16 ms·

Bravo! As a Firefox user, the trend of web developers only testing in Chrome (and ending up using features that only work in Chrome) is getting really annoying.

Bravo! As a Firefox user, the trend of web developers only testing in Chrome (and ending up using features that only work in Chrome) is getting really annoying. Most of the time, the fixes are really simple, like including more prefixes than -webkit. Very happy to see Mozilla raising awareness around this issue. Personally, I have Firefox and Chrome open side by side for development. If those two work, Safari and Edge generally will too. I'll add IE specific rules/hacks afterward.

skrowl 10y ago
If your app only works in Webkit / Blink, you've written a Chrome App and not a Web App. Your CUSTOMERS do not want to see "To use this site / app, stop using the web browser you've chosen to use (or your company has chosen for you) and go install this instead!"
- nathancahill 10y ago
  Here's a thought exercise: how will this trend be exacerbated by the Electron/Chromium stack? Should Mozilla develop a competing engine for "native" apps?
  - Etzos 10y ago
    They are actually already doing this[1]. [1] https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron
  - ronjouch 10y ago
    Mozilla is developing a competing engine for native apps. The word "embedded" is part of Servo's [1] elevator pitch: Servo is a modern, high-performance browser engine designed for both application and embedded use. Sponsored by Mozilla and written in the new systems programming language Rust, the Servo project aims to achieve better parallelism, security, modularity, and performance. [1] https://servo.org/ https://servo.org/ EDIT seeing Etzos's answer, I see better what you meant (de-facto "standardizing" around electron). positron looks like a better answer then. But long term, there's clear interest from Servo developers, see http://blog.servo.org/2015/05/01/forward/ http://blog.servo.org/2015/05/01/forward/ and Ctrl+F for "Chromium Embedded Framework"
    - nathancahill 10y ago
      Great. I'd prefer to see Servo and browser.html replace the heavy Electron stack.
      - tehbeard 10y ago
        How light is servo + browser.html? you seem to be implying it's much less than electron. Any figures? I haven't looked at Servo / browser.html / rust at all apart from seeing a few news articles pop up on HN the last few months.
        nathancahill 10y ago
        Hard to say since it's still in development. Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in. But it's focus is on parallelism and performance, so I have high hopes. Slack (a flagship of Electron apps) is currently using 850mb of ram, idle in the background. Firefox with 50 tabs open is using the same amount.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Holy crap! 850MB for a chat client!? Just made the argument for truly, native apps right there.
        nachtigall 10y ago
        See this demo comparing Chrome, Firefox and Servo WebRender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws Servo WebRender uses the GPU making it much faster than classic renderers (besides CPU parallelism), think of it like a Webbrowser using Video Gaming technology. There's a talk about this at https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/ https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258) browser.html is just the current "skin" for Servo.
        10y ago
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    Don't forget Cordova where most views are also Chrome based. (The exception being Windows, by default, and many don't seem to test on Windows.) Obviously Mozilla tried and failed with Firefox OS to play in that market at the mobile level. It might be nice to see an Electron and/or Cordova-compatible view engine from Mozilla, but I'm not sure how much adoption or testing it would see unless it became the default (and even then you probably would have a bunch of web developers revert to Chrome views simply because its comfortable to what they know).
  - latortuga 10y ago
    Mozilla actually had one for years, called XULRunner.
    - dfabulich 10y ago
      It's not good; people use Electron instead of XULRunner because XULRunner was barely maintained. It would randomly stop working on major Firefox releases, and would stay broken for weeks, because nobody noticed or cared that XULRunner didn't work, as long as core Firefox kept working. Even when it did work, working with XPCOM sucked. Positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron is the new XULRunner. WIP, doesn't actually work yet. :-(
- tomjen3 10y ago
  The trouble with that is what do you do with older versions of the browsers? Edge is okay with features, but then you have people who complain that your website looks funny in your browser because they still run IE 8 or 10.
fabiogo 10y ago
Right on. The tools we have at our finger tips as web developers are so accessible and comprehensive that there is little excuse for not testing an app across a range of user interfaces/platforms. I shiver to think how much deep DIY happened at every layer of development and deployment in previous software generations.
AndreyErmakov 10y ago
I didn't realize Chrome was becoming the default testing environment. I find it weird, given its terrible font rendering. I tried using Chrome but just couldn't. Smaller size fonts render weak, pale, bleak, like drawn with a dull pencil. I found it rather difficult to read large bodies of text in Chrome which was giving me quite a bit of eye strain. Not sure why anyone would want to test their pages in that in my opinion broken rendering engine. I'm aware there is a setting which has to do with subpixel rendering or whatever this is called, I tried switching it on and off for no perceivable visual change. So I gave up on Chrome. IE also has had broken font rendering since they moved to subpixel rendering several years ago, but at least it draws fonts in a strong and dark fashion making them more readable than in Chrome. Personally, I design for Firefox which I consider the gold standard of web development. Then, at some intervals I check if things are okay in IE and Chrome and usually they are fine. Chrome was useful once in helping me spot some sort of a race condition, its developer tools also conveniently allow you to quickly bypass caching for testing purposes, but other than that I found it useless and unusable.
- ivank 10y ago
  You're probably seeing this bug https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407#c155 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407... and it is indeed a sad story, especially because Chrome 21 worked just fine. Then they rewrote some gamma correction code in the Skia that shipped with Chrome 22.
  - AndreyErmakov 10y ago
    Thanks for the link. Based on some of the screenshots posted over there it indeed looks like what I've been observing on my machine (version 47-something). Not a problem really. Never used Chrome before. Only installed it out of curiosity and also for testing purposes. Within the first day of using it on my development machine it became clear I wouldn't be using this piece of software in the future either.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  I think it is in certain circles. For Google, obviously, in particular. Many of their new sites launch completely incompatible with Firefox and Edge. Some of the frameworks they push, like Polymer and Angular, have been repeat offenders in the past, which leads web apps built with them to also be broken.
amelius 10y ago
The problem is caused by the web spec being way too complicated. Instead W3C should have chosen simpler primitives from which developers can build complicated (formatting) rules themselves. Simpler primitives is also better from a security perspective. By designing the web for average users instead of for developers, W3C has shot itself in the foot.
- nathancahill 10y ago
  > The web spec There are hundreds of web technologies, each with their own spec. None of which are actually that complicated if you read them. > Simpler primitives ... formatting rules ... better from a security perspective. So you mean CSS? What does that have to do with security? > Designing the web for average users Not sure what you're trying to say.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    >There are hundreds of web technologies, each with their own spec. None of which are actually that complicated if you read them. I agree with your overall point, but there is a reason sites like MDN exist. It's because some of the HTML/CSS/JS specs are crazy complicated, contain years and years of edge cases and bugs that have become standard, and are written in standard-eze (which is easy enough to read once you know it, but it can be a bit of a learning curve for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters).
    - nathancahill 10y ago
      MDN will be a huge legacy for Mozilla. Of all of their projects, I think MDN will have the biggest impact on the web. It's absolutely needed for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters. For a more nuanced understanding of browser behavior, you have to read the spec. Worked on a high performance network app, and I think I know the XHR spec by heart now.
      - Klathmon 10y ago

skrowl 10y ago

If your app only works in Webkit / Blink, you've written a Chrome App and not a Web App. Your CUSTOMERS do not want to see "To use this site / app, stop using the web browser you've chosen to use (or your company has chosen for you) and go install this instead!"

nathancahill 10y ago
Here's a thought exercise: how will this trend be exacerbated by the Electron/Chromium stack? Should Mozilla develop a competing engine for "native" apps?
- Etzos 10y ago
  They are actually already doing this[1]. [1] https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron
- ronjouch 10y ago
  Mozilla is developing a competing engine for native apps. The word "embedded" is part of Servo's [1] elevator pitch: Servo is a modern, high-performance browser engine designed for both application and embedded use. Sponsored by Mozilla and written in the new systems programming language Rust, the Servo project aims to achieve better parallelism, security, modularity, and performance. [1] https://servo.org/ https://servo.org/ EDIT seeing Etzos's answer, I see better what you meant (de-facto "standardizing" around electron). positron looks like a better answer then. But long term, there's clear interest from Servo developers, see http://blog.servo.org/2015/05/01/forward/ http://blog.servo.org/2015/05/01/forward/ and Ctrl+F for "Chromium Embedded Framework"
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    Great. I'd prefer to see Servo and browser.html replace the heavy Electron stack.
    - tehbeard 10y ago
      How light is servo + browser.html? you seem to be implying it's much less than electron. Any figures? I haven't looked at Servo / browser.html / rust at all apart from seeing a few news articles pop up on HN the last few months.
      - nathancahill 10y ago
        Hard to say since it's still in development. Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in. But it's focus is on parallelism and performance, so I have high hopes. Slack (a flagship of Electron apps) is currently using 850mb of ram, idle in the background. Firefox with 50 tabs open is using the same amount.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Holy crap! 850MB for a chat client!? Just made the argument for truly, native apps right there.
      - nachtigall 10y ago
        See this demo comparing Chrome, Firefox and Servo WebRender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws Servo WebRender uses the GPU making it much faster than classic renderers (besides CPU parallelism), think of it like a Webbrowser using Video Gaming technology. There's a talk about this at https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/ https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258) browser.html is just the current "skin" for Servo.
        10y ago
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  Don't forget Cordova where most views are also Chrome based. (The exception being Windows, by default, and many don't seem to test on Windows.) Obviously Mozilla tried and failed with Firefox OS to play in that market at the mobile level. It might be nice to see an Electron and/or Cordova-compatible view engine from Mozilla, but I'm not sure how much adoption or testing it would see unless it became the default (and even then you probably would have a bunch of web developers revert to Chrome views simply because its comfortable to what they know).
- latortuga 10y ago
  Mozilla actually had one for years, called XULRunner.
  - dfabulich 10y ago
    It's not good; people use Electron instead of XULRunner because XULRunner was barely maintained. It would randomly stop working on major Firefox releases, and would stay broken for weeks, because nobody noticed or cared that XULRunner didn't work, as long as core Firefox kept working. Even when it did work, working with XPCOM sucked. Positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron is the new XULRunner. WIP, doesn't actually work yet. :-(
tomjen3 10y ago
The trouble with that is what do you do with older versions of the browsers? Edge is okay with features, but then you have people who complain that your website looks funny in your browser because they still run IE 8 or 10.

fabiogo 10y ago

Right on. The tools we have at our finger tips as web developers are so accessible and comprehensive that there is little excuse for not testing an app across a range of user interfaces/platforms. I shiver to think how much deep DIY happened at every layer of development and deployment in previous software generations.

AndreyErmakov 10y ago

I didn't realize Chrome was becoming the default testing environment. I find it weird, given its terrible font rendering. I tried using Chrome but just couldn't. Smaller size fonts render weak, pale, bleak, like drawn with a dull pencil. I found it rather difficult to read large bodies of text in Chrome which was giving me quite a bit of eye strain. Not sure why anyone would want to test their pages in that in my opinion broken rendering engine. I'm aware there is a setting which has to do with subpixel rendering or whatever this is called, I tried switching it on and off for no perceivable visual change. So I gave up on Chrome. IE also has had broken font rendering since they moved to subpixel rendering several years ago, but at least it draws fonts in a strong and dark fashion making them more readable than in Chrome. Personally, I design for Firefox which I consider the gold standard of web development. Then, at some intervals I check if things are okay in IE and Chrome and usually they are fine. Chrome was useful once in helping me spot some sort of a race condition, its developer tools also conveniently allow you to quickly bypass caching for testing purposes, but other than that I found it useless and unusable.

ivank 10y ago
You're probably seeing this bug https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407#c155 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407... and it is indeed a sad story, especially because Chrome 21 worked just fine. Then they rewrote some gamma correction code in the Skia that shipped with Chrome 22.
- AndreyErmakov 10y ago
  Thanks for the link. Based on some of the screenshots posted over there it indeed looks like what I've been observing on my machine (version 47-something). Not a problem really. Never used Chrome before. Only installed it out of curiosity and also for testing purposes. Within the first day of using it on my development machine it became clear I wouldn't be using this piece of software in the future either.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I think it is in certain circles. For Google, obviously, in particular. Many of their new sites launch completely incompatible with Firefox and Edge. Some of the frameworks they push, like Polymer and Angular, have been repeat offenders in the past, which leads web apps built with them to also be broken.

amelius 10y ago

The problem is caused by the web spec being way too complicated. Instead W3C should have chosen simpler primitives from which developers can build complicated (formatting) rules themselves. Simpler primitives is also better from a security perspective. By designing the web for average users instead of for developers, W3C has shot itself in the foot.

nathancahill 10y ago
> The web spec There are hundreds of web technologies, each with their own spec. None of which are actually that complicated if you read them. > Simpler primitives ... formatting rules ... better from a security perspective. So you mean CSS? What does that have to do with security? > Designing the web for average users Not sure what you're trying to say.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  >There are hundreds of web technologies, each with their own spec. None of which are actually that complicated if you read them. I agree with your overall point, but there is a reason sites like MDN exist. It's because some of the HTML/CSS/JS specs are crazy complicated, contain years and years of edge cases and bugs that have become standard, and are written in standard-eze (which is easy enough to read once you know it, but it can be a bit of a learning curve for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters).
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    MDN will be a huge legacy for Mozilla. Of all of their projects, I think MDN will have the biggest impact on the web. It's absolutely needed for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters. For a more nuanced understanding of browser behavior, you have to read the spec. Worked on a high performance network app, and I think I know the XHR spec by heart now.
    - Klathmon 10y ago