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I wish I could downvote this article. It is from a developer who is married with Google Chrome and who is trying to tell us that other browsers are stupid becau

I wish I could downvote this article. It is from a developer who is married with Google Chrome and who is trying to tell us that other browsers are stupid because they don't have the same bugs as Chrome does. It's especially unnerving for me as a firefox user since these days I come across a lot more sites that make stupid mistakes that just works fine in their Chrome. This mindset makes me angry. The same applies when developers think that if your browser blocks google tracking it is ok to just fuck up the whole website. The web should be - progressive - standards-compliant. Some years ago this was widely believed to be right way forward. Nowadays it seems that developers think that Chrome on OS X is the world we all should live in. Loosely related: I am not going to switch to Chrome. I would never use a browser from an Ad Company like Google, as I don't trust them at all.

morkro 10y ago
I have to agree on this one. I have lots of respect for Nicolás and his work, but I think this article shows a little bit of arrogance towards users who don't use Chrome as their primary user. On top of that he disabled accessibility on Firefox entirely in favour of design preferences. Many developer might not care, but it's an attitude which needs to stop.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  It's more than a little arrogance, it's a superiority complex. My jaw dropped when I read the following because it speaks volumes about his mindset. > As such, visitors are mostly privileged web developers using macOS and Google Chrome.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Meet the new bullies. Same as the old bullies. There's a lot of this going on in the tech community. Far cry from when <geeks|nerds|smart people> got pushed around... Now they're (we? I hope I'm not like this) the ones doing the pushing.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      > There's a lot of this going on in the tech community. No. There's a lot of this going on in Silicon Valley and among its camp followers.
      - cptskippy 10y ago
        It happens everywhere. I'm based in Atlanta and we're primarily a Windows Desktop shop but our Marketing department is a bunch of Mac carrying hipsters with titles like "Director of User Experience" and "Mobile Experience Designer".
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Meh. The nerds still get pushed around. Most web devs these days are not nerds in any traditional sense. Web dev has long since left the computer labs and entered the art and media departments. And with it has come the every increasing use of Apple products in web dev circles.
      - wmichelin 10y ago
        I'm not an artist, I came from a Computer Science background, and I still use Apple products. I don't think using Linux as a desktop environment is enjoyable. I don't get the Apple hate.
        cptskippy 10y ago
        It's highly contextual. Macs gained a lot of popularity with OSX because of it's BSD underpinnings that allowed developers to go mobile and disconnected without having to run Linux Desktops. However Macs have always been popular with designers, artists, and creative nontechnical users because of their simplicity and intuitiveness. A lot of the hate comes from having to deal with the later group, not the former.
        s_kilk 10y ago
        And, crucially, OSX is the only real option for running both unixy programs and high-grade commercial software such as the Adobe Suite on the same machine without dual-booting
  - SimeVidas 10y ago
    I don’t get it. Why is this arrogant?
    - cptskippy 10y ago
      He says that by virtue of that fact that his audience is mostly using Chrome and macOS, they are privileged. Therefore anyone who isn't is therefore underprivileged. Additionally he refers to it as macOS which pedantic and yet incorrect unless the majority of his users are running a beta OS.
      - SimeVidas 10y ago
        I think, the author meant that (most) web developers consider themselves privileged, in thinking that all developers should be using MacBook Pros and Chrome, and that there’s no need to test in anything else, when sharing demos and tools between themselves. Using the term macOS is fine. It’s the new name, and we can start using it before the official release of the next version in the fall. I think you are being pedantic here.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > My jaw dropped when I read the following because it speaks volumes about his mindset. > > As such, visitors are mostly privileged web developers using macOS and Google Chrome. Yeah, mine too. I wouldn't think of using macOS & Chrome as a privilege. A cost of doing business, perhaps, but not a privilege. I'm privileged to have a job in which I'm running Linux and Firefox, and I really do count that as a privilege.
- deleted 10y ago
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- magic_beans 10y ago
  The design he's so wedded too isn't exactly stellar either... I don't understand why he didn't just update his design instead of hacking his way to match the design in FF...
deleted 10y ago
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Touche 10y ago
I didn't get this at all from the article. He didn't say that other browsers are stupid, he said that they have bugs; the outline thing is a particularly nasty Firefox bug. It might also be a spec bug if the spec is not detailed enough on how to draw outlines; but it's also definitely a Firefox bug because it looks terrible. There's nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade.
- Etzos 10y ago
  A quick search turns up that it is indeed a Firefox bug and not a bug in the spec[0]. Honestly it is very disappointing that such an obvious issue has been left open for so long. This is part of a very old spec and that any browser doesn't have compliance with this is surprising. [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266122 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266122
- bhauer 10y ago
  I agree that calling out bugs, especially if they've been reported and ignored, is worthwhile. That said, I think what the parent comment is saying is that Chrome too has bugs and a web developer who exclusively tests in Chrome forgives those bugs as "just the way HTML rendering works." This makes the developer effectively blind to Chrome's defects. A developer who uses Firefox exclusively will have a similar feeling of privileged disdain for Chrome's bugs: "How can Google ship a browser with this problem? This is unacceptably broken!" I know I felt that way for ages with Chrome's font rendering [1]. Chrome's font rendering was so poor compared to Firefox that it was difficult for me to use even for short bursts of testing. Although admittedly—and in a way confirming my point—those who used Chrome regularly were conditioned to its rendering and in some cases didn't even perceive the difference when comparing them side-by-side. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541
  - insin 10y ago
    > A developer who uses Firefox exclusively will have a similar feeling of privileged disdain for Chrome's bugs: "How can Google ship a browser with this problem? This is unacceptably broken!" I don't know about its bugs, but that's pretty much how I feel about Chrome's address bar when I'm testing apps in it :)
SimeVidas 10y ago
I’ve read the article yesterday (fully), and I didn’t get the impression that the author thinks that “other browsers are stupid”. (And I’m a loyal Firefox user, so I think I would have noticed.) From what I’ve understood, the thesis is about the issue of browser inconsistencies, and how it sometimes may be sensible to resort to user agent detection and hacks.
devishard 10y ago
The best part is where you visit the site in Chrome and it still looks terrible. Really, you needed to put an opacity transition on the orange background of each of your comments? Maybe if the site had a cleaner, simpler design it would be easier to make it work on all browsers.
- magic_beans 10y ago
  I noticed this too... The site's design is terrible, and I don't get why he has fought so hard to persist a terrible design...
Nadya 10y ago
>....trying to tell us that other browsers are stupid because they don't have the same bugs as Chrome does. It took me finding the bug on the Chrome bug tracker to convince my team that Firefox was rendering things correctly, but because we code/design on Chrome it "looked wrong" because it had been designed to look right in Chrome, which was actually wrong. I can no longer remember the exact bug it was unfortunately - had something to do with positioning elements and flexbox though. Oh - and font rendering. Fonts are always "too thick" in Firefox because Chrome has a poor implementation of font rendering since like Version 21 (22?) and renders fonts thinner than they should be. :) Also someone who will never switch to Chrome, but for different reasons. I hack the UI and UX of Firefox to be almost unrecognizable as Firefox and Chrome doesn't allow for that level of freedom. There is no userChrome.css to modify, addons are more limited in what they can modify, etc.
joshkpeterson 10y ago
Where do they say other browsers are stupid? You're reading some sort of superiority that isn't there. This is a good list of some cross browser development gotchas -- No need to downvote.
cortesoft 10y ago
Your criticism's may be true, but lets think about it from a web developer's perspective. Being standards compliant is great and all, but when you are creating a website you have to think about the way your users are going to experience it. If a large majority of your visitors use chrome, you are going to have to prioritize their experience. While ideally you will make it work perfectly for every browser, sometimes you have to make compromises. It isn't about thinking that Chrome is the world we all SHOULD live in, it is trying to design a web page for the world we DO live in.
athenot 10y ago
Yup. There's an eery parallel with when Internet Explorer + ActiveX extensions where being pushed hard, to the detriment of us mac/linux/bsd users.

morkro 10y ago

I have to agree on this one. I have lots of respect for Nicolás and his work, but I think this article shows a little bit of arrogance towards users who don't use Chrome as their primary user. On top of that he disabled accessibility on Firefox entirely in favour of design preferences. Many developer might not care, but it's an attitude which needs to stop.

cptskippy 10y ago
It's more than a little arrogance, it's a superiority complex. My jaw dropped when I read the following because it speaks volumes about his mindset. > As such, visitors are mostly privileged web developers using macOS and Google Chrome.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Meet the new bullies. Same as the old bullies. There's a lot of this going on in the tech community. Far cry from when <geeks|nerds|smart people> got pushed around... Now they're (we? I hope I'm not like this) the ones doing the pushing.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    > There's a lot of this going on in the tech community. No. There's a lot of this going on in Silicon Valley and among its camp followers.
    - cptskippy 10y ago
      It happens everywhere. I'm based in Atlanta and we're primarily a Windows Desktop shop but our Marketing department is a bunch of Mac carrying hipsters with titles like "Director of User Experience" and "Mobile Experience Designer".
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Meh. The nerds still get pushed around. Most web devs these days are not nerds in any traditional sense. Web dev has long since left the computer labs and entered the art and media departments. And with it has come the every increasing use of Apple products in web dev circles.
    - wmichelin 10y ago
      I'm not an artist, I came from a Computer Science background, and I still use Apple products. I don't think using Linux as a desktop environment is enjoyable. I don't get the Apple hate.
      - cptskippy 10y ago
        It's highly contextual. Macs gained a lot of popularity with OSX because of it's BSD underpinnings that allowed developers to go mobile and disconnected without having to run Linux Desktops. However Macs have always been popular with designers, artists, and creative nontechnical users because of their simplicity and intuitiveness. A lot of the hate comes from having to deal with the later group, not the former.
        s_kilk 10y ago
        And, crucially, OSX is the only real option for running both unixy programs and high-grade commercial software such as the Adobe Suite on the same machine without dual-booting
- SimeVidas 10y ago
  I don’t get it. Why is this arrogant?
  - cptskippy 10y ago
    He says that by virtue of that fact that his audience is mostly using Chrome and macOS, they are privileged. Therefore anyone who isn't is therefore underprivileged. Additionally he refers to it as macOS which pedantic and yet incorrect unless the majority of his users are running a beta OS.
    - SimeVidas 10y ago
      I think, the author meant that (most) web developers consider themselves privileged, in thinking that all developers should be using MacBook Pros and Chrome, and that there’s no need to test in anything else, when sharing demos and tools between themselves. Using the term macOS is fine. It’s the new name, and we can start using it before the official release of the next version in the fall. I think you are being pedantic here.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > My jaw dropped when I read the following because it speaks volumes about his mindset. > > As such, visitors are mostly privileged web developers using macOS and Google Chrome. Yeah, mine too. I wouldn't think of using macOS & Chrome as a privilege. A cost of doing business, perhaps, but not a privilege. I'm privileged to have a job in which I'm running Linux and Firefox, and I really do count that as a privilege.
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magic_beans 10y ago
The design he's so wedded too isn't exactly stellar either... I don't understand why he didn't just update his design instead of hacking his way to match the design in FF...

deleted 10y ago

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Touche 10y ago

I didn't get this at all from the article. He didn't say that other browsers are stupid, he said that they have bugs; the outline thing is a particularly nasty Firefox bug. It might also be a spec bug if the spec is not detailed enough on how to draw outlines; but it's also definitely a Firefox bug because it looks terrible. There's nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade.

Etzos 10y ago
A quick search turns up that it is indeed a Firefox bug and not a bug in the spec[0]. Honestly it is very disappointing that such an obvious issue has been left open for so long. This is part of a very old spec and that any browser doesn't have compliance with this is surprising. [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266122 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266122
bhauer 10y ago
I agree that calling out bugs, especially if they've been reported and ignored, is worthwhile. That said, I think what the parent comment is saying is that Chrome too has bugs and a web developer who exclusively tests in Chrome forgives those bugs as "just the way HTML rendering works." This makes the developer effectively blind to Chrome's defects. A developer who uses Firefox exclusively will have a similar feeling of privileged disdain for Chrome's bugs: "How can Google ship a browser with this problem? This is unacceptably broken!" I know I felt that way for ages with Chrome's font rendering [1]. Chrome's font rendering was so poor compared to Firefox that it was difficult for me to use even for short bursts of testing. Although admittedly—and in a way confirming my point—those who used Chrome regularly were conditioned to its rendering and in some cases didn't even perceive the difference when comparing them side-by-side. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541
- insin 10y ago
  > A developer who uses Firefox exclusively will have a similar feeling of privileged disdain for Chrome's bugs: "How can Google ship a browser with this problem? This is unacceptably broken!" I don't know about its bugs, but that's pretty much how I feel about Chrome's address bar when I'm testing apps in it :)

SimeVidas 10y ago

I’ve read the article yesterday (fully), and I didn’t get the impression that the author thinks that “other browsers are stupid”. (And I’m a loyal Firefox user, so I think I would have noticed.) From what I’ve understood, the thesis is about the issue of browser inconsistencies, and how it sometimes may be sensible to resort to user agent detection and hacks.

devishard 10y ago

The best part is where you visit the site in Chrome and it still looks terrible. Really, you needed to put an opacity transition on the orange background of each of your comments? Maybe if the site had a cleaner, simpler design it would be easier to make it work on all browsers.

magic_beans 10y ago
I noticed this too... The site's design is terrible, and I don't get why he has fought so hard to persist a terrible design...

Nadya 10y ago

>....trying to tell us that other browsers are stupid because they don't have the same bugs as Chrome does. It took me finding the bug on the Chrome bug tracker to convince my team that Firefox was rendering things correctly, but because we code/design on Chrome it "looked wrong" because it had been designed to look right in Chrome, which was actually wrong. I can no longer remember the exact bug it was unfortunately - had something to do with positioning elements and flexbox though. Oh - and font rendering. Fonts are always "too thick" in Firefox because Chrome has a poor implementation of font rendering since like Version 21 (22?) and renders fonts thinner than they should be. :) Also someone who will never switch to Chrome, but for different reasons. I hack the UI and UX of Firefox to be almost unrecognizable as Firefox and Chrome doesn't allow for that level of freedom. There is no userChrome.css to modify, addons are more limited in what they can modify, etc.

joshkpeterson 10y ago

Where do they say other browsers are stupid? You're reading some sort of superiority that isn't there. This is a good list of some cross browser development gotchas -- No need to downvote.

cortesoft 10y ago

Your criticism's may be true, but lets think about it from a web developer's perspective. Being standards compliant is great and all, but when you are creating a website you have to think about the way your users are going to experience it. If a large majority of your visitors use chrome, you are going to have to prioritize their experience. While ideally you will make it work perfectly for every browser, sometimes you have to make compromises. It isn't about thinking that Chrome is the world we all SHOULD live in, it is trying to design a web page for the world we DO live in.

athenot 10y ago

Yup. There's an eery parallel with when Internet Explorer + ActiveX extensions where being pushed hard, to the detriment of us mac/linux/bsd users.