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Why not just say "Good Riddance?" From a pragmatic perspective, the fewer browsers we as developers need to support, the better. There has never been any mean

Why not just say "Good Riddance?" From a pragmatic perspective, the fewer browsers we as developers need to support, the better. There has never been any meaningful standardization between browsers. Even "modern" browsers are all different enough that you need to test and code specific paths for each of them unless you stick to trivial things. Personally, I want the same thing I wanted back in 1996 when I started this ride: One browser to win, and the others to drop to such a tiny share that we don't need to support them anymore. Firefox performed a service in convincing Microsoft to update IE6. But that was fifteen years ago. Since then, Chrome has arrived and demonstrated that it is far and away the best. In my opinion, Firefox would serve us best by simply stepping aside. All it does today is force us to code yet another path into everything we build.

colechristensen 10y ago
I'm sorry, but most of the good things that have happened with the browser are directly because there was competition. If one wins and the others disappear it's simply going to be too tempting for the winner to abuse it's position because nobody will have another choice.
- pherq 10y ago
  To add to that, Google already abuses its position with Chrome (see the stuff surrounding AdNauseum in the past couple days). One company having as much power over the shape of the web as Google already has is scary enough, the notion of them "winning" the browser wars is even worse.
- jasonkester 10y ago
  Actually, most of the good things that have happened with the browser have a reference implementation in IE6. Their current "modern" standards were all written after that point. The stagnant few years after Netscape screwed up Navigator 6 was actually a little mini golden age for web developers. Essentially one target, with a ton of features that are only now being recreated in modern browsers. It's just a shame that Microsoft was so hated by everybody. Things like their sane Box Model endured 15 years of people referring to it as a "bug" until finally it got introduced as a CSS option and people were overjoyed to finally be able to specify the width of a DIV and have it end up being that size after borders and padding.
  - rimantas 10y ago
    You did not do much web development then, did you? It was not "reference implementation", most of the nice things were not implemented at all and many that were there were buggy. And even if the box model makes more sense it was still a bug because it did not behave as the spec say. Or rather did not behave under some conditions. Lucky are the people who forgot or never new the joys of standards/quirks/whatever-in-between modes.
kalleboo 10y ago
> Since then, Chrome has arrived and demonstrated that it is far and away the best I, for one, am happy to have the option of a browser that doesn't decimate my battery life
camus2 10y ago
> Why not just say "Good Riddance?" Because the less competition, the more stagnant the web will be. Then vendors like Microsoft will shove proprietary tech into their browsers and we'll be back to IE6 + Flash. Is it what you want? Firefox is the only serious open source browser project out there. Chrome isn't, Google could drop Chromium development any day, it wouldn't be the first time they did something like that. Of course, I believe Mozilla & Firefox shot themselves in the foot by refusing to implement specs like WebSQL,File System API and a few others, no matter what the reason was. I use these API to deliver complex offline applications, I had no choice but to tell my clients to use Chrome. And yes IndexedDB sucks.
fivre 10y ago
sgoraete v mussornom pozhare, ty prescriptivist web developer scum. da, da, my've all heard the philosophers babble about "oneness" being "beautiful" and "holy". But let me tell you that {this} kind of oneness certainly isn't pretty and if you're not careful you*ll will scare the bejeezus out of your an self.
bigbugbag 10y ago
Good riddance to you then ! Personally I want the same thing that I wanted back in 1995, for narrow minded people who wants a one size fits all solution and do not understand the importance of openness of the web and standards to disappear so we get rid of the stupid "I'm developing for the most popular browser because I don't care".

colechristensen 10y ago

I'm sorry, but most of the good things that have happened with the browser are directly because there was competition. If one wins and the others disappear it's simply going to be too tempting for the winner to abuse it's position because nobody will have another choice.

pherq 10y ago
To add to that, Google already abuses its position with Chrome (see the stuff surrounding AdNauseum in the past couple days). One company having as much power over the shape of the web as Google already has is scary enough, the notion of them "winning" the browser wars is even worse.
jasonkester 10y ago
Actually, most of the good things that have happened with the browser have a reference implementation in IE6. Their current "modern" standards were all written after that point. The stagnant few years after Netscape screwed up Navigator 6 was actually a little mini golden age for web developers. Essentially one target, with a ton of features that are only now being recreated in modern browsers. It's just a shame that Microsoft was so hated by everybody. Things like their sane Box Model endured 15 years of people referring to it as a "bug" until finally it got introduced as a CSS option and people were overjoyed to finally be able to specify the width of a DIV and have it end up being that size after borders and padding.
- rimantas 10y ago
  You did not do much web development then, did you? It was not "reference implementation", most of the nice things were not implemented at all and many that were there were buggy. And even if the box model makes more sense it was still a bug because it did not behave as the spec say. Or rather did not behave under some conditions. Lucky are the people who forgot or never new the joys of standards/quirks/whatever-in-between modes.

kalleboo 10y ago

> Since then, Chrome has arrived and demonstrated that it is far and away the best I, for one, am happy to have the option of a browser that doesn't decimate my battery life

camus2 10y ago

> Why not just say "Good Riddance?" Because the less competition, the more stagnant the web will be. Then vendors like Microsoft will shove proprietary tech into their browsers and we'll be back to IE6 + Flash. Is it what you want? Firefox is the only serious open source browser project out there. Chrome isn't, Google could drop Chromium development any day, it wouldn't be the first time they did something like that. Of course, I believe Mozilla & Firefox shot themselves in the foot by refusing to implement specs like WebSQL,File System API and a few others, no matter what the reason was. I use these API to deliver complex offline applications, I had no choice but to tell my clients to use Chrome. And yes IndexedDB sucks.

fivre 10y ago

sgoraete v mussornom pozhare, ty prescriptivist web developer scum. da, da, my've all heard the philosophers babble about "oneness" being "beautiful" and "holy". But let me tell you that {this} kind of oneness certainly isn't pretty and if you're not careful you*ll will scare the bejeezus out of your an self.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Good riddance to you then ! Personally I want the same thing that I wanted back in 1995, for narrow minded people who wants a one size fits all solution and do not understand the importance of openness of the web and standards to disappear so we get rid of the stupid "I'm developing for the most popular browser because I don't care".