20 ms·

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bo

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to figure out what happened: The developer wrote his code, tested it on chrome alone, and then called it a day. No one booted it up in another browser and even smoke-tested to see if basic use-cases work as intended. If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts with having a test plan for other browsers. Testing on only one platform is tantamount to having official support for one platform because you only guarantee your product to work on that platform in so many words. Officially supporting one platform is pressuring your users into a vendor-lock. They - even the tech savvy ones - can't even begin to make vendor choices when the products they use accidentally lock them out left and right.

userbinator 7y ago
If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts with having a test plan for other browsers. I'd say it starts with dialing back the "new feature/change fetish" that a lot of web developers have. Yes, I know some things simply can't be done without a JS webapp, but not all and probably not even a majority, so if HTML and CSS will do the job fine, then so be it; and even if it needs to use JS, it likely doesn't need to be latest-browser-only JS either. The constant "X is bad, use Y; no, Y is bad, use Z; no, Z is bad, use..." churn and that "push the web forward" trendchasing seems to be so entrenched in "modern" (there's another buzzword) web dev culture that I wonder if Google/Chrome is responsible for cultivating and propagating it, because it's not quite as endemic in other areas of software and also helps Chrome keep its monopoly, since it keeps the target moving and beckons at others to "catch up". I think web developers need to adopt a more "do what you can with what you have"/demoscene-ish (for lack of a better term) attitude and not the silly "I could do it with just X, but I'll use Y because it's newer/better-but-I-can't-explain-why-and-everyone-else-is" that really just assists Google's monopoly. In other words: Writing a webapp that could work over 20 years of browsers may not be as hard as it sounds (I've done it --- and I'm not even a web developer --- which might be the reason why...), and you will definitely help browser diversity that way.
- cageface 7y ago
  The problem with this is that the web is competing with native apps. A vanilla HTML site might be good enough in some cases but often you really need to push the envelope of what’s possible the web and that’s hard to do and also support niche browsers on a tight development budget.
  - potench 7y ago
    You can install a “progressive web app” as a native Android app now. There’s been a big push to develop PWAs on the heels of react and single page apps for a couple years now - google is doing a good job trying to support the web as users move so aggressively to mobile. Facebook basically has its own browser in-app(iOS and Android), i bet that browser has more traffic than Firefox.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Google is a bit schizophrenic though. You can watch IO talks from Android, Chrome, Flutter where the presenter eventually throws some jabs at other competing stacks as if they aren't from the same employer.
      - notyourword 7y ago
        Using the word schizophrenic like that contributes to the stigma associated with psychotic mental illness. It is ableist to use a disability you don't have as a metaphor.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        So the censorship of how we are allowed to speak has arrived to HN?
        lightedman 7y ago
        It was always here, right in the rules dictating how you are to speak. Corporations acting like dictators. Makes you feel all nice and warm, doesn't it?
lightedman 7y ago
"As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest." And guess what? Sites that appear to have bugs in FireFox, when I switch the user agent, suddenly render just fine. Example: Before FB rolled out the FB Live feature to everyone, it was "Chrome only" until I figured out that a simple UA switch made it work. No, I won't trust you to say "It doesn't work in FireFox" because one of the biggest companies on this planet said the same thing and it was an outright LIE. If you're actually coding to real standards, and not the crap Google dictates, your shit will work right down to Lynx (because you'll also be following best practice for the disabled.) Good job demonstrating that you don't really know how to make a web page.
tgv 7y ago
Mozilla does have some way of dealing with bugs in sites. They're maintaining a site/database which Firefox consults for workarounds. More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/cd1lob/how_firefox_68_tackles_web_compatibility_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/cd1lob/how_firefox_...
- flas9sd 7y ago
  thanks for the heads-up - `about:compat` and its enabling "Go Faster Addon" was news to me: giving a channel for concrete action following an opinion piece. Feels like a vendor distributed greasemonkey. It is called user-agent after all.
timwis 7y ago
Interesting. I'm a full time Firefox user as well and honestly can't think of an example where this happened to me. There have been a couple times where I was warned my browser wasn't supported, which is stupid, but it usually works fine anyway.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  I've definitely had sites where FF doesn't work properly with LastPass. I've already had sites that plainly don't work at all with FF. I've never blamed the browser for that though. It's the developer responsibility to make sure I can access their site or I go elsewhere.
  - Lendal 7y ago
    To me, if the site doesn't work on Firefox, the site is broken. End of story.
feanaro 7y ago
> As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. Also a full-time Firefox user. This is fascinating because I quite literally cannot remember a website for which I had to switch browser so it would start working. What kind of websites are these? Have you noticed any pattern about them? Perhaps it's a certain type of site that I usually avoid.
- njsubedi 7y ago
  For example's sake, try opening payment/billing setting pages of Google products. For example, pay.google.com doesn't load on FF latest on MacOsX latest.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    Thanks, though it works for me on Linux and Firefox 68.0.2.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    Loads for me - latest Safari, latest macOS. Maybe it's a specific page? I know for example I can use FF everywhere but specific Google apps (new sites) don't work well in FF, though that's improved lately as well.
- luckylion 7y ago
  Skype Web is an example from the top of my head, but I don't run into them a lot either (or don't notice that they are only broken in Firefox, because I rarely care enough to try another browser). I do see quite a few sites that apparently never have been tested with ublock or privacy badger, but they break on all browsers where those are enabled.
  - mambru 7y ago
    Skype web works if you switch user agent
- rvp-x 7y ago
kungito 7y ago
How about a chrome plugin for developers which somehow on a press of a button replaces the chrome rendered website with the firefox rendered one within chrome? Or like every second reload or something it uses firefox rendeder instead of chrome's. Or uses headless firefox and somehow in the background compares the current chrome website state with the firefox one. This could work for multiple browsers at the same time and would be a must have for web devs.
n-gauge 7y ago
Could also be down to extra testing costing more $$$ to test and fix within a tight deadline to get the product shipped. I don't think the dev would have agreed to test on just a single browser - more likely a management decision.
hutzlibu 7y ago
But Mozilla cannot enforce idealism on the developers. They do already a great job with documentation, but they could and should improve on the dev-tools. Chrome dev tools are now in a state, that I only use them for developing and debugging. Built in code editor with autocomplete. And I can debug ... and change code while debugging. And it works great (mostly). Firefox dev tools on the other hand barely work for me to do some debugging and it is no joy. So no wonder more and more developers skip it alltogether, given the low market share of firefox.
- privethedge 7y ago
  I personally prefer firefox's dev tools to chrome's ones.
  - abraCadabstrax 7y ago
    Boy, I am with you on this one. Full-time FF user too. The whole CSS grid thing is very well done and useful.
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      Well, I don't really work with CSS much, but js. Are you consider the debugging tools well done as well? And do you know chrome dev tools? With its elaborate performance tools etc?
      - abraCadabstrax 7y ago
        I currently work more with CSS so I find the debugging tools on both good enough for my purposes. I do know the chrome dev tools and find them to be good, just happen to prefer the FF dev editions ease with layout.
  - bishalb 7y ago
    Yeah but it's somewhat laggy compared to chrome's.
  - 7y ago
frutiger 7y ago
It’s likely that we visit vastly different corners of the internet. As a full time Safari user I can’t remember the last time I had such an issue.
- sroussey 7y ago
  Any site that uses WebGL2
Isinlor 7y ago
I use Firefox all the time and use it for web development. But modern frontend stack - with the whole pile of transpilers, uglifiers, and what not - is almost unusable with Firefox, because source maps don't work with Webpack. https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194 https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194 This put me in a position where I had to choose between switching to Chrome for development or not using Webpack that comes nicely integrated into the web framework of my choice. I went with ditching Webpack, but it's hard. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55669725/require-module-without-webpack-etc https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55669725/require-module-... Developers will not use Firefox if FF dev tools are inferior to Chrome. Some comments from devs: > Can we please fix this? I don't want to choose Chrome as the browser only coz of this issue. Mozzila took notice of the issue after 4 years...
- sroussey 7y ago
  Source maps don’t work well on Chrome either. :/
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  Your linked issue says that certain types of source maps will work with Firefox. Can't you just use one of the working options (e.g, "eval-source-map" works but "cheap-source-map" does not).
anthony_doan 7y ago
Also buggy firefox extensions that will crash firefox or eat up resources.
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  Is Firefox able to identify misbehaving extensions at runtime? And alert the user?
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
I don't remember many times that I encountered Firefox-specific web bugs. I've had bugs where the site doesn't work in Firefox but works in Chrome, but as far as I can tell, those were always caused by the aggressive privacy settings I use in Firefox (whereas the Chrome profile is mostly default). I'm not particularly concerned with the article's complaint about onboarding. The problem is that Firefox is simply slightly worse (less polished, often slower) in many, many aspects. On Desktop, Firefox is quite usable, even if it is a bit less polished than Chrome. On Mobile, it's another story. The only thing saving it is the fact that Chrome doesn't let you install extensions, so you have the choice between an ad-filled web on a browser that runs well, with the ads slowing you down (with Chrome), and a clean web in a slow browser with an unpolished UX and infuriating bugs that don't get fixed (with Firefox). So far, I'd say the two experiences are comparably annoying.
- yawaramin 7y ago
  Well here is the well-documented YouTube slowness with Firefox: https://fortune.com/2018/07/25/youtube-slow-mozilla-firefox-chrome/ https://fortune.com/2018/07/25/youtube-slow-mozilla-firefox-...
- alex7o 7y ago
  Or you can install brave and not deal with anything
  - hermanradtke 7y ago
    This does not help prevent the blink monoculture though.
- jcranberry 7y ago
  I don't have this experience at all with mobile firefox. I find it faster and with better UX.
mastazi 7y ago
> I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. I don't know if meeting online counts: I'm bothered by Mozilla having a partnership with Google. I'm bothered by the fact that Mozilla maintains an official Facebook container but the Google equivalent is left to the community, I can't help but think that the reason why there isn't an official Google container by Mozilla is that Mozilla and Google have a commercial partnership which apparently provides most of Mozilla's income (as per link provided in the article).
Havoc 7y ago
>I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues This is a game of reducing friction incrementally, not big ticket bothered by it
zxcvbn4038 7y ago
One of the biggest issues with Firefox for me has been the U2F support - because they came so late to that party and so many of the web sites that do support U2F gate it by user agent instead of feature detection, because Firefox was so slow on the uptake, they made a lot of problems for everyone and set back one of the better security standards. I also have a big issue with their handling of webm/webp. There was one single guy at Mozilla killing that for years - may still be - despite heavy demand for support. Both were really disheartening because it showed that Mozilla had lost its fight and had become so complacent that it didn’t even feel the need to match its competitors much less try to lead. On the flip side Chrome has now become so comfortable with their position that their users are more of an annoyance, which lets them do very unpopular things like pinching off all of the ad blockers. This is where Mozilla could make a comeback because I think a lot of people (myself included) would take another look at Firefox if that is what it took to keep ublock and ghostery functioning.
Accacin 7y ago
Exactly, at my place we have about eight front-end developers. Guess how many (excluding me) use Firefox? None. When I started I found a tonne of little bugs just because no one thought to test in Firefox.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  There is definitely a vicious circle here. For many web sites/apps, the browsers that matter are Chrome on desktop and Chrome and Safari on mobile. There is now a huge gap between the number of people using those and the second tier browsers, which in most contexts are IE, Firefox, Edge and (desktop) Safari. That inevitably leads to development and testing resources concentrating on the 80% with the other 20% often being an afterthought if they are considered at all. But then there are more bugs in the second tier browsers, which just opens the gap wider.
  - toastal 7y ago
    But not testing Safari I can understand since it's only officially on Mac. Sure you can kind use it via Epiphany and Midori but a lot of features, like Service Workers for instance, don't exist and therefore can be tested with a download. For me, even after wasting time trying to build from source, it didn't seem like the feature flags worked.
JoshMnem 7y ago
Or just develop on Firefox. Some of its dev tools are better than Chrome's. Mozilla should keep working towards making Firefox better for web developers. Web developers can help by using and endorsing Firefox in their coding tutorials/videos/screenshots. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
cpeterso 7y ago
> As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. You can report sites broken in Firefox (or other browsers) at https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/. Mozilla web developers will debug the broken site and either file a Firefox bug report or try to reach out to the site developer. Mozilla even has a convenient Firefox extension to make reporting broken sites quick and easy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webcompatcom-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webcompatcom-...
marmada 7y ago
The thing is, chrome follows the spec. If the website breaks with Firefox, then maybe the problem is with Firefox (a bug, an unimplemented feature) itself rather then Chrome.
amelius 7y ago
The solution is simple. If you are a developer, then use Firefox as your browser. And make sure that other people in your organization test for Chrome ;)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

userbinator 7y ago

If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts with having a test plan for other browsers. I'd say it starts with dialing back the "new feature/change fetish" that a lot of web developers have. Yes, I know some things simply can't be done without a JS webapp, but not all and probably not even a majority, so if HTML and CSS will do the job fine, then so be it; and even if it needs to use JS, it likely doesn't need to be latest-browser-only JS either. The constant "X is bad, use Y; no, Y is bad, use Z; no, Z is bad, use..." churn and that "push the web forward" trendchasing seems to be so entrenched in "modern" (there's another buzzword) web dev culture that I wonder if Google/Chrome is responsible for cultivating and propagating it, because it's not quite as endemic in other areas of software and also helps Chrome keep its monopoly, since it keeps the target moving and beckons at others to "catch up". I think web developers need to adopt a more "do what you can with what you have"/demoscene-ish (for lack of a better term) attitude and not the silly "I could do it with just X, but I'll use Y because it's newer/better-but-I-can't-explain-why-and-everyone-else-is" that really just assists Google's monopoly. In other words: Writing a webapp that could work over 20 years of browsers may not be as hard as it sounds (I've done it --- and I'm not even a web developer --- which might be the reason why...), and you will definitely help browser diversity that way.

cageface 7y ago
The problem with this is that the web is competing with native apps. A vanilla HTML site might be good enough in some cases but often you really need to push the envelope of what’s possible the web and that’s hard to do and also support niche browsers on a tight development budget.
- potench 7y ago
  You can install a “progressive web app” as a native Android app now. There’s been a big push to develop PWAs on the heels of react and single page apps for a couple years now - google is doing a good job trying to support the web as users move so aggressively to mobile. Facebook basically has its own browser in-app(iOS and Android), i bet that browser has more traffic than Firefox.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Google is a bit schizophrenic though. You can watch IO talks from Android, Chrome, Flutter where the presenter eventually throws some jabs at other competing stacks as if they aren't from the same employer.
    - notyourword 7y ago
      Using the word schizophrenic like that contributes to the stigma associated with psychotic mental illness. It is ableist to use a disability you don't have as a metaphor.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        So the censorship of how we are allowed to speak has arrived to HN?
        lightedman 7y ago
        It was always here, right in the rules dictating how you are to speak. Corporations acting like dictators. Makes you feel all nice and warm, doesn't it?

lightedman 7y ago

"As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest." And guess what? Sites that appear to have bugs in FireFox, when I switch the user agent, suddenly render just fine. Example: Before FB rolled out the FB Live feature to everyone, it was "Chrome only" until I figured out that a simple UA switch made it work. No, I won't trust you to say "It doesn't work in FireFox" because one of the biggest companies on this planet said the same thing and it was an outright LIE. If you're actually coding to real standards, and not the crap Google dictates, your shit will work right down to Lynx (because you'll also be following best practice for the disabled.) Good job demonstrating that you don't really know how to make a web page.

tgv 7y ago

Mozilla does have some way of dealing with bugs in sites. They're maintaining a site/database which Firefox consults for workarounds. More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/cd1lob/how_firefox_68_tackles_web_compatibility_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/cd1lob/how_firefox_...

flas9sd 7y ago
thanks for the heads-up - `about:compat` and its enabling "Go Faster Addon" was news to me: giving a channel for concrete action following an opinion piece. Feels like a vendor distributed greasemonkey. It is called user-agent after all.

timwis 7y ago

Interesting. I'm a full time Firefox user as well and honestly can't think of an example where this happened to me. There have been a couple times where I was warned my browser wasn't supported, which is stupid, but it usually works fine anyway.

cannonedhamster 7y ago
I've definitely had sites where FF doesn't work properly with LastPass. I've already had sites that plainly don't work at all with FF. I've never blamed the browser for that though. It's the developer responsibility to make sure I can access their site or I go elsewhere.
- Lendal 7y ago
  To me, if the site doesn't work on Firefox, the site is broken. End of story.

feanaro 7y ago

> As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. Also a full-time Firefox user. This is fascinating because I quite literally cannot remember a website for which I had to switch browser so it would start working. What kind of websites are these? Have you noticed any pattern about them? Perhaps it's a certain type of site that I usually avoid.

njsubedi 7y ago
For example's sake, try opening payment/billing setting pages of Google products. For example, pay.google.com doesn't load on FF latest on MacOsX latest.
- feanaro 7y ago
  Thanks, though it works for me on Linux and Firefox 68.0.2.
- r00fus 7y ago
  Loads for me - latest Safari, latest macOS. Maybe it's a specific page? I know for example I can use FF everywhere but specific Google apps (new sites) don't work well in FF, though that's improved lately as well.
luckylion 7y ago
Skype Web is an example from the top of my head, but I don't run into them a lot either (or don't notice that they are only broken in Firefox, because I rarely care enough to try another browser). I do see quite a few sites that apparently never have been tested with ublock or privacy badger, but they break on all browsers where those are enabled.
- mambru 7y ago
  Skype web works if you switch user agent
rvp-x 7y ago

kungito 7y ago

How about a chrome plugin for developers which somehow on a press of a button replaces the chrome rendered website with the firefox rendered one within chrome? Or like every second reload or something it uses firefox rendeder instead of chrome's. Or uses headless firefox and somehow in the background compares the current chrome website state with the firefox one. This could work for multiple browsers at the same time and would be a must have for web devs.

n-gauge 7y ago

Could also be down to extra testing costing more $$$ to test and fix within a tight deadline to get the product shipped. I don't think the dev would have agreed to test on just a single browser - more likely a management decision.

hutzlibu 7y ago

But Mozilla cannot enforce idealism on the developers. They do already a great job with documentation, but they could and should improve on the dev-tools. Chrome dev tools are now in a state, that I only use them for developing and debugging. Built in code editor with autocomplete. And I can debug ... and change code while debugging. And it works great (mostly). Firefox dev tools on the other hand barely work for me to do some debugging and it is no joy. So no wonder more and more developers skip it alltogether, given the low market share of firefox.

privethedge 7y ago
I personally prefer firefox's dev tools to chrome's ones.
- abraCadabstrax 7y ago
  Boy, I am with you on this one. Full-time FF user too. The whole CSS grid thing is very well done and useful.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Well, I don't really work with CSS much, but js. Are you consider the debugging tools well done as well? And do you know chrome dev tools? With its elaborate performance tools etc?
    - abraCadabstrax 7y ago
      I currently work more with CSS so I find the debugging tools on both good enough for my purposes. I do know the chrome dev tools and find them to be good, just happen to prefer the FF dev editions ease with layout.
- bishalb 7y ago
  Yeah but it's somewhat laggy compared to chrome's.
- 7y ago

frutiger 7y ago

It’s likely that we visit vastly different corners of the internet. As a full time Safari user I can’t remember the last time I had such an issue.

sroussey 7y ago
Any site that uses WebGL2

Isinlor 7y ago

I use Firefox all the time and use it for web development. But modern frontend stack - with the whole pile of transpilers, uglifiers, and what not - is almost unusable with Firefox, because source maps don't work with Webpack. https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194 https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194 This put me in a position where I had to choose between switching to Chrome for development or not using Webpack that comes nicely integrated into the web framework of my choice. I went with ditching Webpack, but it's hard. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55669725/require-module-without-webpack-etc https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55669725/require-module-... Developers will not use Firefox if FF dev tools are inferior to Chrome. Some comments from devs: > Can we please fix this? I don't want to choose Chrome as the browser only coz of this issue. Mozzila took notice of the issue after 4 years...

sroussey 7y ago
Source maps don’t work well on Chrome either. :/
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Your linked issue says that certain types of source maps will work with Firefox. Can't you just use one of the working options (e.g, "eval-source-map" works but "cheap-source-map" does not).

anthony_doan 7y ago

Also buggy firefox extensions that will crash firefox or eat up resources.

Tempest1981 7y ago
Is Firefox able to identify misbehaving extensions at runtime? And alert the user?

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago

I don't remember many times that I encountered Firefox-specific web bugs. I've had bugs where the site doesn't work in Firefox but works in Chrome, but as far as I can tell, those were always caused by the aggressive privacy settings I use in Firefox (whereas the Chrome profile is mostly default). I'm not particularly concerned with the article's complaint about onboarding. The problem is that Firefox is simply slightly worse (less polished, often slower) in many, many aspects. On Desktop, Firefox is quite usable, even if it is a bit less polished than Chrome. On Mobile, it's another story. The only thing saving it is the fact that Chrome doesn't let you install extensions, so you have the choice between an ad-filled web on a browser that runs well, with the ads slowing you down (with Chrome), and a clean web in a slow browser with an unpolished UX and infuriating bugs that don't get fixed (with Firefox). So far, I'd say the two experiences are comparably annoying.

yawaramin 7y ago
Well here is the well-documented YouTube slowness with Firefox: https://fortune.com/2018/07/25/youtube-slow-mozilla-firefox-chrome/ https://fortune.com/2018/07/25/youtube-slow-mozilla-firefox-...
alex7o 7y ago
Or you can install brave and not deal with anything
- hermanradtke 7y ago
  This does not help prevent the blink monoculture though.
jcranberry 7y ago
I don't have this experience at all with mobile firefox. I find it faster and with better UX.

mastazi 7y ago

> I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. I don't know if meeting online counts: I'm bothered by Mozilla having a partnership with Google. I'm bothered by the fact that Mozilla maintains an official Facebook container but the Google equivalent is left to the community, I can't help but think that the reason why there isn't an official Google container by Mozilla is that Mozilla and Google have a commercial partnership which apparently provides most of Mozilla's income (as per link provided in the article).

Havoc 7y ago

>I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues This is a game of reducing friction incrementally, not big ticket bothered by it

zxcvbn4038 7y ago

One of the biggest issues with Firefox for me has been the U2F support - because they came so late to that party and so many of the web sites that do support U2F gate it by user agent instead of feature detection, because Firefox was so slow on the uptake, they made a lot of problems for everyone and set back one of the better security standards. I also have a big issue with their handling of webm/webp. There was one single guy at Mozilla killing that for years - may still be - despite heavy demand for support. Both were really disheartening because it showed that Mozilla had lost its fight and had become so complacent that it didn’t even feel the need to match its competitors much less try to lead. On the flip side Chrome has now become so comfortable with their position that their users are more of an annoyance, which lets them do very unpopular things like pinching off all of the ad blockers. This is where Mozilla could make a comeback because I think a lot of people (myself included) would take another look at Firefox if that is what it took to keep ublock and ghostery functioning.

Accacin 7y ago

Exactly, at my place we have about eight front-end developers. Guess how many (excluding me) use Firefox? None. When I started I found a tonne of little bugs just because no one thought to test in Firefox.

Silhouette 7y ago
There is definitely a vicious circle here. For many web sites/apps, the browsers that matter are Chrome on desktop and Chrome and Safari on mobile. There is now a huge gap between the number of people using those and the second tier browsers, which in most contexts are IE, Firefox, Edge and (desktop) Safari. That inevitably leads to development and testing resources concentrating on the 80% with the other 20% often being an afterthought if they are considered at all. But then there are more bugs in the second tier browsers, which just opens the gap wider.
- toastal 7y ago
  But not testing Safari I can understand since it's only officially on Mac. Sure you can kind use it via Epiphany and Midori but a lot of features, like Service Workers for instance, don't exist and therefore can be tested with a download. For me, even after wasting time trying to build from source, it didn't seem like the feature flags worked.

JoshMnem 7y ago

Or just develop on Firefox. Some of its dev tools are better than Chrome's. Mozilla should keep working towards making Firefox better for web developers. Web developers can help by using and endorsing Firefox in their coding tutorials/videos/screenshots. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

cpeterso 7y ago

> As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. You can report sites broken in Firefox (or other browsers) at https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/. Mozilla web developers will debug the broken site and either file a Firefox bug report or try to reach out to the site developer. Mozilla even has a convenient Firefox extension to make reporting broken sites quick and easy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webcompatcom-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webcompatcom-...

marmada 7y ago

The thing is, chrome follows the spec. If the website breaks with Firefox, then maybe the problem is with Firefox (a bug, an unimplemented feature) itself rather then Chrome.

amelius 7y ago

The solution is simple. If you are a developer, then use Firefox as your browser. And make sure that other people in your organization test for Chrome ;)

deleted 7y ago

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