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Developers at least the experienced ones never left firefox. For the new developers who got hooked on chrome over the last 10/15 years time to move to a develo

by wolco 6y ago

Developers at least the experienced ones never left firefox. For the new developers who got hooked on chrome over the last 10/15 years time to move to a developer friendly browser. At this point ie becomes more useful.

mantap 6y ago
Blink is the most common browser engine. Firefox has some nice developer tools but if you don't test in blink throughout the day then you're just asking for problems.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  Blink will remain the most common if that's all devs continue to optimize for. Not a way to change anything for the better.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    And it's what devs will continue to optimize for while it continues to be most common. The goal of most web developers is to make pages users can use, not get mired down in the never-ending browser wars.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      It's the most common because devs optimize for it. That's a Catch 22 you can't break out of if you continue to optimize for it, an infinite loop.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        Yes. That is network effect. As the smaller vendor, it's incumbent upon Mozilla to break it. Expecting individual devs to do it collectively when it really isn't in their selfish interests is waiting for a unicorn to appear.
        AsyncAwait 6y ago
        > As the smaller vendor, it's incumbent upon Mozilla to break it. That's kind of impossible to do for a smaller vendor without wider developer cooperation. I remember Mozilla only started to breach IE's dominance once devs were so sick of IE that they installed Firefox on their mom's computer despite tons of sites being made for IE. It's possible for something like it to happen again with Chrome, but less likely since Google's a lot smarter and not too lazy to implement latest tech, so it will sure take longer without some activism and evangelism from web devs. > expecting individual devs to do it collectively when it really isn't in their selfish interests is waiting for a unicorn to appear Selfishness is a lot more complicated thing than people give it credit for. A lot of 'selfless' acts could be alternatively described as selfish in that it makes one feel good. Free software developers already do a lot of work for the wider community, where probably it would be a lot easier to just use the proprietary, already feature-rich, counterpart than trying to develop a libre alternative. But the movement understands that long-term, having as much free software as possible is what will in the end help preserve general-purpose computing in the sea of silos. It takes some discipline, sure, but long-term it's actually in one's selfish self-interest.
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        But that's the thing, if Google is responsive enough to implementing new technologies and improving their browser, there's no reason for most web devs to advocate for an alternative browser. A (high-quality) monoculture is actually much much easier on most web devs, because it minimizes the number of browsers they have to support for quirks.
        AsyncAwait 6y ago
        > A (high-quality) monoculture is actually much much easier on most web devs, because it minimizes the number of browsers they have to support for quirks. Short-term, sure. Long-term it opens devs to Google's whims and makes the "open" web barely more open than Apple's AppStore. But that's short-term vs long-term thinking and I can't deny most would prioritize the short-term. Here's hoping there's still enough idealists, even among web devs to avoid that fate and bring about for the web what GNU did for UNIX in the 80/90s.
Mirioron 6y ago
Perhaps Mozilla should never have made breaking changes that pushed people away? The UI change that killed my extensions made me look elsewhere. Chrome's much faster js engine sealed the deal. I've looked into switching back to Firefox, but what I've found is that they don't allow me to use my own extensions. I would have to use a beta version of Firefox or submit all of my extensions that only I use for approval to Mozilla or have to reinstall my extensions every time I close Firefox. None of these seem good options to me.
strictnein 6y ago
This is just simply inaccurate. I have 25 years of web dev experience and left Firefox because Chrome's dev tools were far, far superior to those of Firefox.

by wolco 6y ago

mantap 6y ago

Blink is the most common browser engine. Firefox has some nice developer tools but if you don't test in blink throughout the day then you're just asking for problems.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
Blink will remain the most common if that's all devs continue to optimize for. Not a way to change anything for the better.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  And it's what devs will continue to optimize for while it continues to be most common. The goal of most web developers is to make pages users can use, not get mired down in the never-ending browser wars.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    It's the most common because devs optimize for it. That's a Catch 22 you can't break out of if you continue to optimize for it, an infinite loop.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Yes. That is network effect. As the smaller vendor, it's incumbent upon Mozilla to break it. Expecting individual devs to do it collectively when it really isn't in their selfish interests is waiting for a unicorn to appear.
      - AsyncAwait 6y ago
        > As the smaller vendor, it's incumbent upon Mozilla to break it. That's kind of impossible to do for a smaller vendor without wider developer cooperation. I remember Mozilla only started to breach IE's dominance once devs were so sick of IE that they installed Firefox on their mom's computer despite tons of sites being made for IE. It's possible for something like it to happen again with Chrome, but less likely since Google's a lot smarter and not too lazy to implement latest tech, so it will sure take longer without some activism and evangelism from web devs. > expecting individual devs to do it collectively when it really isn't in their selfish interests is waiting for a unicorn to appear Selfishness is a lot more complicated thing than people give it credit for. A lot of 'selfless' acts could be alternatively described as selfish in that it makes one feel good. Free software developers already do a lot of work for the wider community, where probably it would be a lot easier to just use the proprietary, already feature-rich, counterpart than trying to develop a libre alternative. But the movement understands that long-term, having as much free software as possible is what will in the end help preserve general-purpose computing in the sea of silos. It takes some discipline, sure, but long-term it's actually in one's selfish self-interest.
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        But that's the thing, if Google is responsive enough to implementing new technologies and improving their browser, there's no reason for most web devs to advocate for an alternative browser. A (high-quality) monoculture is actually much much easier on most web devs, because it minimizes the number of browsers they have to support for quirks.
        AsyncAwait 6y ago
        > A (high-quality) monoculture is actually much much easier on most web devs, because it minimizes the number of browsers they have to support for quirks. Short-term, sure. Long-term it opens devs to Google's whims and makes the "open" web barely more open than Apple's AppStore. But that's short-term vs long-term thinking and I can't deny most would prioritize the short-term. Here's hoping there's still enough idealists, even among web devs to avoid that fate and bring about for the web what GNU did for UNIX in the 80/90s.

Mirioron 6y ago

Perhaps Mozilla should never have made breaking changes that pushed people away? The UI change that killed my extensions made me look elsewhere. Chrome's much faster js engine sealed the deal. I've looked into switching back to Firefox, but what I've found is that they don't allow me to use my own extensions. I would have to use a beta version of Firefox or submit all of my extensions that only I use for approval to Mozilla or have to reinstall my extensions every time I close Firefox. None of these seem good options to me.

strictnein 6y ago

This is just simply inaccurate. I have 25 years of web dev experience and left Firefox because Chrome's dev tools were far, far superior to those of Firefox.