5 ms·

Firefox isn't far behind at 2.6%

by dmm 5y ago

afavour 5y ago
Depressing. But on the other hand you don't actually have to do much if anything to support Firefox, unlike IE11 it adheres to web standards.
- cogman10 5y ago
  And has stayed relatively up to date. That was the biggest PITA with IE is that it would be years behind other browsers in what APIs it supported and you needed a big painful update to the next major version to get new stuff. IMO, MS has really mismanaged the IE product. The fact that there is now a legacy edge is really silly, why did they fork that instead of just making one of the version upgrades be a "Ok, this is a new change to the rendering engine which is fairly major". Their aversion to making anyone unhappy is just silly. Chrome and Firefox have done a much better job with major rendering/js engine upgrades saying "Sorry some things are busted now, get use to it".
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    My understanding is that they didn't have an option. IE has so many idiosyncrasies that they couldn't make it compatible with modern Web standards and simultaneously retain compatibility with sites that were built for IE. Better to write a new browser so that enterprise clients can use both - one for their legacy apps and the other for new stuff and the modern web - while they get everything migrated over one at a time. Versus, changing IE in place would have forced clients to rewrite everything overnight, which would have been a much, much worse situation.
- technion 5y ago
  I think this is a key point. I don't personally care much about deliberately dropping IE11 support. But I do want to use fetch() and similar functions without shipping a polyfill. I want to get the code size reduction that comes with just setting ES6 as a compilation target. I don't have to think much about Firefox when doing so, but I do have to think about dropping IE11.
- slaymaker1907 5y ago
  If anything, I think supporting FireFox is actually quite useful since can highlight areas where one is relying on some Chrome specific behavior. Usually, if something breaks on FireFox, FireFox is actually the one that is correct in my experience.
  - Zardoz84 5y ago
    I found a few Chrome bugs developing on Firefox and testing on Chrome
wackget 5y ago
Maybe if they stopped trying to ape Chrome and actually focused on being a decent browser on their own...
- NeutronStar 5y ago
  What's not decent about Firefox?

Firefox isn't far behind at 2.6%

by dmm 5y ago

Firefox isn't far behind at 2.6%

Depressing. But on the other hand you don't actually have to do much if anything to support Firefox, unlike IE11 it adheres to web standards.

cogman10 5y ago
And has stayed relatively up to date. That was the biggest PITA with IE is that it would be years behind other browsers in what APIs it supported and you needed a big painful update to the next major version to get new stuff. IMO, MS has really mismanaged the IE product. The fact that there is now a legacy edge is really silly, why did they fork that instead of just making one of the version upgrades be a "Ok, this is a new change to the rendering engine which is fairly major". Their aversion to making anyone unhappy is just silly. Chrome and Firefox have done a much better job with major rendering/js engine upgrades saying "Sorry some things are busted now, get use to it".
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  My understanding is that they didn't have an option. IE has so many idiosyncrasies that they couldn't make it compatible with modern Web standards and simultaneously retain compatibility with sites that were built for IE. Better to write a new browser so that enterprise clients can use both - one for their legacy apps and the other for new stuff and the modern web - while they get everything migrated over one at a time. Versus, changing IE in place would have forced clients to rewrite everything overnight, which would have been a much, much worse situation.
technion 5y ago
I think this is a key point. I don't personally care much about deliberately dropping IE11 support. But I do want to use fetch() and similar functions without shipping a polyfill. I want to get the code size reduction that comes with just setting ES6 as a compilation target. I don't have to think much about Firefox when doing so, but I do have to think about dropping IE11.
slaymaker1907 5y ago
If anything, I think supporting FireFox is actually quite useful since can highlight areas where one is relying on some Chrome specific behavior. Usually, if something breaks on FireFox, FireFox is actually the one that is correct in my experience.
- Zardoz84 5y ago
  I found a few Chrome bugs developing on Firefox and testing on Chrome

wackget 5y ago

Maybe if they stopped trying to ape Chrome and actually focused on being a decent browser on their own...

NeutronStar 5y ago
What's not decent about Firefox?