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That's absurd. I'm not targetting Lynx, Haiku, or 8 year old shitty phones. Nor are most web developers. And the attitude that you must support those things i

That's absurd. I'm not targetting Lynx, Haiku, or 8 year old shitty phones. Nor are most web developers. And the attitude that you must support those things is detrimental to the web. It makes people feel like they're doing it wrong of they don't spend all their time chasing those rare edge cases. Which if you're trying to start something new, can kill your productivity. I'd rather have web developers target the common platforms only, than have those developers give up and switch to native apps.

csydas 5y ago
I don't think it's about such things, it's about pushing features that are developer convenient but not really user convenient. I'm on an older MacOS version with Safari 12 (too lazy to update, but that's on me), and there are sites that work just fine one day and then break the next because they changed how they want to load random content for their forever scrolling. I'm sure there's a business case for the development team, but as a user, all I see is that what worked just fine for users before is now broken. The same happens with Firefox too because of Chrome-focused optimizations that a lot of sites seem to make don't always work with Firefox. For me as a user, I don't see it as Safari/FF holding developers back, I see that because of some unknown benefit, I'm being corralled into using Chrome. I make my peace and just don't visit sites that decide on such changes, but the benefit for me as a user for these changes is completely non-apparent. It's very tempting to write it off as "it's convenient for the devs" due to lack of any relevant information on why such changes are made.
- admax88q 5y ago
  Personally I find very few sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox. But as a web developer I'm still irked by some of the more "fun" APIs that firefox refuses to support such as USB/PWAs/NFC etc. Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision. Who can say why those sites are breaking for your version of Safari. Web devs do love to just use the "latest and greatest" APIs just for fun, but it could also be that their changes have improved the experience for the rest of users on modern browsers, and that for them outweighs the loss of users still of Safari 12. I'm not saying every use of new APIs is justified by web devs, the population of web devs is too large and varied to make any statement about the group as a whole. I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox _is_ a detriment to users and web devs, and it pushes developers to make native apps instead which I would argue are a worse experience for many users for certain use cases, and a worse experience for many developers as well.
  - Yizahi 5y ago
    A few years ago there were no sites not working in FF. Now it's my banking site (top 10 or 20, BNP subsidiary), it's a local mountain resort integrated payment, it's several internet shops. My 2fa token is collecting dust because web sites support only google implementation of 2fa. Firefox itself if in shambles and constantly tried to googlify itself, be it UI or addon api. The trend is worse and worse every day, now that FF is below 10% adoption. Soon single Google Chrome browser will take over completely.
  - csydas 5y ago
    >Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision. Sorry, but to be clear, my lack of update is just that -- lack of ambition to do so. I don't really have a compelling reason to update MacOS or Safari. >Who can say why those sites are breaking for your version of Safari. Web devs do love to just use the "latest and greatest" APIs just for fun, but it could also be that their changes have improved the experience for the rest of users on modern browsers, and that for them outweighs the loss of users still of Safari 12. This is kind of my point though -- WebDev is kind of unique as I see it as there are far more opaque changes than with other software disciplines. Changelists are pretty common for every other software discipline, but I'm not sure I can recall too many websites ever mentioning backend changes they make. WebDev changes and fast, and a general feeling is that "outdated" in WebDev appears far faster than anything else (e.g., a friend uses my old 2012 MacBook Air -- it works perfectly still, runs modern Editing and Authoring software (adobe suite), plays videos, works on most websites just fine. Some sites like imgur just shit the bed on it except for Chrome because of browser compatibility) For a situation like this, when absolutely everything else runs fine except for a single website on browsers, it feels hard to blame OS Vendors when it's only the site that is having issues being displayed. >I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox _is_ a detriment to users and web devs, I'm not sure I'm convinced for the reason above, but it's not really possible for an end user to comment because of: - Lack of transparency on why the changes were done in the first place - LifeCycle for features in WebDev are much different than other software life cycles - Old OSes and hardware can run comparatively contemporary software (i.e., new and modern) without issue, it's only WebDev that bumps into this - In many cases, the old stack worked "fine" for users regardless of browser This is where the impression that it's just feature chasing comes from. You can say Safari is a detriment to me, but it has the best battery life (expected), is fastest on MacOS (also expected), has a UI I really like and prefer (likely expected as it's made to look like the rest of MacOS. The new feature that web developers want to use from Chrome isn't just weighed against my experience on your site; it's weighed against the overall browser performance the computer performance, and the browser experience with the computer. I might visit a single site for 10-30 minutes on a given day. I'm using the web browser almost constantly for many many many sites. When one site tries to tell me my browser is insufficient/outdated and it's the only one that is causing issues, I don't feel particularly persuaded by this. It's not about raw numbers; Hacker News performs the same way for me today as it did the day I joined, and while I'm sure they've done gobs of optimizations for the amount of traffic and users they handle, from my point of view as a user on many browsers, the experience is the same.
the_other 5y ago
You’re missing my point. I’m not against browsers having features. They can add whatever they want. Devs can target them too. But “the web”, the platform, the standards process, the language specs, the method of their development is all about maintaining access for the widest range of users for the longest time possible. Or it was. There’s nothing about it stopping you from restricting your own market to support users and devices you want to support… but insisting all mainstream browsers support all the brandest-newest features because ONE of them added it does a disservice to the platform.
- admax88q 5y ago
  Someone has to propose new APIs. Google is the only one at the moment seriously pushing the web as a complete application platform via Chromebooks, and even they are doing a half assed job. Firefox abandoned FirefoxOS, Apple is focused on the App Store. What's the last interesting API proposed by someone other than Google?

csydas 5y ago

I don't think it's about such things, it's about pushing features that are developer convenient but not really user convenient. I'm on an older MacOS version with Safari 12 (too lazy to update, but that's on me), and there are sites that work just fine one day and then break the next because they changed how they want to load random content for their forever scrolling. I'm sure there's a business case for the development team, but as a user, all I see is that what worked just fine for users before is now broken. The same happens with Firefox too because of Chrome-focused optimizations that a lot of sites seem to make don't always work with Firefox. For me as a user, I don't see it as Safari/FF holding developers back, I see that because of some unknown benefit, I'm being corralled into using Chrome. I make my peace and just don't visit sites that decide on such changes, but the benefit for me as a user for these changes is completely non-apparent. It's very tempting to write it off as "it's convenient for the devs" due to lack of any relevant information on why such changes are made.

admax88q 5y ago
Personally I find very few sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox. But as a web developer I'm still irked by some of the more "fun" APIs that firefox refuses to support such as USB/PWAs/NFC etc. Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision. Who can say why those sites are breaking for your version of Safari. Web devs do love to just use the "latest and greatest" APIs just for fun, but it could also be that their changes have improved the experience for the rest of users on modern browsers, and that for them outweighs the loss of users still of Safari 12. I'm not saying every use of new APIs is justified by web devs, the population of web devs is too large and varied to make any statement about the group as a whole. I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox _is_ a detriment to users and web devs, and it pushes developers to make native apps instead which I would argue are a worse experience for many users for certain use cases, and a worse experience for many developers as well.
- Yizahi 5y ago
  A few years ago there were no sites not working in FF. Now it's my banking site (top 10 or 20, BNP subsidiary), it's a local mountain resort integrated payment, it's several internet shops. My 2fa token is collecting dust because web sites support only google implementation of 2fa. Firefox itself if in shambles and constantly tried to googlify itself, be it UI or addon api. The trend is worse and worse every day, now that FF is below 10% adoption. Soon single Google Chrome browser will take over completely.
- csydas 5y ago
  >Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision. Sorry, but to be clear, my lack of update is just that -- lack of ambition to do so. I don't really have a compelling reason to update MacOS or Safari. >Who can say why those sites are breaking for your version of Safari. Web devs do love to just use the "latest and greatest" APIs just for fun, but it could also be that their changes have improved the experience for the rest of users on modern browsers, and that for them outweighs the loss of users still of Safari 12. This is kind of my point though -- WebDev is kind of unique as I see it as there are far more opaque changes than with other software disciplines. Changelists are pretty common for every other software discipline, but I'm not sure I can recall too many websites ever mentioning backend changes they make. WebDev changes and fast, and a general feeling is that "outdated" in WebDev appears far faster than anything else (e.g., a friend uses my old 2012 MacBook Air -- it works perfectly still, runs modern Editing and Authoring software (adobe suite), plays videos, works on most websites just fine. Some sites like imgur just shit the bed on it except for Chrome because of browser compatibility) For a situation like this, when absolutely everything else runs fine except for a single website on browsers, it feels hard to blame OS Vendors when it's only the site that is having issues being displayed. >I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox _is_ a detriment to users and web devs, I'm not sure I'm convinced for the reason above, but it's not really possible for an end user to comment because of: - Lack of transparency on why the changes were done in the first place - LifeCycle for features in WebDev are much different than other software life cycles - Old OSes and hardware can run comparatively contemporary software (i.e., new and modern) without issue, it's only WebDev that bumps into this - In many cases, the old stack worked "fine" for users regardless of browser This is where the impression that it's just feature chasing comes from. You can say Safari is a detriment to me, but it has the best battery life (expected), is fastest on MacOS (also expected), has a UI I really like and prefer (likely expected as it's made to look like the rest of MacOS. The new feature that web developers want to use from Chrome isn't just weighed against my experience on your site; it's weighed against the overall browser performance the computer performance, and the browser experience with the computer. I might visit a single site for 10-30 minutes on a given day. I'm using the web browser almost constantly for many many many sites. When one site tries to tell me my browser is insufficient/outdated and it's the only one that is causing issues, I don't feel particularly persuaded by this. It's not about raw numbers; Hacker News performs the same way for me today as it did the day I joined, and while I'm sure they've done gobs of optimizations for the amount of traffic and users they handle, from my point of view as a user on many browsers, the experience is the same.

the_other 5y ago

You’re missing my point. I’m not against browsers having features. They can add whatever they want. Devs can target them too. But “the web”, the platform, the standards process, the language specs, the method of their development is all about maintaining access for the widest range of users for the longest time possible. Or it was. There’s nothing about it stopping you from restricting your own market to support users and devices you want to support… but insisting all mainstream browsers support all the brandest-newest features because ONE of them added it does a disservice to the platform.

admax88q 5y ago
Someone has to propose new APIs. Google is the only one at the moment seriously pushing the web as a complete application platform via Chromebooks, and even they are doing a half assed job. Firefox abandoned FirefoxOS, Apple is focused on the App Store. What's the last interesting API proposed by someone other than Google?