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There’s plenty of weird cruft in Firefox’s ~30 year old codebase that causes bugs and unspecified behavior. For example, Firefox’s ContentEditable code deletes

by jitl 5y ago

There’s plenty of weird cruft in Firefox’s ~30 year old codebase that causes bugs and unspecified behavior. For example, Firefox’s ContentEditable code deletes things “backwards” compared to all other browsers and operating systems (bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735608 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735608) - this behavior isn’t standardized in any spec, and Firefox is different from other browsers. There are plenty of gotchas in layout/rendering as well, where either the standard is under specified, or Firefox has some small bugs. Maybe Chrome has many-chrome only APIs, but the developer will always need to test in Chrome and iOS Safari 13 (or whatever your oldest supported iOS version is). Chrome and iOS are where the users are, and a good website or app should be usable and beautiful for everyone.

dbrgn 5y ago
Developing UI components based on ContentEditable is trial and error, with a lot of code held together by cross-browser integration tests where you always have to pray that a browser upgrade doesn't brake something new in a subtle and surprising way... 1/5, would not recommend. (But sometimes there's no way around it.)
TheGoddessInari 5y ago
> There’s plenty of weird cruft in Firefox’s ~30 year old codebase that causes bugs and unspecified behavior. Just wondering where you're getting "30 years" from? That asked, a Chrome-shaped monoculture doesn't help anybody. We need more competing implementations, not less. Anyone feel like collaborating on such?
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  Are you casually asking if anyone wants to start writing a rendering engine?
- jitl 5y ago
  Netscape was founded in 1994, Firefox is derived from Gecko (1997) layout code code open-sourced from Netscape in 1998. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) for some background. I was thinking 1994 when I wrote the comment, but it’s closer to ~25 years if you reckon from Gecko’s birth year of 1997.

by jitl 5y ago

dbrgn 5y ago

Developing UI components based on ContentEditable is trial and error, with a lot of code held together by cross-browser integration tests where you always have to pray that a browser upgrade doesn't brake something new in a subtle and surprising way... 1/5, would not recommend. (But sometimes there's no way around it.)

TheGoddessInari 5y ago

> There’s plenty of weird cruft in Firefox’s ~30 year old codebase that causes bugs and unspecified behavior. Just wondering where you're getting "30 years" from? That asked, a Chrome-shaped monoculture doesn't help anybody. We need more competing implementations, not less. Anyone feel like collaborating on such?

hiptobecubic 5y ago
Are you casually asking if anyone wants to start writing a rendering engine?
jitl 5y ago
Netscape was founded in 1994, Firefox is derived from Gecko (1997) layout code code open-sourced from Netscape in 1998. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) for some background. I was thinking 1994 when I wrote the comment, but it’s closer to ~25 years if you reckon from Gecko’s birth year of 1997.