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Painful as it is to admit, even Firefox is not worth testing. In our B2B site, more people are using IE11 than FF. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-sh

Painful as it is to admit, even Firefox is not worth testing. In our B2B site, more people are using IE11 than FF. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share at ~3% of overall share / 7% desktop-only share it's hard to justify putting extra effort.

patrakov 4y ago
Maybe they are not using Firefox, because your site is broken in it, and they have no other way to tell you this?
- helij 4y ago
  This. There are some websites that I have to login that are completely broken when using Firefox. I login with Brave on those and am on a constant lookout for competitors that work on Firefox. As soon as I find them I jump ship and take my money elsewhere.
- kfrzcode 4y ago
  Survivorship bias! Yes, this is something I've experienced directly from end-user perspective as well as debugging/user-analytics perspective.
- l0b0 4y ago
  Yep, it's the classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Even a lot of non-techies are aware that there are multiple browsers, and will just switch to whichever gets the job done. So if you're seeing less % of any specific browser than the overall web your site is probably broken on that browser. If it's not obvious by now, that means you need to do more testing in that browser, not less.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Exactly this happened at the company I work for, and their move to only support Chrome was hailed as a revolutionary time-and-effort saving affair. grrr
- klardotsh 4y ago
  I gave up on Firefox and went back to Blink (via Qutebrowser) in part because of Mozilla's countless recent breakages, regressions, and inexplicable decisions, but in other part because of exactly this problem. So many sites just break in mysterious ways on Firefox, and the reason why is inevitably some exception raised 50 frames down the stack in an obfuscated bundle of $FRAMEWORK_DU_JOUR goop I can't even begin to debug.
- Silhouette 4y ago
  It's a nice idea because I think the web is much healthier if we don't have a single dominant browser/engine driving it, whether Microsoft's or Google's or anyone else's. Unfortunately no data I've seen in years says it's actually happening. Every web product I've worked on recently is built on standards first so this has nothing to do with deterring Firefox users because things don't work. There just aren't a lot of people using it any more. The only big browser that isn't running the same engine as Chrome is now iOS Safari.
jfk13 4y ago
It's not just about the number of your users who are directly using Firefox; it's also about ensuring your code isn't inadvertently depending on non-standard Chrome quirks, and promoting standards compliance, portability, robustness, and such-like goodness on the web. (Test IE11 as well, by all means, if it's relevant to your users; but it's much less relevant to the future of the web.)
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  i’m just being silly when I ask this, but if you have data that most of your users, use Chrome, who cares if quirks that work in chrome don’t work and other browsers, if your users aren’t using those other browsers??
  - toast0 4y ago
    Quirks that only work in Chrome may stop working in a future release. Things that work on Chrome and FF are more likely to continue to work. Ideally, you'd have reliable usage numbers by browser and platform, as well as a threshold of usage that demands testing. Maybe that's 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%? Aggregate up, so if FF desktop doesn't hit the numbers, maybe FF in general does, or maybe 'other browsers' does. Or maybe commit to testing the top N platforms over 1% usage. Lower on the usage scale doesn't need to be pixel perfect or pretty at all, IMHO, but major site features should still work.
  - harperlee 4y ago
    Well, that way you don’t contribute to making more difficult for people to change browsers.
  - latexr 4y ago
    Maybe most of your users use Chrome because they don’t have a choice, i.e. the website is broken in other browsers. Every time they bump into something they dislike about Chrome, they’ll remember who is forcing them to use it. When an alternative comes along and works in their browser of choice, they’ll switch and advocate for it.
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
blowski 4y ago
I can imagine how IE11 gets a higher proportion in traffic in B2B. In B2C, particularly amongst some niches, I'd guess Firefox is still proportionally popular. For example, I'd love to see browser stats for HN. (Disclosure: I am still very much a Firefox user, so this might be projection.)
tinus_hn 4y ago
Possibly Firefox is making it very easy to block your statistics gathering. Besides, 7% is still quite a lot to throw away.
amitp 4y ago
It's around 3% of my pageviews as measured by javascript (e.g. statcounter) but it's 15-20% of my pageviews as seen in my server logs. Now, we might say that the server stats are wrong. But it could also be that the javascript stats are wrong, since firefox comes with tracker blocking. I don't know how to tell.
- tehbeard 4y ago
  Or bots disguised as firefox.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Honestly, the best way to tell is to create an api endpoint that just returns a 1px gif. Add that as an img tag on your site. Then look at the server logs for that endpoint. A curl-bot probably won’t call the endpoint, only browsers that are actually rendering the page. There are bots that actually render the page and run JavaScript, but you can usually look at the request’s ASN to help determine that.
viraptor 4y ago
These numbers are problematic for two reasons. 1. This comes from client side tracking scripts which are now likely blocked in ff than Chrome. 2. Unless you're running a very low traffic site, it's not like 3% of users don't matter. 3% may mean millions of users.

patrakov 4y ago

Maybe they are not using Firefox, because your site is broken in it, and they have no other way to tell you this?

helij 4y ago
This. There are some websites that I have to login that are completely broken when using Firefox. I login with Brave on those and am on a constant lookout for competitors that work on Firefox. As soon as I find them I jump ship and take my money elsewhere.
kfrzcode 4y ago
Survivorship bias! Yes, this is something I've experienced directly from end-user perspective as well as debugging/user-analytics perspective.
l0b0 4y ago
Yep, it's the classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Even a lot of non-techies are aware that there are multiple browsers, and will just switch to whichever gets the job done. So if you're seeing less % of any specific browser than the overall web your site is probably broken on that browser. If it's not obvious by now, that means you need to do more testing in that browser, not less.
falcolas 4y ago
Exactly this happened at the company I work for, and their move to only support Chrome was hailed as a revolutionary time-and-effort saving affair. grrr
klardotsh 4y ago
I gave up on Firefox and went back to Blink (via Qutebrowser) in part because of Mozilla's countless recent breakages, regressions, and inexplicable decisions, but in other part because of exactly this problem. So many sites just break in mysterious ways on Firefox, and the reason why is inevitably some exception raised 50 frames down the stack in an obfuscated bundle of $FRAMEWORK_DU_JOUR goop I can't even begin to debug.
Silhouette 4y ago
It's a nice idea because I think the web is much healthier if we don't have a single dominant browser/engine driving it, whether Microsoft's or Google's or anyone else's. Unfortunately no data I've seen in years says it's actually happening. Every web product I've worked on recently is built on standards first so this has nothing to do with deterring Firefox users because things don't work. There just aren't a lot of people using it any more. The only big browser that isn't running the same engine as Chrome is now iOS Safari.

jfk13 4y ago

It's not just about the number of your users who are directly using Firefox; it's also about ensuring your code isn't inadvertently depending on non-standard Chrome quirks, and promoting standards compliance, portability, robustness, and such-like goodness on the web. (Test IE11 as well, by all means, if it's relevant to your users; but it's much less relevant to the future of the web.)

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
i’m just being silly when I ask this, but if you have data that most of your users, use Chrome, who cares if quirks that work in chrome don’t work and other browsers, if your users aren’t using those other browsers??
- toast0 4y ago
  Quirks that only work in Chrome may stop working in a future release. Things that work on Chrome and FF are more likely to continue to work. Ideally, you'd have reliable usage numbers by browser and platform, as well as a threshold of usage that demands testing. Maybe that's 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%? Aggregate up, so if FF desktop doesn't hit the numbers, maybe FF in general does, or maybe 'other browsers' does. Or maybe commit to testing the top N platforms over 1% usage. Lower on the usage scale doesn't need to be pixel perfect or pretty at all, IMHO, but major site features should still work.
- harperlee 4y ago
  Well, that way you don’t contribute to making more difficult for people to change browsers.
- latexr 4y ago
  Maybe most of your users use Chrome because they don’t have a choice, i.e. the website is broken in other browsers. Every time they bump into something they dislike about Chrome, they’ll remember who is forcing them to use it. When an alternative comes along and works in their browser of choice, they’ll switch and advocate for it.
- deafpolygon 4y ago

blowski 4y ago

I can imagine how IE11 gets a higher proportion in traffic in B2B. In B2C, particularly amongst some niches, I'd guess Firefox is still proportionally popular. For example, I'd love to see browser stats for HN. (Disclosure: I am still very much a Firefox user, so this might be projection.)

tinus_hn 4y ago

Possibly Firefox is making it very easy to block your statistics gathering. Besides, 7% is still quite a lot to throw away.

amitp 4y ago

It's around 3% of my pageviews as measured by javascript (e.g. statcounter) but it's 15-20% of my pageviews as seen in my server logs. Now, we might say that the server stats are wrong. But it could also be that the javascript stats are wrong, since firefox comes with tracker blocking. I don't know how to tell.

tehbeard 4y ago
Or bots disguised as firefox.
withinboredom 4y ago
Honestly, the best way to tell is to create an api endpoint that just returns a 1px gif. Add that as an img tag on your site. Then look at the server logs for that endpoint. A curl-bot probably won’t call the endpoint, only browsers that are actually rendering the page. There are bots that actually render the page and run JavaScript, but you can usually look at the request’s ASN to help determine that.

viraptor 4y ago

These numbers are problematic for two reasons. 1. This comes from client side tracking scripts which are now likely blocked in ff than Chrome. 2. Unless you're running a very low traffic site, it's not like 3% of users don't matter. 3% may mean millions of users.