4 ms·

Unpopular question: At what point should companies officially deprecate support for a minority browser? Firefox is down to like 6% marketshare, barely above (

Unpopular question: At what point should companies officially deprecate support for a minority browser? Firefox is down to like 6% marketshare, barely above (what's left of) Opera. Even Edge has nearly twice the usage. Is reasonable to expect a company to go out of their way to spend resources fixing something that works fine for 94% of their users, using any of several alternate browsers? And this is Microsoft after all, the same company that's been through multiple browser wars and finally caved and joined the Blink family. Why should they care about Firefox?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
realusername 3y ago
> Why should they care about Firefox? Maybe that's a question for them to answer since they actively block it with user agent checks If they truely did not care about Firefox, it would have worked.
- worble 3y ago
  At what point are Firefox going to drop having a unique user-agent and just adopt chromes? There are so many support issues they could avoid if they just did this, I really don't see what the benefit is anymore.
  - realusername 3y ago
    I'm not against the idea personally, the user agent doesn't have a purpose anymore and probably is the number one cause of "bugs" only affecting Firefox. It's the same issue on mobile as well, Google still serves the dumbed down search version to Firefox whereas the one they serve on Chrome fully works with a user agent change.
  - mdaniel 3y ago
    what's old is new again: https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ so, what I'm hearing is that FF should change its current U-A from `Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0` to just `Mozilla/5.0` and skip the pretense :-) In all seriousness, Chrome/Chromium actually had a plan to do some U-A simplification <https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/> but it doesn't appear they're going as far as evicting the Chrome branding from it, nor (confusingly enough) dropping the Safari misnomer (since they don't use WebKit anymore)
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    The funny thing is that changing of the UA fixes most problems I had with office 365 in Firefox. Like the basic view appearing sometimes, or the drag and drop off files not working. So in other words: there's nothing wrong with the technical implementation of the browser engine, but Microsoft consciously degrades the experience for me if they know I run firefox.
hooverd 3y ago
They care enough to make to it specifically /not/ work on Firefox, because it works if Firefox lies about what it is.
db48x 3y ago
They actually went out of their way to block Firefox here. The authentication protocol is a standard supported by all browsers, and if you change the user–agent string to look like Chrome’s then magically it starts working again.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Exactly. Same here. It's ridiculous they deliberately mess things up for us.
recursive 3y ago
So I guess Safari would go too?
kstrauser 3y ago
6% of 5 billion is disregarding about 300 million users. Should MS care enough about 300 megausers to make sure their login flow works? Uh, yeah.
forgotmypw17 3y ago
My personal opinion, as a foss developer who does more than 90% of the commits on a relatively complicated Web aplication, is: NEVER. I have committed myself to supporting every browser in every configuration, because anything less is non-inclusive and assumptive about the user's abilities and capabilities. I will always bend over backwards to accommodate every user, because I want the experience of visiting my websites to be like that of a luxury hotel that caters to every need, rather than project housing or prison that forces to conform. I also think it is rather rude to assume that the user can change anything about their setup. I think of this type of accommodation as wheelchair ramps, which serve only a small demographic, but are pretty much universally agreed upon as being necessary. And yes, I support Internet Explorer, Lynx, and NetSurf.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I disagree. While I appreciate the thinking, it’s not at all like wheelchair ramps. Supporting IE actively made life worse for everyone else. Resources are limited, so dragging that junk heap along meant that developer time was wasted on it instead of adding new features people wanted. Wheelchair ramps are useful for everyone at some time, even if it’s just helping someone push a cart a little more easily.
  - forgotmypw17 3y ago
    If a user only has IE and no ability to upgrade it, should I make extra effort to provide them with accessibility, or should I just tell them to fuck off, blocking them from information that is critical for them to access? I choose the former, because I think the extra effort is worth it. Resources are not unlimited, but it's also quite feasible, if you are creative and not lazy. And if you cannot even support IE, I guess you think that textmode browsers, visually impaired support, slow network connections, and other accessibility modes are also not worth your time?
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      That’s so unfair of you not to support Mosaic. What about the people who can’t upgrade past HTML1 browsers? My point being, it’s great to support all modern browsers (which excludes IE altogether, but definitely including screen readers). If you’re a library, go ahead and support dialup and Lynx, too, if you can afford the dev time. If you’re an e-commerce site, and spending more than hobby time supporting Lynx and 56k, I might think you’re nuts for doing it.
sgift 3y ago
> Is reasonable to expect a company to go out of their way to spend resources fixing something that works fine for 94% of their users, using any of several alternate browsers? Out of their way implies they have to do anything more than implement the standard and don't do browser sniffing, which has always been a bad practice and especially since feature testing has become more widespread. A sibling comment highlighted the part that it works if the user-agent is changed to Chrome. So, here's my take to your original question: If a feature has a backing standard, companies, especially those above a certain size, should be forced to follow the standard for that feature and not include any kind of "only allow using this feature if we have tested it in the browser" code. If the company states they cannot do that (cause they have a policy to only allow features in browsers they've tested or whatever), they should be forced to support everyone. Another good reason to force support for everyone should be if the company has their own browser.
int_19h 3y ago
I would say that there's a moral imperative to support Firefox for as long as it remains the only major open source alternative implementation of HTML/CSS/JS to Blink. We've been there before, and monocultures are just bad all around, so it's important for something like this to exist and be supported for the eventual inevitable day it will be needed.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

realusername 3y ago

> Why should they care about Firefox? Maybe that's a question for them to answer since they actively block it with user agent checks If they truely did not care about Firefox, it would have worked.

worble 3y ago
At what point are Firefox going to drop having a unique user-agent and just adopt chromes? There are so many support issues they could avoid if they just did this, I really don't see what the benefit is anymore.
- realusername 3y ago
  I'm not against the idea personally, the user agent doesn't have a purpose anymore and probably is the number one cause of "bugs" only affecting Firefox. It's the same issue on mobile as well, Google still serves the dumbed down search version to Firefox whereas the one they serve on Chrome fully works with a user agent change.
- mdaniel 3y ago
  what's old is new again: https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ so, what I'm hearing is that FF should change its current U-A from `Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0` to just `Mozilla/5.0` and skip the pretense :-) In all seriousness, Chrome/Chromium actually had a plan to do some U-A simplification <https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/> but it doesn't appear they're going as far as evicting the Chrome branding from it, nor (confusingly enough) dropping the Safari misnomer (since they don't use WebKit anymore)
- wkat4242 3y ago
  The funny thing is that changing of the UA fixes most problems I had with office 365 in Firefox. Like the basic view appearing sometimes, or the drag and drop off files not working. So in other words: there's nothing wrong with the technical implementation of the browser engine, but Microsoft consciously degrades the experience for me if they know I run firefox.

hooverd 3y ago

They care enough to make to it specifically /not/ work on Firefox, because it works if Firefox lies about what it is.

db48x 3y ago

They actually went out of their way to block Firefox here. The authentication protocol is a standard supported by all browsers, and if you change the user–agent string to look like Chrome’s then magically it starts working again.

wkat4242 3y ago
Exactly. Same here. It's ridiculous they deliberately mess things up for us.

recursive 3y ago

So I guess Safari would go too?

kstrauser 3y ago

6% of 5 billion is disregarding about 300 million users. Should MS care enough about 300 megausers to make sure their login flow works? Uh, yeah.

forgotmypw17 3y ago

My personal opinion, as a foss developer who does more than 90% of the commits on a relatively complicated Web aplication, is: NEVER. I have committed myself to supporting every browser in every configuration, because anything less is non-inclusive and assumptive about the user's abilities and capabilities. I will always bend over backwards to accommodate every user, because I want the experience of visiting my websites to be like that of a luxury hotel that caters to every need, rather than project housing or prison that forces to conform. I also think it is rather rude to assume that the user can change anything about their setup. I think of this type of accommodation as wheelchair ramps, which serve only a small demographic, but are pretty much universally agreed upon as being necessary. And yes, I support Internet Explorer, Lynx, and NetSurf.

kstrauser 3y ago
I disagree. While I appreciate the thinking, it’s not at all like wheelchair ramps. Supporting IE actively made life worse for everyone else. Resources are limited, so dragging that junk heap along meant that developer time was wasted on it instead of adding new features people wanted. Wheelchair ramps are useful for everyone at some time, even if it’s just helping someone push a cart a little more easily.
- forgotmypw17 3y ago
  If a user only has IE and no ability to upgrade it, should I make extra effort to provide them with accessibility, or should I just tell them to fuck off, blocking them from information that is critical for them to access? I choose the former, because I think the extra effort is worth it. Resources are not unlimited, but it's also quite feasible, if you are creative and not lazy. And if you cannot even support IE, I guess you think that textmode browsers, visually impaired support, slow network connections, and other accessibility modes are also not worth your time?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    That’s so unfair of you not to support Mosaic. What about the people who can’t upgrade past HTML1 browsers? My point being, it’s great to support all modern browsers (which excludes IE altogether, but definitely including screen readers). If you’re a library, go ahead and support dialup and Lynx, too, if you can afford the dev time. If you’re an e-commerce site, and spending more than hobby time supporting Lynx and 56k, I might think you’re nuts for doing it.

sgift 3y ago

> Is reasonable to expect a company to go out of their way to spend resources fixing something that works fine for 94% of their users, using any of several alternate browsers? Out of their way implies they have to do anything more than implement the standard and don't do browser sniffing, which has always been a bad practice and especially since feature testing has become more widespread. A sibling comment highlighted the part that it works if the user-agent is changed to Chrome. So, here's my take to your original question: If a feature has a backing standard, companies, especially those above a certain size, should be forced to follow the standard for that feature and not include any kind of "only allow using this feature if we have tested it in the browser" code. If the company states they cannot do that (cause they have a policy to only allow features in browsers they've tested or whatever), they should be forced to support everyone. Another good reason to force support for everyone should be if the company has their own browser.

int_19h 3y ago

I would say that there's a moral imperative to support Firefox for as long as it remains the only major open source alternative implementation of HTML/CSS/JS to Blink. We've been there before, and monocultures are just bad all around, so it's important for something like this to exist and be supported for the eventual inevitable day it will be needed.