5 ms·

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overb

• ryukoposting 3y ago
  A handful of Google services are buggy and slow in FireFox. Stackdriver in particular is an absolute shambles. Thankfully I'm an embedded guy so most of the stuff in Stackdriver is hieroglyphics to me anyway. I can't prove that Google is doing that intentionally, but I wouldn't put it past them.
• SkyPuncher 3y ago
  Outside of some subtle pixel variations, I know of a single bug in our product that is browser specific. Even then, it’s kind of our fault.
• MrMember 3y ago
  I've been using Firefox as my primary browser since 2005-2006ish. A site misbehaving because of it is a rare enough occurrence that offhand I can't remember any time that it has happened. One issue I do come across occasionally, and I'm not sure if it's Firefox alone or the combination of add-ons I use in Firefox, is sites being overzealous with captchas. I find myself doing 3-5 captchas occasionally just to use a site.
• hoherd 3y ago
  webusb is another missing feature, and AFAIK Mozilla has a strong stance against enabling it because of the security implications. This is one of the only reasons I keep a chrome-ish browser installed.
• preinheimer 3y ago
  Specific problems I've had as a firefox user: - I can't pay municipal license fees (Site says "Use Chrome") - I can't use the Vendor management portal for $largePopularTechCompany type company for my small business ("We support Chrome") - Xero my small business accounting software just doesn't work properly ("Use Chrome")
  • amanzi 3y ago
    I've used Xero for years with Firefox without issues.
    • neltnerb 3y ago
      Maybe you can share your configuration? I wonder if you are lucky or they are unlucky.
      • neftaly 3y ago
        Are you using Firefox ESR? It usually has worse support then the regular releases.
        • amanzi 3y ago
          Nope - the regular version.
      • amanzi 3y ago
        I run Firefox with uBlock Origin enabled and set the Firefox enhanced privacy settings to the strictest settings. I haven't done anything special to get Xero working - never had any issues.
    • crabmusket 3y ago
      Same here, though I only use a small subset of Xero features.
  • dvngnt_ 3y ago
    i assume this is just a user-agent check though i don't expect regular users to know how to switch.
• neltnerb 3y ago
  I have had several sites refuse to work properly (American Airlines maybe? It was some airline) with every single add-in disabled and with every security feature I could find disabled. I am with you that it's super rare, I have only had to open chrome due to it being that bad a few times, usually I just need to disable javascript blocking or enable more cookies. But there are legitimately sites that are just so badly written that they won't take your money if you use Firefox. I guess Google meet has frozen video for me on Firefox, but I expect Google to intentionally break their website for people not using Chrome after the "DRM Website" thing struck them as a great idea. Using Google products at this point is just asking for more lockin when we should really all know better. At least Zoom is a different company from Google... But overblown for sure, if I disable javascript blocking and cookie autodelete and temporary containers that keep the site from realizing I already logged in -- pretty reasonable issues -- 99.99% of the issues I have vanish.
  • nightpool 3y ago
    I just bought tickets on AA a few months ago with Firefox and didn't have any issues
    • nophunphil 3y ago
      Echoing this. Just bought AA tickets through the airline’s website yesterday using FF and it worked.
      • neltnerb 3y ago
        It was selecting seats that was too broken to continue, though I mean, I already "worked around" the issue. I tried until it was less work to redo all the manual data entry in Chromium, I usually try pretty hard to avoid using it. I don't doubt that it works for a bunch of people, others have stated things that don't work and had others say they do work, so something is up. Maybe we're using different versions or operating systems or installation dates with old configuration data.
        • 3y ago
• mmcgaha 3y ago
  I have been using FF as my primary browser for a few years now. I have not found any site that does not work but sometimes I have to turn off uBlock Origin.
• rozap 3y ago
  I agree it seems overblown. I haven't encountered a site that doesn't work. Even google meet and zoom's web client work great. Not sure what all the fuss is about. It's a great browser. Chrome got very, very aggravating and I've had no problems since switching maybe 4 years ago. Even FF mobile works well.
  • shiroiuma 3y ago
    One problem I have is that screen-sharing doesn't work in Messenger video chat. I have to switch to Chromium for that to work, so I have to remember to start the chat in Chromium instead of FF where I have a Messenger tab pinned.
• aboodman 3y ago
  Speaking as a library developer, Firefox is expensive for us to support in https://replicache.dev https://replicache.dev and https://reflect.net https://reflect.net due to lots of long-open bugs, particularly in the storage system. Firefox also generally has the slowest performance which affects us. I'm not bagging on the team, it's frankly amazing they've been able to mostly keep up, it's just a fact that maintaining a competitive web browser is a gargantuan task that requires a large team and investment.
  • int_19h 3y ago
    I think there's a strong argument to be made here that governments should be actively subsidizing (if not directly managing) some implementation of the web standards that is guaranteed to actually be fully conforming to them, accessible etc. The web stack is such a fundamental part of our infrastructure these days that it feels irresponsible to leave it entirely to the whims of the private market - especially one that is dominated by large oligopolies which said governments are already actively investigating.
  • asdff 3y ago
    When people say firefox is more performant than other browsers, they mean to say you can use actual powerful adblockers like ublock origin that then make it a totally rigged race against other browsers in terms of real world performance.
    • usr1106 3y ago
      Which is a good thing. Running ads is triple pollution. On the servers, on the browser, and by the manipulated comsumers buying crap they don't need in the first place. (Yes, I do pay for content I care about.)
• spacechild1 3y ago
  Same for me! I have been always using Firefox as my main browser for at least 15 years and never had any problems. Actually, I don't really understand why so many tech-savvy people continue to use Chrome... Just switch to Firefox, for foxs sake!
  • int_19h 3y ago
    Part of it is that there are some genuine technical advantages to be had from Blink-based browsers. Most notably, tab process isolation: one tab crashing (and they do crash) generally doesn't bring the whole process down. There's also UX. Right now I can have proper vertical tabs in Edge by changing a single prominent option in settings, but Firefox is still dragging their feet (yes, I know there are extensions for this, but they add a vertical tab bar in addition to the standard horizontal one, because you can't hide the latter without hacks). OTOH Firefox has containers, which is arguably a lot more important if you care about online privacy in any serious way. But people don't like to trade away their convenience, especially once they already got used to it. What we desperately need is a browser based around Firefox implementation of web standards and with all the privacy bells and whistles, but also UI that doesn't constantly tell users that they are "holding it wrong".
    • spacechild1 3y ago
      > Most notably, tab process isolation: one tab crashing (and they do crash) generally doesn't bring the whole process down. Firefox has been doing this for several years now...
  • aendruk 3y ago
    Over the last year or so various websites have mysteriously walled me off with 403s and 5xxs only when I use Firefox. I suspect that merely using a less popular browser is tripping some attempted security measure.
• matteoraso 3y ago
  Agreed. Even if Firefox makes up a small part of the market share, any website that serves millions of people will want to support it. Imagine if you have a website with 1,000,000 monthly visitors, and 2% of them use Firefox. Dropping support will mean 20,000 less monthly visitors. This gives us an idea of how much you should spend on support. If you make an average of $0.10 a month per user, you should be okay with spending at least $2000 a month on Firefox. That's a pretty big budget, and it's reasonable to go much higher than that if your website is rapidly growing. The big players like Google and Facebook will also be comfortable supporting Firefox at a loss, since you don't want to bleed users and create market space for a competitor. At most, you lose a few small websites that you probably weren't going to visit anyways.
  • berkes 3y ago
    > At most, you lose a few small websites that you probably weren't going to visit anyways. I think this is wrong. It starts with a website to look up train departures that no longer works on Ff. Then the site to buy movie or concert tickets fails on FF. Booking a restaurant, again, requires you to take out chrome. Which has two concequences. People stop using FF all together because switching all the time is work. And people ensure they always have a copy of chrome around, while fewer and fewer need to keep a copy of FF around. And so FF spirals exponentially into insignificance.
  • parineum 3y ago
    > Imagine if you have a website with 1,000,000 monthly visitors, and 2% of them use Firefox. Dropping support will mean 20,000 less monthly visitors. It will always be 2% which will always be, at maximum, 2% more revenue. That's probably negligible if you have to support them and there's an opportunity cost to that money. You'd probably be better off spending that money on advertising than Firefox support, especially since Firefox users typically know when a page isn't working, it's probably them and they have a backup solution available. I used Firefox for a long time but switched because I just got tired of switching all the time and I started regularly using a site that didn't work in Firefox (I don't remember now but I think it was my credit card).
    • 3y ago
• mtVessel 3y ago
  Not sure how so many in the thread are using FF problem-free? In the past few years I've encountered more and more sites that don't work properly with FF. Most of the issues are around modals that won't dismiss or even display at all. Other issues I can't identify, but the site becomes unresponsive or some content won't load. I think the Ticketmaster ticket selection page was the last one I couldn't use at all with FF. My cable company's site became Chromium only sometime this year and it still is. Sometimes the cause is uBlock Origin, so I always try turning it off and refreshing. Rarely it's due to enhanced tracking protection. A few times I restarted FF in safe mode to rule out add-ins. It's always just FF.
  • 8bitsrule 3y ago
    Same here. I used to have more FF problems with .gov sites but in the past 2-3 years, rarely. Now & then I have to manipulate NoScript or uBlock to get some feature working on most sites. But most of the time, I'd rather ignore those sites anyway. After I have a look at them ... which I tend to do after NoScript show me the huge list of crap they expect me to load just for the 'privilege'. Good developers/orgs just don't do that. Most go into a 'Block list' I mostly use to remind myself not to bother trying. I take my business elsewhere.
  • ImaCake 3y ago
    I had some issues with several sites around 2-3 years ago but I haven’t been experiencing them recently. I guess FF has issues on a fairly small set of sites which some users use a fair bit while most users don’t see those sites at all. The only site I use regularly which has issues is google earth and the reason why is obvious.
  • alextingle 3y ago
    Another FF user here. Very, very few issues. I had a problem with a shopping web-site the other day. I disabled uBlock origin, and then all extensions, but it still refused to work. I thought I'd finally found one of these mythical "Chrome-only" sites, but no - exactly the same broken site in Chrome, so the site was just totally broken. Nothing to do with FF.
• Ikatza 3y ago
  For one, HN misbehaves pretty badly on mobile.
  • zizee 3y ago
    It does? In what way? I have used Firefox mobile for years on HN without noticing issues. What am I missing? Edit: I used Firefox on Android, the issues you describe might be Firefox on iOS, which is a different beast.
• deleted 3y ago
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• cjpearson 3y ago
  In my experience there are almost never issues. Standardization has gotten much better, and as a web developer I appreciate all the effort the various browser teams have put into ensuring common behavior. The effort of "supporting Firefox" as a developer is basically opening the app in Firefox and confirming that it works, which it basically always does because the app is built on standardized web features. (Other types of support might be different. e.g maybe you have help doc that tells your users how to clear the site cookies. Do you also want to write instructions for Firefox, Safari, Opera etc?) The bigger concern is that some day Google might not need web standards. If developers target Chrome rather than the web platform, Google has free reign and no longer needs to compromise with Apple and Mozilla. For example, Mozilla's veto of the controversial Topics API would hold little weight if nobody cares about Firefox support. If Chrome gets to a dominant enough position it could move from embracing to extending quite quickly. People have different opinions on Google, but even those who believe Google has no ill intentions still feel better if there are some checks and balances. Were Firefox to become obsolete, Apple would be the last one standing. And with the DMA, some are predicting that Safari could soon follow Firefox's decline.
  • int_19h 3y ago
    The concern is that the standardization process for the web stack these days consists mostly of the big guys (Google especially) throwing out a draft standard, which then slowly undergoes standardization process even as it is already getting used on the web because devs like new & shiny and/or because the added features genuinely do make something simpler. There aren't that many sites that actively break on Firefox because of this, and when they do, it's usually a temporary thing until they catch up, but as you rightly note, this is largely because devs are still forced to contend with users of other browsers. And the more popular Chrome is, the less of a forcing function that becomes, and the more whatever "draft standard" proposals are in Blink become the de facto standard.