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Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. It cannot be based on anything subjective, for what should be obvious reasons. On

Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. It cannot be based on anything subjective, for what should be obvious reasons. On top of that, said lack of knowledge is a stated goal of all privacy-focused browsers. GA-blindness is an implementation detail of these policies. Any method the government could use to accurately track that information is effectively a bug in need of fixing from the POV of the browser's developers. The most practical answer is, as was posted by someone else here, the government spec'ing to a standard instead of a set of browsers, which it really should be doing in the first place. The mere fact that the current setup means that the government accidentally makes and/or breaks winners in that space is justification enough.

TheCoelacanth 3y ago
Server-side tracking of user agent strings should still be possible.
- john-radio 3y ago
  Yeah, I think the root comment of this thread is talking out of his ass. Third-party trackers are not needed, and wouldn't make sense to use, to discern browser market share; browsers self-report their identity and operating system unless specifically configured not to. For example, my User-Agent string in my GET request to retrieve Hacker News is: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0".
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Except we should be pushing for the elimination of user agent strings, too. They just end up being used as a lazy way for lazy developers to not test for capabilities. The most recent example I've run into is Snapchat's web client: It reject's Firefox purely by user agent string, but then works perfectly in Firefox if you just have your browser lie.
  - andrepd 3y ago
    That's the sort of this that should be illegal for anticompetitive reasons.
  - Y_Y 3y ago
    I strongly agree. I don't think a website is going to do anything with my user agent string that benefits me. I'd much prefer a web where websites can't do things outside of the standard. We ne er needed webmidi, but a company that makes a browser/is hybrid definitely wanted it. Speaking of Google, won't this interfere with their "look we're not a monopoly" payments to Mozilla Corp?
amadeuspagel 3y ago
There is no standard that you can use instead of a set of browsers. There is no way of making sure that a website works with a browser other then testing it with that browser. The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers.
- Chabsff 3y ago
  Sort of agreed as of today, but this is not something that we just have to accept, especially considering the government doesn't really have a need to make use of the full suite of tools provided by the various existing standards. There are safe subsets to be picked in 2023. The government doesn't design roads to conform to the top brands of cars and trucks. It specs them to a standard and any manufacturer can have their product certified as compliant. This both protects the public and gives anyone an opportunity to provide products no matter how small their market share is. Doing it the other way around would be madness, and I don't see why the same principle shouldn't apply here.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers. This is exactly why sites should be tested for their conformance with the standard rather than with specific browsers. Testing against specific browsers just encourages browser-makers to continue to avoid fixing their shit.
  - roywiggins 3y ago
    If you want to make money or reach constituents, this isn't actually a viable option for anyone. When people complain that they can't submit their DMV forms (or whatever) and you say, "well we followed all the standards, go find another browser" and they say "which one" and you say "I don't know, we didn't test with any browsers, we just test against the standard" who do you think they'll blame?
    - 3y ago
rchaud 3y ago
Firefox is not IE8, which declared lot of CSS3 and HTML5 standards as "won't be supported" in 2009, paving the way for its own extinction. USDS serves basic pages and applets which work fine on Firefox. It is only a handful of very complex web apps like Photopea where the developer will say "run this on Chrome for best results".
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. They really should be hiring a pollster to ask people which browser they use. It might be a bit difficult for those who use the default, but it wouldn't be that difficult to ask a couple of followup questions (e.g. which device) to determine which default browser that is.
- daotoad 3y ago
  I think most people would say "the internet" or "my phone" rather than something useful.

TheCoelacanth 3y ago

Server-side tracking of user agent strings should still be possible.

john-radio 3y ago
Yeah, I think the root comment of this thread is talking out of his ass. Third-party trackers are not needed, and wouldn't make sense to use, to discern browser market share; browsers self-report their identity and operating system unless specifically configured not to. For example, my User-Agent string in my GET request to retrieve Hacker News is: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0".
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Except we should be pushing for the elimination of user agent strings, too. They just end up being used as a lazy way for lazy developers to not test for capabilities. The most recent example I've run into is Snapchat's web client: It reject's Firefox purely by user agent string, but then works perfectly in Firefox if you just have your browser lie.
- andrepd 3y ago
  That's the sort of this that should be illegal for anticompetitive reasons.
- Y_Y 3y ago
  I strongly agree. I don't think a website is going to do anything with my user agent string that benefits me. I'd much prefer a web where websites can't do things outside of the standard. We ne er needed webmidi, but a company that makes a browser/is hybrid definitely wanted it. Speaking of Google, won't this interfere with their "look we're not a monopoly" payments to Mozilla Corp?

amadeuspagel 3y ago

There is no standard that you can use instead of a set of browsers. There is no way of making sure that a website works with a browser other then testing it with that browser. The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers.

Chabsff 3y ago
Sort of agreed as of today, but this is not something that we just have to accept, especially considering the government doesn't really have a need to make use of the full suite of tools provided by the various existing standards. There are safe subsets to be picked in 2023. The government doesn't design roads to conform to the top brands of cars and trucks. It specs them to a standard and any manufacturer can have their product certified as compliant. This both protects the public and gives anyone an opportunity to provide products no matter how small their market share is. Doing it the other way around would be madness, and I don't see why the same principle shouldn't apply here.
JohnFen 3y ago
> The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers. This is exactly why sites should be tested for their conformance with the standard rather than with specific browsers. Testing against specific browsers just encourages browser-makers to continue to avoid fixing their shit.
- roywiggins 3y ago
  If you want to make money or reach constituents, this isn't actually a viable option for anyone. When people complain that they can't submit their DMV forms (or whatever) and you say, "well we followed all the standards, go find another browser" and they say "which one" and you say "I don't know, we didn't test with any browsers, we just test against the standard" who do you think they'll blame?
  - 3y ago

rchaud 3y ago

Firefox is not IE8, which declared lot of CSS3 and HTML5 standards as "won't be supported" in 2009, paving the way for its own extinction. USDS serves basic pages and applets which work fine on Firefox. It is only a handful of very complex web apps like Photopea where the developer will say "run this on Chrome for best results".

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. They really should be hiring a pollster to ask people which browser they use. It might be a bit difficult for those who use the default, but it wouldn't be that difficult to ask a couple of followup questions (e.g. which device) to determine which default browser that is.

daotoad 3y ago
I think most people would say "the internet" or "my phone" rather than something useful.