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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 t

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.

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.