[hinkley]

Firefox got big in large part because they had good developer tools long before anyone else did. I worked several places where management would say things like, "don't waste time, we only need this to work in IE". The developers would nod and go right back to creating in Mozilla and then fixing it in IE after, because it was faster.

In that way there was a quiet revolution toward cross browser support.

[realusername]

I can confirm this, everyone I knew at the time was coding on Firefox even if no-one required any compatibility with it just for that reason, it was just much easier to code with.

[hinkley]

When I shared my observations with coworkers, they would nod and say they had experienced the same thing. Same with peers I knew outside of work. Either we were in a very large bubble, or that was happening everywhere. And I think the rise of Mozilla aligns with those observations. It 'just worked' because everyone quietly made sure it did, even when people told them not to.

[braveo]

And yet, the decision to target a specific browser is STILL a business decision.