[thomastjeffery]

> the breadth of the web platform is staggering. It grew organically over almost three decades, has no clear limits in scope, and has lots of tricky observables that thwart attempts to simplify.

It would be great to create the html/css/javascript stack from scratch, or at least make a non-backwards-compatible version that is simpler and can perform better. HTML5 showed us that can work.

[dullgiulio]

Yeah but Firefox is already struggling while supporting all the possible standards and more ("sorry our site is better view with Google IE4... ehm Google Chrome").

The whole Mozilla strategy of corroding Firefox piece by piece is actually very professional. Big backwards-incompatible transitions in technology almost always fail.

[Manishearth]

> sorry our site is better view with Google IE4... ehm Google Chrome

FWIW this is usually due to folks doing performance work in only one browser or not really testing well and slapping that label on after the fact.

Or stuff like Hangouts and Allo where they use nonstandard features.

The major things Firefox doesn't support that Chrome does are U2F (it does support it now, but flipped off, will flip on soon I think) and web components (support should be available next year I guess; this kinda stalled because of lots of spec churn and Google implementing an earlier incompatible spec early or something.)

[kazagistar]

I've been using a U2F plugin that works everywhere except google, which insists that you cannot possibly have U2F on firefox.

[jacobr]

This is what XHTML2 attempted and failed, HTML5 is the opposite, most of the work was to specify what already existed.

[notriddle]

Didn't HTML5 only remove features that didn't work consistently across browsers anyway?