[mcv]

Are we back to the "built for Netscape 4.7" days?

Sites shouldn't support browsers, but standards. By all means check if a browser supports a certain standard, and provide an error message for browsers that are too far behind, but don't ban them simply for having the wrong user agent.

[tannhaeuser]

I don't want to destroy your illusions, but so-called "web standards" have been "whatever Chrome does" for a while now. FF is great (I'm using it all the time, even on Android until very recently), but publishers have no incentive to test on FF specifically because of ad blockers eliminating all ads irrespective of whether they're targetted/tracking ads or regular ads. Actually, from a purely economical PoV, publishers would benefit in the short term from not supporting content on any other browser than Chrome. Of course, mid-term this will only play into the hands of Google. Actually, I wonder whether we've already past that point where we can prevent the web to become a Google ads channel. At which point "standards" (as understood by WHATWG) are a moot point anyway.

[rchaud]

FF does not include ad blocking by default, you have download the necessary extensions just as you would on Chrome.

[jrockway]

This means that you need some sort of comprehensive integration that tests all corner cases of features you use. You certainly can't rely on the browser vendors to implement every feature perfectly according to spec with no bugs. So you have to test it yourself. Most people test their app, see that it mostly works, and then declares the browser supported. That's why we get these things like "please use browser X"; it's what the developers checked the corner cases on.

[boring_twenties]

Sure, that sounds reasonable but even my bank manages to just display a warning at the top which I can click away for the rest of the session. So when something like Skype or Slack just outright refuses to work, it's quite some nerve they've got there.

[cameronbrown]

I think so. A solution to this might be to croudsource an extension which changes the User Agent on known good apps (where changing it just works but they've decided not to let you use it).

[cies]

> known good apps

Correction: known bad apps (where changing it just works but they've decided not to let you use it).

I consider it very shameful behavior, sabotaging the internet.

[cameronbrown]

Well I meant it as 'apps that work good' when changing the UA string.

But you are right.

[cies]

I kinda got you, just think that they do not deserve the word "good" at this point :)

[jrockway]

I feel like the endgame here is that everyone will just ship Electron apps. Then the web goes completely dark.

[Spivak]

This is a nice sentiment but for actual products you end up having to say X versions of Y browsers are supported.

It ends up being a feature requested by customer support teams that you prevent the app from working on unsupported browsers because users don’t read banners or pop ups and it generates pointless tickets. If you make your users change their UA there’s an awareness that things might break.

[jacquesm]

'unsupported browsers' are browsers that are old or broken. FireFox is a perfectly good browser, it is current and should be supported.

[Spivak]

It's not really about that -- most shops don't support the latest version of Opera or Brave except by accident since they're Chromium backed. If they introduced a breaking incompatbility there is very little chance we would carry patches for them.

'supported browsers' are browsers that you lose customers if you don't support. You don't lose customers by telling them to switch to Chrome. Firefox's market share is small and the number of people who exclusively use Firefox and refuse to switch is vanishingly small.

[jacquesm]

> 'supported browsers' are browsers that you lose customers if you don't support.

That's a great attitude towards your users. No, you, the vendor, adapt to what your users bring.

That is the standard that the web was built around. Lazy developers that only wish to cater to the one browser that they have on their desk and that refuse to recognize that the world is a bit larger than their minimal view (including screenreaders and other accessibility device) should get another job. And if the company they work at is run competently they will (Microsoft apparently is not one of those, but that's not really news either).

[Spivak]

If a user brought you Lynx I'm pretty sure you wouldn't jump to support them. Whether Firefox deserves support by default is a question with a different answer at every company.

[jacquesm]

Twisting this into an absurd discussion does not give you the moral high ground, but fine, I'll bite.

If a browser is standards compliant it should be supported. Note that standards are there for a reason, they create a level playing field. So all you really need to do is to ensure that your implementation is conform the standard, you then still have to test to ensure that your assumptions hold in light of practical applications of that standard on the rendering side. But there really is absolutely no excuse why barring non-standard extensions your website would not work with all browsers with more than 1% market share.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Would be a good place to start for your compatibility testing.

[zsrxx]

Firefox is sitting at 8.3% quota in NA and dwindling. It's reasonable not to support it.

[debaserab2]

I can’t imagine making the case to anyone at my work that we can/should voluntarily stop supporting 8.3% of our audience.

[mcv]

That number should grow again. It's becoming increasingly obvious what a privacy leak Chrome is, and Firefox is just as good, making it an obvious choice for anyone who cares about privacy.

[vetinari]

Let's keep the numbers in perspective.

The 8,3% (or 9,52%, or whatever) of Firefox users is way, way beyond total Skype users. Firefox has about ~170M users, Skype 4,5M.

[DJHenk]

> You don't lose customers by telling them to switch to Chrome

Yes, you do. It might be a very, very small number, so small that you decide not to care about it, but you definitely lose people.

The tricky part is that most companies have no idea how many people they lose and why. It's just marketeers guessing and anecdotal evidence. The number is probably bigger than they think, because generally speaking, marketeers are not the type of persons that about browsers.