[tyrion]

It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features.

However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are very different from yours.

You may think that there is no harm in doing so. Most people use Chrome anyway. And what difference can one more web app make?

However, it is exactly this laziness by skilled developers, who are the only that understand the problem, which brought us to the current situation. There is no way to fix this problem, if the people that understand it do not take a stand.

Next time that your manager asks you if you can have that sweet feature, instead of saying "sure, we just need to drop support for Firefox", please consider trying to explain what are the consequences in the long term.

I know this isn't easy for many people, which do not feel comfortable questioning orders or plans. However, this is our responsibility. Nobody else is going to care, if we do not care.

[lxgr]

There simply isn't a way to implement this on Firefox as it is. It's lacking the necessary API for end-to-end encryption: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27432001

Yes, many pages support only Chrome for no good reason at all, but in this instance, the ball is 100% with Mozilla.

[Jiocus]

What necessary E2E API does Chrome provide?

[spankalee]

WebRTC Insertable Streams: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6321945865879552

[acqq]

The state of it in Firefox:

"Opened Apr 2020"

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/330

Then in October added "Insertable streams is worth prototyping"

Also: "I will remind people that this isn't the place for advocating for what gets implemented in Firefox. This is something that the media team needs to work out."

then "closed 26 Oct 2020"

But, hey, it's June 2021, you just got a new UI redesign which nobody wanted (I guess, except the managers who invented it), and which uses up more vertical space. (Hint: about:config browser.proton.enabled false helps at the moment).

Even the iOS version of Firefox got an UI redesign. One has to care for the priorities! The color of the shed is always the biggest impact a manager can bring!

[cyanydeez]

firefox has serious performance issues, i had to switch to chromium.

i really want to support firefox in my development but their tooling is just not presented in a rational footprint. when i inspect a vue proxy object, i dont want to see all the setters and getters.

they are losing mind share because neight to user facing components normthe dev facing have a well considered presentation or pefformancd

[slver]

After Chrome's RAM guzzling architecture and Firefox' Rust rewrite promises, reading this is so disappointing.

[extra88]

Do you really think the people who implemented UI changes are the same people who could implement an end-to-end encryption API?

[slver]

Do you think people who implement ui changes are paid with same money as those who implement encryption api?

[sam_goody]

Actually, Apple has many developers on this team, and Firefox is an open source project.

If we could create an feeling that companies that claim to be developer friendly make sure that FF is also compatible, it would be a huge win for all involved.

[mook]

Firefox is an open source project, but pushing large changes upstream is difficult (and this is true of pretty much any project). Even if Apple had the patches, Mozilla might not take them.

[olyjohn]

Maybe they could... I dunno... work with Mozilla and see if they were interested in taking the changes?

It's not like they have to build this whole thing out, then hope and pray that Mozilla accepts the changes.

[015a]

While at first glance it would be strange to expect Apple to make these changes; I don't feel its unreasonable from any perspective. Apple should hold a long-term interest in keeping the web diverse; Safari will never reasonably hold a majority/plurality marketshare, so their second highest priority from a revenue/ux perspective should be "sticking to the standards" and helping toward ensuring web developers don't take on a "Chrome and nothing else" stance.

Granted, its also understandable that Apple officially working on Firefox would be "article on The Verge" level of news and even an armchair commentator would be able to connect the dots from what they're working on to predicting Facetime was coming to web. Though, isn't that what Jobs originally promised? Open source protocol and such?

At the end of the day, I'm sick and tired of the prevailing hyper-endstage-capitalist excuse of "they won't make a billion dollars from doing this, so not only will they not do it, but they SHOULDN'T". Its everywhere on HN, and its actual brain worms. Corporate decisions shouldn't only be analyzed through this lens; there's a far broader humanistic lens that codifies a higher standard that we absolutely can reasonably hold all companies to; not from a legal sense (HackerNews isn't a court and your votes are not a jury decision, some armchair commentators need to be reminded), not even from a general population public relations sense; but from a viewpoint that Ethics is not a democracy, there are some ethical positions that won't make money, aren't required by law, and aren't even popular, but are nonetheless crucially important to avoiding a Blade Runner-eque corpo-cyberpunk future (or, with some very legitimate issues, species extinction or at least achieving and maintaining a high standard of living for most of our species).

The sibling argument of Firefox's CEO making a ton of money being reprehensible is... I mean, jeeze, they make awesome software, open source, freedom respecting, privacy respecting, and manage to pay their leadership & employees well? Isn't that the dream? That should be the goal; not be derided. There's a middleground between hyper-endstage-brain-worm-capitalism and "all software is developed by starving monks in a monastery". I understand its hard to believe this, because it isn't an extreme; its easy to let gravity drag your ethical viewpoint to an extreme on the left or right in this age of outrageous social media, but neither extreme on any ethical dimension is conductive to a positive future for humanity.

[EveYoung]

Doesn't Safari has the biggest marketshare on mobile (at least in the US)? So I don't think any major site could simply ignore that.

[015a]

A significant number of websites ignore Safari on mobile; not because its Safari, but because its mobile. Not necessarily with a big banner that says "Please use a desktop", but rather a half-assed layout.

Within the US, Safari and Chrome mobile have roughly equivalent marketshare, recently with an edge to Safari. Globally, Chrome mobile is significantly larger than Safari mobile.

None of that actually matters though; Firefox, Safari, and Edge all deploy advanced analytics blocking features which distort their marketshare. In many instances, these blockers self-report their browser as Chrome, as a "blend in with the crowd" strategy.

[acqq]

When it was reasonable for Apple to do so, Apple distributed Safari for Windows. I don't remember now anymore exactly, it could have been even before Chrome on Windows existed? "Apple's Steve Jobs first announced Windows PC support in Safari 3.0 at Macworld Expo in 2007."

"Google Chrome first release: 2008-09-02." "We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others" (1)

If there's ever a reason for Apple to be more involved in a Windows browser, that's still an option.

But implementing some functionality in a third browser on Windows... why should they? The two which already have the feature are already by the competing companies.

1) https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browse...

[paulcarroty]

> and Firefox is an open source project

check Mozilla CEO salary and stop finding excuses in open source.

[kerng]

What correlation does CEO salary and open source have?

Maybe the comment thinks about "not for profit" org - but even then it seems normal to pay people a competitive salary.

[iakov]

There is an interesting inverse correlation of Mozilla CEO salary and amount of users Firefox has.

I think it's normal to pay competitive salary too, but the salary should reflect one's impact on the company. Looking at the current state of Firefox, I can't imagine why their CEO is compensated as they are.

[atatatat]

> There is an interesting inverse correlation of Mozilla CEO salary and amount of users Firefox has.

The amt of politics required to be dealt with == big compensation.

[9dev]

Firefox isn’t, and never was, Mozilla’s revenue source.

[burnte]

The salary of their CEO has absolutely no bearing on it being open source. None. Look at Tim Apple's salary, and yet Darwin, Webkit, CUPS, and other projects are open source.

[whywhywhywhy]

I can count the number of developers I've worked with over the last 5 years that care about it working in any browser other than Chrome on one finger.

This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browser.

[ballenf]

That mirrors my experience. It's not POs or PMs that hear about some new niche browser feature only supported by Chrome. It's devs that want to play with the latest toys and kind of look at you weird if you use Safari.

There's an annoying assumption from other devs that I must be using Safari out of ignorance. They quickly get over it, but it's a problematic first impression thing when working with new teams.

[52-6F-62]

Oh man, I split my time between Safari and Firefox. I must be some kind of sicko.

[lotsofpulp]

I solely use Safari because it greatly increases my battery life.

[MaanuAir]

So do I.

[lotsofpulp]

> This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browser.

I would have thought at least iOS Safari would be a major consideration for anyone due to the ubiquity of iOS devices.

[mistersquid]

> I would have thought at least iOS Safari would be a major consideration for anyone due to the ubiquity of iOS devices.

If web developers give any consideration to iOS, it usually results in a comparison of Mobile Safari to IE 6.

In reality, Google Chrome’s unilateral provisioning of unratified features drives developers to dismiss competing products as obsolete. In this way, Google Chrome advances the “extend” phase of technological dominance while well-intentioned and overworked web developers implement the “extinguish” phase.

[1over137]

Ubiquity of iOS devices? They are only about 15% of smartphones.

[handrous]

They're way, way more of:

1) Smartphone use, both in general and for web browsing, and

2) Spending on smartphones

These have been true long enough and to a large enough degree that they're usually taken as assumed, baseline facts by anyone involved in mobile software products.

The two of which are why companies not only care about them, but, in fact, iOS' numbers are so good on both of those that it can be tempting to go iOS first for many products, if you have to choose only one platform, even if your demographics don't skew iOS.

iOS devices are used more than Android devices, and their owners spend a lot more on average. There are probably several reasons for this and its unclear which is dominant, but in the end, it doesn't really matter why, if you're just chasing the market.

[lotsofpulp]

50% in the US, and I assume greater proportions amongst those more able to spend money. Plus iPads.

[lxgr]

That heavily varies by market.

[TheCoelacanth]

But like 80% of the executives making decisions.

[musicale]

"Web Browser" === "Chrome"

I suppose we're back in the golden era of "Works Best With Internet Explorer."

[atatatat]

Comparing Chromium project to Internet Explorer seems disingenuous.

[olliej]

In this case it’s because Firefox doesn’t support the necessary APIs for FaceTime rather than just not testing.

[Induane]

I test mostly on Firefox and Epiphany; I figure if it works there it's going to work just about everywhere.

Safari is a different beast because I don't have a Mac and it's support for a lot of standards is pretty dismal. It's like the IE6 of browsers these days.

I keep the JS simple though and for CSS I keep around a few handy LESS functions so I can get some basic stuff on crap browsers. Stuff like:

.opacity(@default, @percent) { -webkit-opacity: @default; -khtml-opacity: @default; -moz-opacity: @default; -ms-opacity: @default; -o-opacity: @default; opacity: @default; // ms-filter *SHOULD* work on IE8 & 9 but ... doesn't always // for me? WTF... anyway (filter should also work). This // should be listed before filter to be safe -ms-filter:"progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=@percent)"; filter: alpha(opacity=@percent); /* support: IE8 oh god we're all gonna die*/ }

or

.box-shadow(@value) { -webkit-box-shadow: @value; -khtml-box-shadow: @value; -moz-box-shadow: @value; -ms-box-shadow: @value; -o-box-shadow: @value; box-shadow: @value; }

This way I don't rely on some framework like Bootstrap, and I can write fairly simple stylesheets. I used to transpile compliant and legacy sheets and serve different urls depending on user agent strings but that didn't work well and was generally crap so - one it is.

Don't worry, when I transpile I strip my unprofessional comments.

[aseipp]

> Next time that your manager asks you if you can have that sweet feature, instead of saying "sure, we just need to drop support for Firefox", please consider trying to explain what are the consequences in the long term.

If the future of the web relies on developers groveling at the feet of a manager, then there's no fight or discussion to be had, because the web has already unequivocally lost. The only thing that's happening is a discussion about whether to parade on the corpse or not.

[rchaud]

> If the future of the web relies on developers groveling at the feet of a manager,

I see a lot of this 'devs v suits' type language used on HN, with the implication being that the developers are principled stewards of technology suffering under the cosh of KPI-obsessed MBAs.

What causes this? The majority of product managers I've met have technical backgrounds, and they have also had to cut corners to keep their product roadmaps on track.

[52-6F-62]

From what I've seen, it doesn't matter if they have a technical background. Hubris operates the same way in people—it serves to blind them of all but their own ambitions as they lose a more complete picture of reality in favour of expressing their egos.

At least in cases that line up. I doubt it's so universal. I've seen something quite similar happen first hand. To the point that I'm pretty beside myself about it. Hard to understand if you don't just assign it to them steamrolling anything but their ego. It's the only way you could just let core functions in your core product falter and not have a plan for it.

That said, I don't think that applies to excluding Firefox in this particular case. It doesn't sound permanent, and it sounds like it just hinges on FF catching up their available APIs to suit.

[willseth]

Not only that, but developers have at least as much incentive to push to avoid cross platform implementations. More work, more complexity, bugs, maintenance, etc., and many (most?) do all of their dev and testing on Chrome anyway.

Web monoculture simply has a set of labor/$ incentives builtin. It's the default, and it's hard (and probably getting harder) to appreciate the long term system-wide risk that accumulates by allowing one company to control web standards.

I don't see it as a dev vs. suits issue at all. If anything, in my experience it's people who remember Internet Explorer and people who don't.

[hiccuphippo]

Or say "no, I still need to add compatibility to 5% of the users", even more if the changes also benefit alt and older browsers.

[spankalee]

Apple's choice here was likely to not release the product at all, or use an open standard that Firefox doesn't yet support, and allow them to support it over time.

Using features that not all browsers have implemented _yet_ isn't always bad for the open web. If the feature is important, the other browsers prioritize it.

[EveYoung]

Why put all this responsibility on developers? I'm pretty sure none of my former managers could have been swayed by talking about the long-time independence of the web. Usually, the most pressing issue was fixing bugs in prod and delivering features on time.

[sfink]

But that raises the question: is not working in Firefox considered to be a bug in prod?

[moron4hire]

>> instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser

That's the problem. Firefox isn't keeping up with standards.

[sfink]

Firefox is doing quite well with the standards. Chrome is implementing things beyond the agreed-upon standards. Which to some extent has to happen in order to advance standards, but that only works if the changes are agreed upon or at least not disagreed upon by other implementations. These days Chrome is forging ahead even in the face of disagreements (usually on grounds of privacy or security).

And to be clear, Firefox is behind on the relevant standard here. Though even then, it's more nuanced than that: Mozilla is ok with prototyping it even though they would prefer for it to use a more secure mechanism -- see https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webrtc-insert...

From what I can tell, Mozilla is in the place of playing catch-up because the other players chose to forge ahead without resolving their objections.

[Ok, "our objections". I work for Mozilla. Not in a relevant area until recently, but it looks like I will be doing some very relevant work starting as soon as I close this damn tab.]

[atatatat]

Just fork Chromium and save yourself 5 years of angst.

[burnte]

What standards are they significantly behind on? I seem to recall Fx being a prime mover on standards most of the time, not a laggard.

[efields]

To the vast majority of the people that use this on the web, they will do care about your story.

I don’t mean that as an insult; I’m happy there are folks like you with passion in this space.

If you’re old enough, you still wake up in the middle of the night sweating about IE 6 or 7 bugs that HAD to be solved with brute force even though the feature worked just fine in Firefox and Chrome. After years of struggle, most of the world uses a very compliant and continuously upgraded browser.

Please… take the win.

[sfink]

It's not about not taking the win. It's about taking the short term win (by contributing to the monoculture dominance) at the expense of a long term loss -- why expect Google to maintain the Web's current advantages when it no longer serves their purpose to? Especially since the writing is already on the wall.

[ok_coo]

It was a combo of being a fresh/new dev on my part and IE6/7, but I recall spending (wasting) days and days of my life working around IE issues.

I know we don't want another situation of one browser dominating the web but Chrome (and Firefox) improved building for the web so much. I don't know if people forget or weren't around for the IE days but it was absolutely terrible and a life-waste.

[ptx]

IE also worked great if you "took the win" and wrote exclusively for IE and not for the standard.

[syshum]

Replacing Microsoft Overlord with Google Overlord does not seem like much of a win

[neoberg]

This might come as a surprise but not everyone sees the world from a "freedom" perspective. In terms of practical/day to day experience we won something that works over something that didn't.

[burnte]

I agree with you, but think that there are different definitions of freedom. I love open source software but I don't think it's a right or that all software should be OSS. I like the freedom to keep the source of my apps closed if I wish. If I choose to use a closed source browser, I'm not giving up any freedom in my mind, I'm making a choice and a deal.

[marcosdumay]

It's not a "freedom" perspective. Once you get an overlord, it's just a matter of time until it starts abusing you.

Or, in other words, it's just a matter of time until it's Chrome keeping you up at night eating all of your productivity to avoid some defect. It probably won't be a rendering bug, but there will be something there.

[leppr]

IE "worked" too. The main problems came from having to develop for multiple browsers with incompatible implementations. If you restricted yourself to IE, it was quite painless. Any quirk you'd encounter daily was documented, and at the time there were quirks in all implementations anyway.

[anoncake]

If you don't look at the world from that freedom perspective, you are simply being shortsighted.

[syshum]

It does not come as a surprise but saddening, because freedom is the most important thing in life

With out freedom life is miserable, and it saddens me that people seem to be valuing freedom less and less, one day they will look around and ask "how did we get here", and people like me will just shrug and say "you should have listened"

[hartator]

> you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place

Does it? Open source standardization is a good thing. Still not sure why html/css/js engine should be the exception. No one is calling for competition for QR code, torrent protocol, or the other billion of very dominant open source projects.

[swsieber]

It's not really open source standardization though. Google is in charge, make no mistake. Yes people can take it and tweak it, but the main feature changes are dictated by Google.

[cpeterso]

HTML, CSS, JS, QR codes, and Bittorrent are data formats or protocols, not implementations.

[homarp]

but we have multiple compilers for the same language though. And multiple OS too.

[cblconfederate]

wish people would say the same thing about mobile platforms

[px43]

This is Apple, the inventor of walled garden tech for consumers. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had some proprietary extensions in Safari that made it so Safari was the only browser that could do it.

[dkonofalski]

You're literally replying to an article about Apple opening up their technology to other users who aren't in their ecosystem...

[unknown_error]

What the open source world calls "freedom of choice", the rest of the world calls "waste of time". I'd argue it does more people more good to have a de facto standard based on a close duopoly (Google + Apple, webkit/blink) to code websites and devices against, rather than the clusterfuck that is the WHATWG, W3C, etc. process. The existence of Gecko is nice for Mozilla but a time sink for developers and users, who at the end of the day just want to look up restaurant menus or buy tickets or check their email instead of fiddling with browser idiosyncrasies.

If Mozilla moved to some Webkit/Blink/Chromium derivative like everyone else, the world could standardize on that renderer and they are still free to "innovate" on the browser UI/chrome surrounding that engine and differentiate themselves that way.

As it is, Gecko adds nothing to the web ecosystem anymore and wastes everyone's time.

[gbromios]

What a deeply ignorant perspective. Too infuriating to ignore. Firefox users constitute <1% of my traffic. If you had any context for how widely browsers diverged on webrtc features (especially video), you'd realize that ff support could easily add months and months to dev time. I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that apple makes no mention of safari in their announcement.

my webrtc-based video conference app doesn't currently support ff and never will unless compatibility with chrome's implementation comes around. My manager would have me committed if I tried to pull that shit, and I'm already notorious for refusing to do things on principle. Suggesting that we don't support firefox because I'm lazy? No, vendors force us to choose, and if the alternative is NO video? Here on earth, where we're trying to cultivate a competitive advantage and survive as a business venture, that's an incredibly easy choice.

edit: other commenters have made the point much more elegantly than I but I leave my words here as a testament to how infuriated I am at this condescending suggestion.

[ivanche]

You made something that doesn't work in Firefox and you're now surprised that <1% of your traffic comes from Firefox?

[antipaul]

Just to note, Apple made no mention of Safari because then you are on an Apple platform, where you always have available the actual FaceTime app

[unyttigfjelltol]

> Firefox users constitute <1% of my traffic.

I configure FF to use a different user agent, as a security measure. It's a short hop from browsing the Internet with FF to disabiling browser identification.

[Thiez]

For a long time I did the same because some websites would refuse to load when they thought you weren't running Chrome even though it would have worked just fine in FF.

[gbromios]

Are you suggesting that ff traffic would be substantially higher if I were to account for users that were obfuscating their user agent header?

[marcosdumay]

And blocking your tracking data (that FF does out of the box)?

Well, maybe. I don't know the usage patterns of your site. And from that interaction, I'm not sure you know either.