[jemmyw]

I've been working on a small side project and I can totally sympathise with this. Chrome has 2 features right now, and has had them for more than a year, that Firefox hasn't yet implemented. One of those is the new navigation API. There's a polyfill but it's complex and can't 100% fill the gap.

I don't want to rely on blink browsers only but when you look at being able to implement a feature in 3 lines Vs many or not at all then...

[olliej]

Yeah, but you can also point to features in Safari or Firefox that chrome doesn't have (weirdly often CSS features?) and make the same argument.

But if you say "only supporting chrome is the easiest option" you're also saying "I want to force my users to use the browser with the least privacy protection made by one of the biggest advertising companies on the planet with a long history of gross privacy violations".

There are also a number of features the google has put into chrome that Firefox and WebKit don't support because they have severe privacy issues. Because if a spec compromises user privacy that's a deal breaker for every engine other than chrome, because chrome's privacy model is "the bare minimum possible".

Google is literally only just talking about blocking third party cookies in chrome this year, despite that being the default behaviour of webkit from day 1. To try and divert attention from chrome intentionally disabling that privacy feature until now (because they've now got sufficient work arounds for third party cookie blocking) they're using the same terminology ("tracking protection" or some such) to describe re-enabling a basic privacy feature as Firefox and Safari use for the various technologies that protect against google's work arounds for third party cookie blocking.

If you say "I only want to support chrome" that means you're also saying "I don't care about user privacy".

[jemmyw]

Well for my example what I want to support is me to begin with, which means Brave, which just so happens to use the same engine as Chrome. Which is helpful because most folks use Chrome. I might not like that, but that is the way of things.

If I had paying customers then I would likely support Firefox. But I don't think you can appeal to companies to do so on moral grounds, which is what most of the comments appear to be saying. If the cost of compatibility is more than the benefit then it won't happen. The only moral appeal you can make is to the end users: use Firefox, it has these benefits over other browsers. Then once that happens compatible support is a no-brainer for devs.

But that hasn't happened. You can get user privacy with the blink engine with various browsers. You can argue that X isn't as good as Y in this area, but honestly, Mozilla hasn't had a great track record either, and imo they've been a very poor steward for Firefox in recent years. I used Firefox from when it was named Phoenix until around 2020 but now I feel pretty meh about it.

[olliej]

But see that's exactly the point. It's much easier for developers to support the majority browser, and that's what they do. MS did lots of shitty things to ensure that once IE was the majority browser it stayed there, but no one seems to remember that it was in the IE4+5 era a faster and more capable browser than netscape. It was only once they got there, and once people started making IE only sites that they were able to then leverage that position to ensure they remained there.

Saying you can use non-chrome versions of blink is entirely moot: if every site requires and is only tested in chrome, then privacy filters in literally every non-chrome engine or blink wrapper is moot because sites will break (cynically I'd guess first breakage would be blink based engines - or UA strings - on google sites). Saying "they're the same engine so they're equivalent" is nonsense. If you use a privacy-preserving blink wrapper then it's disabling a bunch of the chrome-only features that webkit and gecko don't implement, and it's blocking a bunch of tracking mechanisms that chrome uses to support google's revenue. Both restrictions in a non-chrome blink wrapper will cause sites to fail, and we know this is the case because there are already sites that fail in safari and Firefox due to those privacy protections, even though developers know there's a major (? still not sure if this is actually true in the EU) platform where testing a non-chrome browser should be required.

[jemmyw]

There's nothing you've written that I don't disagree with but it doesn't invalidate my points either. Companies did not support Firefox until it became popular. It became popular by being better than IE despite ms efforts to keep users.

An alternative browser needs people like us to rally behind it and build the user base, be better than Chrome so sellable to enough people that supporting it as a platform is worthwhile. Sorry but it's not Firefox for me while it's backed by Mozilla as things stand. I'm totally dismayed by their direction and how they spend their money. As far as I'm concerned Mozilla has been compromised by the executives and board that controls it and Firefox can't do anything useful unless the board is replaced or it is spun out into an independent oss project - which wouldn't surprise me if it happened anyway, I think the only interest those execs have in Firefox is the money the search bar brings in.

The only privacy related feature that has broken sites for me is third party cookies and that used to be the standard, not some chrome only feature.

[Wytwwww]

A very small proportion of websites/webapps actually need those new features though (or should anyway..)

[jemmyw]

My site doesn't need either of these features. What they've implemented are nice APIs for things developers were previously doing with much more overhead. If you're making something by yourself and only have a small number of users right now then those times saving shortcuts are incredibly helpful.

If someone came to me and said they want to use it but it doesn't work in Firefox then I'd... think about it. Hasn't happened yet.