this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on, because I'm personally very bored with my kids' schools and related services sending out emails and forms with links that simply won't open in FF but are clearly expecting Chrome or Edge where they work fine. Yes, this is on the lazy developers, but if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups then this is the stuff they must fix.
What you're talking about is webcompat and is a very complicated issue. Also I've talked to some Mozilla devs who gave me multiple examples of Chromium rendering something wrong, and they'd have to intentionally break Firefox to render it incorrectly too, just so the end user would get a more consistent experience. Of course these issues happen more and more when things are only tested for one browser.
I can't think of a single example where a web page doesn't work on FF.
Lol. I remember when FF was the most popular browser.
I just want my modern codecs to function. Why can't I play .mov or h264??
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If your site doesn't work on Firefox your site doesn't work. As web developers your job is to develop applications for the web not for one specific browser. This goes double for essential services.
My job requires login to most internal websites via Microsoft Azure AD SSO using Kerberos authentication using passwordless, smart card auth.
This switch happened this week. Up until yesterday I was 100% Firefox until this.
Firefox for MacOS is not able to do this. I spent an hour or so looking for solutions. Chrome on MacOS also doesn't. Safari does and now I have to fucking use Safari FFS.
Or use Edge
Could be worse. You could have to use Chrome.
Eh, I'd still take Chromium anything over the dumpster fire that is Safari
Doesn't really matter to a regular user, in that case it's"Firefox doesn't work"
"ugh just use a normal browser"
That's some BS. You and i both know that Chromium has the largest share in the browser business, so it makes sense from a development perspective to develop websites that will reach the most people. It's on Firefox to optimise their browser so that it can run these sites as well.
On the same line of thought, we should remove sidewalks and bike lanes because cars use the road more
That's a pretty crooked line of thought
A single company shouldn't be able to dictate how the web works.
Well too bad, because that's how things are
Wrong again, sparky.
Nope
Slack calls disabled for firefox users, but if you change the user agent to chrome it works...
Almost like it does work on Firefox but for some reason they don't want you using it. Honestly it's so damn weird, why do that? Is there some incentive for them?
Okay that's fine, but when websites are effectively writing
It doesn't really matter how good compatibility is. I've had websites go from nothing but a "Firefox is not supported, please use Chrome" splash screen to working just fine with Firefox by simply spoofing the user agent to Chrome. Maybe some feature was broken, but I was able to do what I needed. More often than not they just aren't testing it and don't want to support other browsers.
The more insidious side of this is that websites will require and attempt to enforce Chrome as adblocking gets increasingly impossible on them, because it aligns with their interests. It's so important for the future of the web that we resist this change, but I think it's too late.
The world wide web is quickly turning into the dark alley of the internet that nobody is willing to walk down.
Can you send me an example? I don't think I ever really encountered those sites and I use FF almost exclusively for ~20 years.
Its a frequency of use thing, and also some required sites. Examples are sites hosted by schools, government, or workplaces.
Although most people using Firefox aren't aware of spoofing the client to look like chrome, so that might need to be talked about more.
That all said, I don't have problems with any required usage, the only ones I have an issue with are on my phone, using mull, some sites payment forms won't load or work correctly. Taco bell is pretty bad for that and then the app wouldnt work either for a while. I also run grapheneos though so its hard to say what's the cause there.
Hm, okay. Maybe it's just a US government page thing then. Here in Germany firefox is still at 20% and used to be the standard browser until 5-6 years ago, so maybe pages are still optimized for it here.
It varies state to state here as well. Someone in Georgia might have way more problems than someone in Minnesota. Its hard to generalize the US in that way. Sort of like the EU being a group but each country separate.
Firefox can't fix all the broken sites in the world, but they do investigate issues reported to https://webcompat.com
You can help by reporting sites that don't work for you.
I encounter this very infrequently. I think I only have 1-2 examples at work. It's not a huge deal for me to spin up a chrome for those one or two occasions.
I recall I didn't get some sites working on Chrome either, when Firefox fails me 😅
This is also true. The majority of the time when something doesn't work on Firefox and I try to go to Chrome, it doesn't work there too 😂
What to do when the site is not compatible with Firefox: Alt + ←