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Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

"We have noticed that you are using an unsupported browser. Please install Google Chrome."

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584720.

This is why using Firefox is so important. We are not there yet, or at least most sites still work fine with FF, but once that changes Google will essentially own the web. There are multiple browsers that also use Blink engine, but they basically just a Chrome with a different skin.

I also really miss that Opera gave up on their Presto engine and at the same time decided to not open source it. Yes, the source code leaked, but without license no one will touch it.

i use firefox on android, mostly because of adblocking, and the number of broken websites on firefox is not small, the menu on the mobile website of my bank does not work in firefox.

it's shit and i consider changing banks because of that (and other things).

Tell them. I had a similar problem a couple of years ago, I logged a complaint and they eventually fixed it. It took a few months, IIRC, but they replied and confirmed that it was fixed.

You can also file a bug report with Mozilla's Web Compat team:

https://webcompat.com/

They diagnose websites broken in Firefox and reach out to website developers, fix Firefox bugs, add Firefox UA overrides (see Firefox's about:compat page), and start discussions to resolve ambiguities in web standards. For example, what should happen for a broken image without an alt value?

https://webcompat.com/issues/44353#issuecomment-555793736

it's related to adblocker, i eventually disabled adblock for that website, but without disabling it it wont work. i know it's not directly a firefox issue, but with mobile chrome not having adblocking it kinda is in that they don't care. it honestly took me to long to figure it because i could not believe that a multi national bank would have this broken website (and that is with new 2018-19 redesign). it's not the first website to not work without js, but you would assume that the bank website would be done in a way where if analytics is not loaded the rest of the webpage would continue to work.

I only use firefox (for work, will test in Safari and Brave), have been doing so for years, and waste waaaay too much time browsing.

I almost never have issues, so maybe it is your plugins that are causing issues (or maybe android ff is different than ff for Mac?)

I got a new laptop about 6 months ago and have refused to install Chrome on it.

For the few cases where I need anything Google related, I use Edge. Basically, Edge gets all my Google related tabs, and Firefox with uBlock Origin gets the rest of my browsing.

I did have to train myself not to control-click links in Gmail though, and instead copy-link, paste-into-Firefox.

I found that Firefox doesn't want to support the same scaling features as Safari and Chrome. I could never get this to work anyhow.

    <meta id="viewport" name="viewport" content="width=device-width, shrink-to-fit=no">

That shit is for lazy devs. Nobody should be forced to use pinch zoom on a platform designed to reflow text.

weird. I've used firefox for years. I can't recall broken stuff really, unless the developer tried to purposefully not let me use it based on user agent (work around available for most). But random crashes did plague me for a bit earlier on.

Did you contact them about it?

Binance.com had the same problem, I emailed them about it and it was fixed the next week.

I hate it when sites block based on user agent (looking at you, Microsoft teams) so I have to use user agent switcher. This way they never have a chance to find out how many Firefox users they really have and support for Firefox never gets priority.

> looking at you, Microsoft teams

Teams definitely doesn't block Firefox for me?

"for the best meeting experience, open the link in Google chrome" with no button to proceed with Firefox.

Teams doesn't even work in Chromium for me.

Yup, I spoofed Chrome on Chromium to make it work.

Weird, I use Chromium at work and Teams seems to work fine for me.

Teams on Firefox enters in a loop of infinite logins.

Have you tried spoofing the user agent string to chrome

Have you tried reading the comment you replied to?

And then they will be able to charge an even higher rent to business who want visibility.

With Chromebooks becoming more than a fringe platform, it will be harder to escape the well of Chrome's gravity; the Android support on Chromebooks still leaves a lot to be desired IME making the use of Firefox/Android on such a devices feel a bit of a sacrifice.

I run a PixelBook running Firefox for Debian with ublock and other privacy settings on high. Not stuck with Chrome on a chromebook that can run Linux apps.

I presume you mean in Crostini? Sure, that works but there are limitations:

1) the use of the on-screen keyboard in tablet mode is iffy with Crostini apps: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=826614 . On my HP X2, I wanted to use Thunderbird to get my email while using the device as a tablet: in addition to scaling issues, the inability to enter text made it impossible for me. It seems that Google seems to be abandoning the idea of detachable Chromebooks replacing the nearly-dead Android tablet market so maybe the expectation of a hardware keyboard is not outrageous.

2) On my machine, the performance of Crostini apps does not even come close to the performance of the native Chrome browser.

That's just my experience though. Edit: FYI, my default browser on the device is Firefox/Android but again, its performance does not come close to the native Chrome plus the latter passive-aggressively brings up a 'choose browser' dialog for any pages I happen to be browsing in it. It really has been an extremely unpleasant experience but I haven't found anything better yet for my specific use case.

I'm worried that Firefox being the sole browser supporting such ad intercept will only make it more likely for UA sniffers to just outright block it.

It's so bad nowadays that I even get "your browser isn't supported" on Chromium based browsers because detection is "is useragent Chrome?".

Why would I use firefox when mozilla has repeatedly lied to me, pretended to care for privacy while making moves to invade it, removed support for features I relied upon, refused to consider linux as worth their time, forced telemetry surveillance upon those who specifically disabled it, dropped what made firefox useful in an attempt to be more chrome-like, etc.

The list goes on and on, mozilla has a terrible record and proved multiple times that it should not be trusted.

After the pulseaudio debacle and after being a supporter since its first steps, I quit firefox and removed it from all computers I maintain to never return. There is no thing mozilla can say or do that will make me go back to firefox, apart from acknowledging their role and taking responsibility by resigning and releasing firefox to the world.

Well I hope you're not using Google's browser then, because it is everything you listed, but way worse.

Whataboutism does not help progress on either front. Both mozilla and google have been acting in bad faith more than any of us would like to admit. Both deserve to be called out, not just accepeted as 'not as bad'.

Well, one does have to use some browser if one wants Web access?

> Whataboutism does not help progress on either front.

You are completely missing the point. At the end of the day you have to pick a browser, and so it matters a great deal which one is worse, even if neither is perfect.

Personally I still trust Mozilla above any other major browser vendor. They're not even in the same ballpark.

What browser do you use now?

Reminds me of the "Best viewed with Internet Explorer" tags. When is Chrome going to reinvent Active-X (which only works in Chrome)???

8 years ago?

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

Isn't NaCl deprecated now?

Yeah, Active-X is deprecated.

Yeah, WebAssembly replaced it.

12 years ago, even.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_(software)

The major differences being that P/NaCL was: 1. An open standard/implementation 2. Used regular OSS code 3. Was actually written to be secure

The effort spurred ASM.js & eventually the WebAssembly standard because of the discomfort of deploying a cutting edge research to billions of people on the web (the initial NaCL implementation was very large & eventually turned out to have security holes, the original research was improved upon but by then the industry had spoken).

Nowadays if a site does this I simply don't visit it. If it's a really important site (which often does support FF anyway), I just use Edge. Chrome is now like an absolute last resort.

I convinced a vendor they needed to stop being Chrome-only. The sales guy was sitting next to me, I loaded the page in FF, and turned to him and said, "Seriously, you want us to install a browser we otherwise refuse to use for this?"

It was fixed that week. Unfortunately, this trick does not work very well on non-enterprisey sites or after you cut them a check.

"I notice you are an unsupported website, goodbye".

For sites that make all their money from ads, this is the preferred response.

hmmm perhaps we can do better than just leaving, after all we do have these robots to do our bidding.

In this case and when website works poorly on firefox: "I have noticed, you are developing unsupported website. I will find my content elsewhere."

Already doing that. You can call it "voting with my wallet".

I have transitioned to Brave [1] a few days ago and never looked back. Brilliant browser for my use case.

[1] https://brave.com/

Still Chromium-based...

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