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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

I really, really like Firefox, but this is basically what happens when I try to get people to use Firefox (and yes, I do actually try to get people to use Firefox):

E: Hey use Firefox!

O: OK, I'll give it a try!

O: Hey, why doesn't X site work properly with Firefox?

Firefox: Introduces something making it more likely that another site doesn't work

O: Hey, now Y site doesn't work either!

E: Hey, just wait a second you can-

O: Sorry, I don't have time for this, I'm switching back to Chrome.

IMHO - Firefox's #1 priority should be making sure every site in the the first 10,000 of Alexa work equally as well with Firefox as it does with Chrome, period.

What good is amazing privacy stuff if your userbase is rapidly dwindling?

list of sites that don't work (many, if not most of these work on Chrome without issue):

https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=50&state=open&s...

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What sites are people visiting? I've used Firefox for over a decade and yet have to run into any kind of issue like this.

I've been using Firefox as my main browser for a long time and over the past couple of years I noticed an uptick in websites that wouldn't work lest I used Chromium. For instance last week I had to use a crappy HSBC website that wouldn't let me login in Firefox (it would just hang) while it worked in Chromium.

It's still very minor and I can't even come up with a 2nd example off the top of my head but it does definitely happen from time to time.

If anything these few cases only makes me value Firefox even more, I don't want to enable the Chrome monopoly.

Ebay works on and off for me. I often have to resort to Safari

What kind of problems are these? I've never used anything but Firefox on Ebay.

"Unsupported browser" messages when attempting to login on both desktop firefox and mobile firefox.

Which sites don't work for you?

Even GSuite works better for me in Firefox. Slides stays smooth even when scrolling through large presentations and it never locks up (like Chrome does).

Excel via Office online is a bit funky for me.

Microsoft Teams is Chrome only. A good reason not to use it.

Cisco Webex is a repeat offender. The experience is much better in Chromium. If I am using Firefox I have to dial in to a meeting using my phone instead of being able to use my USB headset.

Why is this a complaint at Firefox, and not at Google for abusing their monopoly to create new features on a whim regardless of what it does to other browsers?

I suppose because some of them are in the standard and not implemented in other browsers. Or there are some 20 year old bugs (reported) that are not fixed while pocket and robot are featured.

settings that are known to break websites are disabled in the default configuration, and labeled clearly in the settings pane.

firefox doesn't exist to "win" the browser wars. it doesn't even exist to give users the best possible browsing experience, although that's certainly a primary goal and in my experience they're doing well.

the #1 reason that firefox exists is so that mozilla can have a seat at the WHATWG table -- because very important decisions about the fabric of the world wide web happen there, and the other seats all belong to apple, google, and microsoft.

mozilla is the closest thing we (the users -- not just firefox users, but all web users) have to a "representative" in the WHATWG, because mozilla doesn't answer to shareholders.

> What good is amazing privacy stuff if your userbase is rapidly dwindling?

aside from a noticeable dip when the new chromium-edge started shipping with windows, firefox browser usage on desktop has been pretty steady for the past 5 years.

the value in adding privacy features is that it solidifies a certain use of the protocols, making it harder for WHATWG to make spec changes that undermine the provided security.

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