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Comment by xnorswap | Hacker News Reader

https://github.com/openblocks-dev/openblocks/blob/1c5846d049...

Disappointing to see Firefox flagged as a "Not supported browser".

> Your current browser may have compatibility issues. For a better user experience, it is recommended to use the latest version of the Chrome browser.

Huh, it’s been a few years since I saw a banner like this other than on a tech demo that was deliberately using cutting-edge stuff. Hmm… honestly, probably eight or ten years ago.

Quite apart from the fact of the banner’s existence at all, its wording displeases me. Recommending a single browser in such a situation is bad.

Hi, co-founder of Openblocks here.

Sorry about Firefox flagging issue, currently we are on a very tight schedule on developing new features, so we only do a thorough test on Chrome then. We welcome our community to give us feedback about browser compatibility issues and we'll fix this Firefox issue soon.

It's opensource. Build it, test it, send any fixes necessary, add a few CI tests to verify it keeps working, and then add it to the supported list.

No, just remove the banner and check, it’s totally misguided considering how far back their baseline apparently is. It’s a bad implementation of a bad concept.

I tried quickly the app builder with Firefox and it seemed to mostly work fine. I would bet it's just that the devs use chrome and didn't have time to test extensively all their advanced features on all browsers.

What advanced features would be supported by a 3 year old Safari, a 4 year old Chrome, but not by Firefox?

It's a kind of laziness that does the open web great harm by putting unnecessary barriers in front of Firefox users when they shouldn't be there.

Feature detection for any newer APIs is far better. If you know you rely on a particular API set then you can test for precisely that.

Otherwise let browsers be instead of putting banners up recommending "best in IE". It just harms the web.

It's unfair to call the dev lazy on this ground. Even modern browsers are far better than the old days, there remain many discrepancies between browsers and they are still hard to come up with solutions that fit all platforms.

Making a static web page work on different browsers is much easier than making a web app work on all the browsers. For a web app, even 1% of the API doesn't work, the whole app is a failure. Can you accept an app only work 99% of the time?

I've no idea what makes it incompatible with Firefox, but without knowing the reason, it's an offence to call it laziness.

> I've no idea what makes it incompatible with Firefox, but without knowing the reason, it's an offence to call it laziness.

If they didn't bother documenting the compatibility issues, even if only so that future roadmaps can review and take stock of any changes in browser functionality down the road -- or to allow others to work on/around the problem, that's laziness and it's fair to call it out as such.

100% on this. Most startups are limited in resources, and even more so for opensource. Building a business means setting expectations and being clear on the scope of support. This is more than appropriate for a new product.

Personally, I would rather have a warning that FF "may" have issues, than no warning at all. Nothing is stopping a user form using FF if they want, and now they have a heads up.

As a long time open source user and contributor, I find it disappointing when some people can become entitled and complain about free software that doesn't exactly meet their expectations.

As mentioned elsewhere, the fact that it is open source means that anyone can potentially contribute... so if it is a large issue, then there is nothing stopping folks from trying to solve the problem themselves.

yeah, why is firefox lagging behind? well you are stupid to use firefox, i only use muh brave, it blocks ads by default and gives you crypto in return to show their ads.

/s if you didn realize

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