Hacker News Reader

Comment by lopkeny12ko | Hacker News Reader

What Mozilla/Firefox needs to understand is that end users do not care about standards purity/principles. If core functionality doesn't work in your browser, people simply aren't going to use it. This is why the web is increasingly broken on Firefox--nowadays, about 10% of the sites I visit are simply utterly broken or slow on Firefox but work fine on Chrome.

Hell, even the $LARGE_CORPORATION I work at has all its developer tooling (including documentation, custom extensions, etc.) on Chrome. I've reported countless Firefox-specific issues, often due to missing API support, because no one internally tests on anything other than Chrome. You have to meet your users where they are.

View on HN

These are the same sort of arguments that surrounded ActiveX and IE, back in the day. When $LARGE_CORPORATION is stuck on Chrome years after they would like to be (and other fallout), it will have been entirely predictable. Good on you for continuing to report issues you see to FF, but to your final point, if everyone is going to a bad place, no, you do not have to go.

> What Mozilla/Firefox needs to understand is that end users do not care about standards purity/principles. If core functionality doesn't work in your browser, people simply aren't going to use it. This is why the web is increasingly broken on Firefox--nowadays, about 10% of the sites I visit are simply utterly broken or slow on Firefox but work fine on Chrome.

It's not broken because they are fussy on standards.

it's broken because their marketshare dropped so low companies that make money on developing web stuff are often not contractually obliged to even support it. Few of our clients have contracts where we're obliged to support any browser above 5% market share and FF is already below even that!

I agree. I'm developing a system which uses webapp to interact with device over USB. It works in Chrome. It's sad for me to not support Firefox but the only way is to ask user to run some binary which will open websocket on localhost to interact with USB device. This is strictly worse from security PoV. This is strictly worse from usability PoV (user have to download and install manually additional component). This introduces update hurdles (I need to develop reliable updater). So much friction and issues just because of purity stand which hurts user in the end.

> I'm developing a system which uses webapp to interact with device over USB. It works in Chrome. It's sad for me to not support Firefox

As a cautionary tale: the moment Firefox shipped support for a hardware API they immediately ran into sites abusing them. Of course, Chrome doesn't even hide them behind a user prompt. https://twitter.com/denschub/status/1582730985778556931 (and comment)

There are reasons Firefox opposes these standards. Chrome is neither your friend nor does it care for the web. Why are you so willing to give a carte blanche to a power struggle (Chrome/Web vs. Android) inside a web advertising company is beyond me.

I don't know about MIDI but accessing USB requires user confirmation and you can only access a selected port.

That's why th ecautionary tale: which of the capabilities of those APIs whould be behind user consent and which shouldn't? At which point will the user just click "yes" without reading those consent pop ups?

> If core functionality doesn't work

Somehow "everything that Chrome ships" is core functionality now

> broken or slow on Firefox but work fine on Chrome.

Somehow you blame Firefox for this. Even though "only works in IE" isn't even ancient history

> What Mozilla/Firefox needs to understand is that end users do not care about standards purity/principles.

They might when their files get exfiltrated or encrypted. The file system access API UX is far too easily abused to misleading users into granting access to things they didn’t intend.

But at the same time if it's not for purity/principles why would anyone choose Firefox over Chrome?

Single issue user. Adblocking. Not because of some grand belief in the idea that Mozilla would be a better steward for the web like what many others here are advocating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com