Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Huh? But there's so much diversity in the desktop space. You have Windows/Mac, but then Debian/Rhel, Free/Net/OpenBSD, SteamOS, ChromeOS, Tails, NixOS, Qubes, Solaris Family, ReactOS and that's just the ones I've actually seen people use at conferences.

The browser space has never been more diverse as well, most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares, Chrome was Webkit was KHTML when it started too. A browser's success is only somewhat related to its engine. Having a base you can build on that guarantees all current and future website will work and be performant on has allowed for crazy levels of experimentation.

View on HN

> most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares

We should all care, because people start writing apps that work on Safari and Chrome only rather than to a standard. The web wasn't meant to be controlled by two companies, the idea was using standards anybody can implement.

Use Firefox and see what sites you are using regularly that doen't work because they are chrome sepcific.

I've been Firefox only for more than a decade now (although tbf not on iOS) and I've still yet to find a site that straight up doesn't work. I've had some sites where I've had to tell it I'm using Chrome because of poor user agent sniffing but it's been a long time since that was necessary. Ahh Netflix when it still used Silverlight.

The site which lists available COVID vaccination times for this region of Sweden does not work in Firefox but does work in Safari: https://www.vgregion.se/ov/hitta-vaccinationstider-vgr/vacci...

I don't know the reason for the Firefox failure.

The Adobe site https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/generate-qr-code# says it does not work with Firefox, but if I change the User-Agent it does work.

I ran into both in the last month.

Your experience for most of that decade was when Firefox was much more widely used than it is now, so had a higher support priority.

That first one "works on my computer", and the second one also works (but is purported not to).

I've long been confused when reading how Firefox doesn't work everywhere. Now I'm even more confused, because you posted an example that doesn't work on your computer, but does on mine. Do I have some kind of Ultra Firefox or something?

Could you describe what "works" means?

On Firefox (I am using the most recent version for macOS) I see only only about a paragraph of text, plus header and sidebar.

In Safari I also see pull-down menus for "Kommun" and "Tidsperiod för bokningsbara tider", plus other input items, and a description like "Antal mottagningar: 23" plus a list of locations.

I see menus at the top, a heading, a paragraph of text, some dropdowns like "kommun" and "Tidsperiod för bokningsbara tider", checkboxes under "Visa mottagningar som har", and then what I think are a bunch of boxes for locations for appointments? When I click on one, I go to that location.

Are you missing any of that?

Got the same response with Firefox, temporarily disabled uMatrix and it no longer complained.

It's just a shitty as website by a shitty corporation for shitty ends I guess... I never have such issues with sites that benefit me when I visit them :P

How curious!

I don't have uMatrix or other ad blocker installed.

I turned off all "Enhanced Tracking Protection" and still see nothing in Firefox.

I don't know what you mean by "by a shitty corporation for shitty ends ... sites that benefit me". It's run by the regional council (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stra_G%C3%B6taland_Regi...), which is the political organization responsible for the area's public healthcare system. The page lists available COVID vaccination appointments, which benefits me as I was looking to get a booster shot and wanted to know where to go.

I'm sorry, I should have made clear I was referring to the Adobe site :/ Which, to be fair, I didn't attempt to actually use, it's just that disabling uMatrix made the message that it doesn't work with Firefox go away, but I didn't attempt to use it further.

Ahh. That was the one where it actually does work, if I change the User-Agent.

There are plenty; anecdotally, I run into them more than not.

My bank is doing some security theater fingerprinting (instead of something actually secure, like 2FA, but that's a different story), which in the end means I can't login to my bank account using Firefox anymore these days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com