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Comment by NBPEL | Hacker News Reader

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, even big browser like Zen Browser with 10M users failed to acquire it

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How common is this that they would even care about it anyways? I've run Firefox exclusively for the last 2 decades and have never once run into a site that told me I needed to switch to Chromium for compatibility.

And honestly, I've only ever once encountered a website that required Widevine. And that site was a media site. So if you don't watch DRMed movies in your browser then you don't need Widevine in my experience.

I've found widewine a blessing because news sites that autoplay trash seem to be the only group that uses it (other than paid media platforms like Netflix and Spotify).

The blessing is I can just reject it and it blocks all their videos from playing/downloading.

Common enough that Mozilla has full-time engineers working on triaging compatibility issues, so they can either be fixed in Firefox or reported to webmasters. Here are the reports they get: https://webcompat.com/issues

I've never had one tell me; they just don't work, or they get stuck in a loop until they consume all my RAM and the gecko engine crashes. That is, assuming they even show me the page, instead of telling me to go away because they they think I'm a bot.

A few years ago I was maintaining the website for a major brand whose products you probably use. To my horror the website did not support Firefox. I gave them a very minimal estimate on what it would cost to support Firefox along with the estimated percentage of Firefox users in their target market. They were not interested.

Best to avoid talking percentages, talk the specific cost to fix the bugs vs the specific amount of lost profit.

I actually ran into such issues, in particular with commercial websits. Some browsers I use do not work for my online transactions for instance - annoyingly the local bank I use for logging into my account as well. It is basically the bank hijacking my money and forcing me into using a specific browser (or, at the least, very few; they improved compatibility a bit in the last years, but there were more issues in the past here). It is just a reality of the situation that some websites don't work well on certain browsers.

Why don't you consider switching banks? In 2008 I had to switch bank for exactly this reason.

I switched bank in 2021 and it was hard. No bank advertises "we do compliant chip tan" and no bank advertises "we do not buy an app framework that scans for customs roms".

Switching banks is hard, because all of them suck, are underdocumented and a moving target.

I suppose today it is more difficult. At the time I only had to get a guarantee from the bank that they support Firefox in addition to IE. Getting that guarantee did take them a week, and only happened because I found a sympathetic bank manager who was willing to pressure them on my behalf.

In the past Vivaldi used their own user agent string and they ran into a bunch of issues. And they are a chrome derivative! They had to default to the chrome user agent. Here are the examples they cite in their announcement of the decision:

"On Google.com if you present a Vivaldi user agent and arrive via a redirect, the search text box will be misaligned

On Google Docs if you present a Vivaldi user agent you will receive a warning

On Facebook’s WhatsApp web interface if you present a Vivaldi user agent, you cannot enter the site and are advised to switch to one of our competitors

On Microsoft Teams (chat and collaboration website), presenting a Vivaldi user agent will stop you from being able to use the website

On Netflix, presenting a Vivaldi user agent results in a suggestion to install Silverlight to play videos… yes… really… Silverlight!"

(https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/)

When these mega-companies block new competitors it really ought to be seen as collusion. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft certainly have the resources to test and approve the occasional new browser.

They don’t even have the resources to test the most common browsers on every scenario of every page of every application, let alone fix every issue such testing would find.

Big if true

Your experience may be different, but every time I hit the Cloudflare "checking if your connection is secure" turnstyle, it goes into an infinite loop on Firefox. It's the only reason I still have Chrome on any personal device. It may be tracker and privacy settings rather than just Firefox on its own, but I'm not going to run combinatorial experiments to figure out exactly what Cloudflare is looking for, especially since it's probably a moving target.

YouTube is crippled in Firefox, has been for years. It doesn’t force you to use Chrome, just a little nudge

In what way is it crippled?

Takes forever to load anything

Not for every YouTube Premium subscriber in populated areas of California with decent internet connections watching popular videos, even with a userscript automatically selecting highest quality. Always instant, zero wait, very few exceptions.

It’s non-Google sites where Firefox may not be as well supported as Chrome, IME.

I use YouTube on Firefox (with uBlock Origin) almost exclusively and this has not been my experience.

How so? I use Firefox for all leisure activities, including extensive YouTube usage, and have never noticed any issue. I’m running uBlock Origin and Sponsor Block. I’m logged into a dedicated Google account I made solely for browsing YouTube (so I can keep the viewing history without linking it too obviously to my main Google account).

Page load takes twice as long as Chrome, videos buffer more slowly, and memory usage grows much faster. After a dozen tabs it starts visibly lagging when you press play/pause, the exact same session works flawlessly in Chrome.

It doesn't seem to affect everyone equally. Pretending to be Chrome sometimes helps - not too long ago someone found a piece of code that introduced seconds of busy delay for any non-Chrome user agent.

I second that. Loading the pages takes longer before the video starts playing. I also regularly run into bot detection where no video will play at all until I log in.

A lot of systems seem to silently fail on Firefox - my broadband supplier's website failed at the last step of the onboarding process. I managed to get charged for installation (connection by the network operator, UK) twice, have onboarding emails sent, but not have the appointment in my account.

Used Edge, went through completely.

Can't guarantee it was Firefox/browser issues. But this is not that uncommon an occurrence.

I suspect it is the bank who are at fault.

Just today Ryanair wouldnt let me in on Firefox. 403 with a cloudflare error.

But on chrome it went through without a hitch.

I’ve been using Firefox for 20 years, and Ryanair for 10, I’ve never had to switch browser for it. My last flight was 2 weeks ago

Its the magic of multi-metric based DDOS/exploit/whatever protection.

For my full profile the login attempt with Firefox as a user agent apparently pushed it over the edge.

Do you have adblock by any chance?

Unfortunately a whole new generation failed to learn the IE lesson, and are the first to complain when others don't follow the Chrome OS Platform wishes.

To get to the point where these artificial gates substantially matter for interop, you've already cleared 99% of the hurdles, and you can get away with just spoofing the User Agent string most of the time.

Widevine is legitimately a “gate”, but realistically it only stops 4K playback on Netflix, Disney and a few other streaming sites. And it's not super relevant considering that Zen has gathered 10M users without it.

Quite recently, Ladybird started reporting itself as Chrome for exactly this reason.

Hmm, I haven’t used a single website in a long time that forces a Chromium-based browser to operate. The only exception I know of is DocuSign requiring a Chrome extension. And, of course, plenty of websites are laggy on Safari.

They can mock the User Agent for the purposes of compatibility testing. When you control the browser itself, nothing's impossible. (aside from DRM specific issues)

Ladybird, at least initially, will be niche enough that I think this won't be a problem. It'll be tech enthusiasts who use multiple browsers. If it can get a foothold, then I think there will be many more bars to clear.

> DRM Widevine,

we have to thank tim berners lee for allowing this kind of bs in the first place

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/tim_bernerslee_approv...

It was either permit DRM, or cut off the web for all sorts of media.

It was a bad position for him to take.

easy choice. also, thats just BS, remember how SOMEHOW the same was said for playback of music on computers, yet somehow a certain now-dead CEO was able to say "fuck you" and it happened anyway?

Not sure if Spotify got that same memo.

That was part of the deal with Apple the record company because otherwise Apple the computer company would infringe on their trademark. The Steves could have renamed their company or taken the deal. They took the deal.

There would still be piracy sites. So their choice would be between everyone watching it for free or offering their service without drm.

the web was famously cut off for all sorts of media before DRM was permitted

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