Browsers Treat Big Sites Differently

Web dev here.

Many years ago I switched over to FF as my default browser but something kept me from using it for development… Nothing that serious, just small quirks in its dev tools UX and behaviors that weren’t bad, just different.

What I noticed was that if I engineered sites for Chrome, they’d be broken maybe 10% of the time on FF when I eventually tested it and maybe 15% in Safari - especially mobile.

Wanting to limit the amount of bugs I put out in the world I changed my approach to developing solely in FF and occasionally testing in Safari and I can honestly say I’ve never had a bug reported in Chrome. It just works. Safari issues are now down to <1% and mostly involve their unique approach to z-indexing but these are entirely predictable now.

> Chrome doesn't.

For ages when visiting YouTube it wasn't possible to mute the YouTube tab - the mute button was disabled and it was the only website where I've seen such behaviour; just checked, and it's now entirely gone. Compare it to Safari, where option to mute the tab is available (for Youtube)

This history of user agent strings still cracks me up. https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

The IE6 monopoly could be seen as part of MSFT's downfall. Once they achieved near world domination, they disbanded the IE team, as I recall, and tried to put the Internet imp back in the bottle. Tech stagnation followed, Firefox blew a hole in IE's side, but everyone decided to reestablish a browser monopoly.

> And so does SeatGuru.

SeatGuru shut down back in 2025.