Tell HN: Firefox is being slowly deprecated by the industry

by gurjeet 62 comments 70 points
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62 comments

[−] p_ing 49d ago
This is nothing new for any browser, unless you believe in the mid-late 2000s Chrome was being "slowly deprecated by the industry" for sites that refused to work with Chrome.

These are just lazy developers, or developers who don't want to bother testing against FF. It happens. Move on. This is not some industry trend.

[−] xtiansimon 49d ago

> “These are just lazy developers…”

It appears the system is working as intended.

[−] cestivan 49d ago
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[−] gurjeet 49d ago
Oh, but AI has made the cost of development so low! It doesn't cost much to do cross-browser tests anymore. /s :-)
[−] MattGaiser 49d ago
Well, it never cost much. For the most part you just need to install it into your test framework.

The problem is that the value of doing it is essentially none.

[−] coffeefirst 49d ago
This isn’t true. Firefox users get really salty about this. They really will drop your product.
[−] Gud 49d ago
Absolutely. I will refuse to do business with anyone who is hostile to the open web.
[−] marc_abonce 49d ago
One thing we can do to slightly mitigate this as devs is to use Firefox ourselves while working on our job's front-end. Even if the company doesn't prioritize Firefox, we can make sure it works in the browser while doing our normal job.

This is what I've been "accidentally" doing throughout my career, not even thinking about helping Firefox support but just because I actually prefer to use Firefox myself.

And it's not even extra work because nowadays the feature support in Firefox and Chrome is nearly identical and all the mainstream front-end libraries already support both browsers. In fact, I only remember 2 times in the last 5 years when I found bugs caused by inconsistent browser behaviours and both were quick and easy to amend in the same PR; no ticket nor discussions on prioritization were even needed.

[−] Animats 49d ago
The immigration attorney company works from Firefox at

   https://www.tryalma.com/
or https://www.tryalma.ai

but not from https://app.tryalma.com

Nothing reachable from https://www.apple.com/ seems to fail on Firefox.

[−] karlshea 49d ago
Not saying I like the situation, but Firefox usage is about ~2-3%.

That's about where IE 6 and then IE 11 were when everyone was excited they could finally drop them. Why should anyone treat Firefox differently?

[−] Bender 49d ago
When companies or government offices tell me to use another browser I tell them I can not, dont have administrative access and make them input all the data for me.
[−] amatecha 49d ago
Oh well. I just don't use sites that don't load on Firefox. I'm already pretty used to missing out on a lot of websites because I just close websites that show a pop-over modal ad or video ad or anything particularly intrusive like that...
[−] paxys 49d ago
Spoof the user agent. I'd bet the vast majority of "only works on XYZ browser" websites will still work.
[−] UltraSane 49d ago
Firefox + uBlock Origin is the only way the modern web is still usable.
[−] jerhewet 48d ago
Browse to https://www.whatismybrowser.com/guides/the-latest-user-agent... and copy the latest UserAgent string for Google Chrome.

In Firefox, about:config > general.useragent.override > new string, click +, paste in the value from the website above, click the checkmark.

This will work most of the time on the sites that hired lazy, incompetent web developers to design their pages -- washingtonpost.com, lowes.com, and the worst offender of all, homedepot.com.

[−] politelemon 49d ago
This isn't unusual for Apple, who appear to be aspiring to Microsoft business practices from a few decades ago. If they cannot be bothered to support you, you can return in kind by not supporting them and their practices either.

I don't agree with this post being flagged, but HN seems to suppress anything that's remotely critical of apple, don't be surprised if this is removed.

[−] ggm 49d ago
What happens if you configure your browser string to lie about your software origins and compatibility?
[−] RJ000 49d ago
Who benefits from terminating service like this?
[−] _HMCB_ 49d ago
I get the unsupported warning even on iOS Safari.
[−] lousken 48d ago
Instead of shoving AI, firefox should focus more on enterprise needs - it lacks in many ways and if sysadmins can't install it, then people won't even know about it.
[−] cozzyd 49d ago
You would think AlmaLinux would be a supported distribution (and that obviously defaults to Firefox).

I only use Chrome for Microsoft Teams there NASA insists on using (Teams doesn't seem to detect my camera in Firefox... And the teams for Linux app was total trash when I tried it, maybe it's better now if it still exists.). Is there a way to stop it's obnoxious trying to be the default browser every time?

[−] MattGaiser 49d ago
Every company I have worked for has passed on fixing things that just impact Firefox.

In my first job back in 2019, a support ticket came back about a dropdown bug in Firefox. It didn’t even make it to engineering before they told them to switch to Chrome.

[−] 8cvor6j844qw_d6 49d ago
Not surprised. A QA team I worked with only tested against Chrome-based browsers and Safari. If users hit issues on Firefox or anything else, support was just told to have them switch browsers.
[−] wooque 48d ago
Shopify online store editor also doesn't work in Firefox. It's a shame that Firefox is getting sidelined.
[−] EricRiese 48d ago
I tried to order a tablet from OnePlus. It's impossible to create an account on oneplus.com with Firefox.
[−] andrewstuart 49d ago
Use it or lose it folks.
[−] snihalani 49d ago
I think this is a pact between advertising companies.
[−] bawolff 49d ago
This is what happens when your usage share is basically a rounding error.

I love firefox, i've been using it since version 1.0 to today.

However mozilla really has been directionless, its no surprise that nobody cares when the browser has basically devolved into copying everything that chrome does, but a year later and not as good.

[−] theturtle 49d ago
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