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Standardization is nice for people who make sites and people who use them.
Which is why we have HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, supported by all major browsers.
Unless you’re doing something outrageously non-standard, there is no reason to block specific browsers.
Except for politics.
These terms are absolutely meaningless. Browsers like all Chromium forks and Firefox add new CSS, HTML and JS features on a almost monthly basis. Safari then usually is takes a year more to implement them. And for the past few years Chrome has usually been adding new stuff the fastest, then Firefox a bit later and then Apple adds them after a year, but only if they don’t threaten the native Apps on iOS because of AppStore money.
Web standards keep evolving, this is normal. Otherwise you would be still running Adobe Flash.
You know what kind of org Google is don’t you ?
Limited time to build something so you have to pick based on a couple factors, often largest % of users.
cheap. easy to admin.
I believe that this is illegal.
Nope. Afaik, there is still no legal precedent set that you must make your publicly available website usable on more than one browser suite. Which is ludicrous, because Google has quietly been trying to make Chrome the only option.
There’s no law saying you need to support multiple platforms. There are some windows apps that don’t exist on macos for example. It just sucks.
Because they’re paid to.
You know the answer b
The answer to most questions is money.
Ads = money
Ads and tracking ? Browser with the largest market share ? Well, we are back to IE6 monopoly. :(
Largest marketshare to check for compatibility, while ignoring all the other browsers.
There are two web browsers developers need to consider: Chrome and Safari. All the other browsers are either wrappers around/skins around/modifications of Chrome and Safari, or they’re statistically insignificant.
I default to Firefox myself (including my dev work, because Firefox has some real neat dev tools that Chrome lacks), but from a business point of view, it’s hard to warrant the expense of dedicating an hour of someone’s time to work around a browser incompatibility for the 2% of users that already have Chrome on their device anyway.
Hopefully, Mozilla’s new CEO will help bring Firefox back into the browser market. She may be able to capitulate on Apple opening the app store for other browser engines, because Chrome will certainly try to. For now, though, Firefox has a market share smaller than Linux.
On the other hand, if it works in Firefox, it’s likely to work everywhere else.
I use Firefox for development and then, barring some weird chrome bug, things just work everywhere.
That’s true, but sometimes you run into issues that are just Firefox issues, despite all the documentation saying it should work fine.
Chrome and Safari have similar issues, but their massive install base has a better return on investment.
Firefox has a market share smaller than Linux
Now that hurt. I don’t know how software conscious people continue to choose chromium based browsers. It’s one of the easiest switches you can make to show it to yet another monopoly.
Eco system, email, google account, all bookmarks saved between devices. Where as Firefox you’ll need to actively make an account. Chrome also come pre installed on some systems, ive also seen that many installers for random software will offer to install chrome.
Its all subtle manipulation that leads to people using chrome because everyone uses chrome.
Personally I use Firefox based browsers. I font want to support google.
Most people don’t really care about what browser they’re using. They either use the one they’ve always been using (Chrome/Edge/Safari) or they just use the default (Edge/Safari/Chrome), or maybe whatever browser begs the hardest (Edge/Chrome).
Some people fall for ads and install Opera because it’s “gamer”, that seems to be the biggest non-megabrand browser.
Even though they’ve been into some predatory micro loaning schemes in the last last years (opera)
If it truly is only an hour of someone’s time, then I’d much rather they made that insignificant amount less profit, but did the work to make our experience better.
As a developer: I agree. I consider any website that completely refuses to work in Firefox to be broken.
However, some bugs are just too annoying to be worth serious investment. CSS bugs, unimplemented APIs (
input type="week"), and implemented features disabled by default (“log in with google” support, tracking protection breaking Javascript because of imperfect shims, WebGL/WebRTC being off by default). For ages, Firefox used to have a partial implementation for video/audio calling APIs, breaking spec-compliant applications that tried to show an audio/video input dropdown, and the only workaround was to disable the control (which was annoying because Firefox wouldn’t let you switch inputs on the fly) or telling people to use a browser that let you switch to the right audio device.It’s not just the writing of code itself. Every workaround/polyfill/third party library you add requires long term maintenance. When Firefox eventually gets patched, you need to remove your workarounds, and until then, you need to keep coming back to see if your workarounds are still required. This type of death by a thousand cuts can be a real problem if you try to implement every workaround under the sun.
Plus, sometimes Firefox just doesn’t (want to) implement a feature. For example, WebUSB/WebSerial is real useful for flashing phones or microcontrollers without having to download and install flashing software, but only Chromium supports it.
It’s almost certainly market share. Easier to just slap a “use chrome” check on it than to spend any dev time supporting the others.
Time for some user agent spoofing
Chrome implements features that aren’t standards track into their browser, and lazy/oblivious devs use these features to build their products - only to realize wayyy too late it won’t work in Safari/Firefox because it uses APIs that are chrome only
Firefox still has no month or week inputs. These things have been standardized 10 years ago and implemented in Chrome as of version 20.
Probably the reason it was never implemented is that it’s barely an inconvenience. The input just fallback into a text field.
Probably because the week input is just a date picker that applies
Math.floor()on the result, and month inputs are better suited for a<select>
According to MDN, Firefox does support week inputs… on Android. Firefox isn’t really relevant, though. Safari is, and Safari doesn’t have a week input either.
I don’t know many use cases for these input types, but it’s interesting to know about them for the future.
Don’t use that website if you can
I would thank them for letting me know their site isn’t worth the visit.
As if they needed to check for ““compatibility”” at all - just let the users try their makeshift coded-in-a-weekend browsers, or their 2008 version of IE.
The better question is why some websites even bother checking for the browser when the vast majority of people uses mainstream options that follow web standards and self-update.
Checking the browser version kind of made sense 15 years ago when updating the browser depended on the user’s awareness and willingness of doing so, and the lack of standards across browsers was blatant. Nowadays that’s pretty much useless. The maximum these sites should be doing is displaying a banner letting the user know their browser might be incompatible (because it’s likely not in a way that prevents usage), then fuck off.
The problem is that there are still features missing from certain browsers. For example, Mozilla does not like restrictive licenses, which is why many media codecs are not available in Firefox. Google does not care, pays the fees and provides the media codecs for free. As soon as we get rid of shit like h265 and switch to av1, the world will be a better (and more open) place where everyone can use any browser.
Checking the browser almost never makes sense these days.
Sites should be using feature detection instead. Rather than checking the browser version, instead check if the browser supports the features they require.
It’s more practical though, from a more general UX perspective where the U is often a non technical person. If you throw a “ur browser doesn’t support webserial(or whatever)” message up on the screen, you’re just gonna confuse tons of users who won’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Easier (for everyone) to tell them to just use what you know works.
The message doesn’t have to be technical and can still mention browsers - just say “your browser isn’t compatible with this site. Try updating it or switch to Chrome or Edge”. The idea is just that if someone with a non-Chrome and non-Edge browser tries to load the page and it supports the feature, they won’t see the message.
Time for OP to install a User Agent Switcher plugin
Yep, that’s always worth a try
I had a client once who used to be obsessed with this. By his logic, if a potential customer visited the website and had a bad experience because the site didn’t work properly in their browser, they’d think the company was unprofessional and wouldn’t come into the store and we’d lose them as a customer forever. Analytics showed that 99+% of people would visit in one of the big three, and he wouldn’t pay for someone to test the site on the less popular browsers, instead he insisted on fingerprinting logic that broke all the time and probably caused more bounces than any possible rendering quirks from niche mobile browsers would have caused
It’s ridiculous some people even consider blocking a browser completely and having a near 100% chance of turning away the customer that uses it instead of just letting the user browse and have a significant chance of nothing bad happening.
People are not going to change browsers to visit this website unless they absolutely have to - in which case they’ll hate this company for it.
Oh my god, you get it. Thank you for your continued existence. Keep going!
64.7% of all web traffic was from Google Chrome in 12/23. Companies like it because you can develop for one browser and support most people.
If they develop for only Firefix it will work with all browsers because Firefox is standards compatible.
Not really, unfortunately. Firefox has only like 85% of the spec implemented, iirc. It is the browser I develop in most, personally, though, fwiw.
It drives me bonkers.
And, unfortunately, when I mention this issue I’m am frequently assured that I am mistaken and that there can be no issue. (paraphrasing).
It’s a real problem - I live Firefox (with its standards compliance) but people didn’t adhere. And here we are.
It used to be the same way with Internet Explorer.
