[tyrion]

It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features.

However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are very different from yours.

You may think that there is no harm in doing so. Most people use Chrome anyway. And what difference can one more web app make?

However, it is exactly this laziness by skilled developers, who are the only that understand the problem, which brought us to the current situation. There is no way to fix this problem, if the people that understand it do not take a stand.

Next time that your manager asks you if you can have that sweet feature, instead of saying "sure, we just need to drop support for Firefox", please consider trying to explain what are the consequences in the long term.

I know this isn't easy for many people, which do not feel comfortable questioning orders or plans. However, this is our responsibility. Nobody else is going to care, if we do not care.

[lxgr]

There simply isn't a way to implement this on Firefox as it is. It's lacking the necessary API for end-to-end encryption: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27432001

Yes, many pages support only Chrome for no good reason at all, but in this instance, the ball is 100% with Mozilla.

[Jiocus]

What necessary E2E API does Chrome provide?

[sam_goody]

Actually, Apple has many developers on this team, and Firefox is an open source project.

If we could create an feeling that companies that claim to be developer friendly make sure that FF is also compatible, it would be a huge win for all involved.

[whywhywhywhy]

I can count the number of developers I've worked with over the last 5 years that care about it working in any browser other than Chrome on one finger.

This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browser.

[ballenf]

That mirrors my experience. It's not POs or PMs that hear about some new niche browser feature only supported by Chrome. It's devs that want to play with the latest toys and kind of look at you weird if you use Safari.

There's an annoying assumption from other devs that I must be using Safari out of ignorance. They quickly get over it, but it's a problematic first impression thing when working with new teams.

[lotsofpulp]

> This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browser.

I would have thought at least iOS Safari would be a major consideration for anyone due to the ubiquity of iOS devices.

[musicale]

"Web Browser" === "Chrome"

I suppose we're back in the golden era of "Works Best With Internet Explorer."

[olliej]

In this case it’s because Firefox doesn’t support the necessary APIs for FaceTime rather than just not testing.

[Induane]

I test mostly on Firefox and Epiphany; I figure if it works there it's going to work just about everywhere.

Safari is a different beast because I don't have a Mac and it's support for a lot of standards is pretty dismal. It's like the IE6 of browsers these days.

I keep the JS simple though and for CSS I keep around a few handy LESS functions so I can get some basic stuff on crap browsers. Stuff like:

.opacity(@default, @percent) { -webkit-opacity: @default; -khtml-opacity: @default; -moz-opacity: @default; -ms-opacity: @default; -o-opacity: @default; opacity: @default; // ms-filter *SHOULD* work on IE8 & 9 but ... doesn't always // for me? WTF... anyway (filter should also work). This // should be listed before filter to be safe -ms-filter:"progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=@percent)"; filter: alpha(opacity=@percent); /* support: IE8 oh god we're all gonna die*/ }

or

.box-shadow(@value) { -webkit-box-shadow: @value; -khtml-box-shadow: @value; -moz-box-shadow: @value; -ms-box-shadow: @value; -o-box-shadow: @value; box-shadow: @value; }

This way I don't rely on some framework like Bootstrap, and I can write fairly simple stylesheets. I used to transpile compliant and legacy sheets and serve different urls depending on user agent strings but that didn't work well and was generally crap so - one it is.

Don't worry, when I transpile I strip my unprofessional comments.

[aseipp]

> Next time that your manager asks you if you can have that sweet feature, instead of saying "sure, we just need to drop support for Firefox", please consider trying to explain what are the consequences in the long term.

If the future of the web relies on developers groveling at the feet of a manager, then there's no fight or discussion to be had, because the web has already unequivocally lost. The only thing that's happening is a discussion about whether to parade on the corpse or not.

[rchaud]

> If the future of the web relies on developers groveling at the feet of a manager,

I see a lot of this 'devs v suits' type language used on HN, with the implication being that the developers are principled stewards of technology suffering under the cosh of KPI-obsessed MBAs.

What causes this? The majority of product managers I've met have technical backgrounds, and they have also had to cut corners to keep their product roadmaps on track.

[hiccuphippo]

Or say "no, I still need to add compatibility to 5% of the users", even more if the changes also benefit alt and older browsers.

[spankalee]

Apple's choice here was likely to not release the product at all, or use an open standard that Firefox doesn't yet support, and allow them to support it over time.

Using features that not all browsers have implemented _yet_ isn't always bad for the open web. If the feature is important, the other browsers prioritize it.

[EveYoung]

Why put all this responsibility on developers? I'm pretty sure none of my former managers could have been swayed by talking about the long-time independence of the web. Usually, the most pressing issue was fixing bugs in prod and delivering features on time.

[sfink]

But that raises the question: is not working in Firefox considered to be a bug in prod?

[moron4hire]

>> instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser

That's the problem. Firefox isn't keeping up with standards.

[sfink]

Firefox is doing quite well with the standards. Chrome is implementing things beyond the agreed-upon standards. Which to some extent has to happen in order to advance standards, but that only works if the changes are agreed upon or at least not disagreed upon by other implementations. These days Chrome is forging ahead even in the face of disagreements (usually on grounds of privacy or security).

And to be clear, Firefox is behind on the relevant standard here. Though even then, it's more nuanced than that: Mozilla is ok with prototyping it even though they would prefer for it to use a more secure mechanism -- see https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webrtc-insert...

From what I can tell, Mozilla is in the place of playing catch-up because the other players chose to forge ahead without resolving their objections.

[Ok, "our objections". I work for Mozilla. Not in a relevant area until recently, but it looks like I will be doing some very relevant work starting as soon as I close this damn tab.]

[burnte]

What standards are they significantly behind on? I seem to recall Fx being a prime mover on standards most of the time, not a laggard.

[efields]

To the vast majority of the people that use this on the web, they will do care about your story.

I don’t mean that as an insult; I’m happy there are folks like you with passion in this space.

If you’re old enough, you still wake up in the middle of the night sweating about IE 6 or 7 bugs that HAD to be solved with brute force even though the feature worked just fine in Firefox and Chrome. After years of struggle, most of the world uses a very compliant and continuously upgraded browser.

Please… take the win.

[sfink]

It's not about not taking the win. It's about taking the short term win (by contributing to the monoculture dominance) at the expense of a long term loss -- why expect Google to maintain the Web's current advantages when it no longer serves their purpose to? Especially since the writing is already on the wall.

[ok_coo]

It was a combo of being a fresh/new dev on my part and IE6/7, but I recall spending (wasting) days and days of my life working around IE issues.

I know we don't want another situation of one browser dominating the web but Chrome (and Firefox) improved building for the web so much. I don't know if people forget or weren't around for the IE days but it was absolutely terrible and a life-waste.

[ptx]

IE also worked great if you "took the win" and wrote exclusively for IE and not for the standard.

[syshum]

Replacing Microsoft Overlord with Google Overlord does not seem like much of a win

[hartator]

> you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place

Does it? Open source standardization is a good thing. Still not sure why html/css/js engine should be the exception. No one is calling for competition for QR code, torrent protocol, or the other billion of very dominant open source projects.

[swsieber]

It's not really open source standardization though. Google is in charge, make no mistake. Yes people can take it and tweak it, but the main feature changes are dictated by Google.

[cpeterso]

HTML, CSS, JS, QR codes, and Bittorrent are data formats or protocols, not implementations.

[homarp]

but we have multiple compilers for the same language though. And multiple OS too.

[cblconfederate]

wish people would say the same thing about mobile platforms

[px43]

This is Apple, the inventor of walled garden tech for consumers. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had some proprietary extensions in Safari that made it so Safari was the only browser that could do it.

[dkonofalski]

You're literally replying to an article about Apple opening up their technology to other users who aren't in their ecosystem...

[unknown_error]

What the open source world calls "freedom of choice", the rest of the world calls "waste of time". I'd argue it does more people more good to have a de facto standard based on a close duopoly (Google + Apple, webkit/blink) to code websites and devices against, rather than the clusterfuck that is the WHATWG, W3C, etc. process. The existence of Gecko is nice for Mozilla but a time sink for developers and users, who at the end of the day just want to look up restaurant menus or buy tickets or check their email instead of fiddling with browser idiosyncrasies.

If Mozilla moved to some Webkit/Blink/Chromium derivative like everyone else, the world could standardize on that renderer and they are still free to "innovate" on the browser UI/chrome surrounding that engine and differentiate themselves that way.

As it is, Gecko adds nothing to the web ecosystem anymore and wastes everyone's time.

[gbromios]

What a deeply ignorant perspective. Too infuriating to ignore. Firefox users constitute <1% of my traffic. If you had any context for how widely browsers diverged on webrtc features (especially video), you'd realize that ff support could easily add months and months to dev time. I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that apple makes no mention of safari in their announcement.

my webrtc-based video conference app doesn't currently support ff and never will unless compatibility with chrome's implementation comes around. My manager would have me committed if I tried to pull that shit, and I'm already notorious for refusing to do things on principle. Suggesting that we don't support firefox because I'm lazy? No, vendors force us to choose, and if the alternative is NO video? Here on earth, where we're trying to cultivate a competitive advantage and survive as a business venture, that's an incredibly easy choice.

edit: other commenters have made the point much more elegantly than I but I leave my words here as a testament to how infuriated I am at this condescending suggestion.

[ivanche]

You made something that doesn't work in Firefox and you're now surprised that <1% of your traffic comes from Firefox?

[antipaul]

Just to note, Apple made no mention of Safari because then you are on an Apple platform, where you always have available the actual FaceTime app

[unyttigfjelltol]

> Firefox users constitute <1% of my traffic.

I configure FF to use a different user agent, as a security measure. It's a short hop from browsing the Internet with FF to disabiling browser identification.