This is pretty lame BS. I am literally right in the middle of building a public web app (also for a bank) that does not have any sort of arbitrary user agent constraints.
As long as your browser supports reasonably-modern things like flexbox and media queries, my app is just going to work on your machine. Even if it doesn't support these things, I don't see any reason to artificially get in the way of something you might otherwise be able to string along regardless.
I roll 100% vanilla JS/CSS these days so that I can avoid getting entrapped in the kinds of hells that likely entrapped these mbna web developers. It is quite possible they use some JS framework that has a tight dependency on a certain cohort of browser vendors & versions.
Note: MBNA Canada is owned by TD.com (one of the 5 major banks in Canada) and not the US MBNA.
In my estimation, it's likely that they've looked at the numbers and are essentially 'firing' FF customers b/c they don't drive enough rev.
CIBC (another bank here) has been doing this for at least 15 years by offering seemingly 'cheaper' banking services using the same systems but different brands (eg PC financial). The downmarket brand seems cheaper on the surface but they take away all the costly things the flagship brand gives away (eg in-person banking, no fee transactions, etc) and charge [more] for them.
Our telcos here do the same thing with MVNOs (eg Rogers, the flagship brand, owns Chatr, for poor ppl).
Anecdotally, if you use firefox on android to sign in to a wells fargo account you will get a shitload more captchas and extra verification steps to actually login than if you use chrome, or their officially published app.
I've gotten a ton of captchas when using Brave. One time I was trying to create an account and I just got an unending stream of them. I literally gave up after 15 or so. If it had said I was going to have to do 20, I might have continued. But there was on light at the end of the tunnel, so I gave up.
Serious question: I love FF because of many reasons, but "additional voice at the web standard group" is quite far down the list for me. The top reasons I'm using FF right now are the features, namely high customizability on everything, TreeStyleTab, Picture in Picture mode with subtitle support, container tabs, all the privacy stuffs, and so on. How hard is it to have all these features with another engine like Webkit or Blink? Would there be a chance of FF keeping these features but switch out the engine it uses so that it takes less engineering effort to maintain?
Firstly Mozilla is never going to switch to Chromium engine because it'd indicate giving up most of what makes it unique. Second to redo all their unique features would take a number of years, particularly all the privacy aspects that the Tor Browser relies on. Compare it to Brave for example, they've had years to work on their browser and it's not got any of the aforementioned Firefox features and a fraction of the privacy ones.
I wonder if people realize how low Firefox marketshare has fallen, or if people are stuck in a 2010s-era idea of what the web browser landscape is like. I also think the prevalence of Firefox among the (overall tiny) desktop Linux demographic tends to warp developer perspectives.
It's under 4% - for all intents and purposes a dead browser. I certainly wouldn't devote any engineering hours towards supporting it.
Firefox's marketshare is hardly the point here. As bob1029 said, there's no earthly reason why you wouldn't just build a standards-based site and have it work on any modern browser.
Not to mention, the core development team has been cut.
Mozilla is rebranding itself into a “Social Justice For Tech” marketing firm.
There are two significant platforms left Chromium and WebKit. I hope that isn’t the future, but browser dominance is such an obscure, indirect problem to the industry that no company would bother touching it.
Not possible. Google owns the network and wins hands down for being able to advertise Chrome wherever and whenever they want, while Mozilla is forced to buy ads. Being better than Chrome is not enough anymore.
My bank (B of A) started complaining about Debian's firefox-esr being too old and out of date, so I loaded the bleeding edge version just to access my bank account, but use the esr version for general browsing.
What they really mean: "We're no longer developing for/testing Firefox, and if you run into a technical issue we will not offer any support". Firefox will probably continue to work fine.
Few weeks ago my bank force me to use password and SMS code for transactions because of EU regulations. But if I would use app (which I won't), I don't have to use any passwords.
Which EU regulation tell banks to use SMS and password to make transactions without app?
Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), "a new set of rules that will change how you confirm your identity when making purchases online".
A Google search will surface help pages from most European financial regulators and payment processors and banks. For instance, [1-3].
The rollout was delayed a couple of times so cutoff dates mentioned on older pages may well have shifted. In the UK, the cutoff date was 14 March 2022.
My bank offered SMS code authentication as alternative before, but since new EU regulations came out 1-2 years ago, Im forced to either use a physical card-reader OTP generator (which, to be fair, is free, but clunky, so I can't easily put it in my pocket) or use their app that doesn't even work on my device (i use a hardened custom android distro, but have no root and bootloader is locked)
i stopped using firefox as it was not fixing some performance issues. also there are plugins which on chrome, but not ff. and also they never made bookmarks feature complete. i have donated not less than 100 usd to mozilla in total i guess. part because of rust. and brave is more innovative in p2p and web3 area. it has tor. so brave was my final reason to switch.
I'm building a web app, and tested the app against all those browser. The behavior is really different, especially regarding the implementation a newly developed web api and the depreciation plan of ancient javascript api. For example, xhr depreciation [1].
As for chromium, they are quite responsive in responding the developer inquiries regarding a browser-specific API implementation. [2][3]
In the time it took the OP to screenshot this and post it across several social media channels, they could’ve closed their account and joined a bank without such BS restrictions. But gotta get those upvotes.
And of course I realize the OP could have done both, but I am trying to balance rolling on coke with drinking whiskey so please accept my acknowledgment
bob1029|3 years ago
As long as your browser supports reasonably-modern things like flexbox and media queries, my app is just going to work on your machine. Even if it doesn't support these things, I don't see any reason to artificially get in the way of something you might otherwise be able to string along regardless.
I roll 100% vanilla JS/CSS these days so that I can avoid getting entrapped in the kinds of hells that likely entrapped these mbna web developers. It is quite possible they use some JS framework that has a tight dependency on a certain cohort of browser vendors & versions.
RandyRanderson|3 years ago
CIBC (another bank here) has been doing this for at least 15 years by offering seemingly 'cheaper' banking services using the same systems but different brands (eg PC financial). The downmarket brand seems cheaper on the surface but they take away all the costly things the flagship brand gives away (eg in-person banking, no fee transactions, etc) and charge [more] for them.
Our telcos here do the same thing with MVNOs (eg Rogers, the flagship brand, owns Chatr, for poor ppl).
walrus01|3 years ago
This is not how the web was supposed to be.
gnicholas|3 years ago
imtringued|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
ncann|3 years ago
ajvs|3 years ago
foepys|3 years ago
Firefox is doing very well in regards to implementing web standards while Safari doesn't implement enough to be called up to date or modern.
somat|3 years ago
Some days(usually after a few drinks) I set my user agent to a simple "firefox" and every time I do it is depressing how many things break.
dmart|3 years ago
It's under 4% - for all intents and purposes a dead browser. I certainly wouldn't devote any engineering hours towards supporting it.
the_biot|3 years ago
rlpb|3 years ago
Cameri|3 years ago
pipeline_peak|3 years ago
Mozilla is rebranding itself into a “Social Justice For Tech” marketing firm.
There are two significant platforms left Chromium and WebKit. I hope that isn’t the future, but browser dominance is such an obscure, indirect problem to the industry that no company would bother touching it.
satellite2|3 years ago
Additionally, the market FF serves this days is educated, rich and ahead of the curve. Not a market you necessarily want to ignore.
lemoncookiechip|3 years ago
KingOfCoders|3 years ago
squarefoot|3 years ago
ratsmack|3 years ago
mikewave|3 years ago
ryankrage77|3 years ago
oogali|3 years ago
I’m guessing that their feedback was that cross-platform UI testing is occupying a significant chunk of their time.
Leading to some MBA type thinking they could cut the testing time in half if they eliminate browsers that don’t consist of 99% of the user population.
guilherme-puida|3 years ago
whoibrar|3 years ago
t0bia_s|3 years ago
Which EU regulation tell banks to use SMS and password to make transactions without app?
stevesimmons|3 years ago
A Google search will surface help pages from most European financial regulators and payment processors and banks. For instance, [1-3].
The rollout was delayed a couple of times so cutoff dates mentioned on older pages may well have shifted. In the UK, the cutoff date was 14 March 2022.
[1] https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/strong-customer-authentication
[2] https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/our-expertise/cards/card-paymen...
[3] https://www.visa.co.uk/partner-with-us/payment-technology/st...
preisschild|3 years ago
dzmitry_lahoda|3 years ago
altilunium|3 years ago
Firefox-based engine : Firefox, GNU Icecat.
Firefox is slowly becoming the pariah of web browser.
altilunium|3 years ago
As for chromium, they are quite responsive in responding the developer inquiries regarding a browser-specific API implementation. [2][3]
Sadly, it's IE vs Netscape all over again.
[1] : https://xhr.spec.whatwg.org/#the-open()-method
[2] :https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-discuss
[3] : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353527090_Rancang_B... (it contains my communication excerpts to the Chromium team, regarding xhr deprecation plan)
squarefoot|3 years ago
Plus many others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Web_browsers_based_on...
imtringued|3 years ago
ilrwbwrkhv|3 years ago
PraetorianGourd|3 years ago
And of course I realize the OP could have done both, but I am trying to balance rolling on coke with drinking whiskey so please accept my acknowledgment
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
preisschild|3 years ago