I'm one of those web developers who still uses Firefox as my daily driver which means the products I work on work on Firefox. Maybe twice a year a tester uses Chrome and turns up something that's not quite right.
Developers like me are a major reason why Firefox is still a viable web browser and there is someone like me in most organizations. If it wasn't for people like us more and more web pages would work in Chrome only and you just couldn't do things with Firefox. Collectively we probably contribute as much to the success of Firefox than all the people who actually check in changes to the source code but we are not treated accordingly. If they piss all of us off Firefox will become a non-viable web browser.
So far as accessibility I am doing a round of accessibility on my site and found things have gotten way worse for multiple reasons. I used to use NVDA + Firefox but since upgrading to Win 11 NVDA is completely broken for me and I have to pull the power plug on my computer to shut down NVDA.
Narrator + Edge basically works, but Narrator + Firefox is completely spastic. I might have a navigation bar with elements like
-- Choice 1
-- Choice 2
-- Choice 3
in a <nav> and it might read something like "Choice Landmark 1 Navigation Navigation Landmark Choice 2 Landmark Choice Navigation 3 Landmark" where using any ARIA role comes across as website vandalism because it makes Narrator + Firefox blurt out "Landmark" and "Group" and similar words randomly when it is reading stuff.
When something is that broken it doesn't seem worth even putting a ticket it for it.
You can file the ticket claiming that the shiny new promoted thing is actually an antifeature and that you hate the popup. You can then hope that the PM or exec who is currently receiving adulations or making speeches in the hope of a bonus or promotion after the rollout gets assigned the ticket, rather than some lowly volunteer. Then, the next time they get asked to make something, they'll think "wait, maybe I shouldn't advertise this new thing by forcing a popup on every Firefox user?" If that happens often enough to become part of the shared zeitgeist at the organization, they may be able to enact a Mozilla-wide policy against such popups and stop building antifeatures. Good luck, I hope it works for you.
Or you can throw sand in the works. When the accessibility department complains that people keep filing tickets and wasting their time whenever a new feature includes a popup, that component of the organization can push back
Every time I inadvertently find myself at a gas station with those horrific advertisement kiosks installed at the pumps, I either look around for a nearby station that doesn't have ads playing, or I stab the "Help" button to page the cashier. I am well aware that the minimum wage employee stocking the shelves and helping people prepay does not have the phone number of the GSTV producers or the executive decision makers at ExxonMobil or whoever, and I have no animus against that person - I'm infallibly polite with the individual. But I ask them to keep the line open to mute the ads, and they usually do. My only hope for eliminating those ads is either shopping at different gas stations - but how are they ever going to distinguish that microscopic boycott from the noise - or hoping that this communication filters up through the organization.
Don't be so cynical. There are people who actually have impaired accessibility and struggle with technologies we take for granted. Those people are the target of accessibility engineering, not your popup needs.
PaulHoule|4 months ago
I'm one of those web developers who still uses Firefox as my daily driver which means the products I work on work on Firefox. Maybe twice a year a tester uses Chrome and turns up something that's not quite right.
Developers like me are a major reason why Firefox is still a viable web browser and there is someone like me in most organizations. If it wasn't for people like us more and more web pages would work in Chrome only and you just couldn't do things with Firefox. Collectively we probably contribute as much to the success of Firefox than all the people who actually check in changes to the source code but we are not treated accordingly. If they piss all of us off Firefox will become a non-viable web browser.
So far as accessibility I am doing a round of accessibility on my site and found things have gotten way worse for multiple reasons. I used to use NVDA + Firefox but since upgrading to Win 11 NVDA is completely broken for me and I have to pull the power plug on my computer to shut down NVDA.
Narrator + Edge basically works, but Narrator + Firefox is completely spastic. I might have a navigation bar with elements like
-- Choice 1
-- Choice 2
-- Choice 3
in a <nav> and it might read something like "Choice Landmark 1 Navigation Navigation Landmark Choice 2 Landmark Choice Navigation 3 Landmark" where using any ARIA role comes across as website vandalism because it makes Narrator + Firefox blurt out "Landmark" and "Group" and similar words randomly when it is reading stuff.
When something is that broken it doesn't seem worth even putting a ticket it for it.
bilekas|4 months ago
If only Mozilla felt the same about wasting people's time. We wouldn't be having this discussion.
BoredPositron|4 months ago
LeifCarrotson|4 months ago
You can file the ticket claiming that the shiny new promoted thing is actually an antifeature and that you hate the popup. You can then hope that the PM or exec who is currently receiving adulations or making speeches in the hope of a bonus or promotion after the rollout gets assigned the ticket, rather than some lowly volunteer. Then, the next time they get asked to make something, they'll think "wait, maybe I shouldn't advertise this new thing by forcing a popup on every Firefox user?" If that happens often enough to become part of the shared zeitgeist at the organization, they may be able to enact a Mozilla-wide policy against such popups and stop building antifeatures. Good luck, I hope it works for you.
Or you can throw sand in the works. When the accessibility department complains that people keep filing tickets and wasting their time whenever a new feature includes a popup, that component of the organization can push back
Every time I inadvertently find myself at a gas station with those horrific advertisement kiosks installed at the pumps, I either look around for a nearby station that doesn't have ads playing, or I stab the "Help" button to page the cashier. I am well aware that the minimum wage employee stocking the shelves and helping people prepay does not have the phone number of the GSTV producers or the executive decision makers at ExxonMobil or whoever, and I have no animus against that person - I'm infallibly polite with the individual. But I ask them to keep the line open to mute the ads, and they usually do. My only hope for eliminating those ads is either shopping at different gas stations - but how are they ever going to distinguish that microscopic boycott from the noise - or hoping that this communication filters up through the organization.
FirmwareBurner|4 months ago
Mozilla needs to bring in the Bobs from Office Space: "What is it you say you do here?"
dmos62|4 months ago
hombre_fatal|4 months ago
Just because a modal window exists doesn't mean it's bad for accessibility.