35 ms·

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 eve

by tyrion 5y ago

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.

hartator 5y ago
> 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.
- homarp 5y ago
  but we have multiple compilers for the same language though. And multiple OS too.
- swsieber 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  HTML, CSS, JS, QR codes, and Bittorrent are data formats or protocols, not implementations.
cblconfederate 5y ago
wish people would say the same thing about mobile platforms
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    Oh man, I split my time between Safari and Firefox. I must be some kind of sicko.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I solely use Safari because it greatly increases my battery life.
    - MaanuAir 5y ago
      So do I.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > 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.
aseipp 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  > 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.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    From what I've seen, it doesn't matter if they have a technical background. Hubris operates the same way in people—it serves to blind them of all but their own ambitions as they lose a more complete picture of reality in favour of expressing their egos. At least in cases that line up. I doubt it's so universal. I've seen something quite similar happen first hand. To the point that I'm pretty beside myself about it. Hard to understand if you don't just assign it to them steamrolling anything but their ego. It's the only way you could just let core functions in your core product falter and not have a plan for it. That said, I don't think that applies to excluding Firefox in this particular case. It doesn't sound permanent, and it sounds like it just hinges on FF catching up their available APIs to suit.
  - willseth 5y ago
    Not only that, but developers have at least as much incentive to push to avoid cross platform implementations. More work, more complexity, bugs, maintenance, etc., and many (most?) do all of their dev and testing on Chrome anyway. Web monoculture simply has a set of labor/$ incentives builtin. It's the default, and it's hard (and probably getting harder) to appreciate the long term system-wide risk that accumulates by allowing one company to control web standards. I don't see it as a dev vs. suits issue at all. If anything, in my experience it's people who remember Internet Explorer and people who don't.
EveYoung 5y ago
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 5y ago
  But that raises the question: is not working in Firefox considered to be a bug in prod?
efields 5y ago
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.
- syshum 5y ago
  Replacing Microsoft Overlord with Google Overlord does not seem like much of a win
  - neoberg 5y ago
    This might come as a surprise but not everyone sees the world from a "freedom" perspective. In terms of practical/day to day experience we won something that works over something that didn't.
    - syshum 5y ago
      It does not come as a surprise but saddening, because freedom is the most important thing in life With out freedom life is miserable, and it saddens me that people seem to be valuing freedom less and less, one day they will look around and ask "how did we get here", and people like me will just shrug and say "you should have listened"
    - burnte 5y ago
      I agree with you, but think that there are different definitions of freedom. I love open source software but I don't think it's a right or that all software should be OSS. I like the freedom to keep the source of my apps closed if I wish. If I choose to use a closed source browser, I'm not giving up any freedom in my mind, I'm making a choice and a deal.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
px43 5y ago
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 5y ago
  You're literally replying to an article about Apple opening up their technology to other users who aren't in their ecosystem...
lxgr 5y ago
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 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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sam_goody 5y ago
  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.
  - paulcarroty 5y ago
    > and Firefox is an open source project check Mozilla CEO salary and stop finding excuses in open source.
    - kerng 5y ago
      What correlation does CEO salary and open source have? Maybe the comment thinks about "not for profit" org - but even then it seems normal to pay people a competitive salary.
      - iakov 5y ago
        There is an interesting inverse correlation of Mozilla CEO salary and amount of users Firefox has. I think it's normal to pay competitive salary too, but the salary should reflect one's impact on the company. Looking at the current state of Firefox, I can't imagine why their CEO is compensated as they are.
        5y ago
moron4hire 5y ago
>> instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser That's the problem. Firefox isn't keeping up with standards.
- burnte 5y ago
  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.
- sfink 5y ago
  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-insertable-streams 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.]
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Just fork Chromium and save yourself 5 years of angst.
gbromios 5y ago
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.
- antipaul 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  > 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.
  - Thiez 5y ago
    For a long time I did the same because some websites would refuse to load when they thought you weren't running Chrome even though it would have worked just fine in FF.
  - gbromios 5y ago
    Are you suggesting that ff traffic would be substantially higher if I were to account for users that were obfuscating their user agent header?
unknown_error 5y ago
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.
spankalee 5y ago
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.

by tyrion 5y ago

hartator 5y ago

> 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.

homarp 5y ago
but we have multiple compilers for the same language though. And multiple OS too.
swsieber 5y ago
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 5y ago
HTML, CSS, JS, QR codes, and Bittorrent are data formats or protocols, not implementations.

cblconfederate 5y ago

wish people would say the same thing about mobile platforms

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  Oh man, I split my time between Safari and Firefox. I must be some kind of sicko.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I solely use Safari because it greatly increases my battery life.
  - MaanuAir 5y ago
    So do I.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> 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.

aseipp 5y ago

> 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 5y ago
> 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.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  From what I've seen, it doesn't matter if they have a technical background. Hubris operates the same way in people—it serves to blind them of all but their own ambitions as they lose a more complete picture of reality in favour of expressing their egos. At least in cases that line up. I doubt it's so universal. I've seen something quite similar happen first hand. To the point that I'm pretty beside myself about it. Hard to understand if you don't just assign it to them steamrolling anything but their ego. It's the only way you could just let core functions in your core product falter and not have a plan for it. That said, I don't think that applies to excluding Firefox in this particular case. It doesn't sound permanent, and it sounds like it just hinges on FF catching up their available APIs to suit.
- willseth 5y ago
  Not only that, but developers have at least as much incentive to push to avoid cross platform implementations. More work, more complexity, bugs, maintenance, etc., and many (most?) do all of their dev and testing on Chrome anyway. Web monoculture simply has a set of labor/$ incentives builtin. It's the default, and it's hard (and probably getting harder) to appreciate the long term system-wide risk that accumulates by allowing one company to control web standards. I don't see it as a dev vs. suits issue at all. If anything, in my experience it's people who remember Internet Explorer and people who don't.

EveYoung 5y ago

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 5y ago
But that raises the question: is not working in Firefox considered to be a bug in prod?

efields 5y ago

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.

syshum 5y ago
Replacing Microsoft Overlord with Google Overlord does not seem like much of a win
- neoberg 5y ago
  This might come as a surprise but not everyone sees the world from a "freedom" perspective. In terms of practical/day to day experience we won something that works over something that didn't.
  - syshum 5y ago
    It does not come as a surprise but saddening, because freedom is the most important thing in life With out freedom life is miserable, and it saddens me that people seem to be valuing freedom less and less, one day they will look around and ask "how did we get here", and people like me will just shrug and say "you should have listened"
  - burnte 5y ago
    I agree with you, but think that there are different definitions of freedom. I love open source software but I don't think it's a right or that all software should be OSS. I like the freedom to keep the source of my apps closed if I wish. If I choose to use a closed source browser, I'm not giving up any freedom in my mind, I'm making a choice and a deal.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago

px43 5y ago

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 5y ago
You're literally replying to an article about Apple opening up their technology to other users who aren't in their ecosystem...

lxgr 5y ago

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 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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sam_goody 5y ago
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.
- paulcarroty 5y ago
  > and Firefox is an open source project check Mozilla CEO salary and stop finding excuses in open source.
  - kerng 5y ago
    What correlation does CEO salary and open source have? Maybe the comment thinks about "not for profit" org - but even then it seems normal to pay people a competitive salary.
    - iakov 5y ago
      There is an interesting inverse correlation of Mozilla CEO salary and amount of users Firefox has. I think it's normal to pay competitive salary too, but the salary should reflect one's impact on the company. Looking at the current state of Firefox, I can't imagine why their CEO is compensated as they are.
      - 5y ago

moron4hire 5y ago

>> instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser That's the problem. Firefox isn't keeping up with standards.

burnte 5y ago
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.
sfink 5y ago
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-insertable-streams 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.]
- atatatat 5y ago
  Just fork Chromium and save yourself 5 years of angst.

gbromios 5y ago

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.

antipaul 5y ago
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 5y ago
> 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.
- Thiez 5y ago
  For a long time I did the same because some websites would refuse to load when they thought you weren't running Chrome even though it would have worked just fine in FF.
- gbromios 5y ago
  Are you suggesting that ff traffic would be substantially higher if I were to account for users that were obfuscating their user agent header?

unknown_error 5y ago

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.

spankalee 5y ago

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.