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Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
- jsheard 3y agoThree of those browsers are just Chromium reskins, how are they supporting Chrome but not them?
- bandergirl 3y ago“Support” means “actively testing and fixing bugs” This news doesn’t mean that it just will stop working in Firefox, it’s just that they don’t test and they don’t care.
- weaksauce 3y agoi have seen websites that actively block you from using them unless you’re on a “supported” browser. it’s kinda nuts
- quectophoton 3y agoExample: Twitch still doesn't let me login from Firefox if I'm on Alpine Linux. It only happens when I try from Alpine Linux, so they might be testing for some musl-specific quirk and denying access just for not being the Firefox from a different distro.
- sitzkrieg 3y agohow old is your firefox? i am almost positive ive used twitch on alpine but it was a while ago
- nostrademons 3y agoBrave is unsupported by a lot of websites, but almost always works (at least if you turn off shields). "Unsupported" = "We don't test or develop with this browser in mind", not "This browser doesn't work." If that browser effectively mimics one that is supported, it usually works fine.
- supertrope 3y agoThis is a customer facing message. People understand brands, they don't understand which browser uses which engine.
- bell-cot 3y ago...because who could love a technological monopoly more than a huge electrical power utility?
- pjmlp 3y agoEveryone that ships Electron apps, and codes for "ChromeOS".
- anotherhue 3y ago[flagged]
- squigz 3y agoWhy are you sharing this on this post?
- mrsilencedogood 3y agoJust guessing, based on HN groupthink patterns: 1. that tax return shows the former CEO was paid almost 7M annually 2. sharing that on this post, they are probably insinuating that it was a mistake for Mozilla to pay their CEO that amount just for them to lose so much marketshare that they're now nearing an inflection point The inflection point being where a negative feedback loop starts: FF loses marketshare, devs stop testing against it, sites break for users, users leave FF, FF loses marketshare, repeat This post in particular shows that there are breakpoints where government and government-adjacent entities have policies stating that they test against all browsers with > some % of marketshare.
- mozempthrowaway 3y agoI think it’s a reminder of what Mitchell’s priorities were as CEO: lining her pockets and funneling money to her political projects. She has deep ties at Google and after getting out of the Yahoo deal when Verizon bought them, she got a sweetheart deal from Google that was an 84% increase of revenue YoY. She then laid off 25% of the company that year. This last year she ran a budget surplus as she failed to hire as aggressively as we had planned to at the beginning of last year and she still cut 6% of the company (for reference we were behind more than 60 hires for the year which is the amount that was cut). Meanwhile she took a pay increase to 6.9M
- squigz 3y agoI'm just confused as to what this has to do with the content of the post
- 3y ago
- porphyra 3y agoEvidently, electric poles that don't fall over at the slightest breeze are also below PG&E's threshold for support.
- nullindividual 3y agoI'm not sure why this was voted so high or would be news to anyone. It's a single website and historically this is nothing new (IE used to be the only supported browser on nearly all sites, or the reverse became true once Chrome had enough traction while IE development languished). Firefox is not that popular of a browser. Not news at 11.
- racl101 3y agoYeah, I was wondering about this. Who the heck is PG&E and why is it newsworthy if a single company doesn't support Firefox browser fully?
- 8organicbits 3y ago> Who the heck is PG&E For many people this is the power company. If you want electricity, you go through them. Needing to use specific browsers to get basic services is an accessibility problem.
- samtheprogram 3y agoThey are an electric provider in the United States. I last dealt with them while in California.
- jachee 3y agoPG&E is Pacific Gas and Electric. It provides utility services to tens of millions of people. They’re one of, if not the biggest single utility companies in the country. It’s not like MomNPop, LLC.
- earthling8118 3y agoThey may as well be for a lot of us. I'd never heard of Kroger before a few months ago, and apparently they're one of the biggest grocery store chains. Their size doesn't mean that everyone knows about them.
- im3w1l 3y agoThe people posting and upvoting likely see it as the possible start of a trend.
- lenerdenator 3y agoWhat is it, 2008? What kind of exotic stuff is a utility company's public website doing that makes supporting an established browser engine impossible in 2024?
- LAC-Tech 3y agoIt's more a case of they don't bother testing using firefox. It may incidentally work on firefox, as a side effect of being tested in browsers that people still commonly use in the 2020s.
- Bjorkbat 3y agoIt's more that they don't care if, say, an automated support chatbot doesn't work in Firefox. In which case they tell you to just use Chrome rather than submit a ticket telling one of their web devs to fix something.
- Cerium 3y agoTheir website is SO SO bad. It is almost like they don't want you to easily be able to see your bill and investigate the rates. The only part of the website that is easy is making payments.
- k8svet 3y agoEvery single ISP does this. Even both of Googles ISP brands do it. I've convinced myself it's to hide their coverage maps, forcing you to give address and get a single data point. In reality it just means I never wind up helping friends move ISPs because it feels.lile an abusive relationship no matter what move you make.
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago2008? More like 1998. Totally unacceptable bullshit.
- dist-epoch 3y agoGoogle becoming the main funder of Mozilla was a brilliant strategic move. Now the Mozilla CEO knows where the money and it's salary comes from, and they know what they need to do to please the funder. Thus the Firefox usage stats shows a perfect downtrend line, just as Google would want it to be. No words need to be spoken, but everybody understands what the game is.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoFirefox has been declining in popularity for a decade and a half.
- colechristensen 3y agoEh it's been a decline approaching about 3% and staying around there for years now.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoMoral victory.
- sevg 3y agoI guess Firefox just isn't hexavalent enough for PG&E.
- aggieNick02 3y ago"Don't worry, though... Regardless of your browser choice, we'll still hijack 'alt+back_arrow' to show you supported browsers instead of navigating to the previous page." That'll teach me to try to eat leftover bbq with my primary hand while using the other to browse HN over lunch.
- hn_acker 3y ago> Regardless of your browser choice, we'll still hijack 'alt+back_arrow' to show you supported browsers instead of navigating to the previous page. Frustrating. I'm using Mac, so the corresponding shortcut for returning to the previous page is command + left arrow (back arrow), now hijacked. command + [ does the same thing and isn't hijacked yet. If you're on Windows, backspace might work in Firefox, but you'll first need to change to change a flag in about:config [1]. I'd be reluctant to give backspace that behavior, since I've accidentally lost progress on online forms by accidentally navigating to another page. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly#firefox:win11:fx123 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perf...
- whalesalad 3y agoI've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible.
- hollerith 3y agoThe good news is that it is rare for any of us to need to visit them.
- bragr 3y agoExcept that when you need to visit them, you almost always REALLY need it.
- silent_cal 3y agoVery low competition I'd guess. It's a little better with internet providers because we have a few options, at least in my area.
- pengaru 3y ago> I've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible. Utility companies are deliberately regional monopolies, without the threat of competition there's no incentive to do better. That's presumably reflected in but not limited to the quality of their web sites.
- mistrial9 3y agoIn California, PG&E refused to hand over legally-required documents, in addition to refusing to hand over ordinary information that they were not required to hand over. Subsequently, a pipeline in San Bruno (updt) area exploded, a dozen houses burned to the ground, and several people died. They established new legal precedent by being convicted of Murder One. investigations subsequently determined that PG&E had falsified reports, and failed to conduct testing that was required by law. Next, the Tubbs fires. "do better" ??
- 3y ago
- mfer 3y agoConsider what support mean. It doesn't mean "works with". Supported likely means that they test with and design for. It also means that if a customer is using that browser and there's a problem (e.g., seeing their bill online) they will fix the problem if it's just in that browser. Firefox is 3.3% of users [1]. When it comes to testing features with (including QA validation) and working around browser specific bugs, what % of usage should drive that? [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/ https://gs.statcounter.com/
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIs that a tracker that works even in the presence of AdBlock et al? If not, it's going to significantly undercount Firefox.
- gtk40 3y agoI have a theory that Firefox gets under reported in a lot of stats because its users are more likely to use Adblockers. Statcounter for example is going to be blocked by most Adblockers; stats based on server logs will be more accurate.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIt's not just client side trackers that get blocked -- any server side tracker that only counts specific resources being requested is going to be blocked by Adblockers too.
- earthling8118 3y ago3% isn't that low when you consider how many people there are.
- brnt 3y agoThis. I wish we didn't only measure (and pay for) five nines+ uptime, but also support. Remember how annoyingly often just 99.9% uptime means you're out of business?
- antisthenes 3y agoLots of other websites that don't have this disclaimer, but also have much worse support for Firefox (read: none, and it's likely perma-broken and wontfix)
- xg15 3y ago"Pge.com is supported on most major operating systems and browsers." And by "most major browsers", we mean Chrome, reskinned Chrome and Safari.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt is already been like that for the last five years in most projects I worked on. It wasn't part of browser matrix for acceptance delivery, we did it because we still cared, not because we had to.
- out-of-ideas 3y agoif you want "support" the price of your bills will go up 50%. cuz just displaying HTML is too hard for some developers
- NeverBehave 3y agoself note: realize this when I login to the website to check my bill and now there is always an orange bar saying I am using unsupported browser, and a pop up every time I open the website. The bigger problem I think is I cannot dismiss the bar. Of course I can use adblocker element match to block it but it is a hostile move imo.
- joshlittle 3y agoPlease don’t bring it to their attention. At $0.60/kWh, I cannot afford a new excuse to hike my electric and gas bill. I cannot stand this company. I don’t agree with the practice where people in San Francisco have to pay for mismanagement and neglect of this for profit corporation’s infrastructure in far flung rural areas - places that I have never been before - and have no connection to. If we forced PG&E to breakup after the last bankruptcy, and San Francisco had purchased the wire infrastructure and transmission lines that give us light in the City, we would be much better off. Proceeds would be reinvested… Municipal ownership is the only proper solution. Just a thought.
- xacky 3y agoWhenever I mention a website's issue to tech support, they give me the "just use Chrome" song and dance. I have to actively protest for the right to use Firefox. If your company does this you are complicit in Google's monopoly control of the web and you probably don't support Linux either.
- tiahura 3y agoThanks Mitchell! ♡ Chrome Team