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I was having a peaceful day until these CSS curiosities brought back memories of my painful days. It's really good that we don't need to deal with such hacks an

I was having a peaceful day until these CSS curiosities brought back memories of my painful days. It's really good that we don't need to deal with such hacks and vendor-specific things anymore. The last time I participated in a project that targeted an old browser was in 2018!

robin_reala 6d ago
Out of interest, how do you define “old”?
- meerita 6d ago
  Mostly Internet Explorer 7 and 8, some Mozilla Firefox builds. That’s what I had in mind when I said “old browsers.” The last project I worked on that still had to support browsers from that era was in 2018.
  - robin_reala 6d ago
    Sounds about right. Looking back I’d already moved IE7 to “functional” support in late 2016[1] and was planning to do the same to 8 and 9 in the not too distant future. [1] https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/10/21/gaining-understanding-of-the-browsers-people-use/ https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/10/21/gaining-understand...
nottorp 6d ago
> we don't need to deal with such hacks and vendor-specific things anymore Unfortunately that means everyone targets chrome. Then you end up with shit performance or broken sites in Firefox [1]. You'd think with "AI" they could generate js/css that works in both browsers... [1] Which is the only browser that can still run proper ublock origin... Edit: someone pointed below that the compatibility problem's magnitude is much smaller. Seems flagged and dead for unknown reasons. The magnitude is probably much smaller, but that makes it worse, because people will just forget about FF.
- meerita 6d ago
  That is not quite the same problem. Modern browsers are vastly more standards-compliant than they were in the IE era, and most CSS/JS works across Chrome, Firefox and Safari without browser-specific hacks. There was a time when we routinely did browser sniffing, maintained IE-specific code paths, used vendor prefixes everywhere, and sometimes shipped completely different fixes depending on the browser. That largely disappeared as browsers converged on standards. Chrome-first development can still cause bugs elsewhere, but that's usually a "testing/implementation problem" rather than the same compatibility mess we had back then.
  - mitxela 5d ago
    That's because they just wrote down what Chrome did and called it a standard.
- bryanrasmussen 6d ago
  The magnitude might be greater in specific sub areas, for example if you are doing chrome first, how is your accessibility on Safari? I don't know myself, but I think there are holes people don't notice with this approach. Also I agree the thing about Meerita's post being flagged and dead seems wrong. There is evidently nothing wrong with the post and it should not be.
- carlosjobim 6d ago
  It's easy nowadays to make websites that function perfectly and look beautiful on all devices, browsers, and systems from 10 years ago until today. If somebody cannot deliver that, they should be fired from their job.
  - nottorp 6d ago
    > If somebody cannot deliver that, they should be fired from their job. ... i haven't been able to download my invoices off the Orange Romania site for months in Firefox. They work perfectly in Chrome. Somehow I bet the ones that fucked up the functionality got a raise instead of being fired.

robin_reala 6d ago

Out of interest, how do you define “old”?

meerita 6d ago
Mostly Internet Explorer 7 and 8, some Mozilla Firefox builds. That’s what I had in mind when I said “old browsers.” The last project I worked on that still had to support browsers from that era was in 2018.
- robin_reala 6d ago
  Sounds about right. Looking back I’d already moved IE7 to “functional” support in late 2016[1] and was planning to do the same to 8 and 9 in the not too distant future. [1] https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/10/21/gaining-understanding-of-the-browsers-people-use/ https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/10/21/gaining-understand...

nottorp 6d ago

> we don't need to deal with such hacks and vendor-specific things anymore Unfortunately that means everyone targets chrome. Then you end up with shit performance or broken sites in Firefox [1]. You'd think with "AI" they could generate js/css that works in both browsers... [1] Which is the only browser that can still run proper ublock origin... Edit: someone pointed below that the compatibility problem's magnitude is much smaller. Seems flagged and dead for unknown reasons. The magnitude is probably much smaller, but that makes it worse, because people will just forget about FF.

meerita 6d ago
That is not quite the same problem. Modern browsers are vastly more standards-compliant than they were in the IE era, and most CSS/JS works across Chrome, Firefox and Safari without browser-specific hacks. There was a time when we routinely did browser sniffing, maintained IE-specific code paths, used vendor prefixes everywhere, and sometimes shipped completely different fixes depending on the browser. That largely disappeared as browsers converged on standards. Chrome-first development can still cause bugs elsewhere, but that's usually a "testing/implementation problem" rather than the same compatibility mess we had back then.
- mitxela 5d ago
  That's because they just wrote down what Chrome did and called it a standard.
bryanrasmussen 6d ago
The magnitude might be greater in specific sub areas, for example if you are doing chrome first, how is your accessibility on Safari? I don't know myself, but I think there are holes people don't notice with this approach. Also I agree the thing about Meerita's post being flagged and dead seems wrong. There is evidently nothing wrong with the post and it should not be.
carlosjobim 6d ago
It's easy nowadays to make websites that function perfectly and look beautiful on all devices, browsers, and systems from 10 years ago until today. If somebody cannot deliver that, they should be fired from their job.
- nottorp 6d ago
  > If somebody cannot deliver that, they should be fired from their job. ... i haven't been able to download my invoices off the Orange Romania site for months in Firefox. They work perfectly in Chrome. Somehow I bet the ones that fucked up the functionality got a raise instead of being fired.