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0 pointsshadowgovt3y ago0 comments

> If they don't, the website is broken.

The Internet is a network with social effects. Whether "this didn't work" means "the website is broken" or "the browser is broken" has always been more about end-user experience and the wisdom of crowds than a more concrete definition.

A website broken only on Firefox works for 96.5% of users. I have personally had to make the hard judgment call (as a fan of Firefox!) to not spend 25% of our engineering debugging time on a problem only 3.5% of users encounter.

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dingleberry4203y ago

Right, so you accepted that your website was broken. That can be a valid business decision, but that doesn't not make it broken.

Try this analogy: Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

karpierz3y ago

> Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

People without functional legs can't simply decide to walk up some steps.

People use Firefox can simply decide to use Chrome.

To be more direct; what's your definition of "broken"? Is it that it doesn't work for you in the manner that you'd like?

robonerd3y ago

It seems as though capitalism has little room for craftsmanship as a virtue. The only value becomes the dollar value, people see no shame in shoddy workmanship so long as it's profitable.

shadowgovtOP3y ago

The way I see it, Firefox's reputation for craftsmanship is unearned. The only time it crosses my desk as a site developer is people filing browser-specific bug reports for it. Its engine does not, in general, benchmark as performant as either Chrome's or Safari's on our site. It's certainly not beating them by enough percentage points for me to suggest people switch to it for performance.

Mozilla has had more time to work on this problem space than their competitors, and they don't have the technical advantage to show for it. They may have been the technologically better choice in the Browser Wars era of Internet Explorer, but nowadays? They're falling down on the technical merits, not just the network effects.

It's free and it's widely available. If they were better than the alternatives more people would switch to them but they're not.

my69thaccount3y ago

That's too bad. If you didn't make that call it would probably have larger market share. What you've done actually feeds in to the problem.

shadowgovtOP3y ago

But that's the issue. It's not my problem. My problem is maximizing the user experience for most of my users, and that involves squashing usability bugs common to all browsers and adding features that have been requested, not keeping up with the Gecko quirks-du-jour.

(Speaking of "quirks-du-jour", the problem eventually "solved itself." The next major iteration of Firefox fixed a rendering regression and resolved the bug. We "solved" the problem spending zero eng-hours on it; you can't beat that for efficiency. But that's the challenge Mozilla faces as an also-ran: burden's on them to keep up with the competition and make their rendering agent on-par with other agents for both performance and strangeness, because they lack the market clout to make developers bend to their flaws and oddities. No matter who the front runner is, there are always flaws and oddities.)

paulryanrogers3y ago

So a tragedy of the commons?

See it is your problem to offer something to the general public then serve only the defacto monopolist instead of web standards. Because with each small compromise we each contribute to the problem until it reaches a breaking point. All the while those on the margins suffer, some with no real alternative.

For ex in poorer areas where they cannot afford a computer that runs Chrome (which has no LTS/ESR).

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dingleberry4203y ago

Right, so you accepted that your website was broken. That can be a valid business decision, but that doesn't not make it broken.

Try this analogy: Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

karpierz3y ago

> Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

People without functional legs can't simply decide to walk up some steps.

People use Firefox can simply decide to use Chrome.

To be more direct; what's your definition of "broken"? Is it that it doesn't work for you in the manner that you'd like?

robonerd3y ago

It seems as though capitalism has little room for craftsmanship as a virtue. The only value becomes the dollar value, people see no shame in shoddy workmanship so long as it's profitable.

shadowgovtOP3y ago

It's free and it's widely available. If they were better than the alternatives more people would switch to them but they're not.

my69thaccount3y ago

That's too bad. If you didn't make that call it would probably have larger market share. What you've done actually feeds in to the problem.

shadowgovtOP3y ago

paulryanrogers3y ago

So a tragedy of the commons?

For ex in poorer areas where they cannot afford a computer that runs Chrome (which has no LTS/ESR).

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