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As if they needed to check for ““compatibility”” at all - just let the users try their makeshift coded-in-a-weekend browsers, or their 2008 version of IE.
The better question is why some websites even bother checking for the browser when the vast majority of people uses mainstream options that follow web standards and self-update.
Checking the browser version kind of made sense 15 years ago when updating the browser depended on the user’s awareness and willingness of doing so, and the lack of standards across browsers was blatant. Nowadays that’s pretty much useless. The maximum these sites should be doing is displaying a banner letting the user know their browser might be incompatible (because it’s likely not in a way that prevents usage), then fuck off.
I had a client once who used to be obsessed with this. By his logic, if a potential customer visited the website and had a bad experience because the site didn’t work properly in their browser, they’d think the company was unprofessional and wouldn’t come into the store and we’d lose them as a customer forever. Analytics showed that 99+% of people would visit in one of the big three, and he wouldn’t pay for someone to test the site on the less popular browsers, instead he insisted on fingerprinting logic that broke all the time and probably caused more bounces than any possible rendering quirks from niche mobile browsers would have caused
It’s ridiculous some people even consider blocking a browser completely and having a near 100% chance of turning away the customer that uses it instead of just letting the user browse and have a significant chance of nothing bad happening.
People are not going to change browsers to visit this website unless they absolutely have to - in which case they’ll hate this company for it.
Oh my god, you get it. Thank you for your continued existence. Keep going!
Ads and tracking ? Browser with the largest market share ? Well, we are back to IE6 monopoly. :(
Largest marketshare to check for compatibility, while ignoring all the other browsers.
It’s almost certainly market share. Easier to just slap a “use chrome” check on it than to spend any dev time supporting the others.
There are two web browsers developers need to consider: Chrome and Safari. All the other browsers are either wrappers around/skins around/modifications of Chrome and Safari, or they’re statistically insignificant.
I default to Firefox myself (including my dev work, because Firefox has some real neat dev tools that Chrome lacks), but from a business point of view, it’s hard to warrant the expense of dedicating an hour of someone’s time to work around a browser incompatibility for the 2% of users that already have Chrome on their device anyway.
Hopefully, Mozilla’s new CEO will help bring Firefox back into the browser market. She may be able to capitulate on Apple opening the app store for other browser engines, because Chrome will certainly try to. For now, though, Firefox has a market share smaller than Linux.
On the other hand, if it works in Firefox, it’s likely to work everywhere else.
I use Firefox for development and then, barring some weird chrome bug, things just work everywhere.
That’s true, but sometimes you run into issues that are just Firefox issues, despite all the documentation saying it should work fine.
Chrome and Safari have similar issues, but their massive install base has a better return on investment.
Firefox has a market share smaller than Linux
Now that hurt. I don’t know how software conscious people continue to choose chromium based browsers. It’s one of the easiest switches you can make to show it to yet another monopoly.
Most people don’t really care about what browser they’re using. They either use the one they’ve always been using (Chrome/Edge/Safari) or they just use the default (Edge/Safari/Chrome), or maybe whatever browser begs the hardest (Edge/Chrome).
Some people fall for ads and install Opera because it’s “gamer”, that seems to be the biggest non-megabrand browser.
If it truly is only an hour of someone’s time, then I’d much rather they made that insignificant amount less profit, but did the work to make our experience better.
As a developer: I agree. I consider any website that completely refuses to work in Firefox to be broken.
However, some bugs are just too annoying to be worth serious investment. CSS bugs, unimplemented APIs (
input type="week"), and implemented features disabled by default (“log in with google” support, tracking protection breaking Javascript because of imperfect shims, WebGL/WebRTC being off by default). For ages, Firefox used to have a partial implementation for video/audio calling APIs, breaking spec-compliant applications that tried to show an audio/video input dropdown, and the only workaround was to disable the control (which was annoying because Firefox wouldn’t let you switch inputs on the fly) or telling people to use a browser that let you switch to the right audio device.It’s not just the writing of code itself. Every workaround/polyfill/third party library you add requires long term maintenance. When Firefox eventually gets patched, you need to remove your workarounds, and until then, you need to keep coming back to see if your workarounds are still required. This type of death by a thousand cuts can be a real problem if you try to implement every workaround under the sun.
Plus, sometimes Firefox just doesn’t (want to) implement a feature. For example, WebUSB/WebSerial is real useful for flashing phones or microcontrollers without having to download and install flashing software, but only Chromium supports it.
Because they hire cheap developers who don’t know what the fuck they are doing?
This is the correct answer
I would sooner blame the management, that would even think of excluding “untested” or “unsupported” browsers, like some kind of technofacist dictator, instead of choosing a helpful “if you’re having problems with our shit site, use chrome” message… or even literally doing nothing… everything is broken these days, and a half-functional site is better than an intentionally-broken one.
Is very possible to know exactly what should be done, but not have the time available to achieve it.
Weird, I see “You will need to use a different service/company”
Exactly what I saw. A giant nope.
Companies like chrome because it’s the most used browser. So if they develop for it, and only for it without caring of compatibility on others, then it’s cheaper. And since they don’t want you to use another browser and complain that their site is broken, the just block you.
Which is kind of dumb, because if you target Firefox you are writing to a standards compliant browser that means your code should work on all other browsers. Chrome came when IE still owned the internet and their goal was to offer a faster browser that still worked, so now chrome has a bunch of hacks coded into it.
Because Firefox has better XSS detection than Chrome and will block adware sites from injecting tracking that Chrome completely allows.
Time for some user agent spoofing
Don’t use that website if you can
I would thank them for letting me know their site isn’t worth the visit.
I absolutely hate this. Ordered something last night that refused to work on Firefox or Firefox based browsers. Switched to my emergency Fulguris and checkout worked like police working for a white rich man.
It used to be the same way with Internet Explorer.
What really chaps my ass is when they don’t bother to tell you. It always happens when I’m filling out a form and find out that the submit button just doesn’t do anything. Then I have to go back through chrome just to fill out the same form a second time.
Worst part is that I get this with the government website in the UK. For me it was a sub menu which was supposed to appear when a certain option was clicked. It wouldn’t display the sub menu in Firefox. Had to redo the damn thing in Edge…
Yep and this happens more than the situation in the OP. Just… shit won’t work. No reason why? Well fuck, let me try Chrome. Yep, that works.
It’s just lazy devs. They program for Chrome and don’t even test in anything else because that’s 90% of the market. On the desktop.
This is hilariously not the case on mobile, where everything is programmed for Safari.
I just call places like that and tell the service rep the website didn’t work. They do it for me on their end usually and it costs the company more money for the trouble.
Because Google Chrome setups a good framework from the moment you open it to track, collect data, basically free market your internet life. Companies like to work the less possible using the least money, if Google already gives them all that setup for a fee then it’s more profitable than having to pay programmers to track you in other browsers.
So they deliberately are saying to your face: “I only let you use my stuff if you enter as naked as possible”. They are not even shy about it.
Someone like this only deserves a spit in the face and a domain ban. Basically. They can fuck off.
Notes: Most of what I said is not exactly all the true. Most companies just reuse webpage code that it’s only tested form chromium, so they only let you use that. Because they are lazy AF, they don’t care about customers, they only care about money.
Find the user agent of the most recent chrome release and change your user agent in about:config
You know the answer b
The answer to most questions is money.
Ads = money
The really irritating part is that tools like Playwright let you end-to-end test your product across the big three (Chromium, Firefox and Webkit). Which, most of the time, means these products that specify “Chrome only” simply aren’t E2E testing with modern tools.
The only end-to-end happening in those scenarios is the end-to-end pipeline of “shit in, shit out”.
