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 (inputtype="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.
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.