FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#121

Post by handrous » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

1over137 wrote: post #97

lotsofpulp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browser. I would have thought at least iOS Safari would be a major consideration for anyone due to the ubiquity of iOS devices.

Ubiquity of iOS devices? They are only about 15% of smartphones.

They're way, way more of:

1) Smartphone use, both in general and for web browsing, and

2) Spending on smartphones

These have been true long enough and to a large enough degree that they're usually taken as assumed, baseline facts by anyone involved in mobile software products.

The two of which are why companies not only care about them, but, in fact, iOS' numbers are so good on both of those that it can be tempting to go iOS first for many products, if you have to choose only one platform, even if your demographics don't skew iOS.

iOS devices are used more than Android devices, and their owners spend a lot more on average. There are probably several reasons for this and its unclear which is dominant, but in the end, it doesn't really matter why, if you're just chasing the market.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#122

Post by mistersquid » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #78

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can count the number of developers I've worked with over the last 5 years that care about it working in any browser other than Chrome on one finger. This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browse…

> This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browser. I would have thought at least iOS Safari would be a major consideration for anyone due to the ubiquity of iOS devices.

> I would have thought at least iOS Safari would be a major consideration for anyone due to the ubiquity of iOS devices.

If web developers give any consideration to iOS, it usually results in a comparison of Mobile Safari to IE 6.

In reality, Google Chrome’s unilateral provisioning of unratified features drives developers to dismiss competing products as obsolete. In this way, Google Chrome advances the “extend” phase of technological dominance while well-intentioned and overworked web developers implement the “extinguish” phase.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#123

Post by ivanche » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

gbromios wrote: post #89

tyrion wrote: post #49

It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features. However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are ver…

What a deeply ignorant perspective. Too infuriating to ignore. Firefox users constitute my webrtc-based video conference app doesn't currently support ff and never will unless compatibility with chrome's implementation comes around. My manager would have me committed if I tried to pull that shit, and I'm already notorious for refusing to do things on principle. Suggesting that we don't support firefox because I'm laz…

You made something that doesn't work in Firefox and you're now surprised that <1% of your traffic comes from Firefox?

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#124

Post by neoberg » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #106

efields wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the vast majority of the people that use this on the web, they will do care about your story. I don’t mean that as an insult; I’m happy there are folks like you with passion in this space. If you’re old enough, you still wake up in the middle of the night sweating about IE 6 or 7 bugs that HAD to be solved with brute force even though the feature worked just fine in Firefox and Chrome. After years of struggle, mos…

Replacing Microsoft Overlord with Google Overlord does not seem like much of a win

This might come as a surprise but not everyone sees the world from a "freedom" perspective. In terms of practical/day to day experience we won something that works over something that didn't.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#125

Post by gentleman11 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

seumars wrote: post #116

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #67

If you review Mozilla's business practices, constant spending on NGOs and Politics, ludicrous executive compensation, and recent layoffs of the engineering team, constant buying and starting of new projects (Pocket, Firefox OS) only to abandon them, and so on, it is clear that at least part of the story is that Firefox has been through incredible mismanagement even as they should have been in the fight for their live…

Spot on. Browser competition nowadays is all about each vendor's ability to implement new standards – and in this case Firefox is clearly lagging.

More often, I find the css property I want to use is in Firefox but not chrome. Eg, some of the sideways text values are still Firefox only, forcing you to use transform rotate instead

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#126

Post by hiccuphippo » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

aseipp wrote: post #64

tyrion wrote: post #49

It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features. However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are ver…

> Next time that your manager asks you if you can have that sweet feature, instead of saying "sure, we just need to drop support for Firefox", please consider trying to explain what are the consequences in the long term. If the future of the web relies on developers groveling at the feet of a manager, then there's no fight or discussion to be had, because the web has already unequivocally lost. The only thing that's…

Or say "no, I still need to add compatibility to 5% of the users", even more if the changes also benefit alt and older browsers.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#127

Post by Induane » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #59

tyrion wrote: post #49

It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features. However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are ver…

I can count the number of developers I've worked with over the last 5 years that care about it working in any browser other than Chrome on one finger. This idea that only Chrome matters is absolutely coming from the bottom up and when you point out something broken in Safari the first response from them is "Does it work in Chrome?" before they even look at it because they themselves don't even test in a second browse…

I test mostly on Firefox and Epiphany; I figure if it works there it's going to work just about everywhere.

Safari is a different beast because I don't have a Mac and it's support for a lot of standards is pretty dismal. It's like the IE6 of browsers these days.

I keep the JS simple though and for CSS I keep around a few handy LESS functions so I can get some basic stuff on crap browsers. Stuff like:

.opacity(@default, @percent) { -webkit-opacity: @default; -khtml-opacity: @default; -moz-opacity: @default; -ms-opacity: @default; -o-opacity: @default; opacity: @default; // ms-filter *SHOULD* work on IE8 & 9 but ... doesn't always // for me? WTF... anyway (filter should also work). This // should be listed before filter to be safe -ms-filter:"progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=@percent)"; filter: alpha(opacity=@percent); /* support: IE8 oh god we're all gonna die*/ }

or

.box-shadow(@value) { -webkit-box-shadow: @value; -khtml-box-shadow: @value; -moz-box-shadow: @value; -ms-box-shadow: @value; -o-box-shadow: @value; box-shadow: @value; }

This way I don't rely on some framework like Bootstrap, and I can write fairly simple stylesheets. I used to transpile compliant and legacy sheets and serve different urls depending on user agent strings but that didn't work well and was generally crap so - one it is.

Don't worry, when I transpile I strip my unprofessional comments.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#128

Post by syshum » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

neoberg wrote: post #124

syshum wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing Microsoft Overlord with Google Overlord does not seem like much of a win

This might come as a surprise but not everyone sees the world from a "freedom" perspective. In terms of practical/day to day experience we won something that works over something that didn't.

It does not come as a surprise but saddening, because freedom is the most important thing in life

With out freedom life is miserable, and it saddens me that people seem to be valuing freedom less and less, one day they will look around and ask "how did we get here", and people like me will just shrug and say "you should have listened"

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#129

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

Looking at where Mozilla spends its money and their layoff of engineering staff, if they don’t prioritize Firefox and engineering, why should we?

Also from Apple’s perspective, there may be x% of people using Firefox, but I bet every one of them has the ability to use Chrome if they wanted to, and the people that are sticking solely to Firefox aren’t the ones likely to use FaceTime anyway.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#130

Post by unknown_error » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

tyrion wrote: post #49

It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features. However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are ver…

What the open source world calls "freedom of choice", the rest of the world calls "waste of time". I'd argue it does more people more good to have a de facto standard based on a close duopoly (Google + Apple, webkit/blink) to code websites and devices against, rather than the clusterfuck that is the WHATWG, W3C, etc. process. The existence of Gecko is nice for Mozilla but a time sink for developers and users, who at the end of the day just want to look up restaurant menus or buy tickets or check their email instead of fiddling with browser idiosyncrasies.

If Mozilla moved to some Webkit/Blink/Chromium derivative like everyone else, the world could standardize on that renderer and they are still free to "innovate" on the browser UI/chrome surrounding that engine and differentiate themselves that way.

As it is, Gecko adds nothing to the web ecosystem anymore and wastes everyone's time.