Firefox has been declining in popularity for a decade and a half.
Eh it's been a decline approaching about 3% and staying around there for years now.
Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
31–40 of 89 posts
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#32I'm not sure why this was voted so high or would be news to anyone. It's a single website and historically this is nothing new (IE used to be the only supported browser on nearly all sites, or the reverse became true once Chrome had enough traction while IE development languished). Firefox is not that popular of a browser. Not news at 11.
Yeah, I was wondering about this. Who the heck is PG&E and why is it newsworthy if a single company doesn't support Firefox browser fully?
The people posting and upvoting likely see it as the possible start of a trend.
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#33I'm not sure why this was voted so high or would be news to anyone. It's a single website and historically this is nothing new (IE used to be the only supported browser on nearly all sites, or the reverse became true once Chrome had enough traction while IE development languished). Firefox is not that popular of a browser. Not news at 11.
Yeah, I was wondering about this. Who the heck is PG&E and why is it newsworthy if a single company doesn't support Firefox browser fully?
... One of the largest utility companies in the US and part of the S&P500?
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#34I'm not sure why this was voted so high or would be news to anyone. It's a single website and historically this is nothing new (IE used to be the only supported browser on nearly all sites, or the reverse became true once Chrome had enough traction while IE development languished). Firefox is not that popular of a browser. Not news at 11.
Yeah, I was wondering about this. Who the heck is PG&E and why is it newsworthy if a single company doesn't support Firefox browser fully?
PG&E is a huge utility company in northern california.
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#35I'm not sure why this was voted so high or would be news to anyone. It's a single website and historically this is nothing new (IE used to be the only supported browser on nearly all sites, or the reverse became true once Chrome had enough traction while IE development languished). Firefox is not that popular of a browser. Not news at 11.
Yeah, I was wondering about this. Who the heck is PG&E and why is it newsworthy if a single company doesn't support Firefox browser fully?
It's a electricity and gas utility that serves San Francisco and the Bay Area. Many Hacker News readers are from this area.
People love complaining about PG&E since its prices are ludicrously high (one of the highest in the nation --- about 50 cents per kWh), while the service is quite poor (they famously caused some serious wildfires and have frequent power outages during storms, although admittedly the recent couple of storms were quite strong). Now that they stopped supporting a beloved browser, there is all the more reason for the Bay Area techies to complain.
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#36I've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible.
The good news is that it is rare for any of us to need to visit them.
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#37Consider what support mean. It doesn't mean "works with".
Supported likely means that they test with and design for. It also means that if a customer is using that browser and there's a problem (e.g., seeing their bill online) they will fix the problem if it's just in that browser.
Firefox is 3.3% of users [1]. When it comes to testing features with (including QA validation) and working around browser specific bugs, what % of usage should drive that?
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#38I've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible.
Very low competition I'd guess. It's a little better with internet providers because we have a few options, at least in my area.
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#39I've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible.
> I've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible.
Utility companies are deliberately regional monopolies, without the threat of competition there's no incentive to do better. That's presumably reflected in but not limited to the quality of their web sites.
Re: Mozilla Firefox is below PG&E threshold for support
#40What is it, 2008? What kind of exotic stuff is a utility company's public website doing that makes supporting an established browser engine impossible in 2024?
It's more that they don't care if, say, an automated support chatbot doesn't work in Firefox. In which case they tell you to just use Chrome rather than submit a ticket telling one of their web devs to fix something.