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.
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.
Well chrome should, yes. But they don't.
Then some JavaScript framework developers think "well this non-standard feature is neat, let's use that everywhere" and then companies who use their framework (or a framwork dependent on it) can't support all browsers.
It's a multilayered problem (as always) with lots of individually decisions that make sense, but don't work out in the end (as always).
I found a bug once in our content that only affected Firefox. Old versions of articulate whouldnt start properly. Not somthing I could fix on my own as i meeded anyoher department. I brought it to the attention of the managers. They didn't want to fox it as apprently Google analytics showed only .4% of our user base was using Firefox. I manged to convince them its part of our user commitment to ensure that we work consistently across all browsers, but it was a pain.
That's the main issue of using analytics and telemetry on something that's used by power users: most of them disable/block them, so the real reported usage is much lower
Exactly. When the planes come back from battle, you put armor on all the places where the bullet holes aren't, because that's where the planes that didn't make it back were shot.
On the desktop, Firefox has about 6% marketshare, and Edge, the Windows default, about 11%.
On mobile, however, Firefox is at 0.5%, and Edge at 0.3%.
A lot of people only browse the Web on a mobile platform. And the ones using those tend to use the default browser bundled with their phone; if what they have out-of-box works, they're not going to install anything else. Apple bundles Safari, and Google bundles Chrome, so that's what gets used.
That's why I started setting Firefox as the default browser on my family's phones. They were too annoyed by ads and almost got scammed once. With Firefox and uBlock Origin it's like magic for them. Plus they don't visit any non-mainstream websites so they'll never encounter such a screen.
A small step to a better web-browsing experience for all of us.
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.
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