Mozilla says Apple’s new browser rules are “as painful as possible” for Firefox
Mozilla is “extremely disappointed.”
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When a company' website doesn't work on Firefox I don't get angry at Firefox, I just don't use the site. When a company makes their cookie popups are a pain in the ass I don't get angry at the EU, I get angry at the company that made the popup. I use Firefox as a Canary that dies when a website is a piece of shit.
Maybe it's a win-win, I don't have to deal with Apple's bullshit and Apple doesn't have to waste resources on me, for me to block all their shady shit.
I feel the same but I also cannot avoid some sites. Ohio's unemployment and job board only works with Chrome based sites and I have to use those when I'm in between jobs.
This brings up an interesting thought though. Should governments and states be able to prefer you to use a certain browser or should they be required to make the website function on all..
Pretty sure the old fuckers in the legislature aren't writing that into the contracts. If you ask them what browser they're using they'll probably say "internet."
If the government cared at all about accessibility, then you'd be able to do your taxes in an HTML form.
But then how will congress give taxpayer dollars to a private company to do a terrible job?
I mean, we COULD have a government run agency that retains skilled engineers and keeps a good talent and knowledge pool of people specialized at delivering services that hundreds of millions of people rely on OR we could give money to the lowest bidder and blame "government inefficiency" for the contractor's fuckups.
Yeah. Now that we have a functioning FCC again we might see some progress.
You would have to find a good definition of "all browsers", and I think that would be nearly impossible.
I absolutely agree that governments should support Firefox, that's a reasonable claim. But do they need to support the earliest version of netscape? Or the browser I made as a hobby project last week and published as open source? There's a limit to what's reasonable and workable.
Specific versions of basic standards would do. HTML forms, as another comment says. With tables and CSS which doesn't make it unusable if your browser doesn't support CSS.
As the others have mentioned, it's about following standards. Like if you specify a design for a plug using standard measurement units, people can then make plugs that plug into that using whatever measurement and calibration tools they want because they all generally follow standards.
It would be like if the government released some device that was meant to be repaired by anyone but used some proprietary Apple screw head for all the screws. That's not repairable by anyone, that's only repairable by Apple customers.
Conforms to a specific revision of HTML with a specific revision of JavaScript and css, also requiring it to not use any proprietary extensions of either HTML or JavaScript.
Or the government could just use PDFs and email, I think that might be able to accomplish all the functionality of most websites.
Most government sites must be accessible to individuals with disabilities such as low vision or other imapirments. You can't require a blind person to use chrome to apply for a job.
They just ignore it, even if it's law somewhere, because "are you nuts, everybody's using Chrome, you are a luddite boomer, we'll do things the normal way".
Well, it would be nice to be enlightened about countries where government sites really are usable with screenreaders and\or Lynx.
It would be reasonable for a govt to tell Google that actions taken on their platform which force users to use a certain browser to access a govt website are violating some equal opportunity law or something.
That's not really where the problem lies. It lies in the choices made when developing the site. "Do we use a framework or feature that isn't part of the HTML standard to force users to use the subset of browsers that support that or do we use one of the many other options that do follow the standard?"
It wouldn't surprise me if those choices are being made by some web devs because those high up don't even think about it and those implementing it don't think much about the standards and just do it the way they do it because it's easy or that's just the way they know how to do it.
Governments (and their agents) shouldn't be choosing proprietary options that force people to use a specific company's resources.
can you send fake device headers using a plug in?
Or can you use a stripped down version of Chromium?
I just use Chromium or Edge. It's too much effort to be stubborn otherwise.
There's an extension called Consent-O-Matic that will deal with the popups automatically for you.
Presumably rejecting them? It's the legitimate toggle that gets me though. How do 400 partners require access to my browsing information in order for your site to run?
That's the obvious bullshit lol, exactly
I think you can configure it but I have mine set to reject them all.
But yeah the excuses are absurd. This tracking is not only not necessary, it's also wrong.
Until Chrome starts doing its bullshit "attestor" stuff that'll essentially make websites not work on Chrome if they allow Firefox and other browsers that respect privacy.
Pretty much zero websites will choose Chrome over Firefox.
Firefox has add-ons that automatically reject all on cookie pop ups. It works great and sometimes you see it working which is really satisfying.
I use it. Sometimes it can't though, which is my cue to leave.
I use Firefox as a Canary
You shouldn't capitalize canary, it's like saying goose or pigeon.
But, it's the Canary®™... of coal mine fame.
Got to buy material for house renovation, several hundreds € of saving if I bought on one website that didn’t work with Firefox. Guess what I did.
Almost everyone choose money and commodity over everything else. Firefox is doomed to fail, and I say that as Firefox user.
You could have said the same for Internet Explorer some years ago, and they got their lunch eaten despite being free AND the default owned by a monopoly
Yes but Internet Explorer had massive issue, nowadays it’s Firefox that has compatibility issue, doesn’t have a platform where its default (Microsoft has windows/edge, android/chrome, iPhone/safari) and no meaningfull advantage on the other.
The cards are stacked against it, if only they could use Google money to get some advantage, like a better design. Right now if I open Firefox there is 3 row of sponsored clickbait articles. The reason I paid money for Mac is because I was fed up of the very same bullshit on windows, make something lean, sleek that works well and people might use it but here it’s a kind of dinosaur software that is even filled with sponsored articles.
The difference is that Google had the capital and a monopoly itself. Mozilla doesn't have shit.
Mozilla has a regular income from Google.
Yeah, they're pretty much owned by Google, thus not a competitor.
Google paying Firefox explicitly to make Google the default search engine. That doesn’t mean they own Firefox in any way shape or form. Firefox routinely makes anti Google decisions, and acts against googles interest. It’s pretty clear they aren’t googles removed.
Most of the revenue of Mozilla Corporation comes from Google (81% in 2022). They have influence.
The excuse of search engine funding is a fig leaf for the US and monopoly laws.
Google pays every browser they can to make Google the default search engine. Including direct competitors, and companies that have a direct interest in going against Google. Companies like Apple, who butt heads with Google regularly.
That doesn’t mean they have influence.
However, if Google decided one day to yank 80% of Mozilla's income...
Yeah that would be problematic to an extent. But I doubt that’ll happen, and if it did I’m sure it would continue just in a slower/reduced capacity.
Except and arguably better product in the browser space?
Both Mozilla and Opera had better browsers.
But you're forgetting something important: Firefox is open-source, meaning that it is literally impossible for it to fail. Even if the Mozilla org goes down in flames tomorrow.
If Mozilla dies, someone else will become a maintainer for the Firefox open-source project. If they are compromised or bought out, someone will fork the project (again). If 100% of websites make some code change that forces them to only work on a Chromium rendering engine, the developers of one of the Firefox forks (or, more likely, all of them) will implement a fix within days that spoofs whatever signal the lock-in code requires. If some form of online DRM is implemented, it will be cracked and the solution will be made available online. Or the relevant chunk of Chromium will be copied and modified to generate that verification key on Firefox without telemetry.
The browser may never achieve market dominance, but it doesn't have to. It's on the Internet, and on the Internet nothing ever truly goes away.
Sure nothing goes away on the internet but things get deprecated. Keeping up with a browser development must require highly technical engineer, who often don’t work for free. If Mozilla were to disappear or get 80% of its budget removed (Google) one can doubt they would be able to keep up with the evolution of internet.
I mean just look at Linux desktop, people working on it for free is great but it’s slow, innefective and it goes to all direction at the same time. Without million of $ behind it, Firefox would be gone in a year or two whatever the amount of fork happening.
That's just...not true on any level at all. Of course things get deprecated, but engineers work for free on open source projects all the time.
And you understand nothing about Linux development if you think its development is slow; the kernel already has stable support for Intel's Meteor Lake graphics, which were released only 43 days ago at the time of this comment.
The idea that Firefox would be "gone in a year or two" without Google's money ignores the reality that there are thousands of large, successful open-source projects without massive financial endowments, projects that are still continuously updated over years and even decades for no other reason than that the maintainers want to use them.
Misunderstanding, I was speaking of Linux desktop environment. You think I speak of Linux. Linux is backed by dozen of companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta. It sure doesn’t lack any fund. Now compare it to the Linux desktop environment where this is mostly people working for free, shit doesn’t get done in 43 days. For instance, Wayland has been out for several years and many environment still doesn’t work with it or have not even started working on it.
The closest open source project I can think of is libreoffice. Just check it, it lacks tons of functions compared to ms but most important is that it barely improved at all in years. Now doc document aren’t going to change drastically , file from the 90’s are still compatible but the web foundation it improves very fast. When I say 2 years I’m generous, its already half dead (3.14% user !), breaking compatibility would be the nail in the coffin.
Actually, LibreOffice is the perfect example, thank you. After OOo development went in a direction the community didn't agree with, the Document Foundation was formed and the project was immediately forked. 13½ years later, the project is still updated every six months. It has every necessary feature and supports all formats. A browser would be similar; web standards don't change that much. Wayland, by comparison, is currently a niche product for a niche product; it doesn't need the same support, and so it doesn't get it.
Well I admire your optimism, personally I don’t have much faith into open source project because their is often very little or no money for the developer.
The last forty years of FOSS software would beg to differ.
