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Comment by K0nserv | Hacker News Reader

I'm not gonna dispute that. I've found that Firefox is an adequate replacement, however it is much more sluggish for certain sites specifically those that are javascript heavy.

Like David mentions it's not really about which is the best browser, but picking a browse that isn't chrome as favour to the open web. As a side effects you'll discover a lot of bugs that were likely to otherwise be missed in both your products and others'.

The Chrome monoculture among developers can easily cause a negative spiral were websites aren't tested in other browsers causing users of those browsers to be discontent with the browser and switch away from it likely to Chrome which will work. It's this exact behaviour that contributed to the IE6 situation.

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> The Chrome monoculture among developers can easily cause a negative spiral were websites aren't tested in other browsers

If what browser developers prefer to use has a significant influence on testing of anything other than experimental prototype / proof-of-concept work, the problem that needs to be addressed is testing practices, not developer browser choices.

Trying to fix it with the latter won't work, it will just make different projects having different improper testing biases, which will make the web broken in all browsers instead of just non-Chrome browsers.

> If what browser developers prefer to use has a significant influence on testing of anything other than experimental prototype / proof-of-concept work, the problem that needs to be addressed is testing practices, not developer browser choices.

I don't disagree that testing practice as far as cross browser testing isn't quite where it should be. However changing testing practices is a harder problem than creating diversification in developer teams. When I switched from Chrome to Firefox in my team I shifted the balance from 10 people using Chrome to 9 people using Chrome and 1 using Firefox. Running Firefox often surfaces problems in both our product and in those of other people.

> Trying to fix it with the latter won't work, it will just make different projects having different improper testing biases, which will make the web broken in all browsers instead of just non-Chrome browsers.

Striving for a diverse set of browsers used in any developer team helps, but tackling the testing biases is important. At a larger scale reducing the share of Chrome users on the web is a good in itself.

I am gonna dispute that. Chrome is bloated and inextensible.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions ?

The kind Firefox will only have in a release or two?

Firefox is just as bloated but at least it's extensible (for now.) Web "extensions" are Firefox' suicide.

Seems like it's impossible for a modern desktop browser not to be "bloated" considering all the crap they need to support.

"bloated" is arbitrarily defined.

No it isn't. Does your web browser do more than browse web pages? Then it's bloated. When you can log in your browser, start asking questions.

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