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Comment by johnchristopher | Hacker News Reader

In what way is the site "optimized for privacy-respecting browsers" ? The browser is the thing being optimized. Does it mean to say that the website operators will intentionnaly not respect privacy of Chrome users but they will for Firefox ?

“Chrome users might experience issues” but what issues ? It reads like a dishonest TOS like the one used by service providers using catch-all statements to cover their backs.

It sounds like the old “optimized for Internet explorer and 837 by 394 resolution” for websites that were not optimized in any way but it was just the people behind it not able or unwilling to do better.

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You could fill a website with privacy-invasive scripts from Google, like 100 copies of Google Analytics and another 100 copies of Google Adsense. This would make it optimized for privacy-respecting browsers which block these, and the website would become slower on Google Chrome thanks to Google's own scripts.

Without going to such absurd lengths, a lot of the APIs Google came up with to complicate the web and slow down browser competition are usually bad for privacy. A browser that blocks those will probably have better performance if the website has fingerprinting scripts that use a lot of those APIs.

> You could fill a website with privacy-invasive scripts from Google, like 100 copies of Google Analytics and another 100 copies of Google Adsense. This would make it optimized for privacy-respecting browsers which block these, and the website would become slower on Google Chrome thanks to Google's own scripts.

Degrading the user experience for one browser does not mean it's optimized for another. Nothing has changed for privacy-respecting browser, there is no optimization, there is no code specifically targeting privacy-respecting browsers. But there is code targeting non privacy-respecting browsers and this code is in the website, not the browser. So the responsibility falls on the website author to respect its user's privacy, not the browser.

Am I being pedantic ? I have issues with the verb 'optimize' in this context.

I would expect such a site to work well without third-party scripts, without JavaScript, and perhaps even without a GUI. I would expect it to provide full functionality on Firefox with aggressive uBlock settings and on text-based browsers. I would be surprised to see a cookie banner.

Mostly, I would expect the site to work quickly and deliver valuable information with minimal nonsense, while integrating well with power user tools based on web standards.

I wish all websites were like this!

As a web developer I don’t test in Chrome—I develop against Firefox and sanity check using Safari iOS.

Therefore my site is explicitly optimised for Firefox. Chrome users might experience issues. Or they won’t. I have no idea.

Your "about" clearly states it: Some say I argue on the internet too much, but those people are wrong.

I don't know what you do/sell on said websites, but if you still have a job it means that those who hired you haven't received (enough) complaints yet.

I am not sure about that. Usually, when people only use Chrome to test and develop; Firefox/Safari users end up with problems. When someone tests on Firefox; things usually end up working on Chrome without problems.

This might be due to Firefox users being more aware of standards than just "whatever runs on Chrome today", or because Google tends to ship non-standard behaviour with their browser and make it a "standard" with their massive marketshare. Or it might be related to Firefox developers implementing the standards more carefully in order to protect their shrinking marketshare.

In my experience people get way more complaints when the developer uses Chrome and the user uses Firefox than the other way around.

Do you remember the IE4-Days? DHTML? That’s what Chrome might become.

This. I develop against firefox only, internal apps for my company. It's been many years since something was funtionally crippled in Chrome. At worst some ugly UI elements.

I remember auditing the ebanking system for a bank a decade+ ago.

I was expecting that they perform their UAT on the prevalent browsers at the time. I don't expect/demand that people will UAT a website for "Pale Moon", but it is dangerous to not test Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera (and a few more) and in multiple devices/displays.

I have no expectation that a personal blog will display perfectly, but for some applications/websites every menu option, line, frame, must be perfecly visible as per the design, otherwise you get your Chrome users that cannot hit "send" to complete that funds transfer, and that won't keep you employed for long.

Exactly this. I have no desire to develop against the most bleeding edge target. Thanks for explaining this better than I could.

You do realise that my “about” is a joke, right?

Regardless, I’m self-employed and my website makes enough money that I can spend plenty of time arguing with people on the Internet. Your admonishments certainly aren’t going to be my undoing.

Don't see why you're being down-voted. That seems like a perfectly reasonable approach. Assuming, of course, the decision on compatibility is yours to make.

Paradoxically, it's consistent with part of the strategy google used to promote Chrome in the first place: make the dev tools good, to encourage developers to use chrome, so they'll optimise for it, so it'll become popular.

Privacy-advocating developers optimising for the browser(s) they believe are most privacy-respecting seems entirely appropriate. It's not anti-chrome, any more than those using chrome as their primary tool are anti-firefox (or whatever).

EDIT: noted that taking this decision requires the authority to do so.

It's no matter; I'm not here for the points. Personally I find it hilarious to be down-voted for stating plain facts about my own (demonstrably effective) development process.

So it is very likely that you do not live of being a web developer or have a very small niche market, given the market share of FF and the market share of chrome.

No normal buisness can ignore how the vast majority of its users experience their site. Every user with issues is likely a lost user.

But ... from a technical point of view, it is indeed very likely that what runs on FF will also run on chrome, but not necessarily the other way around.

> it is indeed very likely that what runs on FF will also run on chrome, but not necessarily the other way around.

Yes, one would expect that to be true. However, as a very heavy FF user I haven't noticed any breakage in pages at all. Might be there's small things in a side-by-side compare, but nothing annoying so far.

What exclusive chrome feature is the mentioned business relaying on ?

Not every website requires retention of every person in order to survive. In my case, my website is better because my user base is tolerant of a bit of jank. I consider it a win whenever someone leaves because of trivial crap.

Tested only on privacy-respecting browsers? That's what sites mean when they have these "soft" banners on non-supported browsers. If it's not tested on chrome, then users on chrome might experience issues.

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