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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

If you are using user-agent for anything other than statistics, you are likely doing something wrong...

And it would be a shame if Firefox didn't implement something, even so minor like a new version number, 'just' because sites break. You are Mozilla, send them a mail and give them a week to fix it, because you are f'ing Mozilla. I'm glad this is apparently just what they did here.

(Same thing when NVIDIA or Microsoft do contortions to support broken games. You already fixed the function or shader; don't hotpatch it but send it to the vendor and tell them to merge it or else...)

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> You are Mozilla, send them a mail and give them a week to fix it, because you are f'ing Mozilla.

Mozilla has a user-base of like 3%.

They don't have any clout at all. They should be grovelling to and thanking any website that bothers to support them, not trying to give ultimatums.

> don't hotpatch it but send it to the vendor and tell them to merge it or else...

But this is a user-hostile approach. No thanks.

User-base has no importance, dev-base is what matters here. If Mozilla sends a letter to developers, chances are those people already stumbled upon MDN multiple times when they looked for answers to web development related questions.

Why would developers care about a browser that their users don't use?

Can you imagine if retail stores where made in a way that 3% of customers couldn't use them?

If there's no law saying they have to support those 3% of customers, and supporting the 3% costs more than the 3% bring in, then yeah they won't bother.

Because if "Firefox/100.0" reveals a bug, the bug may also trigger when other browsers introduce a similar change.

All the web developers I know use and test on Chrome. If they test on Firefox, it's as an afterthought.

Hello! Know you know one who builds and tests on FF.

I use FF as a daily driver.

I also use it for developing and use its developer tools. If it works on Firefox, there's maybe a few CSS tweaks I need to make when I test on other browsers

> If you are using user-agent for anything other than statistics, you are likely doing something wrong...

Except it is very common. Back before FF included DRM (optional) I couldn't get Netflix on Linux FF. But if I switched the UA string to FF Windows or Linux Chrome I could watch it. Contacted Netflix and they said "we don't use UA strings to block people." But it isn't just Netflix. I've seen this happen many times with many different websites (no problems since DRM is enabled on FF).

I don't disagree with you, but the amount of people doing "something wrong" is staggering. And it isn't just the little guys.

Also, Mozilla is what, 3.45%? I don't think people care unless you're Chrome or Safari (combined are ~85%).

I'd like to see you implement SameSite=None cookies without user agent sniffing. Still pisses me off that a bunch of browser vendors decided to break backwards compatibility so badly you're literally forced to sniff for user agents

https://catchjs.com/Blog/SameSiteCookies

Thanks for sharing that article; really gross

There is still a possibility that Mozilla's improvements can break backwards compatibility. One time they attempted to improve Firefox's error message for undefined property accesses in JavaScript, but it caused breaking changes because some websites relied on parsing the old error message format.

Mozilla's response was to roll back the change instead of blaming the users. The alternative was letting Firefox lose market share to Chrome because the websites people wanted to use didn't work. At least one major e-commerce website (Flipkart) was actively losing sales because of the bug.

Mozilla trying to strongarm people into using web features the "right" way sounds like something Google would do.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1488417

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19492660

"Attention all employees: Chrome is the only approved browser for accessing HR websites. Please DO NOT use Firefox for accessing HR websites."

Well, Chrome recently released their 92nd version... The same thing could happen to them really soon. Should they keep the user agent as version 99 indefinitely too? User agents shouldn't be as relevant as they are.

When a new Firefox release breaks a website, the browser is broken.

When a new Chrome or Safari release breaks a website, the website is broken.

I hate myself for typing that out, but it's true. Chrome has the luxury of dictating terms to sites that IE used to have 10 years ago. Firefox has never had such a dominant position, so they need to shoulder some of the burden themselves to ensure remaining users aren't forced to switch.

Said no one. No enterprise is going to recommend a browser that auto updates behind the scenes uncontrollably. Enterprise recommends Edge.

You can disable automatic updates with enterprise policy. https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6350036#turnoffup...

The other valid use case is blacklisting buggy browser versions. Some browsers will claim to support a feature but it doesn't actually work (e.g. indexeddb in some versions of safari). The only way to detect is using the user agent.

> You are Mozilla, send them a mail and give them a week to fix it, because you are f'ing Mozilla.

I think you vastly overestimate Mozilla's clout on the internet these days.

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