I use Firefox exclusively. It is fast, responsive, and works on all the sites that I visit. So I don’t really understand why the share of users are so low. What sites are ya’ll visiting that doesn’t work on FF?
The U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) provides a comprehensive set of standards which guide those who build the U.S. government’s many websites. Its documentation for developers borrows a “2% rule” from its British counterpart:
. . . we officially support any browser above 2% usage as observed by analytics.usa.gov.
Reminder to self to always use FF when visiting .gov sites.
Thank you for the excerpt. I initially interpreted the title as US government agencies will stop using Firefox, not US government agencies will stop requiring their web masters to test in Firefox.
Government IT worker here: IE was dropped off almost all DoD computers years ago when MS officially ceased support of it. Edge, Firefox, and Chrome come standard with the baseline image at most sites I’ve supported.
I think this article is also pretty silly. We have scientists, engineers, accountants, logistics, etc. all using various web apps and sites. Rather than fuck around with installing a browser that may or may not be compatible with any of them, we had our image team blanket install Chrome and Firefox to avoid unnecessary tickets. Just because government websites may not require designers to be compatible with Firefox doesn’t mean anything for all those federal jobs that don’t only use government sites for work.
I’m just switching back to Firefox given all the bullshit that’s coming in Chrome. Hopefully others follow suit and that number starts climbing back up.
All you people too young to remember the late 1990s, enjoy the internet as we used to know it before adblockers, because it sounds like you’re going to be out of options a lot of times soon.
I plan to use Firefox as long as I can, but I hate that I already have to have a backup browser for some sites, including the back end of the website where I used to work. And that will only get worse.
My first desk job was in 96 and even then I needed 3 browsers to get the different government websites to work properly. I don’t know if there was a time before needing a backup browser.
I’m pretty convinced that a country with an annual military spend of almost three quarters of a trillion dollars can afford to QA their web services in at least the latest versions of the five major browsers(1). Anything less might be seen as corporate favouritism.
(1) Chrome, Firefox, Edge (so Chrome), Safari, and Opera (so also fucking Chrome, apparently) were the five I’m thinking of but I’m open to persuasion if anyone’s got a better list
That’s terrible. How can Firefox usage rates be declining? It seems like every day there’s some new scammy feature being rolled out in all the other browsers.
Did you read the article? This is about how the government’s web developers could stop writing websites that support Firefox. You might have to switch to Chromium to use government websites.
Web dev here. Unless they explicitly block other browsers or somehow adopt bleeding-edge tech that other browsers have and Firefox doesn’t (has Firefox ever not been the first to support new standards?) I don’t know how this would even be a problem.
Governments agencies usually obtain software through contracts with vendors. Microsoft is one of those vendors so I’m not surprised to hear about this.
Also, Firefox is the pretty much the browser of freedom and independence so I’m surprised it’s not illegal or “against family values” at this point. 😔
No, what this means is sites might start adopting features like PassKeys - a major browser feature that works in every browser except FireFox and one where you just might not be able to access the service, at all, unless your browser has support.
(Passkeys are a replacement for passwords - essentially the idea is to take the technology commonly used for second factor authentication and use it as your “first factor” instead)
Isn’t that what password managers are for? People don’t store credentials in browsers, not sure why they’d start for passkeys when password managers are rolling out support.
Yes they do - every browser asks users if they want to remember the password they just entered. Many people say yes, I do too for most cases - it is very convinient.
Trust issues aside, do you use the same browser for every task on every device? What do you use to generate your passwords?
Genuinely asking, this is wild to me. This would be like allowing location or desktop notifs from a website.
Edit: downvotes are weird. Fuck me for asking a question I guess? Would be more useful if y’all explained yourselves (and thanks to the one dude who apparently does use only one browser - cool that this works for you)
PassKeys - a major browser feature that works in every browser except FireFox
So… Chrome and Safari? Because the rest of browsers are just rebranded Chrome.
I’m not particularly a fan of passkeys, because I’m fairly happy with my password manager, but personal opinions apart, just because Google and Apple decided to implement a feature, that doesn’t make it an standard.
This is why Chrome having the web engine monopoly is such a big problem. They can implement whatever they want and because it will also be adopted by Edge, Opera and others, it seems to automatically be considered a web standard and websites will start using it even when the other major independent browser (Firefox) hasn’t implemented it.
God this reminds me that it took Firefox forever to support security keys natively. I hope PassKeys are implemented quickly in Firefox if they take off.
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Oh no! Now that shitty government websites with 12-character passwords don’t work, Firefox is dead!!
Get real. Too many of their websites only supported IE when it was around.
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Firefox usage has plummeted. To be fair, 2% isn’t a huge slice of the pie, but it’s still a pretty large number of users in absolute terms.
I use Firefox exclusively. It is fast, responsive, and works on all the sites that I visit. So I don’t really understand why the share of users are so low. What sites are ya’ll visiting that doesn’t work on FF?
Mobile browsing altered the landscape.
Sounds like you’re living in a 10000 meter hole under a rock.
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Reminder to self to always use FF when visiting .gov sites.
Thank you for the excerpt. I initially interpreted the title as US government agencies will stop using Firefox, not US government agencies will stop requiring their web masters to test in Firefox.
I’d imagine that effectively means agencies would stop using Firefox, if they can’t use it on their own sites.
Fat chance they’re actually using Firefox in the first place. My money’s on Chrome or IE.
Government IT worker here: IE was dropped off almost all DoD computers years ago when MS officially ceased support of it. Edge, Firefox, and Chrome come standard with the baseline image at most sites I’ve supported.
I think this article is also pretty silly. We have scientists, engineers, accountants, logistics, etc. all using various web apps and sites. Rather than fuck around with installing a browser that may or may not be compatible with any of them, we had our image team blanket install Chrome and Firefox to avoid unnecessary tickets. Just because government websites may not require designers to be compatible with Firefox doesn’t mean anything for all those federal jobs that don’t only use government sites for work.
tbh I already editorialized the title a bit to make it less exaggerated, wasn’t sure how far to take it.
I actually did that today before reading the article.
I’m just switching back to Firefox given all the bullshit that’s coming in Chrome. Hopefully others follow suit and that number starts climbing back up.
So everyone using FF just had to start visiting more .gov websites (using the correct user agent) ?
All you people too young to remember the late 1990s, enjoy the internet as we used to know it before adblockers, because it sounds like you’re going to be out of options a lot of times soon.
I plan to use Firefox as long as I can, but I hate that I already have to have a backup browser for some sites, including the back end of the website where I used to work. And that will only get worse.
My first desk job was in 96 and even then I needed 3 browsers to get the different government websites to work properly. I don’t know if there was a time before needing a backup browser.
Yeah about that. Manifest V3 will infuse Firefox userbase nicely come next summer.
I’m pretty convinced that a country with an annual military spend of almost three quarters of a trillion dollars can afford to QA their web services in at least the latest versions of the five major browsers(1). Anything less might be seen as corporate favouritism.
(1) Chrome, Firefox, Edge (so Chrome), Safari, and Opera (so also fucking Chrome, apparently) were the five I’m thinking of but I’m open to persuasion if anyone’s got a better list
Even Opera is now Chrome…
And the last reason to even consider using it goes out the window 🙄 Thanks for the heads-up.
Bold of you to assume there’s QA happening on govt UIs.
That’s terrible. How can Firefox usage rates be declining? It seems like every day there’s some new scammy feature being rolled out in all the other browsers.
Try asking a random person about any of those features. They’ll have no idea
https://gs.statcounter.com/ until G tries to force ads on all the Chrome
Who cares? I use Firefox but why do I care if the US government does? I thought they were still using Netscape on Windows ME
Did you read the article? This is about how the government’s web developers could stop writing websites that support Firefox. You might have to switch to Chromium to use government websites.
How convenient for them and the Corp lining their pockets.
Web dev here. Unless they explicitly block other browsers or somehow adopt bleeding-edge tech that other browsers have and Firefox doesn’t (has Firefox ever not been the first to support new standards?) I don’t know how this would even be a problem.
Knock on affects could hurt firefox quite a bit
Governments agencies usually obtain software through contracts with vendors. Microsoft is one of those vendors so I’m not surprised to hear about this.
Also, Firefox is the pretty much the browser of freedom and independence so I’m surprised it’s not illegal or “against family values” at this point. 😔
So changing the user agent to chrome to fool websites that work shittier on non chromium stuff will ruin this metric?
No, what this means is sites might start adopting features like PassKeys - a major browser feature that works in every browser except FireFox and one where you just might not be able to access the service, at all, unless your browser has support.
(Passkeys are a replacement for passwords - essentially the idea is to take the technology commonly used for second factor authentication and use it as your “first factor” instead)
Isn’t that what password managers are for? People don’t store credentials in browsers, not sure why they’d start for passkeys when password managers are rolling out support.
Yes they do - every browser asks users if they want to remember the password they just entered. Many people say yes, I do too for most cases - it is very convinient.
Did you know that you can see those passwords in plain text in the browser settings?
Use a password manager
Trust issues aside, do you use the same browser for every task on every device? What do you use to generate your passwords?
Genuinely asking, this is wild to me. This would be like allowing location or desktop notifs from a website.
Edit: downvotes are weird. Fuck me for asking a question I guess? Would be more useful if y’all explained yourselves (and thanks to the one dude who apparently does use only one browser - cool that this works for you)
Personally for me, I use different browsers or at least different browser profiles for different uses - e.g. Work, personal, financial, etc.
I use KeePass for sensitive passwords, the browser’s password manager is good for general stuff.
Most people I know who don’t really care about tech don’t do any of this and use whatever they’re offered.
Thanks for explanation, TIL
I use 1password for passkeys on FF, works great.
I know your point is native, just want to point it out.
No, what I mean is “metric” as in data about users per browser.
So… Chrome and Safari? Because the rest of browsers are just rebranded Chrome.
I’m not particularly a fan of passkeys, because I’m fairly happy with my password manager, but personal opinions apart, just because Google and Apple decided to implement a feature, that doesn’t make it an standard.
This is why Chrome having the web engine monopoly is such a big problem. They can implement whatever they want and because it will also be adopted by Edge, Opera and others, it seems to automatically be considered a web standard and websites will start using it even when the other major independent browser (Firefox) hasn’t implemented it.
God this reminds me that it took Firefox forever to support security keys natively. I hope PassKeys are implemented quickly in Firefox if they take off.
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In Soviet Russia, browser drops government!
Edit: FireFox fire + outfox you!