Every day I read something that makes me feel a little more like I'm living in a cyberpunk dystopia. Today it's the fact that Chromium is so dominant that a large number of website developers seem to ditch testing in non-Chromium browsers. This is evidenced by non-Chromium browsers, like Firefox, loading some sites differently, e.g., by pretending to be Chromium, because the website developers wrote sloppy code that only works in Chromium. So I guess, especially with the announced anti-adblock in the next Chromium iteration, the choice is to use a low performance browser that is actively hurting your privacy, or experience friction, knowing that Mozilla can't find and carpet over all the bugs in other people's code. For me, the answer remains Firefox and it's forks. However, for many, I fear this will ingrain Chromium dominance deeper and deeper. Please: how is this market dominance, evidence by soft-forced hot fixes only in non-Chromium browsers, not anti-trust?

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[–] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The easiest solution. Fuck those companies and don't use their services!! Simple as that.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    But what about essential services that you can't avoid? Online banking. Education like blackboard is horrid on Firefox. Youtube and social media are optional use, but for access to utility sites and finance are not.

    That is where we are heading the longer chromium remains dominant.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It was bound to happen. Chrome has become what IE was, a defacto standard.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    This has been going on for a long time in general, but Google recently stopped testing for non-chrome browsers altogether.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    anti-trust?

    Yes it is very obviously an anti-trust issue, but the US Government is obviously corrupt. The system serves its masters.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    They'll be found guilty and will be fined 1 penny for every billion they made screwing over every person.

    The perfect grift is to be too rich by the time anyone notices your illegal activities so you can just pay the regulators, legislators, police, SEC and whoever else is in the way.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    The US response to Microsoft's monopoly was meager, this time, they will cheer Google on.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Looked at header image. AI.

    Okay, maybe the author just doesn't respect the craft of graphics.

    Chrome doesn’t add quirks; it sets the agenda.

    Oh the article is AI too.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Ladybird will have an AI spaghetti code. We're cooked.

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  • 5 comments in c/webdev@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 23 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Tldr: the big sites only target functionality for chrome due to market share, and if the other browsers don't want the shitty reputation, they have to do this

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    I don't doubt your explanation, but it's tragic and backwards. It would make sense that a WordPress recipe blog wouldn't be developed with smaller browsers in mind. But 5% of Instagram's traffic is a gigantic amount of traffic, worth catering to. Wouldn't it be the big websites that have both the budget and the motivation to make their sites work across browsers?

    Call me a luddite, but I think if I were the website director I'd be saying "If you have to do something special to make it work in Browser X vs Browser Y, you're getting too fancy, you don't need that crap."

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago

    Publisher targets 85% Chrome, other browsers send Chrome user agent as a workaround, Publisher now sees 95% Chrome. 🫠

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