5 mo. ago • 60%

Why does Firefox get more errors than Chrome?

Is there a reason why? Less funding? Web devs don't make the pages Firefox friendly? Since the user base is smaller, they just don't care?

82 comments

Hmm, do you mean in the web console?

I know Firefox has a bit of a reputation for being rather precise in how it handles web standards compliance. So, it'll show comparatively many warnings and errors, if you don't keep to the web standards.

This is actually quite useful for web devs, because it means, if Firefox is happy with your implementation, then it's relatively likely to run correctly on all browsers.

93
- Yeah, if that's what OP means (though that's unclear), I'm not sure why OP thinks it's a bad thing. It's a good thing.
  
  Or maybe OP means Firefox crashes more or something. In which case I can only say that hasn't been my experience.
  
  My experience has been, however, that Firefox is quite usable on a Raspberry Pi 4 while Chromium is far too resource hungry to be usable on that platform.
  
  45
Anecdotal, but I've never once had a problem with any function of Firefox in the decade I've been using it. On the contrary it's been the most stable browser I've had the pleasure of using, orders of magnitude more reliable in all situations than Chrome or Opera ever was.

This post smells of astroturfing. There's been an awful lot of "why is Firefox so shit?" posts recently, now that Google is proving itself untrustable.

31
- The only time I’ve ever had issues with errors or ads is while using it on iOS, because it’s not possible to add extensions. Otherwise as you said, it is by far the best and most stable browser I’ve used in the last decade
  
  1
I don’t think I’ve experienced this. Do you mean some pages not working in Firefox, but working in Chrome? That’s mainly because of parts of web standards that are ambiguous or undefined, and Firefox and Chrome have different behavior. Some web developers (read lazy web developers) don’t test in Firefox, so they write bad code. Both Firefox and Chrome follow the standards, so if web devs just stick to the standards, everything should work.

13
- Not a dev, but I work with them. It's often the product manager that pushes an ignore everything but chrome so we can ship more features. I've seen devs argue and lose on such things.
  
  10
Back in the early days I found Firefox to be clunkier and slower than Chrome, which was the reason for my using Chrome for well over a decade. But since Chrome became Google's My Little Spyware, I've moved back to Firefox and it's so much better. More stable, better customization, and way more privacy focused.

Someone else said it but yeah, this feels like astroturfing.

12
it's like how something like 99% of computer viruses or tailored for windows. most of the people that you're going to be pulling revenue from are using Chrome, so optimize for Chrome and then ship

10
Could you give an example of a web page that doesn't work right on it? I've never noticed browsers differing like you describe.

4
Once in a while I'll get the odd webpage that supposedly isn't supported on Firefox or doesn't render completely well. I always assumed web developers just made their stuff for the largest audience, which is Chrome users. Back in the day it was the same with IE...

4
I work in web and app development company and we don't check Firefox anymore, because it's the only outlier and has not many users. But mainly because we wouldn't have to do it for any other browser specifically and Firefox is not special in any way. The errors come from it being more strict, which might sound good, but it's actually really just inconvenient. The errors go from image alignment issues to apps not working at all. We don't fix any of that.

-85
- Aaah so you and your company were proponents of the "This Site is optimised for Internet Explorer"
  
  71
  
  Ok boomer.
  
  -37
- If you're developing software for one client who only uses a specific browser, I can see this being okay, but several times I have chosen not to buy things from websites that were broken in Firefox. I don't bother to check whether they'd work in Chromium, I just buy it elsewhere.
  
  The number of people who act like me probably isn't large in absolute terms, but how many customers have been lost because of a broken website that you didn't even know about because they just left without a trace?
  
  This might not apply to you, but it's some food for thought whenever Web developers decide to be sloppy and not check compatibility for a browser that still has significant market share.
  
  54
  
  Same. I'm not bothering with broken web sites.
  
  I'm not in the US though, so I don't get many of them.
  
  13
  
  The number of people who act like that is negligible. We tested for that.
  
  We don't see it as that we are sloppy but that Firefox is not a good browser. We came to that conclusion because no other browser acts like that.
  
  -39
- Ah. You pray at the altar of Google with the mantra: "It only works in Chrome or Edge. Why not upgrade your browser?"
  
  What could possibly go wrong with giving all the power to one browser engine? If only there was a precedent to learn from...
  
  50
  
  Bruh, he just explained what his company's workflow is like. He wasn't espousing the opinions that everybody is accusing him of, just saying how his job requires him to work.
  
  This community can be hyper-reactionary sometimes.
  
  -13
  
  Haha, no. We don't pray. We make web apps to make money. Catering to a negligible users who for some reason want to use the single browser with issues, that's up to them.
  
  -16
- It's funny, I am not a web developer, but have built my own page for indexing my photo galleries.
  
  It uses a lot of CSS, and I gave up on developing for Chrome/Webkit just because it is less precise, I make it work in Firefox because then I know it works fine in Chrome.
  
  Way more efficient.
  
  30
  
  Well no. It doesn't work like that. Unfortunately.
  
  -16
- It's like making a .txt document with tables and ASCII art and then on my God other text editors use different fonts and the look breaks. Only the most popular, Windows Notepad is supported.
  
  Web was supposed to be bulletproof, easy to archive and implement. If a webpage break because a browser is supporting 99% of super bloated web standards instead of 99.5% of Chrome, there is clearly something wrong.
  
  My rule of thumb is, try to randomly remove some HTML tags and CSS declarations. If whole site break and is unusable because of one/two lines missing, this website is a hack exploiting browser monoculture.
  
  14
  
  Again, I'm not a soldier for any particular software. I'm a pragmatic user. I will use whatever works and will develop of whatever works.
  
  Some apps and websites are broken on Firefox, that's why we don't use it and don't optimise for it. We don't care it's not the fault of Firefox. It's a pragmatic business decision that is practically inconsequential, because Firefox has so few users.
  
  -15
- I work in web and app development company and we don’t check Firefox anymore, because it’s the only outlier and has not many users.
  
  Fellow webdev here, You're absolutly correct.
  
  1
  
  I mostly use Firefox, so I develop on Firefox and check other browsers for issues. That way, I can make sure the app and websites I'm working on still work on Firefox.
  
  12

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