Firefox to begin supporting -webkit prefix CSS Options

[Christian J]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/04/fi...it_css_support/

I remember a time when a young and bold Mozilla/Firefox ignored non-standard properties, and was praised for doing so. Those were also the days when their market share was growing. Now they'll apparently begin supporting non-standard properties to protect their shrinking market share. Seems like an act of desperation.

[Terminator]

It def is desperation as they cant seem to compete with Chrome. I don't know if anyone posts actual, overall browser usage stats as that might be hard to figure out, but I hear Chrome has been the #1 most used for awhile now.

[Christian J]

I suspect one reason for that might be that Chrome is bundled with all kinds of other software, such as Flash player updates.

And of course when Firefox tries to be more and more like Chrome, many people will find fewer reason for using Firefox.

Finally, until recently the Mozilla Foundation was literally drowned in money from Google, the producer of Chrome and as such their biggest competitor. No doubt all that money has had a bad influence.

[pandy]

The situation is indeed sad. Mostly I think because browsers are getting dumbed down by the minute almost. I'm not talking about the rendering engine, but the other features one expects from a browser.

We are in a way back to the Netscape-IE situation. A couple of competing browsers and not much else. Difference is now they try to be as like each other as possible, which means as dumbed down as possible. What happened to resizing text for example? OK, I can't read too small text so I sometimes need to up the text size and I find too large text cumbersome to read so I want to size it down. I don't want to resize the whole darn page, images and all! Chrome and, I think, Firefox forces me to do that.

[Christian J]

We are in a way back to the Netscape-IE situation. A couple of competing browsers and not much else. Difference is now they try to be as like each other as possible, which means as dumbed down as possible.

Someone said Microsoft's's new Edge browser could be the new innovator. I'm sceptical, but at the same time I can't see the need for another Chrome-imitator either; so maybe MS must become innovative, not because they want to but because they have to?

What happened to resizing text for example? OK, I can't read too small text so I sometimes need to up the text size and I find too large text cumbersome to read so I want to size it down. I don't want to resize the whole darn page, images and all! Chrome and, I think, Firefox forces me to do that.

My Firefox ESR 38 still has a checkbox for "zoom text only" in View > Zoom. There's also a setting for minimum text size in Tools > Options > Content > Advanced Font settings.

And while Firefox keeps removing important UI features, it's still possible to fix many things with extensions. Alas too many extensions slow down the browser.

[Frederiek]

If only all browsers would comply with W3C standards. :-<

[pandy]

It wouldn't be the first time MS leads the way. It wasn't that many years ago they did. Besides, they own CSS so they should know how to handle it.

[Frederiek]

… until Bill Gates left MS

[pandy]

He's still chairman. You mean he's the only one at MS that understands CSS?

[Frederiek]

Maybe, I don't know.

In any case, he isn't a member of the CSS Working Group or the W3C staff. Apparently, he stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, but remained as technology advisor to the then new CEO.

So, they [MS] own CSS? I'd rather say Bert Bos (as co-inventor) and Philippe Le Hégaret (writer of the first CSS validator) "own" CSS, and probably yet some.

[pandy]

He has? Then Wikipedia isn't up to date for once.

They hold the patent for essential parts of CSS, or at least they did. Don't find it now. It is/was U.S. Patent No. 5860073. IIRC correctly CSS was the technology MS wanted while Netscape tried to get their JSSS to become a standard. So they probably were in on it from the start.

[Christian J]

If only all browsers would comply with W3C standards. :-<

Ironically, Apple and the Mozilla Foundation are both W3C members. So, Apple's browser developers invent a new property, which is declined by Apple's and Mozilla's W3C spec writers. Then Mozilla's browser developers start to support it anyway.

[pandy]

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with browsers "inventing" new properties. Things need to be tested. That's how the spec moves forwards. What Mozilla does now is something different.