undefined | Better HN

0 pointsdx0347y ago0 comments

But as a web developer I don't necessarily care about standards. I want the page to work for as many users as possible. For the longest time this meant to support IE's way of doing things, now it means to support Chrome (unless you target Enterprise users).

Even if you develop for Chrome, Firefox and Edge you'll just end up building workarounds for all 3, not adhering strictly to the standard.

0 comments

Blaiz0r7y ago

Sorry to break this to you, but as a web developer you should only care about standards, otherwise you have no standards.

The standards are a single source of truth for your production, if you build solely to a single browsers quirks (in this case Chrome) then those quirks can change at any time.

ng127y ago

My standard is the browser ~95% of my users use. It's the only meaningful one.

I still fix FF bugs when they come in (it seems to be a bigger offender than IE recently) but developing for Chrome first is the only approach which makes business sense.

robin_reala7y ago

95%? I haven’t seen less than 20% mobile Safari on any site I’ve worked on in the last few years, and that’s not even including Edge / IE / Firefox and desktop Safari.

2 more replies

noir_lord7y ago

I get to mandate the browser the work system supports (which is Chrome because that was what the majority of users used when I started so I went with what would cause the least amount of pain) but every feature I rollout works with Chrome, Firefox and mobile Safari (I test all three).

It adds very little extra work with the advantage of surfacing edge cases/issues that might have bitten me even if it was just Chrome in the mix.

Also from a business risk point of view tying the entire platform to a capricious vendor is dangerous and I've been around long enough to remember the days of IE5 then 6.

Once bitten, twice shy.

aaaaaaaaaaab7y ago

You would have loved IE6 back in the day.

fixermark7y ago

This point of view is as ignorant of reality as the grammarians that say Webster's English is the only true English. Every standard is a three-edged sword: the spec, the intent behind the spec, and the practical application of the spec in the real world (which all-too-often, unfortunately, includes things like "Yeah, that's what the spec says, but then scammers realized you could exploit that to use people's browsers to mine Bitcoin or something, so no browser actually does that").

A web developer codes against real machines, not the imagined, idealized, and non-existent machines the specs describe.

zaarn7y ago

By your argument we should only need a single dictionary, Websters, because your language is real and not the imagined one people in other english places speak, Webster just happens to be the one that aligns closest to your usage of english.

Blaiz0r7y ago

If that were true then web developers would have never bothered supporting alternative browsers.

Regardless of browser matrices, it is the will of the developer to support the open web platform that made sure that Internet Explorer and thus Microsoft didn't own the web (browser) in the 2000s.

Anecdotally this point of view has done no harm to me and I'm not the only that shares it.

1 more reply

fastball7y ago

And if you build to the standards, it's possible that no actual browser implements them correctly.

And then what?

CharlesColeman7y ago

> And if you build to the standards, it's possible that no actual browser implements them correctly.

> And then what?

Build to standards first, then accommodate quirks last.

Building to Chrome first is just building to its quirks, and totally forgetting about standards.

1 more reply

saagarjha7y ago

You wait for them to do so, and are vocal whenever this happens.

1 more reply

rootusrootus7y ago

This is like an unpleasant blast from the past. It was wrong when web developers did this for IE, it's wrong now.

symlinkk7y ago

I read comments like this all the time and I feel like I'm in a different world.

I just write standards compliant ES6 code, put it through a transpiler and some polyfills, and my code runs on every browser. I haven't had to think about which browser I'm targeting for years.

fixermark7y ago

It's often the case that this works fine. When you get into corner cases (i.e. if you try to stretch what animation APIs can do or you start to need to care deeply about the performance constraints of flex layout), you start to need to care about how the browsers actually work.

... but you can (and I'd argue in a lot of cases, looking around at the overly-complicated sites on the web, should) write a lot of fully functional web pages by keeping to the standard and trusting it's good enough. We are no longer in the bad old days where IE and other browsers deviated significantly---most of the browsers today adhere closely to the spec, and in the places they don't, it's often more like one browser handles a nasty corner case better than another because the browser built an optimization in for a critical path your page layout cares about.

fgkramer7y ago

I'm tempted to say JS is not the biggest problem between browsers, but CSS... the fact that valid CSS code behaves differently and that it cannot be fixed without changing most of it. Not even mentioning if you actually need to change your DOM structure to make a layout work.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

Blaiz0r7y ago

Sorry to break this to you, but as a web developer you should only care about standards, otherwise you have no standards.

The standards are a single source of truth for your production, if you build solely to a single browsers quirks (in this case Chrome) then those quirks can change at any time.

ng127y ago

My standard is the browser ~95% of my users use. It's the only meaningful one.

I still fix FF bugs when they come in (it seems to be a bigger offender than IE recently) but developing for Chrome first is the only approach which makes business sense.

robin_reala7y ago

95%? I haven’t seen less than 20% mobile Safari on any site I’ve worked on in the last few years, and that’s not even including Edge / IE / Firefox and desktop Safari.

2 more replies

noir_lord7y ago

It adds very little extra work with the advantage of surfacing edge cases/issues that might have bitten me even if it was just Chrome in the mix.

Also from a business risk point of view tying the entire platform to a capricious vendor is dangerous and I've been around long enough to remember the days of IE5 then 6.

Once bitten, twice shy.

aaaaaaaaaaab7y ago

You would have loved IE6 back in the day.

fixermark7y ago

A web developer codes against real machines, not the imagined, idealized, and non-existent machines the specs describe.

zaarn7y ago

Blaiz0r7y ago

If that were true then web developers would have never bothered supporting alternative browsers.

Regardless of browser matrices, it is the will of the developer to support the open web platform that made sure that Internet Explorer and thus Microsoft didn't own the web (browser) in the 2000s.

Anecdotally this point of view has done no harm to me and I'm not the only that shares it.

1 more reply

fastball7y ago

And if you build to the standards, it's possible that no actual browser implements them correctly.

And then what?

CharlesColeman7y ago

> And if you build to the standards, it's possible that no actual browser implements them correctly.

> And then what?

Build to standards first, then accommodate quirks last.

Building to Chrome first is just building to its quirks, and totally forgetting about standards.

1 more reply

saagarjha7y ago

You wait for them to do so, and are vocal whenever this happens.

1 more reply

rootusrootus7y ago

This is like an unpleasant blast from the past. It was wrong when web developers did this for IE, it's wrong now.

symlinkk7y ago

I read comments like this all the time and I feel like I'm in a different world.

I just write standards compliant ES6 code, put it through a transpiler and some polyfills, and my code runs on every browser. I haven't had to think about which browser I'm targeting for years.

fixermark7y ago

fgkramer7y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse