What causes certain parts of sites to not work on different browser engines?

[Elarion]

I don't know much of anything about web development. I just know that I really like using Firefox, but there are certain things that break on various sites when I use it. I sometimes have to switch over to Brave in order to accomplish the task I was performing, and as my wife completes her browser switch away from Opera, she's probably going to end up on Brave as well, simply because the troubleshooting isn't worth it.

 

I'm curious, what is it in website's code that makes certain functions work on one web browser compared to another? Does it have to do with Javascript and how it interacts with the browser engine?

[tkitch]

can be any number of things in the page code that causes it.

 

Some sites like firefox better.  Some like chrome better.

 

[Kilrah]

Have a look at that page, should give an idea of the kind of reasons...

 

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Browser_support_for_JavaScript_APIs

[Elarion]

2 minutes ago, tkitch said:

can be any number of things in the page code that causes it.

 

Some sites like firefox better.  Some like chrome better.

 

I guess I'll keep both around for when I need them then. I still use Mullvad for just occasional searching, Firefox and Brave are just for my stuff that I have an account with that I like to keep synced.

[Elarion]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Have a look at that page, should give an idea of the kind of reasons...

 

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Browser_support_for_JavaScript_APIs

Oh wow, that is a lot of variability between all of them. Is there a reason they don't tend to support everything? It seems like there's a fairly standardized list of what is out there. It would make clicking on a button that doesn't work far less irritating.

[tkitch]

2 minutes ago, Elarion said:

Oh wow, that is a lot of variability between all of them. Is there a reason they don't tend to support everything? It seems like there's a fairly standardized list of what is out there. It would make clicking on a button that doesn't work far less irritating.

standardized?  in browsers?
That's hilarious!  

 

Nothing's actually standardized, and the web is a giant bodge of code from the last 30 years stirred up into a shit smoothie that browsers try to interpret.  

[Elarion]

Just now, tkitch said:

standardized?  in browsers?
That's hilarious!  

 

Nothing's actually standardized, and the web is a giant bodge of code from the last 30 years stirred up into a shit smoothie that browsers try to interpret.  

So you're telling me somebody should make a new standard?

[jaslion]

37 minutes ago, Elarion said:

So you're telling me somebody should make a new standard?

Yeah pretty much this to be honest

 

Also keep in mind half this shit is run of some dudes ancient github project that if that breaks somehow causes a massive outage for half the web

 

Look it up its happened a couple times!

[WindirBear]

It depends on the cookies and which you browser thinks taste better.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Elarion said:

I don't know much of anything about web development. I just know that I really like using Firefox, but there are certain things that break on various sites when I use it. I sometimes have to switch over to Brave in order to accomplish the task I was performing, and as my wife completes her browser switch away from Opera, she's probably going to end up on Brave as well, simply because the troubleshooting isn't worth it.

 

I'm curious, what is it in website's code that makes certain functions work on one web browser compared to another? Does it have to do with Javascript and how it interacts with the browser engine?

90% of issues are browser extensions, not the browser. The other 10% is usually crap related to ads. There's very little functionality that the browsers do not implement equally, and most of the "missing functionality" is actually on iOS Safari.

 

For example, Spotify (which uses the CEF, chromium embedded framework) has ads, but I'm not blocking the ads. Yet half the ads just stop working.

 

Firefox, the javascript that controls the volume control on Twitch.tv becomes unable to be clicked on after an ad plays. I have to resize the window to tiny and restore it before it becomes clickable again.

 

All browsers implement the functionality that is necessary and "chromium engine" often implements "alpha quality" features into release versions of the browser, which retroactively break functionality. Opera/Edge don't always roll out the same version of the layout engine and Javascript engine, but they generally use V8. Firefox (Spidermonkey) and Safari (JavascriptCore) use different Javascript engines.

 

Most of the problems are always going to be "blame google"

 

[Distinctly Average]

23 hours ago, Elarion said:

Oh wow, that is a lot of variability between all of them. Is there a reason they don't tend to support everything? It seems like there's a fairly standardized list of what is out there. It would make clicking on a button that doesn't work far less irritating.

It used to be far worse in the IE days. It was notorious for not playing ball due to often only partially supporting standards like CSS3 etc. Some content management systems made it really easy for people to screw up their sites too. For instance, Word contains html based formatting. So if you pasted directly some text from word it could be parsed by the browser. Firefox recognised it so a site would look fine. IE would parse this code and as a result sites were knackered. I used to make a decent living in the side fixing these sorts of problems for people.