The U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) provides a comprehensive set of standards which guide those who build the U.S. government’s many websites. Its documentation for developers borrows a “2% rule” from its British counterpart:
. . . we officially support any browser above 2% usage as observed by analytics.usa.gov.
Reminder to self to always use FF when visiting .gov sites.
Thank you for the excerpt. I initially interpreted the title as US government agencies will stop using Firefox, not US government agencies will stop requiring their web masters to test in Firefox.
Government IT worker here: IE was dropped off almost all DoD computers years ago when MS officially ceased support of it. Edge, Firefox, and Chrome come standard with the baseline image at most sites I’ve supported.
I think this article is also pretty silly. We have scientists, engineers, accountants, logistics, etc. all using various web apps and sites. Rather than fuck around with installing a browser that may or may not be compatible with any of them, we had our image team blanket install Chrome and Firefox to avoid unnecessary tickets. Just because government websites may not require designers to be compatible with Firefox doesn’t mean anything for all those federal jobs that don’t only use government sites for work.
Nono, the other way round. Visit it with chrome and spoof a firefox user agent, so it looks like you used firefox, while you can still use the website.
Reminder to self to always use FF when visiting .gov sites.
Thank you for the excerpt. I initially interpreted the title as US government agencies will stop using Firefox, not US government agencies will stop requiring their web masters to test in Firefox.
I’d imagine that effectively means agencies would stop using Firefox, if they can’t use it on their own sites.
Websites built for Chrome do work in Firefox.
Maybe like 98% of the time.
Google Sheets would disagree.
When the website and browser are made by the same company, they aren’t exactly motivated to make sure it runs well in other browsers.
Fat chance they’re actually using Firefox in the first place. My money’s on Chrome or IE.
Government IT worker here: IE was dropped off almost all DoD computers years ago when MS officially ceased support of it. Edge, Firefox, and Chrome come standard with the baseline image at most sites I’ve supported.
I think this article is also pretty silly. We have scientists, engineers, accountants, logistics, etc. all using various web apps and sites. Rather than fuck around with installing a browser that may or may not be compatible with any of them, we had our image team blanket install Chrome and Firefox to avoid unnecessary tickets. Just because government websites may not require designers to be compatible with Firefox doesn’t mean anything for all those federal jobs that don’t only use government sites for work.
I thought that too. Poorly worded title.
tbh I already editorialized the title a bit to make it less exaggerated, wasn’t sure how far to take it.
Reminder to self to always use FF when visiting all websites.
^except the ones that only work in chrome
*especially! Spoof user agent if you have to.
if you spoof your user-agent it won’t help Firefox in metrics, since websites will think you’re other browser.
Nono, the other way round. Visit it with chrome and spoof a firefox user agent, so it looks like you used firefox, while you can still use the website.
Well I only suggest it for sites one has to use, and even then I think it would still show google people are fed up with their shit
I visit weather.gov around once a day on both mobile and desktop Firefox.
I actually did that today before reading the article.