Is Firefox Relevant For Web Designers?

There are a lot of browsers out there, but despite that, we usually talk about one or two. Chrome is the biggest one, but there’s also Edge and Safari. At about 3% of the market share, Firefox isn’t exactly hot, so… is Firefox relevant for web designers?

Is Firefox relevant for web designers?

In our opinion, which is subjective, Firefox remains one of the best browsers. Customizability-wise, it knows no rivals. It also has built-in developer tools that are great for inspecting and debugging web pages. There’s even a developer edition that was designed specifically for web developers. It includes various features and tools that make developing, testing, and debugging web applications and websites easy. In other words, it’s a dedicated browser where you can simulate different browser settings — various font sizes, extensions, cookies, etc. The dev tools give you a lot of valuable hints and visualizations when working with CSS.

Another thing we like about it is that Firefox is known for its commitment to open standards and accessibility. For development, it’s the best browser out there.

Testing: Chrome or Firefox?

Still, there’s no clear-cut answer. While most developers argue that if an app works in Chrome, it would have a 99.9% chance of working in Firefox – given that Chrome has very few obscure standards issues – others disagree. They point out that significant differences exist in how different browsers handle certain features, like hit detection bugs in Firefox’s 3D canvases, that can cause an app to fail in certain browsers.

There’s no arguing that testing across multiple browsers is crucial for ensuring that web applications work as intended for all users. Testing on different browsers and older versions of each is vital for ensuring app compatibility across platforms and is a primary convention in web development.

Speaking of Firefox — it is only a marginally popular browser with a pathetic market share. Does it even matter? There’s a popular opinion that testing only for marginal browsers could be counterproductive. However, major commercial web businesses like Facebook, Google, and Twitter develop projects that they test across several browsers, which suggests that only testing in the most popular browser like Chrome might be a shortsighted strategy.

Some devs question the notion that some browsers are not “real” and emphasize that all popular browsers adhere to the same web standards. In that sense, Firefox’s implementation matches these standards more closely than Chrome. If the criterion for a “real” browser were its adherence to web standards, Firefox would be the winner.

So, in conclusion, we can’t deny that Firefox is not as popular as it once was, but it’s still an excellent option for users who care about privacy. Even more, developers still use it a lot thanks to its built-in developer tools. In other words, Firefox isn’t going anywhere.