Complete Firefox support required
June 11th, 2009 by Janus Boye
Today it is still common to find commercial web systems that only support Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). With Firefox usage share at 22%, the days are over when you as a customer should silently accept this. Do you really want to limit the user experience and functionality for 22% of all users?
The second browser war in history is ongoing. Microsoft won the first one back in the late 90’s, but this time things are not looking so good for IE. According to updated browser usage share numbers (source: NetApplications), Internet Explorer is today only used by 65% down from 91% in Q4 2004. In the same period, Firefox market share has risen from 3% to 22%. This means that Firefox usage has extended its reach far beyond the ranks of IT and developers. Other significant browser are Safari (8% usage) and Chrome (2% usage).
I suspect that Firefox usage share is even higher in higher education due to their very heterogeneous IT environments. In general, public sector organisations probably have higher Firefox adoption due to their tendencies towards accessibility, standards and open source. In the private sector you may have a more controlled and homogenous IT environment, but still your customers and employees may use home computers, with Firefox or even Mozilla as their preferred browser.
Among the many vendors that we regularly cover on this blog, here’s some that still only offer limited support for Firefox:
- Alterian Immediacy
- CrownPeak
- Dynamicweb
- EMC Documentum
- EPiServer
- GOSS
- IBM
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Open Text RedDot
- Oracle Stellent
- SDL Tridion
- Sitecore
- Webtrends
In some cases basic functionality is available in Firefox, but more advanced functionality only in Internet Explorer and sometimes even only on Windows (c.f. see details on SharePoint browser support). Feel free to drop a comment below, if you have any vendors that should be added or removed from the above list.
As a customer you should make vendors demonstrate compatibility. If there are any limitations at all with regards to Firefox, make sure that these are publicly documented together with a stated commitment towards moving to complete support in the very near future.
To back up your requirements, I encourage you to take a closer look at browser usage share in your analytics tool for your own site. It might be significantly higher than the global market share. On this site 40% of all visitors in May 2009 used Firefox.
Have you been asleep when it comes to Firefox support?
Tags: browser, firefox, mozilla, user experience
June 11th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Are you referring to supporting Firefox for site administration systems or for public-facing website (or intranet viewer) content? I’m hoping that you’re saying we’re well beyond general visitors being able to use Firefox, and that this post is encouraging that in addition, administration tools must work on Firefox.
There after further benefits to a system that operates well with Firefox. When you talk of systems supporting Firefox, as a developer you assume this being synonymous with supporting best practice HTML, CSS, and Javascript. A system that supports Firefox, Safari, and IE will generally be much more future-proof towards new browsers than a system that only works in IE. The industry has seen this with IE6, where many companies found their intranets and internal systems forced them to keep on IE6 or face expensive upgrades of their internal web apps. Systems that already worked on Firefox allowed them to upgrade to IE7 and IE8 much more easily.
Interesting about your browser stats. On silverstripe.org, Firefox is 60%, IE 21%, Safari 14%.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Hi Sigurd,
Thanks for your comment and good point about the future-proof benefits
Complete Firefox support is required for public-facing websites, intranets as well as web administration tools, eg. a Web CMS such as SilverStripe.
Cheers, Janus
June 11th, 2009 at 8:53 am
This is an interesting article. I think that IE 6 will more likely be replaced with Google Chrome in the enterprise. It will have the Google support/QA behind it and will mean that IT depts will not have to upgrade core Windows XP but still retain support.
Whichever is chosen Firefox or Chrome anything that prevents to costs of developing for IE6 will be a bonus. Once people realise the cost of supporting IE6 in their projects “probably in the 10-20% region” IE7/8, Chrome and Firefox will move in quickly.
Sigurd: We report the same finding as you with IE only at 40-60% on consumer sites.
Tony
June 11th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Having Composite on your list must be an error – Composite C1 have 100% Firefox support – we actually encourage our users to use Firefox for optimal performance.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Hello Marcus from Composite,
That’s interesting as your customers are telling me otherwise. Can you confirm that Composite C1 works with Firefox on Linux?
Cheers, Janus
June 11th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hi Janus
Dynamicweb supports firefox on both frontend and backend administration.
Feel free to take it for a spin.
http://demo.dynamicweb.biz/admin
Username: user
Password: user2006
Regards
Soeren
Dynamicweb Software
June 11th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Hi Janus,
I can confirm that Composite C1 works with Firefox on Linux, Windows and Mac and that all our features are available on all of these platforms. I can also confirm that we have no known critical issues with Firefox. I would suggest that the customers you refer to contact us so we can learn about any issues they may have.
You may try Composite C1 on Linux for yourself – you can get Linux up and running in a few minutes by visiting http://www.vmware.com/download/player/ and http://linhost.info/vmware/ – we will happily provide you with a site for testing. Get in touch with us or visit http://www.composite.net/C1/CMS/Freetrial.aspx
We take Firefox and interoperability pretty seriously and we fully agree with your opinions expressed in this blog post – but we do not understand why you list us among systems not having full Firefox support.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Thanks for a great article – the CMS vendors need to take this more seriously.
I just tried the DynamicWeb site and it wasn’t pretty in FF:
Log på with Danish.
Err 1: Press “Moduler”, “Audit”, “Legeplads”. (Editor does not, periodically, start)
Err 2: Press “Moduler”, “Audit”, “Legeplads”. Press “Preview not available”. “Template vælger” starts . (IE will show the previews, FF does not)
Err 3: Press “Moduler”, “Forside” – rediger “Template”. Press “Vis”. (gives a timeout in FF)
I also got this one in both IE and FF:
Press “Moduler”, “Forside” – rediger “Template”. Press “Oversæt”. ( A HTTP500 in both IE+FF)
There is quite a bit of mountain to climb from ’supports FF’ to complete ‘FF support required’. So DynamicWeb definitely needs to be on this list (especially since I only really tried it for 10-15 mins – maybe some internal testing might be appropriate?).
/Mark
June 20th, 2009 at 10:28 am
SharePoint’s support for non IE-browsers is a disgrace. But according to your link, not only are Firefox/Opera/Chrome/Safari users left with a substandard user interface (with i.e. no Rich Text Editor, no datepickers etc.) – even brand new 64 bit versions of IE7 and IE8 are treated as “Level 2 browsers”.
Hopefully some of this will be improved in the upcoming 2010 version (which at least on the serverside will only run on 64 bit Windows).
June 25th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Hi Janus,
articles like http://www.microsoft.com/danmark/referencer/compositeUK.mspx might give you the impression that we would favor IE and have Firefox as a step child, but if you were to investigate this a little bit beyond hearsay I think you would find that we are not only at 100% Firefox support – we actually encourage people to use Firefox for editing via Composite C1.
If you are not going to remove us from your list, at least have the courtesy of informing us where we are lacking Firefox support, either by contacting us directly or posting it on this blog.
Best regards
Marcus Wendt
June 28th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Glad to hear that Composite takes Firefox serious.
According to the C1 system requirements document up on your own site (http://compositecorp.c1live01.composite.net/Renderers/ShowMedia.ashx?i=MediaArchive:/Downloads/Composite_C1_System_requirements.pdf) the Composite C1 client runs on Windows XP or Apples OS X. It says nothing about Linux.
Let me know
June 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
In addition to Linux we could also add Solaris, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and a bunch of other platforms featuring Mozilla Firefox. Like a lot of other software vendors out there we have listed the platforms which we encounter in the market, not an exhaustive list.
It’s like the list you have assembled above – you have added systems which you feel are relevant to your audience, not every CMS you have ever heard about. You have done this because you know that being exhaustive is not necessarily helping the reader.
Anyway – as stated a few times by now – Composite C1 enjoys complete Firefox support, yet you claim that we don’t. I’m still waiting for your actual response – that we are either removed from this list or that you describe a single user action which a Firefox user is barred from executing in Composite C1. You simply can not call your self a vender neutral CMS expert and then make unfounded claims like this.
Best regards
Marcus Wendt
Composite
July 1st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Hello Markus
I am glad to hear that you claim Firefox support on so many different platforms.
As I said a few weeks ago, your customers are telling me otherwise. They may be on older versions or they may simply be wrong. I would be happy to delete you from the list, if you could provide me with some references that I can talk to that actually uses C1 on Firefox
NB: A part of being vendor neutral is that I listen to both customers and vendors. When there are conflicting claims, which often happen, I do a fact-check, but lean towards trusting the customer statements. Making unfounded claims, or accusing others of doing so, makes little sense for everybody involved.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Seeing we’re playing this game, I’ll add that EPiServer 4.6x is a complete mess in Firefox. EPiServer 5, however, is great. The only feature that doesn’t work in FireFox is drag-and-drop file upload from the desktop into the browser as this requires ActiveX. If there is a OS and browser neutral way to achieve this, I don’t know what it is. There are FireFox extensions, and Google Wave uses Google Gears to achieve this, I think.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Thanks, Jon.
I’ll keep EPiServer on the list
Cheers,
July 8th, 2009 at 9:34 am
I can completely appreciate the level of effort required to develop a WCM that supports multiple browsers. I think the big issue is that if the system wasn’t developed at the beginning with that in mind it’s very difficult to retro fit.
We supported Firefox and IE from the start and have also introduced support for Safari and Opera. Now that we introducing a lot more AJAX in the front end we can really see the amount of work required to implement and test our system in all the browsers. That said we believe that it’s worth it, especially the increasing number of Apple and Firefox users out there.
August 21st, 2009 at 1:57 am
Acknowledging that Composite C1 enjoys 100% Firefox support by removing us from this list is something I would like to thank you for. That’s a vendor list we are glad not to be part of. Interoperability and web standards are dear to out heart and your mission with this blog post is a mission we fully support – keep up the good work!
Marcus Wendt
Composite