Firefox was seriously a better browser, not just "implements standards better". It ran faster, it had tabs (wow!) and at one point it got Firebug which let you have a console INSIDE the browser that showed information you could print with `console.log`, I kid you not.

It was a better browser through and through, maybe because MS slept on IE or maybe not, but in the end it isn't revisionist to say they beat MS's proverbial posterior because the browser was better.

▲

cogman10 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Firebug was a big reason for webdevs to adopt firefox in the first place. Part of what made chrome succeed is it came out with a pretty robust set of webdev tools right from the get-go.

But also, google spent a mountain of money advertising chrome.

▲

ghurtado 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Part of what made chrome succeed is it came out with a pretty robust set of webdev tools right from the get-go.

I think this factor isn't given enough weight in the shift to Firefox.

At that time, the largest pain point in web development was (by a long shot) browser compatibility.

When developers fell in love with Firefox, they started pushing business requirements away from IE and towards the browser that didn't feel like it was their enemy. Alongside with this there was also massive shift to start taking web standards seriously, which is another area where IE dropped the ball spectacularly

It took a few years, but eventually pointy haired managers got sick of our whining and gave in.

▲

cogman10 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We, no joke, ultimately were able to drop our support for IE6->8 because of the youtube "we are dropping support for IE" banner. We spun it to our bosses as "If google is doing this, we should be able to."

	▲	fragmede 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Which, if you haven't read it before, the story of how they did that is worth the read. https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
	▲	FridayoLeary 8 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Some time ago there was a post here about it. The guy claimed he and a few other fed up devs made that banner on their own initiative. The whole thing was a huge bluff because at the time google had no such plan but it gained so much momentum that they went ahead with it eventually.

▲

throwup238 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> But also, google spent a mountain of money advertising chrome.

Not to mention preferential treatment like the Youtube anti-IE campaign [1]

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/4/18529381/google-youtube-in...

▲

hi_hi 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's hard to state just how much of a game changer Firebug was for web development. Before that your only option was "alert()"ing or outputting directly to the page.

Once Chrome came along with their devtools, improvements quickly escalated between the 2 before Google eventually won out.

I can't recall the exact point in time when my use of Firefox fell off, but it was probably due to the account integrations with Chrome.

▲

paradox460 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chrome has the advantage that they inherited webkits inspector. The chrome team made improvements, yes, but it originated in Safari

▲

evilduck 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Chrome borrowed their webdev tools from Webkit, who borrowed them from KHTML. Chrome launched with dev tools, but they didn't develop their own distinct version of them for many years after launching the browser.

	▲	cxr 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Chrome borrowed their webdev tools from Webkit, who borrowed them from KHTML. Neither KDE nor OS X ever shipped their built-in Web Inspector prior to the appearance of Firebug in 2006, and by that point WebKit and Safari were already in full swing. The very first iteration[1] of Web Inspector appeared around the same time as Firebug and was an original contribution by Apple; it wasn't borrowed from KHTML. 1. <https://web.archive.org/web/20070621162114/https://webkit.or...>