Developers, designers, and strategists, here’s something you can do for the health of the web:
Test all your sites in Firefox.
Yes, we should all design to web standards to the best of our ability. Yes, we should all test our work in *every* browser and device we can. Yes, yes, of course yes.
But the health of Firefox is critical now that Chromium will be the web’s de facto rendering engine.
Even if you love Chrome, adore Gmail, and live in Google Docs or Analytics, no single company, let alone a user-tracking advertising giant, should control the internet.
The development and adoption of accessible standards happens when a balance of corporate powers supports organizations like the W3C, and cross-browser-and-device testing is part of every project.
When one rendering engine rules them all, well, many of us remember when progress halted for close to ten years because developers only tested in IE6, and more than a few of us recall a similar period when Netscape was the only browser that mattered.
Don’t think the need to test in phones will save us: Chromium powers most of them, too.
And don’t write off the desktop just because many of us love our phones more.
When one company decides which ideas are worth supporting and which aren’t, which access problems matter and which don’t, it stifles innovation, crushes competition, and opens the door to excluding people from digital experiences.
So how do we fight this? We, who are not powerful? We do it by doubling down on cross-browser testing. By baking it into the requirements on every project, large or small. By making sure our colleagues, bosses, and clients know what we’re doing and why.
Maybe also we do it by always showing clients and colleagues our work in Firefox, instead of Chrome. Just as a subtle reminder that there are other browsers out there, and some of them kick ass. (As a bonus, you’ll get to use all those amazing Mozilla developer tools that are built into Firefox.)
Diversity is as good for the web as it is for society. And it starts with us.
