A somewhat vague directive for US government website developers may hasten the downfall of Mozilla's Firefox browser.
There are already many large organizations, public and private, whose websites do not have adequate support for Firefox. This could get worse in the near future.
The US web design system (USWDS from the US Web Design System) provides a comprehensive set of standards that guide those building the countless US government websites. Its documentation for developers he says the "2% rule".
What does this mean;
It means that the USWDS officially supports any browser whose usage is at 2%, as recorded by “analytics.usa.gov.”
Firefox's market share was 2,2%, for the previous ninety days.
| Browser | Share |
|---|---|
| Chrome | 49% |
| safari | 34.8% |
| Edge | 8.4% |
| Firefox | 2.2% |
| Safari (in app) | 1.9% |
| Samsung Internet | 1.6% |
| Android web view | 1% |
| Other | 1% |
So what; you may be wondering. “This only applies to US web developers. It does not affect other developers.”
In fact, it could affect them all. Let's see how it can start:
1. Once Firefox drops below the 2% threshold in government analytics, USWDS will instruct government developers that they no longer need to support Firefox.
2. Once word gets out, it will spread quickly not only to the front-end developer community but also to the corporate IT departments that some web developers work for. Many companies do a lot of business with the government, so what the government does will affect what the companies do.
3. Companies will see this change as an opportunity to reduce programming costs and lead times, as it will provide a very good excuse for leaving certain tests (and in rare cases, specific coding) out of the development workflow.
Hope that Mozilla browser adoption rates will skyrocket in 2024. It's the browser I've been using for years and I wouldn't want to lose it.
