eli5 Why do some websites work on specific browsers? For example Chrome and not Firefox.

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eli5 Why do some websites work on specific browsers? For example Chrome and not Firefox.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s something called “W3C,” which stands for “Word Wide Web Consortium,” think of it kind of like a web Illuminati, but instead of controlling governments it’s a bunch of nerds that decide how HTML should work. They decide on a “specification,” which basically outlines things like “if a programmer types `<img src=”someURL” />`” a web browser should display an image.

Here’s where the problem starts. The specification is just a text document, and it’s up to each browser developer to decide how they want to implement it in code. This can result in:

* Different browser implementing things slightly differently or interpreting the spec differently, producing slightly different output.
* Browser developers adding extra features that aren’t in the spec, usually so they can prototype out these features for a later proposal to add them to the official spec. These features might be handy enough web developers start to use them before they’re official, meaning that website will only work in the browser that implemented them.
* Deprecation. Technology changes, we learn more about how users behave, and we learn more about how developers can work more efficiently every day. Sometimes the way the spec was built 10 years ago isn’t how modern users/developers need websites to work these days, so new features are added, but old features are also taken away. When a feature is taken away, it’s called being “deprecated.” Some websites are older and they can’t afford (or are too cheap to) upgrade their site, so the old code can only run on older/certain browser that still supports the deprecated code.

There are probably a few more, but these are the main ones.

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