Dude. I've been following your blog for years, and in that time I've gotten sicker and sicker of your anti-every-other-browser-maker-but-Mozilla flamebait. I'm done now. Good riddance.

I entirely agree, Ryan. If you haven't noticed, Asa is actually a detriment to the marketing of Firefox. Were he to adopt a more positive tone and discuss the pros of Firefox rather than his constant bashing of other browsers, he might actually achieve something. Bottom line: typical Asa negativity. I'm just surprised we haven't had our daily bashing of Opera yet.

Yet you obviously keep on reading :)

That's weird. I've been reading Asa's increasingly negative and "ours is better" style posts for quite a while now, getting more and more bored of it. As I'm about to remove this feed from Google Reader I thought that I'll make a comment - turns out I'm not the only one that feels this way.

I thought I was part of a larger team of volunteers building and promoting a great Web browser, to make the Web a better place. Through our collective work, I'm making the Internet better for everyone.

But now that I've read your post, why do that? I could just reach for my inner fanboy and begin channeling hatred and mockery towards all things Not What They Should Be.

Civility -1.

The fact that some (myself included obviously) have continued to read Asa's blog has nothing to do with the value of his comments. You might liken it to one's inability to look away rather than stare at an accident. It's almost as though you're wondering: Is he capable of anything positive or is it all just bash, bash, bash? And then, of course, there are the comments from many here who represent the good things about Firefox without the negativity Asa projects. By simply boycotting his blog we would cut ourselves off from their contributions. But frankly, I've just about reached my own limit of what I can stomach. I've ditched his blog once before and managed to stay off for half a year. This time....???

Oh Boo-hoo. If you don't like what I write, then go away. You're not going to convince me to write differently so stop wasting your time.

"Poor poor Microsoft and Apple and Google. Asa won't stop bashing them. He's so mean to those nice corporations it just makes me want to cry."

What. Ever.

You're really a piece of work, Dotzler. I'm outta here as well but in the meantime, I'll do what little I can do to dissuade others from giving your site any more credence than it deserves (which is pretty much zero).

Wow. Amazing. Just amazing.
Imagine the type of World that we'd live in if nobody spoke their mind and stood up especially for those without a voice or audience. No democracies, no equality or fairness, everything would be dictated by only those with money and power from money.

Let's take this on first. I'm legally blind. I and millions of others benefit from Mozilla's EXTRA actions taken to ensure that Firefox is as accessible as possible to as many people as possible regardless of ability, financial status, culture or language. I've seen NO other browser or company as committed as they are to do such a thing which is much harder and more time consuming to do than to just manufacture a product that will be usable to a certain demographic.

Now who is going to listen to just me and support me in my calls for action for companies, sites, and services to provide an equal opportunity to me to be able to access and use their products as freely as others are able to? No one. No one will listen to me.
Asa is doing the right thing, and the responsible thing.

It's no secret that readership for this blog is huge, and so Asa has an opportunity to shine a bright light on a serious issue that no one else is addressing or no one that we know of because they don't have the same luxury of being able to expose such a thing to as many people as Asa does.

Apple and Google should be ashamed and I'm sure that they won't dig press like this, but perhaps it'll get some things rolling within those companies and things will change which I believe is Asa's primary motive for posting this at all.
If you see him as just browser bashing and can't see the bigger picture, then no, you shouldn't bother following this blog any longer and I hope that you don't because I won't have to waste my time explaining things to you.

I don't understand how people consider stating the facts as browser bashing anyway. It's not like I've ever read Asa write, Opera sucks! (or) All browsers suck except Firefox. If he was writing fictitious content, that would be one thing and he'd have no readers or credibility but I don't see him being called out on the facts. I only see people shooting the messenger because they don't like what he's saying.

First thing on http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html claims to be accessibility. (I can't tell if that's true, I have no Mac and honestly don't like Apple all that much.) I wouldn't really blame Apple all that much - for them, the primary (and really, the only relevant) platform is Mac, where there seems to be some support. Of course, Chrome wouldn't have that excuse.

Incidentally, how is IE (6/7/8) compared to Firefox on Windows? A hundred million ways of awesome?

[Offtopic: I do find that "Windows Native Look" and "Windows Font Rendering" being listed on that Apple page to be amusing.]

Ken, thanks for your comment.

I'll admit to being a bit angry when I posted this. It shocked me to see how little respect that Apple and Google had for people with disabilities. I use a Mac almost exclusively and I use Google web apps all the time -- and as a user of their products and an Open Web advocate I feel quite OK calling out the almost unfathomable lack of content accessibility support in their browsers.

Maybe it is bashing.

If it is, then some things are worth bashing and I think that disrespecting people with disabilities falls in that bucket for me.

- A

Mook, IE on Windows is doing quite well. They're trailing Firefox, but it's clear they're actually trying to get this right.

I'd imagine that since they have to worry about institutional deployment and since it's their own API they need to work through, it's a priority for them.

With WebKit on Windows, it is obviously just not a priority.

- A

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12132

"Poor poor Microsoft and Apple and Google. Asa won't stop bashing them. He's so mean to those nice corporations it just makes me want to cry."

typical Asa Dotzler's way of pulling fictitious nonsense craps out of nowhere and trying to put them in other's mouth. a very poor attempt at that too.

What. Ever. Indeed.

Ethan, yes, that appears to be the WebKit bug that's gone almost completely without action except from the reporter, Aaron Leventhal, who has been Mozilla's accessibility advocate and lead for about a decade.

- A

Yet, there is a LOT more to accessibility than a few tags. Yet that is not in the least important. Normal Asa.

The fact that Safari is a mess of DX expensive effects which consumes 90MB per tab also tells that apple does not care for people with weaker hardware.

About Chrome, well, it's just a barebones windows around webkit.

There are two ways to go about making yourself look better, actually being better or trying to make the other guy look worse. One is positive campaigning, one is negative.

Mozilla is doing good things, why tarnish it by lowering yourself to bashing others? People, like myself come here to see what's going on with Mozilla, what's new, what's hot, advancements made, not to read drive by bashings, headlines that make Apple look like they are against people with disabilities, which you know just isn't true. Maybe their software isn't up to snuff, maybe it's not priority one for them, but come on, a little bit of common sense goes a long way.

It's low level sensationalism that you expect from news outlets and politicians. For those with half a brain, we see right through it for what it is, you can make your point without bashing. The headline could have just as easily been, Mozilla leads the way for sight impaired browsing, or something else along those lines.

It's about promoting what you've done, not making outlandish accusations about why someone else hasn't, people expect more. You can argue all you want that this is your forum and you have the right to write anyway you see fit, and that's true, but it doesn't make everyone else wrong. Everyone can benefit from a little bit of critiquing every now and then.

-just a reader

"Poor poor Microsoft and Apple and Google. Asa won't stop bashing them. He's so mean to those nice corporations it just makes me want to cry."

Yeah, that's not really what we were getting at. But you're free to believe it if it helps raise your blood pressure.

While I do think when it comes to accessibility and support for WAI ARIA in particular, Mozilla leads the pack and Microsoft is doing good work (some may think suprisingly), all browser vendors are making an effort to support WAI ARIA and in the process improving the general accessibility of their browsers and web content to Assistive Technology.
But as the results for MAC browsers show: WAI-ARIA role support - How the MAC browsers stack up (http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=123) Firefox WAI-ARIA role support on MAC is 0. This does not mean that Mozilla are not interested in blind users on MAC, it means they still have work to do on an emerging standard. (still in last call at W3C).

"headlines that make Apple look like they are against people with disabilities"

Well they (and Google) are certainly not showing that they are concerned about people with disabilities.

Mozilla has set a precedent with its advocacy for accessibility and their source code is no secret so there is no excuse for other browser makers to CHOOSE to exclude the readily available resources and knowledge for them to include in their browsers for persons with disabilities, and they are free to tap the brains of Mozilla's developers who work on accessibility.

What possible reasons could Apple and Google come up with for excluding modern accessibility technology in their applications?
It's too costly? Well, Mozilla takes in a tad bit less revenue then they do.
The technology doesn't exists? It does in Firefox.
We just don't feel like it. Ah, I appreciate honesty over bulls**t any day.

There's is a choice so it can be seen as intentionally excluding persons with disabilities and if they're not careful, they could be seeing law suits like the one that Target went through.

Okay, I am Blind, all of my interaction on the web is ultimately Jaws based. Seems all the major browsers work about the same to me. The problems I encounter are mostly in the scripting and page format. For a browser to claim any sense of accessibility it would have to correct these errors. Unfortunately I don't "see" any of them stepping up to re-write every page out there. I hate to tell you, all this banter of, this browser or that browser is really a moot point until the most basic of issues is addressed, uniform code, scripting and all that other geek stuff. Even upon these things being addressed... with out the addition of something similar to Jaws or the likes integrated into the browser itself, they will never be more than a tool for my Real assistive software to use. If you wish to experience the web blind while testing each browser separately, http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/wa.php is a assistive technology that loads and allows you to surf and such in any of the browsers. Oh yeah, don't forget to close your eyes. Point Being, a browser is nothing more then what a blind persons software makes of it. And at this point of my blindness, Ai squared, Freedom Scientific and the likes make the web and computers accessible to the blind. If you could, explain to this blind dude exactly how names like Mozilla, Appel, Google or any of them can make a difference in this arena? If there is not a voice telling me my point of focus I can't pass go