The Vagueries of Browsers

I have—or should I say I had—four browsers loaded on my laptop. Why, you ask? Because NONE OF THEM work consistently with all websites I visit.

Being a Mac user, for the longest time I was using Safari exclusively. I like how it automatically offers to pop in those two-factor authentication numbers that come in via text when you're logging into certain websites—because, of course, it's integrated with Apple Messages.

For a while I was using the new Microsoft Edge. It's built on Chrome, but it doesn't seem to be the annoying memory hog (or data harvester) that Chrome has proven itself to be. It also allows me to use certain Chrome extensions (like ad blockers) that Safari does not.

Many years ago I used to be a Firefox apostle, but I found it refused to play nice with—or in some cases even open—certain websites. I finally abandoned it for that reason. Too much of a hassle. (Come to think of it, I had the same issue with Safari years ago and that's what led me to Chrome.)

I was discussing these browser issues with a friend of mine a few weeks ago and he said he was firmly in the Firefox camp and found it incredulous that I wasn't—if only because of the built-in security in the browser. He said most of the issues I'd been complaining about from years past had been long since resolved and that I should give it another try.

I took him up on his suggestion, and have been happy with the decision. While it doesn't meet all of my needs consistently, it does it enough that I removed Edge and Chrome.

What led me to this post, however, is a quirk I noticed when posting video clips. In Safari, Chrome, and Edge, when I post videos, they just appear as black boxes with the play button in the center. There's no preview, or "poster image" displayed, necessitating the need for me to add one manually in WordPress.

Firefox, however, displays the videos with the preview already in place, not only when I'm composing the posts, but also when they're published—something none of the other browsers did.

Granted, I still have to manually add a poster image for the maximum compatibility for my readers, but it's still cool to know that it's not needed if you're using Firefox exclusively.