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Firefox

Firefox is the secondary browser in this setup, used for cross-browser testing. Its Gecko rendering engine behaves differently from Chrome's Blink in edge cases related to CSS layout, form behaviour, and JavaScript APIs.

It is installed through Homebrew and declared in the project Brewfile.

Installation

It is part of the curated Homebrew environment; see Homebrew setup to install everything at once.

Install Firefox directly:

brew install --cask firefox

Verify the installation:

brew list --cask | grep -x firefox

Cross-browser testing workflow

Use Firefox as a second pass after validating the golden path in Chrome:

  1. Open the page in Firefox.
  2. Check layout consistency (Grid, Flexbox, custom properties).
  3. Check form behaviour (date inputs, validation messages).
  4. Check font rendering and scroll behaviour.
  5. Run the accessibility inspector.

Firefox DevTools inspecting a simple documentation page

DevTools highlights

Firefox DevTools include tools not available in Chrome:

Tool Location
Grid Inspector Elements → Grid overlay — visualises CSS Grid lines and areas
Flexbox Inspector Elements → Flex overlay — shows flex item alignment
Accessibility Inspector Accessibility tab — full accessibility tree with role and name
Font Inspector Inspector → Fonts — shows the resolved font stack

Usage policy

Use Firefox for testing only. Do not synchronise a personal Firefox account to the test browser instance. Keep personal browsing in a separate profile or browser to avoid mixing usage data.

Rollback

Remove Firefox with Homebrew:

brew uninstall --cask firefox

Then remove its entry from profiles/full/Brewfile.

Firefox profile data lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox and is not removed by the cask uninstall.

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