I built campaign sites for the automotive industry. Always felt wrong. Was asked to pitch for a client in the petroleum industry and declined. That felt great.
I think this is extremely common in payed-by-the-hour scenarios, when the person doing the tasks aren't on-site.
I also think most people are aware that's the case, and are fine with it since they've got an estimate that they've approved. The estimate was good enough to justify the business value so they expect to pay the full hours.
Letting people know you need more time is probably a bigger issue.
The artist in question has been pioneering online interactive experiences for years, and through his work (and possibly directly) helped shape the APIs and prompt browser adoption of new standards used.
If you get a "use chrome" message, it's most likely not because the artist is evil, but rather that the experience used tech only available in chrome at the time the work was done.
As an artist, the whole point is to keep exploring and creating. It's not the same as a 9 to 5 where you maintain a company website etc. Going back and adjusting the flow for each experience would be the equivalent of asking pavers to go back and add a bit of plastic to each section of concrete they've laid down for the last five years.
I think the strong reaction comes from the fact that this change was sprung with very little, if any, warning.
On a serious note; I'm not sure why my comments get down voted? Are there guidelines against sarcasm, or is it just people with lots of karma that simply don't like that I like js?