Live data from Hacker News

The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

blog.runspired.com

91–100 of 230 posts

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#91
Mobile Chrome performs much better than mobile Safari on my iPhone 5s. I'm not sure why, because as far as I know, they use the same rendering engine. But, for the javascript on some sites, Safari will hit a brick wall and Chrome will keep sailing smoothly.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#92
post #50

> I've learned the hard way that Chrome is the new IE. I started having similar thoughts when seeing sites that require Chrome because they use some (admittedly awesome) new browser feature that's not yet standard. It's given me flashbacks to the days where people used ActiveX for some accessory feature out of "coolness" when they could have had a slightly less fancy site but which would work across browsers.

It's not unusual to visit a site (often something neglected but really important, like a support website), and find it simply doesn't load in Firefox.

Then I open it in Chrome and it works. And it's clear which browser the developers tested the site against.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#93
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is also the only desktop browser that can handle my "power user" web browsing style. Chrome completely falls over after a few dozen tabs are opened. Firefox holds up better, but still starts starts stuttering when it gets to 80–100 tabs. Safari keeps going fine with several hundred tabs. Edit: For the folks who are apparently offended by my browser use, I’ll elaborate: Why would anyone want a large number of t…

Several hundred tabs? Dear god

Aka The User is Wrong

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#94
post #56

"Chrome is 3x to 300x slower than Safari." This would not surprise me. I have a 2009 MBP with 4G RAM. Performance issues become very obvious with low spec hardware. Safari is incredibly snappy, complex pages like amazon.com scroll smoothly with no effort. This old machine actually feels new in that scenario. The only concern I have about Safari is that Apple's security patches seem to come at a slow pace.

I'm suprised by all this safari love in 2016. Working in front end web development, Safari has become the IE of today. Compatability and support for otherwise common web technologies is just plain broken.

Safari is slow to adopt new features, yes, but the features it has work properly and everything runs snappily.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#95

I think this article is missing the idea of the browser hype cycle (Every 4-5 years): 1. A cool new browser comes along promising a minimal featureset with a focus on speed. 2. Early adopters make the move and start asking for a few features they liked on their old browser (extensions, some customization, etc). 3. The new browser is excited by the growth opportunity and invests in said features. 4. Eventually, the ne…

That hype cycle seems to affect most things. Ubuntu originally appeared on my radar as a stripped down fast version of Debain with a focus on UI. Now its probably the most bloated Linux desktop I have tried.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#97
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a "hype cycle" can only exist where the OS supports integration of 3rd party browsers (desktop only). On mobile devices you can rarely switch browsers without losing access to major parts of the OS (read: 3rd party browsers can render/view web pages, but forget about integration).

>On mobile devices you can rarely switch browsers without losing access to major parts of the OS You mean "on iOS", not on mobile devices in general. On Android at least all such integration is done with Intents, a broadcast message from the OS or one app to another, and those Intents can be remapped to target whatever app a user wants, meaning a third-party browser can be as integrated into the OS as Chrome. You can…

>You mean "on iOS", not on mobile devices in general.

Also on FirefoxOS and ChromeOS where third party browsers aren't possible at all.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#98
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Windows user, and one thing I dislike about Chrome on Windows is the text rendering. Here is a screenshot of some text from the Google Play store rendered in IE, Firefox and Chrome. Click the image to see it in its full size: http://imgur.com/yYKSNBB Firefox looks the best to me; Chrome the worst. IE is not great either, but it is better at larger font sizes than Chrome (IMO). You might argue that the differenc…

I have a CRT monitor, and Windows 8 font rendering is overall TERRIBLE on it, as in, heavily aliased AND full of colour fringes. So I installed MacType, only to find that Chrome has two ways to render fonts, and both are extremely wonky, I spent like 30 minutes tweaking MacType to my tastes, and then 3 hours re-tweaking it to make Chrome behave properly, it was a serious pain.

> I have a CRT monitor

Sorry, I have to bite. Why?!?

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#99
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome was (probably still is) the only usable browser left on Windows, but I never used it or had to use it ever since I switched to Macs a few years ago. Aside from the plugins ecosystem (which I don't need) Safari works infinitely better (loads faster, uses less resources, even with 100s of tabs, and has nice little features like the Reading List, Reading Mode, Force-Touch Peek and so on) and fits into the OS X lo…

I use Firefox on all my platforms (Linux, Windows, OSX, Android). It's fine.

Firefox has been a memory hog for the last few years. Enough that I switched to Chrome, only to find it was just as bad.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#100

I refuse to use Safari on iOS until they stop hiding the full URL on every web site. Shouldn't take too long, someone will soon figure out how to abuse it for successful phishing attacks.

Is there an example of such an attack?

I thought the point of this was to make phishing less likely by making you focus on the domain name you're on.

Post reply on HN