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Chrome browser for businesses

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Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#111

Post by donatj »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #88
alkonaut wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing how we see web apps as the solution to deployment woes. I miss proper custom desktop apps with horrible looking cluttered interfaces. Soo productive compared to any web based interface for almost all tasks.

>I miss proper custom desktop apps with horrible looking cluttered interfaces. Soo productive compared to any web based interface for almost all tasks. You mean where everything runs on the UI thread? Gotta pass on that. :)

In my experiences being forced to use various SPAs from various venders, more often than not async just means I need to behave single threaded rather than the app lest I wish to trigger race conditions that desync the local model and I end up having to hard refresh.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#112

Post by fbender »

satysin wrote: post #51
krzyk wrote: post #18

Is this about replacing one monopoly with another? It is slowly starting too look like in the early 00's, most developers are starting to support only chrome, with no testing in Firefox or latest IE. On Android it is even worse, no one is testing with Firefox Mobile (Fennec) - this is WinXP-IE6 all over again.

I was a long time Firefox user until the start of this year. I think I started using Pheonix as my main browser around 0.5 or 0.6. However over the years Firefox has got heavier and slower and taken way too long to evolve. It sucked when I realised I hadn't opened Firefox for a whole month. Now I just stay in Chrome as it is, for me, the best browsing experience. It is fast and looks good. It might be a large program…

Firefox slowness is often related to some bad-behaving extension (though that improved over time), some AV software hijacking the process (happens far too often and way harder to detect than it should), or some busted profiles with a lot of cruft that failed to be cleaned up automatically (re: bad behaving extensions). I advise you to try the Firefox DevEdition (which uses a separate profile by default) and check if it works for you. You can also get rid of your old profile or try to reset it (preserving some data).

Money isn't necessarily the issue for Mozilla, they managed to create a decent browser with a fraction of the big player's budget. As always, it's the triangle of complexity and time and manpower, they just can't fight on all fronts at once. At the moment, they are trying to get rid of a lot of legacy that prevented them from improving some aspects of the system (see project e10s, WebExtensions, etc.) all while preserving as much of the ecosystem as possible – which is very hard due to the current extension system that was created more than 10 years ago and just doesn't fit the bill anymore. E.g. e10s is already going on for 5 years or so and it just started rolling out a few months ago.

Good news is that with these projects completing (improving overall responsiveness), there's a huge new project starting (Project Quantum) that aims to overhaul major parts of the rendering engine. This will integrate a lot of the research and investment poured into Rust and Servo, which will probably outrun current browsers by an order of magnitude (at least in some aspects that has already been shown, see WebRender).

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#113

Post by cmdrfred »

majewsky wrote: post #104
alkonaut wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't orgs just use multiple browsers to reduce risk? With some monitoring of which clients are used, one could remove e.g ie8 support once it's established that every internal product has been used long enough with ie10

This works reasonably well for applications that are used daily or weekly (deprecation notifications help). But then, after you phased out IE8 after months of no problems with IE10, during the holiday period the accountant tries to close the yearly accounts, finds that the form does not work with IE10, and hell breaks loose.

Can't you just build on HTML and JavaScript api's that are widely utilized and accepted? I know before I call something I'm unfamiliar with I'll look up what browsers support it. Most of the problems with IE versions have to do with plugins be it ActiveX or a Java applet. In my mind that isn't a web app but an application packed in a web browser (often so the consultants can call it a web app, "you go to a website to lauch it, see?”)

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#114

Post by di4na »

roblev wrote: post #67
jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

For many organisations there is a real risk that a browser update will unexpectedly break a key internal application, which could have a catastrophic impact on operations. The vast majority of large companies will control and test key software updates, balancing the various risks (security patches, obsolescence, operational incidents..). Not allowing auto-updating to be controlled basically means that the software is…

my personal take on it : the most you break it, the most you may get money to fix the shit.

So contrary. Guerilla IT. You push for auto update so that they get a motivation to clean shit.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#115

Post by donatj »

dingaling wrote: post #73
jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

Companies have far too much internal plumbing to permit browsers to auto-update themselves. Being feature-compatible with the latest SV-poster-child website is insignificant compared to maintaining stability for the tax-management team's internal web app. I was once involved in an IE6 -> IE8 upgrade for a Fortune 100 corporation. It took nine months to analyze all the possible impacts and implement mitigations before…

At my previous company we used IE8 for the internal crap, and up to date Chrome for everything else.

Basically all the issues the internal junk had stemmed from JavaScript; they were JUST forms! No legitimate need for JS.

If you just need a form, just build a simple POSTing without any JS. It will stand the test of time. A simple form from 1996 will still work today. A livescript enabled form from 1996 however almost certainly will not.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#116

Post by fbender »

donatj wrote: post #80
krzyk wrote: post #18

Is this about replacing one monopoly with another? It is slowly starting too look like in the early 00's, most developers are starting to support only chrome, with no testing in Firefox or latest IE. On Android it is even worse, no one is testing with Firefox Mobile (Fennec) - this is WinXP-IE6 all over again.

We test on browsers we see more than 1% usage on by rule. This includes a swath of versions and platforms of IE, Chrome, Firefox, Edge as well as some foreign ones I know little about like UCBrowser. Firefox Mobile does not meet that rule for us. I know personally a single person who uses it, and that's only because he's fiercely anti-Google. There's just little sense testing against something no one is using, lest w…

Well, if nobody tests it, the browser doesn't stand a chance because it does not work on many sites. It's a vicious circle …

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#117

Post by FLUX-YOU »

alkonaut wrote: post #101
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I miss proper custom desktop apps with horrible looking cluttered interfaces. Soo productive compared to any web based interface for almost all tasks. You mean where everything runs on the UI thread? Gotta pass on that. :)

Not necessarily - although that's usually fine. I prefer a non responsive UI when waiting for io/db, to a poorly implemented background execution where you aren't sure anything is actually happening.

> I prefer a non responsive UI when waiting for io/db, to a poorly implemented background execution where you aren't sure anything is actually happening.

You can't be sure anything is happening on a locked desktop app either though, so at least you can close it gracefully if it's doing that on another thread

IME customers close stuff if Windows shows "Not Responding" but not if you just have a fake progress bar.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#118

Post by Nux »

Freak_NL wrote: post #82
roblev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many organisations there is a real risk that a browser update will unexpectedly break a key internal application, which could have a catastrophic impact on operations. The vast majority of large companies will control and test key software updates, balancing the various risks (security patches, obsolescence, operational incidents..). Not allowing auto-updating to be controlled basically means that the software is…

I prefer Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR)¹ for this though. Every year (currently in March) the current normal Firefox version (that does auto-update) is forked for a new ESR support cycle and made available for acceptance. Three months later if all is stable, it replaces the previous ESR release series, and for a year corporate IT gets a browser that will only be updated with critical (security) updates; no ne…

Looking at all these "enterprise" horror stories, I don't think ESR's 1 year is nearly enough.

3 or 5 years might be more suitable.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#119

Post by fbender »

lhaussknecht wrote: post #75

We already deployed chrome in the enterise to run our Chrome packaged app. Too bad Google EOLed packaged apps....

ServiceWorker/Progressive Web Apps is the way to go. Works in any* browser.

* Any modern and recent browser, so no Safari support, at least until summer '17.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#120

Post by tomelders »

jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

My first thoughts exactly.

My work has increasingly become creating software for enterprise clients. They all want it to be delivered through the browser. Over time, chrome has become the primary target because its simply unfeasible to target IE. Organisations have bizarre and arcane rules for who gets which versions of IE, so it inevitably leads to developing for the lowest common denominator, which in turn leads to disgruntled clients who see some fancy feature on the web and can't understand why we can't give them the same thing in the time and budget they've allocated. Now, we generally say we'll target chrome and provide "some" support for IE.

But I absolutely guarantee that an orgs IT dept will seize this opportunity to convolute and complicate who gets which versions of Chrome.

And its all for nought. In my experience, IT departments cite vague security requirements, but when you scratch the surface there's typically no security at all. For example, at one company who really does need strong security policies, it was common knowledge that you could circumvent their stupid auth process by opening the task manager and quitting the process. You could also open up the developer tools console and send whatever requests you wanted to any service because features were enabled and disabled in the UI only.

My point is, IT departments in my experience only talk about security and use it as an excuse to do bizarre stuff that looks smart, but is generally the opposite.

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