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Chrome browser for businesses

enterprise.google.com

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Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#221

Post by Silhouette »

johnward wrote: post #181
neiled wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does Dev stop, but the people that built the app, agreed on the specs and really understood it, all left too. Auto update is unfortunately something that's just not worth the risk in a lot of cases.

With web apps there should be very little risk if you followed standards. The problem is most of these places chose to follow IE6 instead of standards. They will put this off until it becomes a major issue or someone else takes their business. By know I've left banks of terrible client facing systems but internal enn efficiencies are even obvious. It took almost 8 weeks, multiple in person visits, and a freaking type…

With web apps there should be very little risk if you followed standards.

There should be very little risk, but the fact is, there is actually a great deal of risk. With my professional web developer hat on, the "evergreen" browsers are the best advertisement in the history of computing for why organisations that need reliability in their IT systems should be wary of automated updates controlled by outside parties.

Browser updates break stuff all the time. And not just obscure things, though there are plenty of those. On the small scale, I've seen Chrome updates break basic page layout, and rendering styles as simple as rounded corners or shadow effects. On the larger scale, Chrome sometimes removes entire chunks of functionality, like support for important plugins. New features are often the worst, and it's particularly insulting to be told we should all use HTML5 feature X or JS feature Y instead of plugins, when the reality is that the new version still isn't up to doing what the plugin did a decade ago.

Businesses don't care that it's more convenient for the browser developers if everyone rearranges their entire work schedules to keep up with the latest "living standards". Businesses just want software that works, and having found it, they will go to extraordinary lengths to continue using it rather than playing the upgrade lottery. And given the track records of most of the upgraders in this game, frankly, it's hard to blame them.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#222

Post by gkop »

Manishearth wrote: post #71
twblalock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I can tell you from experience, they don't work all of the time, and it is a source of frustration for front-end developers I know who need to work with it.

You're not supposed to use the webkit prefixes. The only reason firefox has them is because some older websites will stop working. Most of them have equivalent standardized features, or are in a state where you really shouldn't be using them. Don't expect every webkit prefix to work in Firefox.

I'm not sure we're supposed to think about prefixes at all, but instead just let https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer do its thing.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#223

Post by bitmapbrother »

pjmlp wrote: post #63
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.

Yet somehow many thought that the cynic ones of us where wrong and Google would be different. Our opinions are based on life experience, watching the same cycles unfold time and time again. The next one will be the demise of open source ideals after everyone has migrated away from GPL for everything but the Linux kernel. I will give it around 10 years for it to happen.

Open source ideals defined by who? Richard Stallman? True open source is code that you can do whatever you want with it. When Google releases their code it's under what I consider the true ideals for open source software and not some license that threatens legal action if you don't release your modifications.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#224

Post by dispose13432 »

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…

>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.

So why don't they have two browsers - one for internal use only (IE6), which is firewalled to only internal network shares and another browser (Chrome, whatever) which can only go to the real internet?

At least that way you'll be browsing the wild internet safely.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#225

Post by bitmapbrother »

ktta wrote: post #9

I think most interesting part of all this is that they're offering support for this[1]. So that and it now being a part of G suite is making it an 'official' service/product. And since Chromium browser is an open source browser which receives many contributions from many developers[2], this will add Google to the list of companies which take contributions from OSS and make money off it. Please correct me if I'm wrong…

Chromium is funded by Google and nearly all of the modifications and security updates are by Google employee's. So to imply that Google should not profit from an open source browser they bankroll and maintain is beyond ridiculous.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#226

Post by bitmapbrother »

ktta wrote: post #9

I think most interesting part of all this is that they're offering support for this[1]. So that and it now being a part of G suite is making it an 'official' service/product. And since Chromium browser is an open source browser which receives many contributions from many developers[2], this will add Google to the list of companies which take contributions from OSS and make money off it. Please correct me if I'm wrong…

One more thing, the majority of Linux contributions are from employee's that work for major corporations that use Linux.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#227

Post by Silhouette »

tomelders wrote: post #122
dingaling wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is a weak argument. The problem here is that companies think that software can exist in some sort of "done" state, where no further updates or development is required. That has never been true. The hardware and software changes. The infrastructure it connects to changes. But most importantly, your workflows must evolve if you are to remain efficient. If you roll your own software, you either commit to co…

The hardware and software changes. The infrastructure it connects to changes. But most importantly, your workflows must evolve if you are to remain efficient.

All true, but in a larger organisation with all the overheads and co-ordination that entails, you're looking for a pace of change measured in years, not weeks. You have better things to do than constantly redoing work you already did because software changes, and IT systems that aren't set up accordingly are simply failing to meet one of the most basic business requirements for being useful.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#228

Post by ktta »

ktta wrote: post #9

I think most interesting part of all this is that they're offering support for this[1]. So that and it now being a part of G suite is making it an 'official' service/product. And since Chromium browser is an open source browser which receives many contributions from many developers[2], this will add Google to the list of companies which take contributions from OSS and make money off it. Please correct me if I'm wrong…

Apparently my comment looks like I'm criticizing Google for making money off OSS projects. That is NOT what I meant to do.

I like companies that make companies that open source their commercial products. It means they aren't paranoid of someone 'stealing' their work, like so many other companies do so. And that they realize the power of open source. I'm NOT against people making money from open source projects. The only word I used to describe my opinion is 'interesting'.

I am aware of companies that also have OSS as their main/major revenue like Nginx, Redis Labs, and ofcourse the big one, Red hat. Even Ubuntu is a such a company and I like them.

I thought it was 'interesting' because till now I saw google as this black box which never open sourced anything other than some tiny tool which wasn't related to their revenue source. That changed a bit when they open sourced Kubernetes and Tensorflow, but that was possibly because they would benefit from adoption.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#229

Post by mburst »

gajjanag wrote: post #205
illumin8 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean this is a good practice. In fact, I would argue that this type of thinking has created far more harm than good for both the IT industry as well as the companies that adopt this harmful practice. Case in point: many of these same companies that refuse to upgrade systems for a decade or more are still running Windows XP and Server 2003. Due to the negligence of their IT leadership, they are now vulner…

> That doesn't mean this is a good practice. In fact, I would argue that this type of thinking has created far more harm than good for both the IT industry as well as the companies that adopt this harmful practice. > Case in point: many of these same companies that refuse to upgrade systems for a decade or more are still running Windows XP and Server 2003. Due to the negligence of their IT leadership, they are now vu…

Not that I'm arguing for or against auto-updating, but I'd say Windows XP fits the bill for a vendor maintaining an LTS and yet people are still on that. LTS versions need to die at some point too.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#230

Post by Manishearth »

gkop wrote: post #222
Manishearth wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not supposed to use the webkit prefixes. The only reason firefox has them is because some older websites will stop working. Most of them have equivalent standardized features, or are in a state where you really shouldn't be using them. Don't expect every webkit prefix to work in Firefox.

I'm not sure we're supposed to think about prefixes at all, but instead just let https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer do its thing.

So yeah, using prefixes to make props work on older browsers is fine. Using only the prefixed version of a property or a property that doesn't have an unprefixed version at all is not.
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