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Chrome breaks the Web

tonsky.me

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Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#101

Post by Klathmon »

ksk wrote: post #94
Klathmon wrote: post #16

To be honest as a user, I'm glad they made this change, even though as a developer it might be a pain in the ass for a day or 2. Scrolling on the mobile web sucked for a long time. Yes, updating the default broke many things, but the scope of that breakage was fairly limited in the grand scheme of things (like the author said, sliders, maps, touch-and-draggable things like lists are the biggest impacted, stuff like "…

How is it good for the user if it breaks the website?

The same way getting your flu shot can make you feel worse for a bit, but can prevent you from getting the flu which will make you feel worse for much longer, and it can help prevent others around you from getting the flu.

Yes, it breaks some websites, and for those users in that moment things might be worse, but it is making the web better for significantly more people, and even the users affected aren't really "impacted" by it in most cases (generally only seeing "sticky" headers warp around while scrolling outside of a few specific types of applications).

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#102

Post by emodendroket »

dhimes wrote: post #90
KeitIG wrote: post #9

> they made all top-level event listeners passive by default. They call it “an intervention”. This is my very problem with Chrome/Chromium right now. The Chrome team does assumption on how things "should" be (in a highly subjective way) and breaks the web. Another example: they decided to ignore the value of `autocomplete` attributes on ` ` tags [1], because: > The tricky part here is that somewhere along the journey…

They've also done something so threatening to users' security that I can't take them seriously on the issue. They've been doing it for years, they refuse to change, and it makes me conclude that they fundamentally don't understand the problem. Every update of chrome erases their password manager entries. So for every site their password has to be re-entered. Why is that dangerous? Because that means that my cousins a…

> Every update of chrome erases their password manager entries.

That has not been my experience.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#103

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

artursapek wrote: post #95
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It it were lisp, java, or erlang I'd still be pissed. The web should not have a client-side scripting language.

You never use or benefit from any web apps that take advantage of javascript?

I almost never use web apps that couldn't be done without JavaScript.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#104

Post by emodendroket »

chii wrote: post #26
Klathmon wrote: post #16

To be honest as a user, I'm glad they made this change, even though as a developer it might be a pain in the ass for a day or 2. Scrolling on the mobile web sucked for a long time. Yes, updating the default broke many things, but the scope of that breakage was fairly limited in the grand scheme of things (like the author said, sliders, maps, touch-and-draggable things like lists are the biggest impacted, stuff like "…

> "polyfill" that reverted the change that site owners could use as a stop-gap until they could properly update their apps to work correctly then the site owners would just use the polyfill indefinitely, since it now works again. THe more expensive option of rewriting to conform is not going to give return on investment. This is why breaking a bad thing is needed - the suffering has to happen. It's like getting the f…

Except that millions of sites will not ever be fixed; they'll just be broken indefinitely.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#105

Post by ksk »

saas_co_de wrote: post #84
KeitIG wrote: post #9

> they made all top-level event listeners passive by default. They call it “an intervention”. This is my very problem with Chrome/Chromium right now. The Chrome team does assumption on how things "should" be (in a highly subjective way) and breaks the web. Another example: they decided to ignore the value of `autocomplete` attributes on ` ` tags [1], because: > The tricky part here is that somewhere along the journey…

> does assumption on how things "should" be (in a highly subjective way) They claim they are making these decisions based on user data which I have no reason to doubt. > and breaks the web. Breaks crap websites that are broken already from performance and usability perspective. I personally think this is exactly what is needed to make the web better as a whole. Individual developers working for individual companies a…

We all would like to see this "user data" and make up our own mind. Is the whole open source thing just a gimmick for Google?

>Individual developers working for individual companies are rarely if ever thinking about the good of their users, except in a very narrow profit motivated sense, and never thinking about the good of the ecosystem as a whole.

>Google is also "breaking the web" by not auto playing videos, not allowing alerts in one tab to block the entire browser, etc. Those all seem like good things to me.

Its interesting that you're calling for a browser to not implement standards.

In any case, an advertising company would be the last entity who I would trust to do anything "good" with regards to the web.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#106

Post by bzbarsky »

criddell wrote: post #43
breakingcups wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's bad behaviour to rely on browser user agents instead of feature detection. It's what led to IE-only sites and is currently leading to Chrome-only sites.

Are there Chrome-only sites? I'm sure they exist on LANs, but are there public sites that only work with Chrome?

> Are there Chrome-only sites?

Yes, very much so. Especially on mobile, where UA-sniffing is rife.

Here's a very much non-exhaustive sample:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1047854

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975444

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322001

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=958575

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1020740

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1232656

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1377499

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1393109

(funny what percentage of those are google.com sites....)

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#107

Post by CydeWeys »

FussyZeus wrote: post #99
saas_co_de wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does assumption on how things "should" be (in a highly subjective way) They claim they are making these decisions based on user data which I have no reason to doubt. > and breaks the web. Breaks crap websites that are broken already from performance and usability perspective. I personally think this is exactly what is needed to make the web better as a whole. Individual developers working for individual companies a…

So aside of the fact that you agree with their decisions, how is this at all different from how Internet Explorer's dev team made arbitrary decisions on how things would work in their browser, and in so doing because of their market dominance, influenced how the web grew, looked and functioned for decades to come? And how much technical debt had to be tacked onto every project to address that need (and is to this day…

There are several other first-class browsers that you have a choice of if you don't like Chrome. The same was not true during IE's era of dominance.

Also, do you agree, in general terms, that sometimes changes can be good whereas other times changes can be bad?

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#108

Post by Santosh83 »

dhimes wrote: post #90
KeitIG wrote: post #9

> they made all top-level event listeners passive by default. They call it “an intervention”. This is my very problem with Chrome/Chromium right now. The Chrome team does assumption on how things "should" be (in a highly subjective way) and breaks the web. Another example: they decided to ignore the value of `autocomplete` attributes on ` ` tags [1], because: > The tricky part here is that somewhere along the journey…

They've also done something so threatening to users' security that I can't take them seriously on the issue. They've been doing it for years, they refuse to change, and it makes me conclude that they fundamentally don't understand the problem. Every update of chrome erases their password manager entries. So for every site their password has to be re-entered. Why is that dangerous? Because that means that my cousins a…

Wait, Chrome updates erase your stored passwords!!?

At least for me they don't. I have 2 passwords stored in Chrome (not a site important enough to go into KeePass), and have been through multiple updates and yet to lose any passwords.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#109

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

kowdermeister wrote: post #96
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It it were lisp, java, or erlang I'd still be pissed. The web should not have a client-side scripting language.

That's just laughable. Somebody at some point would have created an alternative browser with client side scripting. Otherwise you end up with static text and video. Wonderful. And plugins! Because you don't allow scripts :)

I don't think that it was a mistake at the time. I think that in retrospect it has been abused, and many of the things that justified it are now possible without it. It should be deprecated and removed.

Yes, I know this is a fool's errand. I don't actually expect this to happen.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#110

Post by CydeWeys »

mcv wrote: post #67
Spivak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that some sites decided to use autocomplete=off to impose their feeling about password managers on users and make them more difficult to use. It's the same reason I have to turn off clipboard events because some sites think it's okay to block copy/paste.

So the question becomes what's less bad: for website developers to break their own site, or for Chrome to break other people's site. I'm all for empowering browsers to override abusive behaviour from websites, but using bad defaults and breaking innocent websites as a result is not the solution.

Chrome is a program that I run on my computer. It protects my interests, not the interests of random crappy website developers doing horrible things like hijacking clipboard events. I'm all for the defaults being whatever is best for me.

The browser is the agent of the user.

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