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Chrome breaks the Web

tonsky.me

111–120 of 473 posts

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#111
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "imp…

>and for those users in that moment things might be worse, but it is making the web better for significantly more people,

What are you basing this on?

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#112
post #89
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this different from websites that think it's okay to force you to abide by ridiculous password restrictions The difference is that disabling of "autocomplete" is a user interface issue, and can be addressed by the browser I use. The problem of ridiculous password restrictions is not usually something that can be controlled by the client. I like the idea of convincing IT to change crazy password policies, but…

You don't necessarily have to convince IT. If you instead convince their legal department that by not following the NIST standards for passwords they are opening their company to a lawsuit, that could get results a lot faster. When IT is convinced they have to decide when to put it into the budget. If they think their policy is not okay, just not perfect the fix will probably be buried in the bottom of the budget pil…

Not all websites are operated by US companies. Would that still work for, say UBS (a big bank) in Switzerland?

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#113

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…

It's not really comparable to IE. MS had a pretty explicit goal of destroying Netscape - to the extent that they were making deals with other companies to break compat with Netscape.

Chrome is breaking 'autofill=false' on webforms because its really bad to have autofill=false most of the time. For example, this was breaking password managers, forcing users to have a worse experience around something as security critical as entering a password. If the goal is to have the user never remember their passwords to avoid phishing, this is a really important thing.

I'm entirely, 100% in support of them ignoring 'autofill=false' because most of the time I see this as a security flaw on websites. This isn't anticompetitive - they aren't trying to break websites on Firefox, they aren't contacting websites to get them to do some Chrome specific thing. They're ignoring a really bad default that hurts users.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#114
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah- it gets rid of them. Linux chrome.

It's been doing it for a while apparently.

https://superuser.com/questions/926902/google-chrome-loses-d...

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most of those are rebranded chromium.

The only big ones that are independent are Safari (since Google forked Webkit to create Blink), Firefox, and IE/Edge.

And the impression i have is that Safari is lagging, Mozilla is directionless and struggling to keep Firefox relevant, and MS is, well, MS.

Ever since Opera folded and made their browser a Chromium clone, only Mozilla have been carrying the banner for standard correctness. And even they seem more and more bow to Google's decrees (whole virtually cloning the Chrome look and feel with each Firefox update).

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#116
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder what the difference is? It's been going on for years.

https://superuser.com/questions/926902/google-chrome-loses-d...

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#118
post #64

I side with Google on this one. IMO we should be breaking JavaScript more often, especially in the name of performance, to make people use less JS and simpler JS on their websites.

You know who is a big user of JS? Who is using more, and more complex JS on their websites? Google. Google is also the pusher of some of the WebAPIs that will give browsers more access to your system (e.g. WebUSB [1]) Do you think Google is breaking JS to make themselves using less JS? [1]: https://wicg.github.io/webusb/

Of course I don't think that. But I recognize this move by Google as beneficial to my own goals, namely getting JavaScript off of the web.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Strong-arming the spec is bad.

Re: Chrome breaks the Web

#120
post #105

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…

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 a…

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

The "standards" are created by the browser makers. It is up to them to decide what the standards are by choosing what to implement.

For instance, Apple can decide to not allow 3rd party cookies, which "breaks the web" and "doesn't follow standards" but it is also the right thing to do.

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