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Chrome is Not the Standard

chriskrycho.com

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Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#291

Post by dubbel »

drvortex wrote: post #192

Standards are irrelevant to pragmatism. De facto standards are what is important. By virture of sheer popularity, Chrome is the de facto standard. And if they have provided anything that becomes useful or popular, then by virtue of popularity of that feature in what is already the post popular browser, makes that feature part of the de facto standard. The post is just pedantic whining about how something isn't accord…

Depends on who your target audience is.

Germany for example uses 38.22% Chrome and 31.11% Firefox on Desktops. No way you can speak about a de facto standard here.

I, as an end user, don't know about industry standards for screws, magnet strips or pipelines either, but that doesn't make them less important.

We already tried giving a commercial company free reign in this regard, with Microsoft and it's Internet Explorer, and it did not end well. I see no reason to try this again.

Standards also just make it easier for new players to enter the browser market, instead of having to reverse engineer how Google does stuff, so Standards even help with competition.

I will happily discuss current shortcomings of the W3C and standardization process in general, but we shouldn't repeat the past.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#292

Post by j605 »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #52
yoavm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this attitude. Mozilla doesn't need to be everything I ever wanted from a browser in order to get my support. It only needs to be better than Google. Are all these people sticking with Chrome because Mozilla is not holding up to its values really think Google is better at taking care of our freedom?!

Chrome doesn't magically revert privacy or search engine settings in updates, but Firefox apparently does. To quote from https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-... : > Not only are these experiments enabled by default, but updates have been known to re-enable it if you turn it off. Chrome has some troubling defaults but Google never decided to flip the default search engine or turn on any phone-h…

Prove it or show code! This statements sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#293

Post by spankalee »

chriskrycho wrote: post #289
spankalee wrote: post #285

It's interesting that the author chose PWA's as their example. The "Progressive" in Progressive Web Application means that web sites progressively become more app-like as they use certain APIs like Service Workers, but it also means that PWAs progressively become more app-like on browsers that support those APIs. A site can go all-in on the PWA-related APIs and cause absolutely no degradation in experience on browser…

Yep, and this is one reason I like the PWA design a lot . It's very web-y in the best ways. Which is part of why the "Safari is holding back the web b/c no PWA!" response perplexes me. Even independent of the fact that they were in fact getting there – just not as fast as people wanted! – progressive enhancement is still a thing.

Safari has definitely been holding back PWAs though, because they're the gatekeeper of feature on iOS.

I've personally had meetings with teams would would love to adopt PWAs over their existing native apps, but can't due to Safari. I'm excited that it looks like that will change very soon!

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#294

Post by Vinnl »

suby wrote: post #38
Vinnl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is in great parts its community, and so far, it has done a great job in keeping it in tow when it appeared to derail. The Mr. Robot thing has been retracted (although it was also largely portrayed as a privacy issue, which it wasn't), Pocket has been acquired, and the rest were mainly diversions that many people deem unnecessary but that aren't necessarily a threat to Mozilla's mission other than potentially…

If Mozilla was serious about repairing trust, they would make user studies opt-in instead of opt-out. As it stands now, they are performing experiments on users by default. When people say the Mr. Robot thing was a violation of privacy, I believe this is ultimately where they are coming from.

If your first line is also about the Mr. Robot thing: it was opt-in. Yes, the code was there, and it was listed as an extension (which reasonably caused people to think they caught a virus or something), but no code was actually being executed. You had to explicitly enable that yourself in about:config. (And because that is often not mentioned, it's portrayed as a privacy issue, which is a shame because it's inaccurate and damages trust more than it should.)

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#295

Post by Spivak »

threeseed wrote: post #234
user5994461 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a case for anti trust, just like microsoft had with IE.

1) iOS is not a monopoly. 2) Apple has legitimate technical reasons for not allowing other browser engines (well specifically the JS part). Intent matters.

I think this thread is full of people who want Apple be considered a monopoly more than care about whether they actually are.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#296

Post by Spivak »

bhawks wrote: post #207

I wish the author discussed the fact that Apple doesn't allow any other browsers to target the iOS platform. Chrome / Firefox are forced to be thin wrappers against the webkit engine instead of bringing their own technology. No other platform has policies like this and it greatly impacts the web platform and changes the dynamic of web standards in a way no other browser developer could.

> No other platform has policies like this

The Windows store has the same policy and by proxy all Windows S machines.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#297

Post by Gracana »

fixermark wrote: post #156
komali2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there may even be a chicken and egg situation going on - for some reason, media websites such as CNN are pushing giant rich media content objects at us like videos, which obviously are meaningless to a text browser. Even webdev blogs are being posted with big GIFs every paragraph or two. I'm not sure why content creators are feeling the need to go multi-media - perhaps it's getting harder and harder to tell w…

"For some reason" I think we should probably expect the Cable News Network to traffic heavily in video, yes?

If you've ever watched History or The Learning Channel, you might not expect much anymore.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#298

Post by mulmen »

lukeschlather wrote: post #211
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. The rendering, JS engines in Firefox and Chrome are state-of-the-art and take small armies to build and maintain. Mozilla has to strike a balance between revenue seeking and consumer protection seeking behavior that I would imagine is quite difficult to maintain. Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specifi…

> Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specific workflow was upheaveled by a movement to webextensions planned like 2 years in advance. Maybe their incredibly specific workflow involves a piece of multi-million dollar equipment and updating to a new API involves reflashing its firmware for some crazy reason. (alternately, 100 $200 pieces of equipment in hard-to-reach places that must be ma…

Did Mozilla claim to offer support for their product for that period of time? Why would an embedded developer take a dependency on a third party product that does not have a guaranteed support cycle greater than the life of the device?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#299

Post by baddox »

connorelsea wrote: post #257
jen20 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? iOS has by most measures less than 50% of the market.

Even with a low market share Apple could still theoretically be engaging in practices that are anti-consumer, such as disallowing the use of other browser engines. Though, afaik, Apple does not stoop to the levels of Amazon, who removed the Twitch app from Roku platform for absolutely no reason other than to line their pockets with more cash.

Aren’t anticompetitive and anti-consumer two completely separate things?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#300

Post by earenndil »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #33
kevmo wrote: post #4

I know they screwed up recently with the Mr. Robot malware, but I think it's really important for developers to get behind Firefox again. As the American government fails to provide any sort of check on its behemoth corporations (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and to protect consumer privacy, Firefox is basically the last contender for real consumer protection standing.

I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. The rendering, JS engines in Firefox and Chrome are state-of-the-art and take small armies to build and maintain. Mozilla has to strike a balance between revenue seeking and consumer protection seeking behavior that I would imagine is quite difficult to maintain. Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specifi…

Just because it was planned 2 years in advance doesn't make it any less meaningful. And there were a lot of "incredibly specific workflows" that xul extensions allowed that webextensions won't. Will you deny millions of people each their own incredibly specific workflow if there's one singular ecosystem that mozilla has to maintain, to accommodate them all?
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