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Chrome is Not the Standard

chriskrycho.com

331–340 of 465 posts

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#331
post #304
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No other platform has policies like this The Windows store has the same policy and by proxy all Windows S machines.

So then the trend is that platform owners are the only allowed browser implementors on the their platform? Platform owners' interests and public rationalizations aside, is this in the best interest of the web and its users?

Not sure, but Microsoft seems inclined to lean that way, since even on Android, where they have a choice, they elected to use Chromium for Edge.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#333

developers grouse about the other browser makers who are “holding the web back.” Indeed, perhaps "holding the web back" is a good thing if it means websites will be more accessible overall, to even less common browsers like NetSurf, Dillo, and all the other text-based ones. IMHO the "feature war/race" between the major browser vendors has had an overall negative effect, as if all sites somehow need to turn into ridic…

i really wish the standards bodies would make a concerted push for a solid advance in CSS (flexbox and css grids are pushing that way but are relatively complex), so that we could get rid of DIV-itis. it's like the TABLE-itis of the past, but two letters shorter (i'm exaggerating, but still...). that would not only clean up the html but make both learning and development faster. they should also really advance basic…

> flexbox and css grids are pushing that way but are relatively complex

Can you describe a concrete solution that is less complex than flexbox while still managing to achieve its goals?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would a better experience be on iOS? I personally wouldn’t find mixing the audio and having to pause one or open a per-app volume mixer control panel to be a better implementation.

Not sure, but to have this happen even for silent videos seems particularly annoying

From what I know, even "silent" videos can have an audio stream, which just happens to have all its samples decode to 0 (or nearly 0.)

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#335

developers grouse about the other browser makers who are “holding the web back.” Indeed, perhaps "holding the web back" is a good thing if it means websites will be more accessible overall, to even less common browsers like NetSurf, Dillo, and all the other text-based ones. IMHO the "feature war/race" between the major browser vendors has had an overall negative effect, as if all sites somehow need to turn into ridic…

I'm not sure but I suspect the DOM is the reason small browser implementations can't catch up. I think over the years specifying interactions with JavaScript and CSS have led to ambiguities in the standard and undefined behavior.

The difficulty of implementing the Web platform comes from many things, from the difficulty of implementing JS to the complexity of the DOM to how subtle CSS is to complex, far-reaching APIs like ServiceWorker and WebGL to unspecified behavior depended on by sites. There is no one reason.

I will say that the DOM is one of the better-specified areas of the Web platform. CSS 2.1, for example, is significantly worse. And the table layout specifications are in a miserable state (one of the reasons why it drives me crazy when people suggest going back to table layout for "simplicity").

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#336

The thing is that Google owns WHATWG (who write and edit HTML specs) so the difference between Web "standards" and "what Chrome does" is moot. Other browser vendors have no choice other than to follow suit. I'm putting "standards" in scare quotes since what WHATWG publishes - the "living standard" thing - doesn't qualify as standard in my book. It's a tragedy to see so much well-intentioned work being weaponized. Act…

"The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software in 2004."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#337
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has legitimate technical reasons for not allowing other browser engines (well specifically the JS part). Intent matters. Oh please... source?

Efficient javascript needs to be JIT'ed, but that means your app needs to be granted API access to map writeable memory as executable, which is a security risk they are not willing to grant third party developers. So a third party browser/js engine will likely be quite slow. I guess this would give users of a bad impression of iOS perfomance as a whole then, if other browser engines were allowed and became popular?

Restricting the JS engine but allowing other browser engines to tie into it so you could leverage different browser's rendering and CSS features would be a step up and would sidestep much of the problem.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#338
Glad the author is cheering for a browser that is only available on the platform sold by only one vendor. And is dissing developers that are complaining that features that could make their job easier are not available on the author favorite platform.

I would honestly be more thankful for a lynx friendlier internet.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here here. The author clearly hasn't worked with Apple's implementation of Audio Context either. Granted the bar is pretty low compared to Chrome, but wow! What a mess. Safari consistently has latency and bit rate issues when playing even the smallest files.

Actually it’s “hear hear”. This comment has been up for 3 hours already, I’m surprised I’m the first word nazi to correct it :)

If we're being pedantic, there ought to be a comma between those "hears". :)

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#340
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They're up in arms because of an upheaval which prevents anyone from restoring their workflow : the new extensions API simply does not allow the extensibility the new extensions API allowed. Some of the changes are arbitrary (e.g. it's not possible to rebi…

I wouldn't call it permanent. It'll just take time to build up the WebExtensions API set more, which there should be more breathing room to do with 57 finally out the door. The change to the Sync security model happened in response to years of user feedback about the usability of the system as it was.

> The change to the Sync security model happened in response to years of user feedback about the usability of the system as it was.

They should have improved default usability while still preserving their previously-unmatched security level. Yes, the old system didn't do what novices expected, and yes they should have gotten a default system which would. But experts should still be able to use a truly-secure system.

It's currently impossible to use the Sync system securely: even if one ran one's own Accounts server remotely, then an attacker would still be able to inject malicious JavaScript into the signin page. Accounts should never have been usable from within a web page; they should always have been isolated to the browser chrome.

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