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Chrome is Not the Standard

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Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#431

Post by sowbug »

ori_b wrote: post #375
sowbug wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, if you want every browser to be identical, that's your right. I happen to think that competition among browsers is a good thing, and that means that they'll always be at least a little bit different. Shouldn't it matter which browser you use? No major browser vendor (in the modern era, at least) wants to break interoperability -- that's the bright line that separates innovation from fragmentation -- and you'll f…

> Shouldn't it matter which browser you use? Yes, in terms of performance, user interface preferences, features like bookmark syncing, and so on. But visiting any page should work in any browser. If proprietary extensions get used, then the pages are no longer able to interoperate. You now have a proprietary ecosystem. If these proprietary extensions catch on, now you're back to the bad old "best viewed in IE6" days.

I'm not sure you're considering the fact that the web ecosystem itself is in competition with other platforms. The counter to your "If proprietary extensions get used" hypothetical is that if they don't get used, the world moves on, getting the job done with fully proprietary and/or platform-specific solutions -- Windows applications, Android apps, etc.

People don't sit back, put their needs on hold, and wait for the web platform to develop and implement new standards. They use available tools. Would you advise them to leave the web ecosystem entirely? Or use the lesser evil of extensions platforms, thereby solving their urgent problems and indirectly providing long-term direction to the web platform's evolution?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#432

Post by ori_b »

sowbug wrote: post #431
ori_b wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn't it matter which browser you use? Yes, in terms of performance, user interface preferences, features like bookmark syncing, and so on. But visiting any page should work in any browser. If proprietary extensions get used, then the pages are no longer able to interoperate. You now have a proprietary ecosystem. If these proprietary extensions catch on, now you're back to the bad old "best viewed in IE6" days.

I'm not sure you're considering the fact that the web ecosystem itself is in competition with other platforms. The counter to your "If proprietary extensions get used" hypothetical is that if they don't get used, the world moves on, getting the job done with fully proprietary and/or platform-specific solutions -- Windows applications, Android apps, etc. People don't sit back, put their needs on hold, and wait for the…

There are exactly three situations:

1) Browsers start the standardization process immediately. There's no proprietary extensions, and things remain interoperable.

2) Browsers add proprietary extensions. Nobody uses them, and they burn money on engineering time.

3) Browsers add proprietary extensions. These extensions get used. Interoperability goes out the window.

> Would you advise them to leave the web ecosystem entirely?

Yes, I think so.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#433

Post by connorelsea »

alwillis wrote: post #416
RobertRoberts wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, the op is right. Safari IS the new IE. Service workers is one of the most egregious failures on their part. And I believe it's been done on purpose. With service workers you get full control over building your JS based app, something Apple does not want, they want everyone to got through their store. Considering that the only way (moving forward) to create an offline JS app now is through service workers, and…

Since Service Workers were enabled in STP as of a couple of days ago, the next upgrade to Safari in a few months will likely have it—it’s not 1-2 years away as you suggested. I’m pretty sure I’ll be running PWAs on my iPhone 5s the first half of 2018.

This is the dream, but I doubt Apple will offer any kind of proper home-screen integration like there is on Android. I can only hope tho

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#434

Post by alwillis »

connorelsea wrote: post #433
alwillis wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Service Workers were enabled in STP as of a couple of days ago, the next upgrade to Safari in a few months will likely have it—it’s not 1-2 years away as you suggested. I’m pretty sure I’ll be running PWAs on my iPhone 5s the first half of 2018.

This is the dream, but I doubt Apple will offer any kind of proper home-screen integration like there is on Android. I can only hope tho

Part of what’s required is Web Manifest and that’s on the WebKit roadmap: https://webkit.org/status/#?search=manifest

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#435

Post by reacharavindh »

alwillis wrote: post #426
reacharavindh wrote: post #41

Is there a possibility of an alternative to Mozilla with the kind of backing that Mozilla enjoys now? GNU project? Apache web browser? Linux Foundation? Heck, I'm sure privacy conscious people will happily pay for a quality browser that they can trust. I don't have the technical prowess to build a browser. If I did, I would.

You want Brave, which is based on Chromium. They raised $35 million in an ICO and plan to disrupt web advertising. Has a built-in wallet to pay content creators with cryptocurrency (-totally optional. Browser: https://brave.com/ Basic Attention Token: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Thanks for posting this. But, what does the ICO mean here? Are they some kind of shares of the company? Investors? What influence does that bring with?

If no one chooses to use their Basic Attention Token, will the project survive?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#436

Post by abritinthebay »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #351
abritinthebay wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do forget that IE was legitimately a good browser for quite a while - starting around IE3 it really did quite well. Plus I'll take IE4 + NN4 issues vs IE6/7/8 issues in 20-freaking-14 (or beyond, argh). IE9 at least fixed a lot . At least the early IE vs NN stuff was fast to change and interesting . IE6 issues were the exact opposite :(

The real explorer issue was that xp refused to die for the longest time. When those browser came out they were kinda fine in context, they got lot of hate a decade later when the world moved onto new standard but you still had 10%+ users living in the past

Well that and they refused to update it for 5 years AND refused to EoL it for 7.

It was entirely due to MS’s negligence, not just XP.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#437

Post by alwillis »

reacharavindh wrote: post #435
alwillis wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want Brave, which is based on Chromium. They raised $35 million in an ICO and plan to disrupt web advertising. Has a built-in wallet to pay content creators with cryptocurrency (-totally optional. Browser: https://brave.com/ Basic Attention Token: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Thanks for posting this. But, what does the ICO mean here? Are they some kind of shares of the company? Investors? What influence does that bring with? If no one chooses to use their Basic Attention Token, will the project survive?

First, the ICO enabled them to raise money to hire a real team to develop the Brave browser and build out the ecosystem. They're on macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS and Android already.

They're seeding the ecosystem by giving BAT away to users so they can start paying content creators: "Brave grants 300,000 crypto tokens to browser users"--https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-grants-300000-crypto-t....

BAT is an investment that the current situation with how advertising works on the web isn't sustainable--over 600 million users with ad blockers installed and climbing.

We know we need a way to pay for content that doesn't suck, so lets build it into the browser and make it a mostly automatic and anonymous, based on the amount of time spent on web sites.

In addition, the goal is for BAT to be used by advertisers to create a decentralized ad exchange where users who opt-in to watching privacy-respecting, quality-made ads get compensated in BAT (that's coming in the next 3-6 months.)

Users who chose to watch and receive BAT can then pay other content creators with it, including on Youtube.

Lastly, BAT is actively traded--the market cap is close to $349 million @ $0.39/BAT and over 16 million tokens in the past 24 hours: https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/basic-attention-to...

The thread was about how only the big guys can afford to make a browser but here's a startup that is going after Google's core business using Chromium's code.

Lots going on here; I can't do it all justice; this video should help--https://vimeo.com/209336437.

Plus the latest community update--https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7ljinb/bat_comm...

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#438

Post by starik36 »

Mayzie wrote: post #415
starik36 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The IE6 of today is IE11, not Safari. Just look caniuse.come for practically any modern feature. It either requires you to pollute your code base with polyfills or doesn't work at all. Every day bring another fun barrier. Today it was Promises ( https://caniuse.com/#search=promise ), tomorrow, I am sure, it'll be something else.

Except IE11 is 4 years old and no longer has any feature development. Use Edge.

Nearly all IE11 visits to my sites are from Windows 7 and 8.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#439

Post by drvortex »

pjmlp wrote: post #370
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…

Same could be said for IE, but then Microsoft isn't a HN darling so it gets bashed, while Google gets praised for doing exactly the same.

Oh yes. The same could be said about IE. In fact, I personally have no problems with IE implementing new features. The problem with IE was never that it was standards-incompliant. Heck, they were the de facto standard and there software used even today that won't run on anything but IE.

The problem with IE was that it was a shitty bloated browser. And to be honest, nothing shook its dominance before Chrome. Not even Firefox.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#440

Post by rubyn00bie »

octalmage wrote: post #54
rubyn00bie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No and I think your opinion is harmful. IE literally refused to implement standards, rendered broken dom elements, allowed for proprietary native extensions and had many different apis for them. They had 90% of the market share and no other viable platforms. This meant developers built things which exploited these broken features causing huge compatibility issues when they aren’t (every other browser). A simple lack…

Apple is doing similar stuff by refusing to implement the payment request API and instead implementing their proprietary Apple Pay API. So you can use one API to target Chrome and Firefox and another for Safari. This is starting to sound a bit like IE. They were invited to join the working group for Payment Request and decided not to take part.

Apple hasn’t had an monopoly antitrust suit against them for it. Different story, different times.
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