Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I’m done with Chrome

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 876 posts

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#331

Post by hcs »

atombender wrote: post #247
brian-armstrong wrote: post #10

Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.

I wish Firefox was as sleek, fast and no-nonsense as Safari on the Mac, which is my everyday browser. I vastly prefer the idea of an open browser that is not tightly coupled to a particular industry giant. And I wish Firefox actually had a viable Safari competitor on iOS, so that I can sync my state around. Unfortunately, while Firefox has made significant leaps the last couple of years, it's still not a viable alter…

> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to

You might want to take a look at the Firefox Multi-Account Containers Add-on, it lets you set domains to always open in a given container, which cuts down on the micromanagement a lot once you get it "trained". [edit: This is not well-advertised, it's accessed through the context menu (right-click) on a page when you have it open in that container]

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-conta...

> i.e. all web sites should be "contained"

It's possible to enable this for most intents and purposes with "1st party isolation", which came from the Tor browser. Some info here:

https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/firefox-fpi

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#332

Post by pmorici »

On mine I see the new icon but when I click on the menu that pops up has a "sign in to Chrome" button that you can click. I wonder if it hasn't signed me in yet because my Gmail cookie hasn't expired and so I haven't retyped my user name and password since it upgraded.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#333

Post by shawnz »

dithering wrote: post #289
shawnz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that just your opinion, or do you genuinely believe most Chrome users see it that way?

We could apply the principle of least astonishment to get a feel for correct behaviour without resorting to sterile arguments about what proportion of users understand the difference between a web site and a web browser. If they looked at a slightly risque URL on their phone, would the average user expect Chrome on their laptop to autocomplete that URL?

The current behavior does not activate syncing by default in spite of the slippery slope arguments being made here. Furthermore i think most users would in fact expect syncing like that to work with minimal configuration in this day and age.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#334

Post by liftbigweights »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #14
zbrozek wrote: post #9

I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history. They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.

Google's culture breeds internal arrogance and blindness to outside concerns. Arguing with Google people about issues with their products is approximately as effective as arguing with a brick wall.

It's not a matter of arrogance but of money. You have to understand when it comes to google, you are the product, not the customer. Google's real customers are big ad buyers. They listen to large ad buyers. Look how quickly they "cleaned" up search results and youtube videos when ad buyers complained.

Us complaining to google about poor treatment is like sheep complaining to shepherds or vegetables complaining to the farmer about poor treatment. Nobody would care. But if the shepherd or farmer's customers complained, they would listen very closely because it affects their bottom line.

Especially now that google has a monopoly position on search and online videos, they have even less reason to care about what the products ( you and me ) say.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#335

Post by ethbro »

Stratoscope wrote: post #262
ethbro wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using Chrome when I wanted to have downloads automatically save to the desktop (no dialog). Turned out, there was a 2 year old open bug on the missing feature, in which Google UX engineers repeatedly argued allowing the save location to be changed was counter to the desired user experience. I switched to Firefox the next day and haven't touched Chrome since.

Was that a long time ago? Chrome has supported the option of a fixed download location for many years. I don't remember it ever not having that option, in all the time I've used it.

Correction: I think it was the ability to turn off the in-window "downloaded file bar" pop-up, which could(?) only be dismissed by manually closing it.

There are a lot of different bug reports out there asking for a flag, and apparently the Chrome team added one, then disabled it a few patches latter.

I forget what I was doing at the time (downloading PDFs for a uni course?). But it was a pain in the ass, of dubious utility anyway, and the cavalier UX attitude of "father knows best" left a really bad taste.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8966

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#336

Post by qrbLPHiKpiux »

partiallypro wrote: post #248

Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up until about 2008. So many things have changed since then. Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting…

AMP was what did it for me.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#337

Post by atombender »

smcnally wrote: post #320
atombender wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Firefox was as sleek, fast and no-nonsense as Safari on the Mac, which is my everyday browser. I vastly prefer the idea of an open browser that is not tightly coupled to a particular industry giant. And I wish Firefox actually had a viable Safari competitor on iOS, so that I can sync my state around. Unfortunately, while Firefox has made significant leaps the last couple of years, it's still not a viable alter…

> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to, and provides a "techie" solution to something that should just be invisible and default (i.e. all web sites should be "contained"). All websites contained would be an interesting default. With ways to “re-open current tab in container [X]” and “merge current tab wi…

I think container tabs conflates several things that won't be understandable to non-techies. One is privacy — preventing sites from abusing cross-site concerns such as cookies for tracking.

The other is what could be described as "focus" or "modality". A lot of people use windows as a poor man's workspace. For example, if I'm researching where to travel, I'll have a window open with tons of tabs — Google Flights, Kayak, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, all jammed into one "workspace". If I'm comparison shopping for one specific thing, there'd be Amazon, Jet, Etsy, eBay, etc. This is how people tend to work: Windows separate modes, tabs separate units of focus within that mode. And yet there's no browser that supports such a way of working. We have to accept that people now "live" within the Internet, and need to support different modes. Rather than think of the browser as a shell, why not think of the browser as a world in which you can open up different types of interacting with that world? For example, a Google Doc tab is not something that works very well as a tab. It's a document, representing its own modality. Slack is an app, also its own modality. A "workspace" is something else again. And so on. These are all "applications" in a classical sense, yet work within the context of a user.

I'm not suggesting a ChromeOS, just that what we think of as "the web" could be rethought in terms of different variations — ways to work — with the same thing.

Also, in terms of privacy, why are we still using cookies? Why are we "logging in" and "logging out" of web sites and having password managers that automatically fill out form fields? Why can't the web site negotiate its session with the browser ("I want an identity for gmail.com, please give me one"), which can already know who I am?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#338

Post by azdle »

jhoh wrote: post #184
stonogo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the Google Analytics embedded into the extension system.

Really? Do you have a source for this?

I assume they're talking about the use of google analytics on the about:addons page discussed here: https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785

Two things to note from that thread:

From what I've read, Mozilla had some agreement with Google to keep all the data from their tracking stuff silo'ed so it wasn't aggregated with other data and wasn't used for anything besides showing back to Mozilla people.

and

They're now (and have been for more than a year) respecting DNT, removing the GA code so that you don't make any requests to google if you have that enabled.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#340

Post by hcs »

mehrdadn wrote: post #201
EwanToo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run either Firefox ESR or the unbranded builds [1] if you want unsigned extensions, but I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla? 1 - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...

> You can run either Firefox ESR Then I have the exact same problem when support dies in the coming months though. > or the unbranded builds [1] Interesting, so does this mean that if I want stable builds, I'd have to manually update to the exact unbranded counterpart of that stable version? > I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla? I guess because I really don't see what…

I know this is exactly what you're trying to avoid, but could you upload an example unsigned extension? I'll try to figure it out, could be a bug somewhere.
Post reply on HN