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We Need Chrome No More

redalemeden.com

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Re: We Need Chrome No More

#71

Post by [deleted] »

cromwellian wrote: post #46
mapgrep wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this post, but I take issue with the idea that Chrome was initially adopted, or served, "to break the Web free from corporate greed." Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. No one else had this at the time, and it was a big deal because Flash was still widespread so sites were even less stable than they are today. Luckily…

It still is behind technically isn't it? Does Firefox support Site Isolation yet?

[deleted]

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#72

Post by fastball »

Blaiz0r wrote: post #47
dx034 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as a web developer I don't necessarily care about standards. I want the page to work for as many users as possible. For the longest time this meant to support IE's way of doing things, now it means to support Chrome (unless you target Enterprise users). Even if you develop for Chrome, Firefox and Edge you'll just end up building workarounds for all 3, not adhering strictly to the standard.

Sorry to break this to you, but as a web developer you should only care about standards, otherwise you have no standards. The standards are a single source of truth for your production, if you build solely to a single browsers quirks (in this case Chrome) then those quirks can change at any time.

And if you build to the standards, it's possible that no actual browser implements them correctly.

And then what?

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#74

Post by aeturnum »

As others have said here, I think the article mischaracterizes why stakeholders were enthusiastic about Chrome back in the day. It was a technically compelling browser which joined Firefox in pushing web standards in a way that Microsoft (and Apple) wouldn't.

I think the dominance of Webkit is concerning, but I don't think we can reuse the justifications of ten years ago to say why. Chrome continues to be technically strong (though perhaps not as much) and continues to push web standards (though perhaps too many supporting Google). The situation just isn't as bad today as it was. There is a lot less friction in the everyday experience of developers and users who want to use cutting-edge web standards.

Monoculture is bad, but it's hard to get people excited about challenging it when the monocultural product isn't awful.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#75

Post by skybrian »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #53
Shank wrote: post #41

I find posts like this kind of interesting. Chrome gained prominence because it had great performance improvements over the competition -- IE and Firefox. IE in particular was dog slow at all times, and Chrome ran everything at least as well and almost always better. Firefox didn't have process isolation when Chrome came onto the scene, and that kind of knocked it for security and stability. It's not as if people swi…

>It's not as if people switched just because it had Google branding. Everyone switched because it was quantifiably better. The knowledgeable minority, maybe. _Most_ people switched because Google pushed it like a piece of adware. Bundling it with other software installers, prompting you to use it whenever you use Google search or other products, and bundling it with an OS.

This probably does explain why a lot of people tried it, but it doesn't explain why they kept on using it. Often, ad campaigns cause churn as people try a product but bounce off of it.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#76

Post by lern_too_spel »

dccoolgai wrote: post #67

Other than AMP, I can't really think of a case that I would characterize as "Google abusing its position" w.r.t. Open Web. It was Chrome that led the push for PWAs, which I think is both great for the Open Web and consumers... The author complains about other vendors being "called laggards", which - let's be honest - we're really talking about how long Apple/Safari dragged their feet on Service Workers... and they _s…

It's laughable that the author suggests Apple as a viable alternative. Apple, the last company pushing license encumbered formats into web standards. Apple, the perennial laggard on standards support in general.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#77

Post by fastball »

ams6110 wrote: post #69
remir wrote: post #39

Do we know why Google grew dissatisfied with Apple and forked Webkit?

Do we know why Google grew dissatisfied with sites serving their own content and developed AMP?

Because sites serving their own content were generally slower, and slower load times means fewer ad clicks.

Google making the web faster is a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#78

Post by mapgrep »

perlgeek wrote: post #25
mapgrep wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this post, but I take issue with the idea that Chrome was initially adopted, or served, "to break the Web free from corporate greed." Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. No one else had this at the time, and it was a big deal because Flash was still widespread so sites were even less stable than they are today. Luckily…

> Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. Curious, I remember speed being the primary reason. Google invented V8 (the javascript engine), with some pretty decent optimizations and a well-working JIT on i386/amd64 platforms. At the time when chromium came out, it handled some JS-heavy applications very nicely that Firefox struggled w…

Good point, V8 (that is, fast Javascript) was key as well.

(I suppose it makes sense I'd agree with someone else with a Perl-inspired handle :-)

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#79

Post by earenndil »

rrggrr wrote: post #26

Extensions. I am now locked into Chrome because several services I use require Chrome extensions that aren't available elsewhere. The idea that Chrome can be unseated, or isn't needed, is unrealistic for the many users who rely on Chrome-exclusive extensions.

Firefox implements chrome's webextensions api, so it should be possible to run those extensions. Try chrome store foxified https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#80

Post by laumars »

perlgeek wrote: post #25
mapgrep wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this post, but I take issue with the idea that Chrome was initially adopted, or served, "to break the Web free from corporate greed." Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. No one else had this at the time, and it was a big deal because Flash was still widespread so sites were even less stable than they are today. Luckily…

> Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. Curious, I remember speed being the primary reason. Google invented V8 (the javascript engine), with some pretty decent optimizations and a well-working JIT on i386/amd64 platforms. At the time when chromium came out, it handled some JS-heavy applications very nicely that Firefox struggled w…

As you alluded to at the start of your post, Chromes speed improvements were more technical than it was due to a lack of bloat. In fact Chrome consumed more memory than FF did at that time and that was down to it being multi-processed (ie one heavy page wouldn’t slow down the rest of the application in other tabs) but that came at a cost in terms of RAM used.

Obviously the v8 stuff also made a massive difference too.

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