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We Need Chrome No More

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Re: We Need Chrome No More

#281

Post by Phrodo_00 »

Yoric wrote: post #273
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember using Firefox in the pre 1.0 days. It took slightly longer to launch than IE, but since it had tabs, I didn't care, because I wasn't opening a new instances constantly.

Fwiw, IE was pre-launched with Windows. That was the secret behind its (often) fast startup. Not doing the same in Firefox was a conscious design decision by the Firefox team, which didn't want to hoard the memory when Firefox wasn't in use.

Yeah, seamonkey (and maybe opera) also had ways to start the browser with the os.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#282

Post by muststopmyths »

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. 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.

Actually IE8 had the same thing (and it was in development by 2007, so the few-months-later release date vs Chrome doesn't matter in terms of architecture).

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#283

Post by clairity »

bobajeff wrote: post #244
tracker1 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond even that, Firefox was already stripping market share away from IE at the time. Around 2010 or so it was really a 3-way split, which was really nice in terms of getting a lot of things worked out between the three (relatively speaking). A lot of people would have migrated away from IE, it just would have been more Firefox, less Chrome.

At one point Firefox's growth stopped or slowed considerably. Without Chrome I doubt many would've migrated away from Internet Explorer.

firefox had been taking market share from IE slowly, then when it started to make some real gains, chrome came around and swiped it all out from under firefox.

i've mainly used the mozilla lineage of browsers (all the way through netscape and back to mosaic) and was really dismayed when this happened because even by then it was pretty obvious that chrome was part of google's wild west landgrab before regulations and law had a chance to catch up to online surveillance.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#285

Post by yesco »

Vinnl wrote: post #261
yesco wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even to this day Firefox doesn't have websocket frame inspection. Its very frustrating to me that dev tools aren't a higher priority for Firefox. As they are now, they are only slightly worse than Chromes which is unacceptable considering more and more websites are being developed with only Chrome in mind.

That is frustrating, but the good news is that this is being picked up as part of (somewhat ironically) Google Summer of Code: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c49

I find it ironic that they kept lowering the priority since an extension already added the ability, yet that very same extension no longer works thanks to their recent API changes. Perhaps lowering the priority several times wasn't that best idea after all?

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#286

Post by wwweston »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #106

The problem with these articles is that the recommendation always ends up just preaching to the choir: people who already switched away from Chrome nod in appreciation, but people who haven't switched literally get nothing out of these posts to convince them to switch to what is basically the same application made by a different company, with completely different conventions on where everything is, without any concre…

We don't know that this kind of article doesn't have effects.

If there's always some subpopulation who's never heard of diet coke & mentos (https://www.xkcd.com/1053/ ), it's pretty likely that there's some subpopulation that is unaware of the implications of Chrome's dominance combined with Google's business model and amenable to arguments that something like Firefox or even Safari might be a better choice.

And I think it's also worth considering that Firefox made significant strides into IE's marketshare back in the early/mid 2000s when users ostensibly had no reason to care by the standard of "no concrete/perceived benefits", since everyone had to code to accomodate IE. There's no other reasonable model I can think of other than IT professionals frequently recommending FF, and many non-pros finding that recommendation compelling enough to switch.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#287

Post by gwbas1c »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #188
perlgeek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm surprised there aren't more people on here who moved to chome for the dev tools. That is what moved me over there. Firebug was great in it's day but at some point Chrome's dev tools just became too much better to make staying on Firefox possible.

Back when Chrome was new, I'd occasionally open Firefox for the debugging tools.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#288

Post by Laforet »

yesco wrote: post #285
Vinnl wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is frustrating, but the good news is that this is being picked up as part of (somewhat ironically) Google Summer of Code: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c49

I find it ironic that they kept lowering the priority since an extension already added the ability, yet that very same extension no longer works thanks to their recent API changes. Perhaps lowering the priority several times wasn't that best idea after all?

The decision to revamp their extensions API also cost a lot of goodwill from the community. FF today may be faster and more secure than two years ago, but from my perspective it has permanently lost some of its utility and appeal.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#289

Post by scrollaway »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #173
andrewla wrote: post #43

Here's hoping. The proliferation of browser standards has made this appear a more daunting task as time has gone by. There was a point where if you built a good DOM, javascript engine, and a layout engine and had a reasonable ability to fetch resources, you could bootstrap a browser. That's how Konquerer got there. But now, I think we're past that point -- if your browser can't do native video conferencing and opengl…

I have a better idea: build a new browser for a new web that is designed with decades of hindsight and isn't as bogged down in all the stupid legacy crap that the current web is. Then port Chromium to it as a portal to the legacy web.

That's cute and wishful but the world is built on legacy crap. And it'll remain that way until economic forces dictate otherwise.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#290

Post by c-smile »

The post is missing one simple point: the complexity of browser's engine.

The complexity of current web client stack is comparable with the average OS. Any modern browser has all components of Android OS for example - internal file systems, threads, VM, virtual native code execution, independent windowing and graphics stack, message routing, etc.

That's like situation with Windows and WINE. Yes, you may run some win progs on Wine but original Windows will always be better for them.

So we will have just one browser. That's the reality, want we that or not.

Until either one of these:

1. The spec of Web Client will be reduced to bare minimum. With unified extensions mechanism, think about but more flexible - based on universal bytecode VM free from licensing issues.

2. Or users will pay for the browser application, instead of having it for free - giving up their private data instead of money. So browser vendors will be able and motivated to provide better, privacy first browsers.

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