Live data from Hacker News

We Need Chrome No More

redalemeden.com

421–430 of 536 posts

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#421

Whenever Firefox comes out with a new version I try to use it for a week and realize it just doesn't perform as well as Chrome. Theres always one or two sites like twitch where it just LAGS to death whereas in Chrome its smooth as butter. At this point I just go back to it. Sigh...

Are you using mostly Google pages or services? That might explain why Firefox runs worse. Anecdotally, of the three browsers I have on my dev machine Chrome is the biggest resource hog.

Resource hog != lag.

The reason Chrome doesn't lag is probably due to the fact that it uses so much RAM. I personally use Safari because of the OS integration but for some sites I do have to fire up Chrome just for performance.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why so many HN posters feel the need to boast about not executing JavaScript. All that means is that you've opted out of the web that the rest of the world is using. Good for you. But people who have disabled JS make up such a small porportion of web users (~.2% of pageviews) that your experience is pretty much irrelevant to the question of general browser trends. I'd also bet that Chrome was faster at p…

I surmise it is because HN attracts a higher percentage of critical thinkers than many other boards. A startling amount of JS on the web falls into the following categories: 1) Advertisement 2) Tracking 3) Useless animation I don't care for any of those things. I generally prefer simple html pages that load <1 second, take very few resources, do not track any information about me, and don't use any mouse-reactive ani…

It's more likely that most of the "critical thinkers" you speak of write JavaScript for money everyday. Even on HN the amount of JS blockers is tiny but it seems higher because they always have to mention they block JS.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#423
"We Need Chrome No more" appeared on HN five months ago, and there was a comment that confirmed there is interest in an alternative search engine written by djb.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053163

It was obviously a joke as no one serious about text-only browsing would suggest lynx over the alternatives (w3m, links, links2, etc.)

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#424
Chrome has some great extensions now: Great Suspender is one of the best. Before Chrome killed my computer with too many tabs, now it's fine! Chrome is the best product of Google to me.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#425
post #412
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's one thing that Google does well, it's convince the relevant people that their software is open source. See: Chrome and Android

They are though. There are no Edge forks or free iOS distributions.

No, they’re not. They’re based on open source software.

But by that measure safari is open source because WebKit is open source.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t entirely market driven. Chrome was collectively faster, smoother and tab crashes were isolated which was critical back then. My dad was firmly middle aged when it came out and was very attached to Firefox. After a few debates we did some very unscientific desktop-to-page render comparisons as well as loading some pretty js heavy sites and chrome beat Firefox handily. He still took a while to come around and…

Sounds like your Dad would not have switched without your advocacy.

It was less about advocacy and more about arguing with him. I was a teenager at the time eager to best him in any argument I could.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#427
One thing that people seem to forget is the extreme amount of marketing and push that happened. If you used any Google product (even today) it's basically annoyance not to use Chrome, because of all the "popups" and messages you see on screen to switch to Chrome.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#428

I'll write an unpopular opinion: 1. Developer's time is not a commodity. The time you spend testing in alternative browsers is time you can spend in tasks that will make life less painful to the people who work with you such as writing tests, documentation, or new code. 2. A website that only works in Chrome is preferable to a website that does not exist. The business should be the one who dictates which browsers sho…

> A website that only works in Chrome is preferable to a website that does not exist I think the only scenario where that's acceptable is experimental/nightly features that haven't yet made their way to the majority of browsers. > Using a website is a privilege Some would dispute that. My bank, for instance, doesn't have physical branches. Is it considered a privilege to access my funds via website?

> My bank, for instance, doesn't have physical branches. Is it considered a privilege to access my funds via website?

Glad you made this question. I'm a customer from BBVA and years ago, when Opera recently launched its Chromium-based fork I got a nag: You're using an unsupported browser

I was infuriated: "How the f*ck are you targeting the new Opera?!?!?!?! I mean, even the user agent looks like Chrome, to display this nag you had to explicitly target the new Opera WTF?!?!?!"

Now I ask you the following question: Can you access your bank account with Lynx? Curl? Where do you draw the line between which browsers to support?

Where do you draw the line between telling a user "Use Chrome" or having the user to complain at your call center because the website broke specifically in Brave browser? (pretty unlikely but not unrealistic scenario)

Years ago many banks and government agencies even required you to install Java to access their service. So yeah, it is a privilege to access your funds in a non-supported mean, if you complain at their call center they'll probably tell you "just use Chrome", or "install the Android app", or a similar alternative. If a bank thinks it is a competitive advantage to let you access in Mosaic, then it will push their development team to support even Mosaic.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#429
Am I the only one on the planet that never had stability nor speed problems with Firefox?

(e.g. on Linux when I start Firefox it displays all tabs, but it refreshes/loads only the "last"/current tab - other tabs are refreshed/loaded only if I switch to them. On the other hand when I start Chrome, all tabs are refreshed/downloaded immediately, and all of them start running their code whatever it is)

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remove support for 3rd Party Ad Blocking that's a bit misleading, no?

Google maintains plausible deniability but it's an odd coincidence that they first introduce their own Ad Blocker, and then soon after propose to remove an API that's necessary for 3rd Party Ad Blockers. If you keep in mind that Google is an Ad company then adding an Ad Blocker to their product doesn't make sense until you consider that by doing so they diminish the need for 3rd party Ad Blockers. Once you can succes…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN