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What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

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Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#61

Post by TremendousJudge »

bennyp101 wrote: post #37
TremendousJudge wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Earth

I just tried it in FF and it works fine System requirements for Google Earth - Google Chrome 67, Firefox 63, Edge 79, or Safari 11. - Make sure that you turn on hardware acceleration. But I do know that Apple Business Manager wont run - not sure why as it seems to be a fairly basic interface and says Firefox is supported, but yea I have to use Chrome for that

It works mostly fine now, but when the web version was released it wouldn't even allow you to use Firefox, and straight up pointed you to Chrome.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#62

Post by abraham »

madeofpalk wrote: post #59

> I recently heard from a well-placed contact that “many in the Chromium community are arguing for a Chromium-only Web.” Seems quite an article for something that's founded on just an unsourced and unquotable rumor.

"Chromium community" can mean a lot of different things too.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#63

Post by fauigerzigerk »

paol wrote: post #4

We don't have to speculate, we've been through this already during the IE4 to IE6 era. Microsoft just did whatever they wanted with the web "platform", and so will Google. In Microsoft's case what they wanted was nothing . They weren't a web business, saw it as a threat to their platform leverage, and so just left it abandoned and stagnant for years. Google is simultaneously better and worse: they won't leave it stag…

You fail to mention that IE was closed source while Chromium is open source. That's a completely different situation.

We already have a number of Chromium based browsers that go against some of Google's most fundamental interests (e.g Brave).

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#64

Post by FartyMcFarter »

aaa_aaa wrote: post #50
paol wrote: post #4

We don't have to speculate, we've been through this already during the IE4 to IE6 era. Microsoft just did whatever they wanted with the web "platform", and so will Google. In Microsoft's case what they wanted was nothing . They weren't a web business, saw it as a threat to their platform leverage, and so just left it abandoned and stagnant for years. Google is simultaneously better and worse: they won't leave it stag…

Comparing it with MS-IE is unfair. It was not Mozilla or Firefox, but Chrome and Android broke the hegemony of IE in many countries. Where I lived, bank or government sites were IE-Windows only until Chrome appeared. In countries like Korea it was a total shit show. I understand it is a shame that only 3 engines left and but please it is not even close to what MS did.

I think you're conflating two different things. One thing is Google's decisions when it comes to standards, another one is websites' decision on which browsers to support. Your conclusion that "websites support more than one browser therefore Google's behavior is not that bad" doesn't follow, even if those things are somewhat correlated in the long run.

It's perfectly possible for Google to be engaging in similar behavior to Microsoft during IE era, while websites decide to support more than one browser for the moment. In the long run, Google's behavior could contribute to more websites deciding to support fewer browsers.

I'm already seeing the occasional website that doesn't work properly on Firefox - for the moment this is rare, but I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes more common.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#65

Post by Gigachad »

Joeri wrote: post #36

The chromium-only web is not google’s fault. It is a symptom of a body of web standards that has grown wild to the point of being all but unimplementable. Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with. We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web…

We should convert browsers in to just a basic wasm window responsible for rendering html and running wasm. Then JavaScript and all it’s apis can become a shared library as a wasm package or something.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#66

Post by rhdunn »

I've already noticed several things not working on Firefox that work on Chrome and Edge, such as the Discord age selection dropdowns -- clicking on them does nothing in Firefox. It's frustrating as I use Firefox exclusively (outside of testing functionality on Chrome and Edge).

It's good that Chrome is finally on track to provide MathML support (which Firefox has had since version 4), and as of version 91 supports counter styles (Firefox supports it since version 33), but I wonder how much of that will happen if/when Chrome is the only actively developed browser on non-Mac platforms, resulting in WebKit/Blink being the only engine developed for the web.

I'm also concerned about what will happen in regard to the web standards, given that the browsers have abandoned the W3C in favour of continually changing documents, and only seem to be interested in the needs of web browsers. That makes it difficult for other uses like in ePubs to steer the direction of HTML and the associated standards.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#67

Post by leononame »

paol wrote: post #4

We don't have to speculate, we've been through this already during the IE4 to IE6 era. Microsoft just did whatever they wanted with the web "platform", and so will Google. In Microsoft's case what they wanted was nothing . They weren't a web business, saw it as a threat to their platform leverage, and so just left it abandoned and stagnant for years. Google is simultaneously better and worse: they won't leave it stag…

I don't know if Google continuing to develop the web is really better than leaving it stagnant. A stagnant product can be picked up and improved later, but Google pushing their stuff onto the web can leave damage that is much harder to undo.

Ironically, Safari is more similar to IE in that regard. The web isn't Apple's platform, either, so they're not too interested in continuing to develop it.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#68

Post by ecmascript »

Santosh83 wrote: post #44
ecmascript wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but before the tech community was all fire for Firefox. IT-guys installed it on work computers, school computers etc. We would recommend it to our families and install it for our less techy family when they would need our assistance. Firefox had the IT-sector with them. I think this does a lot for spreading the usage. Even just one IT-guy can probably give Firefox hundreds of users. Now, this is no longer the cas…

All that you say may be true, but if that stops the vast majority of tech community from using FF and installing it for their user support base, then we must be prepared for a Blink/Webkit only future, and maybe even Blink only in the worst case. What will the tech community do if Google starts promoting a certain political direction, if they haven't already? Will they stop seeking employment at Google, or stop using…

You're preaching to the choir here. I don't like Google either and I avoid Google products as much as I can in my daily life. I agree with you that the future looks rather bleak and I put my hopes in that some new browser engine will be developed or that other browsers will start using the engine that's powering Firefox.

If there will be a Blink only future I hope that regulators will force Google to invite others to decide what to do with it.

> Sometimes the larger goals should outweigh the immediate disappointments.

I agree and that's what make me feel bad, like there is no good choice available to me. I don't know what to do. It's just like the phone OS market, I dislike both realistic options (ios, android) but since my state and banks require me to use one of these I have to make a choice even if I rather use a linux based phone.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#69

Post by bobajeff »

charcircuit wrote: post #40
Santosh83 wrote: post #7

If there is only one implementation, then whichever body (private, public, for profit, not for profit, doesn't matter) controls this implementation will control the direction of the entire web. It's the definition of consolidation and monopoly control. There is no reasonable argument to make for a Chromium only web from anyone without vested interests.

It's open source. Anyone can fork it.

Sadly, even if you don't fork Chromium and simply embed It via Electron or Chromium Embedded Framework you still won't be able to login in to some Google sites.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#70

Post by fullstop »

paol wrote: post #42
MikusR wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ajax?

Yep, XMLHttpRequest was literally the only thing to come out of years of Microsoft tenure. Fun fact: it was added so that they could make the Outlook web interface. Edit: well, that and ActiveX, but that's not a good thing...

Microsoft exposed virtually all elements in the DOM. Netscape was extremely limited in this regard.
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