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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?

#191

Post by i5Aj7PXGjUPy »

snickerbockers wrote: post #92

I'm not a webdev so I mostly don't care as long as it's FOSS, but I will say that firefox loads a lot faster than chromium on my machine. Looking at top it appears that somehow firefox is actually using more memory than chromium is (i only tested a three tabs open in each browser so maybe they don't scale the same under heavier load) but at the same time I can report anecdotally that in addition to being slower, chro…

> but I will say that firefox loads a lot faster than chromium on my machine.

which machine??? genuinely curious

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

#192

Post by Eric_WVGG »

pilif wrote: post #86
noduerme wrote: post #47

I think it's bizarre to conflate Apple's refusal to allow other webkits on iOS with the fact that Safari remains a viable alternative engine. They're far from heroes here. I think it's great they maintain a Chrome alternative kit that mostly works but let's not pretend they're saints or kid ourselves about the reasons for it. The only reason they disallow Chromium and Mozilla is they want their users locked into thei…

> The only reason they disallow Chromium and Mozilla is they want their users locked into their environment and they want to leverage that substantial locked-in user base to dictate terms That's one reason, but not the only reason. Security is another big one in that the WebKit process is running with privileges that Apple does not want to award to any other app process on the platform, much less a third-party one. T…

Having a smartphone battery that lasts more than an hour is also a pretty good reason.

It’s like the skepticism over the Steve Jobs “Flash” memo… why do nerds have such a hard time accepting that Apple might actually be sincere about wanting to make a decent product?

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

#193

Post by pmoriarty »

pilif wrote: post #180
pmoriarty wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Audits is not what uncovers security flaws. Detailed research, fuzzing and effectively unlimited time to do both on the side of white-hat hackers and unlimited budget and criminal energy on the side of black-hats is what does." Audits aren't supposed to be an ultimate guarantee of security, but provide a minimum, independently judged hurdle that has to be passed to get on the platform. If there's a better, independe…

Apple thinks (and I'm inclined to agree) that no browser engine is safe enough to be on the platform but as there has to be at least one by necessity, they might as well reduce the attack surface by restricting it to a single one that's tightly integrated with the OS security measures and which is updated together with other OS updates.

Following that reasoning there should only be one app of each kind on the platform: an Apple app.

Minimize attack surface, minimize choice.

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

#194

Post by postalrat »

bobajeff wrote: post #181
postalrat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Images complicate the accessible requirement.

True, it's still worth doing though. That's one of the reasons for alt, longdesc, and aria-describedby attributes.

What image formats will be support? Plain old 256 color uncompressed bitmaps?

Why leave an existing protocol and easy accessibility just for a few images.

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

#195

Post by bobajeff »

postalrat wrote: post #97
bobajeff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've been wanting something that's just a rich document but designed around accessibility with no styles or JavaScript.

You want gopher. Most people don't. If what you really want is to change what other people want you will stay disappointed.

I don't think that's really true. People want content and they will put up with some sites to get it but if things like Readability and Ublock Origin has shown us anything there's a need for something with more user control over it.

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

#196

Post by layer8 »

paol wrote: post #105
scotty79 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development between IE4 and 5.5 was massive.

You and the grandparents are thinking of a slightly earlier time. Yes IE jumped over Netscape massively in technical terms. Then Netscape died an MS, having mission accomplished, basically stopped touching the browser.

The problem wasn’t per se that MS stopped (having a stable platform that doesn’t change continuously is in principle a good thing), it was most of all the many quirks, inconsistencies and bugs that IE had.

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

#197

Post by titzer »

The Web platform is an abject failure of layering. It's truly the biggest ball of mud that software has yet birthed. If it had only reasonable modularity its implementation would be large integer factors less code and it would not be necessary to wait on three browser engines to ship obscure (declarative!) features for CSS, like dropshadows, which could easily be programmed on top of a better designed, simpler core.

And don't even get me started on "accessibility". The web's barely-acceptable kludges for accessibility could easily be accommodated in a layered, more programmable system.

The web platform is rife with abstraction inversion, employs declarativity where programmability is necessary, and vice versa. It puts magic in pretty much all the wrong spots. And its event-based programming model that puts all JS on the "main" (actually UI) "thread", forcing a painful and awkward asynchronous programming model that we are gaslighting into believing is good for us, is frankly just dumb. But the web has always thought designers and developers are dumb, so it's fair play to just hate it right back.

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

#198

Post by ecmascript »

opheliate wrote: post #56
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…

Given the direction Brendan Eich has pursued at Brave, I'm personally very glad he didn't remain as Mozilla's CEO, regardless of political views. Edit: Also, I don't think it's particularly reasonable to single out an individual being funded by Mozilla without a very good explanation as to why. Is there something that Leil Zahra has done which makes you think they are inappropriate to be associated with Mozilla? Or a…

> Is there something that Leil Zahra has done which makes you think they are inappropriate to be associated with Mozilla?

No I just don't think Mozilla should fund political projects at all. I know that if I donate to Mozilla, my money will go to activists and not to the continued development of Firefox.

The reason why I singled out one individual was because it shows that they support specific political agendas (and was the one I found after a quick search to give a sourced example). There is a pattern in the type of activists they support. I welcome you to find someone who would represent the opposite political side, you probably won't because they wouldn't.

> Or are you just upset by their identity as a queer person?

I don't care, people can have whatever views or identities they want.

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

#199

Post by jorvi »

skinnymuch wrote: post #177
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My point is that Open Source of itself is not sufficient And I didn't claim that it was. My point was merely that Chromium being open source changes the equation pretty fundamentally compared to the IE situation. Whether it's enough to make a Chromium monopoly consistent with an open web, I really don't know. There are very good reasons to be sceptical.

Your comments appear to be saying that Chromium being open source makes the equation better. Like the comments defending this point about Brave and other wrapper browsers. So you’re not claiming open source is sufficient but you are seemingly defending it is a better situation. While I and some other commenters are signaling we don’t think the situation is better. To me the fundamental part of the equation is outsize…

You are under the mistaken assumption that Google maintains absolute power over the Chromium codebase.

It is very permissively licensed, and Microsoft’s Edge is so successful and Microsoft is contributing a ton upstream. In a few years time they will have de-facto equal say over where the codebase goes. If Google disagrees too much, we will in fact see a fork.

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

#200

Post by jefftk »

dblohm7 wrote: post #159
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that both Brave and Vivaldi were able to disable Google's FlOC within a very short period of time is evidence against both (a) and (b) in my view. Even more so the fact that Brave was able to build an alternative ad network on top of Chromium.

Brave and Vivaldi fall into the “don’t matter” category. Call me when a Chromium fork displaces Chromium.

> Call me when a Chromium fork displaces Chromium.

This hasn't happened with Chromium, but it did happen with WebKit.

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