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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?

#301

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

andrekandre wrote: post #186
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…

> 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, and because they are used all over the web a new browser maker has little choice except forking chromium or firefox. could web assembly be a way out?…

QuickJS (and various others) demonstrates that small teams can create fast and efficient JavaScript engines that comply with standards. Even though v8 is faster, it spends an order of magnitude more engineering effort for that marginal benefit.

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

#302

Post by Wowfunhappy »

pornel wrote: post #49

Even if Google was an absolute saint without a trillion-dollar ad business, there's still a problem of "bug-compatibility". Without a second browser engine to test pages in, it's really hard to know what is a bug and what is intentional. Devs don't know all the specs by heart. They write whatever happens to work for them, but sometimes they accidentally depend on obscure edge cases in the implementation that were nev…

> Without a second browser engine to test pages in, it's really hard to know what is a bug and what is intentional. Devs don't know all the specs by heart. They write whatever happens to work for them, but sometimes they accidentally depend on obscure edge cases in the implementation that were never meant to exist.

I know this isn’t everyone’s experience, but I believe adding IE11 support to my personal website improved the quality of my code.

There were a lot of things I hadn’t specified explicitly, and for whatever reason Chrome/Webkit and Firefox just happened to make the right guesses. IE11 did not, so I had to go back and be clear about exactly what I actually wanted.

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

#303

Post by native_samples »

jacobolus wrote: post #218
native_samples wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because there's nothing magical about HTML that makes it more battery efficient than Flash was. Quite the opposite really - Flash is a compact binary format designed specifically for high graphics performance in an era when HTML4 thought floating menus was cutting edge. The Jobs Flash memo was crystal clear about why Flash was being booted off his platform. It was to avoid "a third party layer of software coming…

There’s nothing “magical”, but Safari uses a lot less battery than Chrome. Safari developers optimize for battery life whereas Chrome developers seem not to care about client-side resource use.

Right, yet, Chrome has an enormous number of Mac users. Apple argue that battery life is a topic so important it's worth banning competitors for but clearly when given the choice users disagree. There are other things more important to them.

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

#304

Post by withinboredom »

corrral wrote: post #286
withinboredom wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't change their incentives. They might make a nice browser, for you. On every other OS, Apple's software is so slow as to be borderline useless. Watching iTunes struggle to download album art is almost as entertaining as listening to the music. I do use a MBP daily, and the software there is amazing. But seeing that their software barely works outside of their platform, it's a miracle they have any customer…

> But seeing that their software barely works outside of their platform, it's a miracle they have any customers at all. I don't think very many of their customers run any of their software anywhere other than on Macs and iDevices, so I expect that doesn't have much effect. Aside from the apple TV app on Roku and various TV operating systems and such. And still, none of this makes Safari not an "actual browser".

I think by their decision not to implement so many APIs we can say it is /not/ an “actual browser” and more of “check the box” browser.

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

#305

Post by wdb »

threeseed wrote: post #147
horsawlarway wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry - but this is just not a realistic take. Call me when I can install Safari on linux (or any platform other than macOS/iOS). Until then - the ugly truth is that Apple intentionally underfunds and underdevelops the browser because they see it as a fundamental risk to their control and revenue from the App store. It's there because "they have to have a browser" not because they're doing anything novel or cleve…

> the ugly truth is that Apple intentionally underfunds and underdevelops the browser That's not a truth that's an opinion. And one I would definitely disagree with. When it comes to speed, privacy and battery life I am always choosing Safari over Chrome. And many of us care about those three things over new features that often just make the web worse.

Same here. Safari is my preferred browser for content consumption but not for development work

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

#306

Post by diggernet »

guerrilla wrote: post #134
Gigachad wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So... aren't we kind of coming full circle if we do that, going back to the JVM+Swing except this time it's boxed in a window and is more dynamic...

No, we are coming full circle back to the days when a company might put up a website that was just a single Flash app, and you couldn't link directly to anything in it, you could only interact with whatever navigation they built into it.

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

#307

Post by Klonoar »

paol wrote: post #109
pilif wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Yes, because Chrome and Firefox have such a terrible track record with security /sarcasm Lets face it, that's a conveniently plausible excuse, not an actual reason.

You’re completely cutting off the other half of their post which makes sense with the context you’re quoting.

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

#308

Post by wdb »

withinboredom wrote: post #304
corrral wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But seeing that their software barely works outside of their platform, it's a miracle they have any customers at all. I don't think very many of their customers run any of their software anywhere other than on Macs and iDevices, so I expect that doesn't have much effect. Aside from the apple TV app on Roku and various TV operating systems and such. And still, none of this makes Safari not an "actual browser".

I think by their decision not to implement so many APIs we can say it is /not/ an “actual browser” and more of “check the box” browser.

Maybe. I think implementing APIs like WebUSB, WebHID API, Web Serial API, Web Bluetooth, Web MIDI API etc. is not a big issue. Missing Filesystem Access API and Push API, WebGPU API would be nice to have. But the latter two would need to implement in a way to protect privacy of the user.

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

#309

Post by vanviegen »

turminal wrote: post #141
vanviegen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Brave, or any small team really, can disable privacy infringing and google oriented features, and other user hostile behavior.

Until those features become core web functionality and websites stop working without them.

Of course. But the question at hand is: does it matter that the competition is using chromium to power their browsers? At least with chromium, competition is somewhat viable, in case Google goes over more lines than even the general public can stomach.

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

#310

Post by thorncorona »

snickerbockers wrote: post #245
i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

intel i9-9900 3.60GHz, 32GB DDR4 RAM, and a 6TB 7200RPM SATA HDD running manjaro

No SSD?
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