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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?

#331

Post by GekkePrutser »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #271
gspr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the Chromium folks handle security issues with: "version x.y.z is vulnerable, please update to (x+7).(y+25).(z+2), as it is the only supported version – the fact that the diff from x.y.z is 100 kLOC and touches mostly completely unrelated things is your problem". This isn't sustainable open source development in any practical sense. Sure, it's technically open source, but nearly useless for a…

Arch has been handling minor releases on Chromium just fine. If Debian is having issues, it is most likely with them trying to backport fixes into antiquated code bases.

But arch is a rolling distro.

Debian has a release model for a reason and it's their raison d'etre. Of course they don't want to compromise that.

Considering the amount of other distros that use them as a base they're providing something that people want.

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

#332

Post by encryptluks2 »

gspr wrote: post #325
encryptluks2 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch has been handling minor releases on Chromium just fine. If Debian is having issues, it is most likely with them trying to backport fixes into antiquated code bases.

If a year old is considered antiquated, we have some major problems in this world. And it's kinda my whole point: code that can only be consumed wholesale as shipped might technically be open source, but if backporting fixes to a year old version is nigh on impossible, is it truly open source in practice?

Yes it is. That is like saying because it doesn't run on an Atari that it isn't truly open source.

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

#333

Post by bromuro »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #302
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 impro…

The quality of the code could improve, true, yet I wish nobody the endless afternoons trying to debug code or fix the CSS in IE.

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

#335

Post by Gigachad »

diggernet wrote: post #306
guerrilla wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Single page apps and wasm apps have full access to the URL and usually integrate well with it. With the age of SEO, everyone wants their pages fully linkable.

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

#336

Post by daveoc64 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #329
daveoc64 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frustration with the shortcomings of older web standards resulted in the prevalence of browser plugins like Adobe Flash, and non-standard technology like ActiveX. If there are things browsers can't do natively, then someone will build their own way to do it and then you end up with non-standard implementations. It's better to get everyone on the same page and develop an open standard.

Was that all though? I think part of this was just businesses attempting to lock the web into their tech. Microsoft has never wanted the web to be open, first trying to reinvent it with their own MSN. Then trying to lock it in with IE and ActiveX. Adobe / Macromedia started from the designer perspective but Flash soon became a goal of its own because Adobe wouldn't give up that marketshare. Only now all parties reali…

Flash was able to support file uploads, video streaming, and clipboard access long before the HTML and JavaScript specs allowed for this.

Users and website creators wanted these features and Flash was the way to do them.

Sure, other technologies like Microsoft's Silverlight allowed similar things, but Flash was so widely used it could be relied on to offer these features.

Even now things like clipboard access aren't supported in the same way across all of the major browsers.

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

#337

Post by mdavis6890 »

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…

Basically - the web is what Chromium source code says it is - no more, no less, and no other.

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

#338

Post by solardev »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #285
solardev wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite seems true right now, with Apple deciding to improve its proprietary ecosystems (app store, swift, etc.) and letting WebKit stagnate. There's a lot that Gecko and Blink can handle but Safari struggles with, seemingly by design. Apple doesn't want a strong web-based ecosystem because that means their competitors can use it too, vs the iOS/macOS only stuff. If they wanted to, they could switch Safari to Bl…

Apple do appear to be trying a bit harder with Safari - since the regulatory heat has turned up, they've started releasing Safari more regularly since v15, and adding more new web platform features. Safari still does have its problems but I don't think it's fair to say Apple are letting WebKit stagnate.

I don't know how you're quantifying "trying a bit harder", but from caniuse: https://caniuse.com/?compare=edge+102,firefox+101,chrome+102...

Safari and iOS mobile are the main outliers. Firefox is a little behind too, but few people use that anymore.

Chromium/Blink development is what actively drives the web forward, with everyone else playing catchup. Apple just doesn't care about that (or is perhaps purposely trying to slow it down) in favor of their own priorities and platforms.

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

#339

Post by HWR_14 »

jacooper wrote: post #327
HWR_14 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Topics is rebranded FLOC. Everyone pushed back on it when FLOC came out, but that was publicly reviled and there was a simple toggle to turn it off (it was an experimental feature). This is an excellent test of Google's ability to just push a very unpopular feature into Chromium derivatives.

Non google browsers didn't only disable it, they removed it completely. Google has a lot of control over chromium, but I don't think its even close to how gimped AOSP is compared to Android google edition.

> Non google browsers didn't only disable it, they removed it completely.

They set the toggle to false and deactivated any of the options to turn it back on. That's very different from removing a feature (or maintaining a legacy feature).

The only code they changed was UX-related and a single default.

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

#340

Post by gspr »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #332
gspr wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a year old is considered antiquated, we have some major problems in this world. And it's kinda my whole point: code that can only be consumed wholesale as shipped might technically be open source, but if backporting fixes to a year old version is nigh on impossible, is it truly open source in practice?

Yes it is. That is like saying because it doesn't run on an Atari that it isn't truly open source.

No it's not. The Atari isn't one year old. Come on man, from your logic you might as well say that a one year old car should be fed hay since it's practically a horse.
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