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Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

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Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#251

Post by wutbrodo »

lovich wrote: post #73
kajecounterhack wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a feature to not be allowed to use non-webkit Chrome on my iPhone, even if it might unlock superior features? Is it a feature that Google Fi can't work optimally on iPhone thanks to their anti-competitive restrictions? Is it a feature that I have to use Siri, which is way inferior to Google Assistant, when communicating in CarPlay? Is the planned obsolescence a feature too? My 12 year old Mac laptop is d…

>Is it really a feature to not be allowed to use non-webkit Chrome on my iPhone, even if it might unlock superior features? Yes it is for many people. They do not want to risk the chance of their tool not working for some nebulous chance at a better experience. The vast majority of people are not tinkerer's at heart. The rest of your questions can all be answered with "Yes", as long as the tool does as expected. We a…

The example of Chrome on Windows given above seems to belie this claim. The "nebulous chance to use a better product" you refer to was apparently enough to trickle down to the non-tinkerers. Who's to say the same wouldn't be the case for eg Google Assistant vs Siri?

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#252

Post by forgotpwd16 »

pmlnr wrote: post #100
medo-bear wrote: post #63

i think mobile users are unaware how good firefox+ublock origin is. i constantly get bombarded by disgusting adds while browsing news portals, cooking recipes, etc. imagine reading about some great cooking ideas and midway through you see an advertisement for "revolutionary medication for foot fungus" with before and after pictures to show. and yes this happens even in "private" tabs. if anything mozilla should give…

I gave up on FF on android, it's abysmal. The best browser UI on android goes to Lightning https://f-droid.org/en/packages/acr.browser.lightning/ but it's essentially abandoned - even though it uses the system webview, it can still be a problem. The next is Bromite https://www.bromite.org/ which is significantly nicer and faster, and FF on Android, with built-in ad blocking. On desktop, FF is still my choice, but the…

>best browser UI on android goes to Lightning

Lighting was my browser of choice. After stopped being updated moved to, a fork of it, SmartCookieWeb.

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#253

Post by nicoburns »

trelane wrote: post #238
actionfromafar wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Mac, I find Safari also uses less battery than either Chrome or Firefox. (I use Firefox anyway, because I like its features and I'm a zealot too, but if on battery without a charger nearby, I use Safari.)

Do they have secret APIs the rest of us plebes don't get?

No, they just focus on power consumption more than the other browsers (they also have the advantage of not needing to work cross-platform, making this easier). This is often why Safari is behind other browsers on features: a focus on quality of implementation of quantity of features.

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#255

Post by trelane »

unglaublich wrote: post #249
trelane wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced that safety regulations enacted by elected bodies are the same as proprietary software offering its manufacturer against the user's wishes.

They are not the same at all, so your statement is incorrect.

I don't see your argument here. Is your objection solely that I was insufficiently restrictive in my statement?

addendum: You're saying your analogy is fallacious, therefore I'm incorrect. Which I find rather confusing.

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#256

Post by nicoburns »

izacus wrote: post #138
agos wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is also pushed quite aggressively by Google

How exactly? Microsoft has been randomly resetting my default browser back to Edge on every big Windows update. They've thrown Edge on my desktop against my wish. They keep buggering me to change the default back. And yet, somehow, Chrome is still more popular. So what are those horrible tactics Google uses to brainwash people into using their browsers when both of their major competitors use their own operating syst…

They advertise it on the google.com homepage. Which is quite the prime location to advertise. That said, I do think that Chrome has taken over mostly on merit. In many ways it is the best browser. It's just a shame it's so dominant because a monopoly situation rarely works out well for end users.

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#257

Post by trelane »

nicoburns wrote: post #253
trelane wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have secret APIs the rest of us plebes don't get?

No, they just focus on power consumption more than the other browsers (they also have the advantage of not needing to work cross-platform, making this easier). This is often why Safari is behind other browsers on features: a focus on quality of implementation of quantity of features.

Source?

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#258

Post by em-bee »

hardware2win wrote: post #209
em-bee wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but the target for each of those is user-configurable. any request to another browser would go back to my preferred one. regardless, web-apps that depend on a specific browser should not exist.

If browsers had equal features support then yea

that's what the standards are for.

any feature that is not implemented in all major browsers should be considered experimental. it might go away. it's fine to use such features for experiments, but they should not be put into production and relied upon.

any differences in the implementation of the standard should be considered a bug. warning users about bugs is fine, but automatically redirecting me to some other browser that you deem working is not.

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#259

Post by klibertp »

lovich wrote: post #84
anders_p wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one's that stupid" 99.9% of people are not like you. They barely even know the difference between Windows and Google. People who got online when smartphones entered the scene have a difficult time when I try to explain what "folders" and "files" are. I do a lot of tech support for family and friends. They NEVER enter settings or preferences for their OS or their browser. They're afraid they'll "break something".…

>They're afraid they'll "break something". Right? I feel like my non technical social connections have an even greater learned helplessness from interacting with any sort of open to customization technology because they've learned that everytime they touch something the tool stops working in a way they don't understand. Most people are not going to spend days to weeks, and definitely not months to years learning how…

Well, it's a fact that all that technology is incredibly brittle. Systems lack resilience, error recovery, and accessible debuggability, and when something breaks, there's a high chance it'll have disastrous effects. It's objectively safer to stay within the "works for me" happy paths that authors are likely to be actually testing/using themselves. Even this sometimes fails, sometimes seemingly without reason, only to later (maybe) start working again. It's a nightmare, a constant source of stress and another thing that people feel they have no control of at all. It's not strange users flock to authoritarian-style environments, managed by someone who do have the capability to control that chaos to some extent - even if they sell users' PII data to Sunday and back.

There are complex reasons for this, but the end result is simply that IT is not ready for mass adoption. Software is still in its infancy - I suspect that the broader the possible implications of technology, the longer it will take it to be ready to be mass adopted. We gave up all hopes of ever proving program correctness in the 80s, then in the last decade we've given up all pretenses that we know what we're doing... and nobody saw a difference. By all rights, software should be confined to research labs and garages of nerds for quite a few more decades.

The problem is that this technology is too useful. It has too far-reaching applications in almost all spheres of human activity. When the software (and all layers below it) actually works, it brings small miracles to its users, enough that they're willing to pay a lot for a product obviously unfinished, rushed, that'll probably get killed after few years. They think that, yeah, it breaks all the time and I'm afraid to breathe in its direction, but it's ok, I'm strong, I can deal with it if I'm able to do X or Y.

Tl;DR? I dunno. Maybe developers should put more effort into professionalizing the field, but this kind of thing is impossible to rush. Or maybe the users should get a grip and accept that it's not developers who force them to use their products. The massive amounts of money involved, along with the life-changing potential of IT products, skew incentives so much that, currently, both developers and users pretend that it's all fine, even though it obviously isn't, and then both complain. Users are stupid, developers are lazy, but neither can live without the other any longer...

Re: Browsers are essential and how operating systems are holding them back (2022) [pdf] (2022)

#260

Post by jckahn »

BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #86

Browsers are doing well. I'm more worried about the fact the browser is turning into the entire operating system these days. Even the apps use the browser engine for a lot of functionality these days. It's like a parasite, the OS is being eaten inside out. I'd be fine with this, it's a typical disruption process. Except the browser stack is full of legacy features, is bloated, and I'd hate for this to be the de-facto…

> I'd hate for this to be the de-facto platform for "everything" going forward.

How come? It seems like a positive, user-empowering shift to me.

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