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A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

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Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#301

Post by djaychela »

foobarbecue wrote: post #280
sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

I'm afraid to switch because: - Chrome dev tools is consistently amazing and I use several extensions on it - I use google password manager which is also amazing and it works seamlessly on all my android devices, even filling passwords into android apps (although most people don't seem to know it exists) Sooner or later, I will get around to switching back to FF, but it's daunting. I used FF before Chrome came out.

FTR Bitwarden fills android app passwords.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#302

Post by jchw »

mrtksn wrote: post #57

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…

No, this is a LARP. People hated IE for many reasons but the main one is having to do a bunch of extra work to support it. When IE did depart from the standards most severely, it wasn't like most other browsers were super compliant, it's just that IE didn't update, so it stayed in its same non-compliant state for many years.

IE6 lasted from 2001 to 2006 in terms of being the latest browser, which is eons. But worse is that due to the fact that browsers were not evergreen, supporting IE6 remained relevant for far longer. Well into 2010 many sites still had to support the dinosaur of a browser due to its still-relevant marketshare. In fact, I bet IE6 in that era had more marketshare than Firefox does now!

Squabbles over standards like this are nothing particularly new either. The only reason Safari was? the new IE is because you have to test in it. caniuse says you can use Wasm, but the commonly-used initiateStreaming API came over a year later in Safari than it did other browsers.

What Chrome is today is far worse than the new IE. IE did a lot of dumb garbage, and even some kind of sabotage, but they never had the opportunity to do the kinds of things Google is working on now.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#303

Post by kybernetikos »

foobarbecue wrote: post #280
sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

I'm afraid to switch because: - Chrome dev tools is consistently amazing and I use several extensions on it - I use google password manager which is also amazing and it works seamlessly on all my android devices, even filling passwords into android apps (although most people don't seem to know it exists) Sooner or later, I will get around to switching back to FF, but it's daunting. I used FF before Chrome came out.

One of the main places I use FF is on mobile. Turns out that putting the browser chrome at the bottom of the screen is correct and I can't go back now.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#304

Post by joshuaissac »

cubefox wrote: post #271
joshuaissac wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The JS and CSS and HTML box model worked differently This was required for compatibility with Netscape. Developers coded for the Netscape box model when it was dominant, so Microsoft had to follow the same model to prevent the pages from breaking when viewed in Internet Explorer.

Neither Mozilla nor Opera did that, so apparently they didn't have to.

> Neither Mozilla nor Opera did that, so apparently they didn't have to.

Both of them did that. The box model in question was invented by Mozilla (internal code name for Netscape), and Opera 7 also implemented it.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#305

Post by djaychela »

hliyan wrote: post #207
sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

For a Mac M1 user who wants a lightweight browser, what would you recommend: 1. Safari (with this, I have trouble with some websites, particularly Google ones) 2. Firefox (good, but has been a memory hog in the past) 3. Brave (like that it's Chromium, but I worry about the odd features like crypto) 4. Edge (I just downloaded it. leaning toward this choice)

Firefox has been fine for me on a variety of macOS devices in the last 4 years, and it's currently on my M1 max macbook, and also my 2012 macbook Pro which is running OCLP and macOS 12. If it runs fine on that, can't see how you'd have an issue on any M1 device.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#306

Post by kybernetikos »

hliyan wrote: post #207
sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

For a Mac M1 user who wants a lightweight browser, what would you recommend: 1. Safari (with this, I have trouble with some websites, particularly Google ones) 2. Firefox (good, but has been a memory hog in the past) 3. Brave (like that it's Chromium, but I worry about the odd features like crypto) 4. Edge (I just downloaded it. leaning toward this choice)

I don't know why people worry about the crypto in Brave. Personally I like crypto but I have it turned off in Brave anyway and it never bothers me.

When I open a new tab, Brave tells me:

Trackers & ads blocked 36,822

Bandwidth saved 5.62GB

Time saved 3.3hours

Which is definitely a feature I like.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#307

Post by hanniabu »

hliyan wrote: post #207
sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

For a Mac M1 user who wants a lightweight browser, what would you recommend: 1. Safari (with this, I have trouble with some websites, particularly Google ones) 2. Firefox (good, but has been a memory hog in the past) 3. Brave (like that it's Chromium, but I worry about the odd features like crypto) 4. Edge (I just downloaded it. leaning toward this choice)

Isn't Edge built on chromium, which is getting the chrome updates forced into it?

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#308

Post by jwells89 »

threeseed wrote: post #230
NicoJuicy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari was always behind on Web specs that could replace apps in the app store. It's all about the $$$. Apple is no different than Google in that regard :) - Apple: Asking premium price and reducing alternatives - Google: Free for the end-user, get money from other means if possible ( eg. ads)

People have been making this tired argument for literally over a decade. Mobile web apps failed because they are inherently worse in every single way than native apps. There will never be some magical feature e.g push notifications or installation on Home Screen that will change this. Apple even was going to use web apps instead of native until they too realised how bad they are. So no there is no conspiracy by Apple…

I think it’s possible to develop a reasonably good web app or PWA. I’ve seen a small handful, but the vast majority I encounter don’t meet that bar. Truly great web apps are rare.

There’s so many little things that need to be gotten right for a mobile app of any kind to feel good to use, and on the web it’s all entirely up to the developer since it’s “bring your own everything” with no shared known-good foundation and scaffolding to rely on (even React doesn’t really fit with the wildly different ways it can be used). There’s so many variables at play that the average incidence of papercuts is markedly higher.

The other thing is that to make a great web app, the developer needs to care a lot about delivering quality and polish, which is somewhat rare. This can probably be attributed to the web as a platform often being chosen to keep costs down (multiplatform, large pool of devs) — while in theory the savings from not having to maintain codebases for separate platforms could instead be invested in quality of the web app, it’s usually not, instead being put towards more marketable things as the app is forever stuck at “technically works” in all its janky glory.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#309

Post by mixedCase »

SanderSantema wrote: post #196
tomjen3 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can install adons from the Chrome store in Brave.

I think the point isn’t necessarily to not use chrome but to use something not based on chromium in general, which brave is, e.g. Firefox or Safari.

That's not really the point. The point is to take away control from Google's user-hostile decision making, and that's a good chunk of the value proposition of Brave as a fork/patchset.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#310

Post by hanniabu »

tgv wrote: post #55
dbish wrote: post #3

The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge, arc, etc.) Are there any real competitors building a new browser?

What would you think the problem with Firefox' UX that keeps so many people from switching is? I think it's not UX, but pure marketing.

There's a risk of them shutting down
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