A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by Klonoar » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #275

jwells89 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, Safari at least has the fundamentals in place — IE couldn’t even render transparent PNGs properly without Windows-specific filter trickery until around version 9 or so which was released in 2011, around a decade after Gecko based browsers, WebKit-based browsers, and even Microsoft’s own Tasman-based IE for Mac did.

People are quick to forget the pain of things like table-based-layout. I’ll never forget in 2006-2008-ish I developed a website for my computer repair business (I was in High School) and was very proud of it. Then I opened it in IE (I had developed it in Firefox) and it all fell apart (I was using floats IIRC). I then rewrote the whole thing using tables because I knew my target audience would not be running Firefox.…

Years of obscure CSS targeting tricks to fix IE6/IE7/etc. Codebases littered with star html hacks that effectively rendered an alternate layout.

Safari is fine in comparison.

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

#362

Post by izacus » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

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…

Safari already implements Manifest V3 (it never had anything else to block ads) and DRM. So what the heck are you talking about? Safari is leading the charge on all those hostile changes.

(Not to mention all the other ways how they undermine the web, like refusing to properly support PWAs and forcing you to go through Apple reviewed process for apps.)

This strange narative how Safari (the only browser you're ever allowed to use on iOS) is somehow better than Chrome is outright bizarre. It's worse in every single way... and you're not even allowed to use Firefox to fix it.

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

#363

Post by hbn » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #332

spoiler wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE It wasn't because they had poor feature adoption. It was because they'd tend to adopt features in a way that's incompatible with other browsers (of the top of my head, handling of localStorage in private browsing). It was a bit of a "fuck you" to devs since you often had to do browser detection for Safari…

Apple probably have similar motives to MS when it comes to crippling the browser and enforcing its own rendering engine in iOS and that is to protects its app market. However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. With the IE situation, you couldn't just download Firefox and live happy thereafter because every website was made…

It could also be argued that right now Google's domination of the web allows them to throw their weight around and introduce bad "standards" just so everything can be moved to the web, which again, they basically own.

For example the "standard" implementation of web push is straight up bad. I don't think websites should be able to throw popups asking users with enable notifications, because users are so used to accepting TOS agreements and cookie prompts that they just click "ok" and "accept" on everything, and now your grandma has gambling app ads in her notifications because she accepted notifications from some sketchy site she was linked to on Facebook.

Apple made the right move by requiring you to add a website to your home screen before it's allowed to send you push notifications.

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

#364

Post by drewcoo » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Everyone hated IE because once they won the browser war Microsoft stopped improving their browser. Why bother? There was no market to gain.

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

#365

Post by Klonoar » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #248

lol768 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari caused me by far the most issues, back when I was doing frontend in ~2017/2018, in terms of how it complied with web standards (I wasn't as fussed at the standards it didn't support - at least I knew!) and rendered the web application I was working on across desktop, iPad and iPhone. I spent more time chasing Safari bugs and rendering idiosyncrasies than I did dealing with IE11, frankly.

I’m sorry but just no. I’ve been developing on the web since IE6 and while Safari has a few quirks it doesn’t even start to compare to IE at any stage. The worst I deal with in Safari is lack of certain features (often things that weren’t standardized and Chrome just added) and some minor CSS quirks. In some of those cases when I dig into the “issue” it appears that Safari is handling it in a way that makes more sens…

Gradients could be done via base64 css if you triggered the Outlook rendering engine under the hood. ;)

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

#366

Post by _ea1k » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

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…

And yet a lot of us avoid the Reddit app and use the mobile web version instead. Lots of apps are just thin web wrappers too, and I bet most users don't even notice.

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

#367

Post by izacus » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #332

spoiler wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE It wasn't because they had poor feature adoption. It was because they'd tend to adopt features in a way that's incompatible with other browsers (of the top of my head, handling of localStorage in private browsing). It was a bit of a "fuck you" to devs since you often had to do browser detection for Safari…

Apple probably have similar motives to MS when it comes to crippling the browser and enforcing its own rendering engine in iOS and that is to protects its app market. However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. With the IE situation, you couldn't just download Firefox and live happy thereafter because every website was made…

> However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff.

Of course they didn't, because they outright want to kill the web so all your content is locked into Apple reviewed and taxed apps. Why would they divide the web when their goal is to make sure it's not a viable platform for their newest devices?

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

#368

Post by burkaman » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #351

another_bear wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

(I'll just copy/paste from a previous comment) 1. Under her leadership Mozilla has lost virtually all of its users. It has been reduced to less than 10% of what it had before, maybe worse - I haven't kept up. 2. At the beginning of Covid, a time when remote work was on the rise and tech valuations were through the roof, a time when the browser was more important than ever, she took her largest payout and fired hundre…

Do you have any concerns about Google's CEO's salary ($226 million) or failed products (https://killedbygoogle.com/)?

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

#369

Post by treis » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:44 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #332

spoiler wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE It wasn't because they had poor feature adoption. It was because they'd tend to adopt features in a way that's incompatible with other browsers (of the top of my head, handling of localStorage in private browsing). It was a bit of a "fuck you" to devs since you often had to do browser detection for Safari…

Apple probably have similar motives to MS when it comes to crippling the browser and enforcing its own rendering engine in iOS and that is to protects its app market. However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. With the IE situation, you couldn't just download Firefox and live happy thereafter because every website was made…

>you couldn't just download Firefox ... Apple hasn't done that

Apple has banned any browser engine except Safari from iOS.

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

#370

Post by tux1968 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 1:44 PM UTC

consentreality wrote: post #336

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…

The biggest blocker for me has been the lack of convenient profile switching. It's an important part of my workflow to have a separate profile for home/work/other, with history, bookmarks, etc. Container tabs are not a good replacement. Worse, I get irritated with the fact that Firefox fully supports this under the hood, but seems to push back against actually implementing a convenient way to use it. I'm currently do…

> The biggest blocker for me has been the lack of convenient profile switching.

Switching profiles can be as easy as restarting the browser. For instance, you could create an icon on your desktop for each profile, or just a single icon to run :

     firefox   --ProfileManager

And you'll get a menu to choose which profile you want to use.

> I also can't open links in anything but the default profile

Interesting. Running on Linux here, and links open in whatever profile is currently in use.