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Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

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Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#11

Post by couchand »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #8

The last paragraph: "However, we still haven't figured out exactly why Google is blocking Inbox on Firefox. That the application is not working, seems to not be fully true. With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox to. Maybe too much Chrome specific technologies or just a try to limit the usage of Firefox on the web?" Is odd as he's spent the rest of the article po…

Animations are not important enough to justify. Not wanting to serve all your content from a single domain is not enough to justify. These are excuses, not technical reasons.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#13

Post by diggan »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #8

The last paragraph: "However, we still haven't figured out exactly why Google is blocking Inbox on Firefox. That the application is not working, seems to not be fully true. With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox to. Maybe too much Chrome specific technologies or just a try to limit the usage of Firefox on the web?" Is odd as he's spent the rest of the article po…

What I know, given the right vendor prefixes, transitions works mostly the same way on both platforms. I don't think it makes sense to only have transitions for one browser when it's trivial to support other browsers as well. The CSP issue I honestly don't know why that's so but I'm fairly sure they should be able to follow CSP on their own domains, just like the rest of the applications on the web have to do.

To me, it feels like Google has an unfair advantage on doing web applications when they can do stuff on their own domains that no one else can, unless they also develop their own browser with unique features.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#15

Post by diggan »

pilif wrote: post #9

On the HN thread accompanying the release of Google Inbox, a (supposed) engineer working on Inbox was saying that the reason for the exclusion of Firefox was a performance issue with accessing sparse arrays with huge indexes. Link to the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498 Link to the bugzilla entry: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963

Thanks a lot for that information! Will include it in the post when I get a chance.

The performance is kind of bad in Firefox but I'm not sure it justifies blocking the entire browser because of that. For a comparison, Google Photos is slow as hell in Firefox, but you could still use it if you want to.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#16

Post by spindritf »

Because they don't want a slow webapp under their logo. And this one would be particularly handicapped by that.

Everyone praises Apple for user experience, right? There you go. They're giving you want you want. And at least Chrome works on multiple platforms, even Linux.

What seems like a more arbitrary limitation is that Inbox doesn't work with Google Apps. Thought it, too, probably has some technical reason deep in the belly of the beast.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#17

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

couchand wrote: post #11
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #8

The last paragraph: "However, we still haven't figured out exactly why Google is blocking Inbox on Firefox. That the application is not working, seems to not be fully true. With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox to. Maybe too much Chrome specific technologies or just a try to limit the usage of Firefox on the web?" Is odd as he's spent the rest of the article po…

Animations are not important enough to justify. Not wanting to serve all your content from a single domain is not enough to justify. These are excuses, not technical reasons.

I disagree.

They're short cuts you might take to get a product out and get early feedback, the same sort of shortcuts most of us have taken when pushed to release something sooner. This is a product in Beta, not the finish article.

Even if everything work in theory just dropping multi-browser testing would save time. If their aim is a beta product for early user testing, I really don't think what they've done is unreasonable.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#18

Post by Blahah »

couchand wrote: post #10
jaimeyap wrote: post #3

I think the term "blocking" is a bit misleading. It implies they have it running properly in FireFox and are going out of their way to make it only run in Chrome. It seems more likely they had an aggressive plan to ship inbox across Web, Android and iOS. And they started with "Chrome only" to save development time. I'm sure support for other modern browsers will follow soon.

Except that with a few quick changes the application ran, so intentionally blocking seems like a valid description.

Changes that included disabling a browser security policy - not something it's reasonable for Inbox to request its users to do.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#19

Post by diggan »

jaimeyap wrote: post #3

I think the term "blocking" is a bit misleading. It implies they have it running properly in FireFox and are going out of their way to make it only run in Chrome. It seems more likely they had an aggressive plan to ship inbox across Web, Android and iOS. And they started with "Chrome only" to save development time. I'm sure support for other modern browsers will follow soon.

Yes, it is indeed functional in Firefox, with some adjustments to their animations, it would be "running properly". And yes, they are going out of their way to make it run only in Chrome since all the rest of the browsers are blocked.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#20

Post by couchand »

Blahah wrote: post #18
couchand wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that with a few quick changes the application ran, so intentionally blocking seems like a valid description.

Changes that included disabling a browser security policy - not something it's reasonable for Inbox to request its users to do.

But serving all content from a single domain is a reasonable thing for Google to do.
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