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Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#171

Post by vxNsr »

gareim wrote: post #160
TuringTest wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, as LiroXIV said, is missing the point. If they publish the Google Play store as a web site, it should work on all standard-compliant web browsers. If they want it to be accessed only from the Android app, fine, but then don't make it available to the Chrome browser either. That kind of "only-works-with-products-from-the-same-vendor" bundling is what got Microsoft convicted for monopolistic practices back in th…

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not using that to justify Google's actions, I'm explaining to him why he's being downvoted. By virtue of it being available on Chrome, his argument that this action is intended to funnel users to the app is weak. I suspect that's what qntmfred meant too.

I think you guys just illustrated why one line comments are high school cafeteria meatballs (you're never sure if you're getting asda ground beef or the jock's latest bm).

I was sure (until I read the explanation) that qntmfred was telling zanny that it was a malicious betrayal of trust and LiroXIV was enigmatically defending google's choice, but then you guys are saying that actually the two of them (and all children) were agreeing without realizing it.

This isn't 4chan please take more than 2 seconds to compose your comment.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#172

Post by piyush_soni »

vxNsr wrote: post #169
lloeki wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Months later, inbox.google.com still requires Chrome, despite it working perfectly well in Safari when spoofing the UA, and claims that it was held back by "performance issues on some animations", and while I've had a few occasional bugs running it in Firefox, it seemed to be altogether quite fine. Anyway I stopped using the thing a month ago because I simply dropped Chrome†. † slowly becoming too much ChromeOS-and-w…

I'd like to take a moment to focus on that last point: Chrome has become the memory hog that caused us all to leave firefox but for the much more egregious reason of trying to be something it's not. Now when I close chrome it wants to stay open like an over eager registry cleaner that hopes to hide behind the always on functionality and thus obscure that fact that it's done nothing, only Chrome's reason is the slight…

And welcome Firefox OS.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#173

Post by SL61 »

Brakenshire wrote: post #163
dublinben wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might I recommend the F-Droid market for all your Android app needs. https://f-droid.org/

It's a pity f-droid doesn't support payment, and doesn't seem to aspire to being a full, polished replacement for Google Play for the average consumer. I would've thought lots of people would be willing to pay the price of a coffee for a well built open source app, without the hassle of building it from source or downloading APKs from dubious sources, then having to manually update them. And many average consumers wo…

According to their wiki, they support donations via Bitcoin and Flattr as long as the developer of the app adds the option.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#174

Post by jagtesh »

dombili wrote: post #131
jagtesh wrote: post #112

I think we're just making a big deal out of this. As someone pointed out, they're likely using technologies not implemented in other browsers yet. Has the OP tried using play store on Aurora? In any case, I feel Google has the ethical and moral right to use whatever they see fit for their own web applications. And let this be said people, this isn't something new. Not even from Google. Inbox doesn't work on non-chrom…

>Even apple restricts using iCloud anything other than Safari. Are you sure? I can login to iCloud just fine on Firefox (35.0.1) and Canary.

Try Chrome mobile. Had an emergency once and got stuck :-/

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#175

Post by jagtesh »

dombili wrote: post #131
jagtesh wrote: post #112

I think we're just making a big deal out of this. As someone pointed out, they're likely using technologies not implemented in other browsers yet. Has the OP tried using play store on Aurora? In any case, I feel Google has the ethical and moral right to use whatever they see fit for their own web applications. And let this be said people, this isn't something new. Not even from Google. Inbox doesn't work on non-chrom…

>Even apple restricts using iCloud anything other than Safari. Are you sure? I can login to iCloud just fine on Firefox (35.0.1) and Canary.

I stand corrected. Maybe it's limited to mobile browsers (doesn't work on Chrome mobile).

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#176

Post by ifdefdebug »

Is it just me, or did anybody else see here a comment from a Google dev just one minute ago, stating this was "just a simple bug", going to be "fixed in short time"? I refreshed the page and now it's gone.

Edit: well I don't really know if the comment came from a Google dev, I guessed so because it looked very authoritative.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#178

Post by wlesieutre »

tuxone wrote: post #162
wlesieutre wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would you be browsing the play store from Android in a browser? Because you're browsing the web in your web browser (that's what I do with mine, anyway), you end up on a webpage with an app review, so you click the link to check out of the official screenshots and reviews, and all of a sudden you're browsing the Play Store in your browser! What a crazy random happenstance! It's almost like that's how webpages w…

It's not crazy, it's Intent Filters [0], IMHO the Android killer feature as an open platform. As an Android user I love the ability to select my default app in order to open an image, share an image, share a text/link and, of course, open a Play Store app record. It's the Android way and Firefox is breaking it. [0] http://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-filter...

As a recent iPhone switcher, yes, I love intents. It's great to be able to set what I open mailto: links in, etc.

Not sure I understand the connection here though, could you explain? What intent is Firefox breaking, and why is it OK that Chrome can go to play.google.com (in the browser, it doesn't bounce me to the Play Store app) while Firefox is blocked?

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#179

Post by sphink »

jagtesh wrote: post #117
jagtesh wrote: post #112

I think we're just making a big deal out of this. As someone pointed out, they're likely using technologies not implemented in other browsers yet. Has the OP tried using play store on Aurora? In any case, I feel Google has the ethical and moral right to use whatever they see fit for their own web applications. And let this be said people, this isn't something new. Not even from Google. Inbox doesn't work on non-chrom…

For the person who just downvoted me, I'd like to know why. Since when is making our opinions heard a bad thing on HN? I never said agree with me. Shouldn't downvoting be restricted to offensive posts?

I am not that person, but I can probably explain anyway.

The whole point of the web is to be a common runtime. You can use it from any browser and any device. You avoid the situation where you prefer browser X because it has some feature that is critical to you, but you have to use browser Y for some web sites. (So in the end, you'll use browser Y for all sites so that your user agent can actually be your agent by eg remembering your history/passwords. Or worse, you will be forced to use multiple browsers due to multiple incompatible websites.) You also avoid the situation where a new hardware platform or browser engine can never be released because there's no way to make it compatible with the current web.

In short, if a "web site" does not work in a strictly standards-compliant browser, then it's not part of the Web. It may be linked to from the web, and it may almost be part of the web, but it's really something else hanging off of it.

There are many such things. Flash apps are a common type. Heck, PDFs are too and until recently all videos were. There's nothing inherently wrong with them existing, as long as they aren't claiming to be part of the Web.

In this case, it may only be a QA shortcoming with respect to a 0.7% market share device. Inbox is not so benign, since the compatibility delay is a pretty strong indicator of corporate priority and policy.

And that's the danger, and the probable reason for the downvote. If you accept non-web things on the web, only thinking of the convenience and added functionality you gain (because your particular user agent is fine with it and makes it appear to be part of the web), then lockin will gradually set in, standards will lose their meaning, browser makers will start having to implement each other's half-baked experimental features that don't interoperate with everything else, cats and dogs will start living together, and there will be no reason not to gain the extra 10% in performance and functionality you get from a native app because your web sites don't run universally anymore anyway. So developers get to start maintaining half a dozen separate code bases because we've pissed away our opportunity to make a single codebase work everywhere. The blasé acceptance of that possibility is what earns downvotes.

The movement in this direction is already well under way on the mobile web, so I'm not just dreaming up imaginary hypothetical scaremongering.

(disclaimer: I am a Firefox platform developer)

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#180

Post by johnkpush »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #114
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't we all applauding some startup that had a douche-bagy "We dont support IE" message on their site and everyone here was so excited about it. Now that the bell is tolling for Firefox, its a different story, eh? There's been this largely ridiculous "revenge of the geeks" after the IE6 days. Now we've fed so much fuel into that fire, that casually telling people to use different browsers is the norm. I'm not sayi…

“Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.” – Tim Berners-Lee (in Technology Review, July 1996)

It's browser vendors that are bearing the torch of interoperability and standards compliance. Unfortunately, most vendors are companies with their own agenda. To add to that, all companies and people interpret standards differently. Given this, it's no wonder we don't see consistent api implementation and behaviors between browsers.

The aftermath of all of this falls on the developer's shoulders, which is why so many hours are poured into getting a modern webapp to work across all browsers. Resources are limited, and at some point, developers have to throw their hands up and resign from having support across all browsers.

When you start using a seemingly mature HTML5 api, and find that it doesn't work as expected in all browsers, what recourse does one have? Should we continue to stifle innovation while we wait for the browser vendor to reach compliance? History shows you're going to be waiting for a while, or for ever.

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