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83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

theregister.co.uk

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Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#11

Post by captn3m0 »

ScottBurson wrote: post #10
jbob2000 wrote: post #8

Kind of a silly article. Most top websites just serve static content with tons of ad-network crap, they would never need 83% of the features. This is like saying "the most sold vehicles in the world don't use 90% of the horsepower they have". No shit, the most sold vehicles in the world are Corollas and Civics, ie. "sit in traffic and commute" type cars. It doesn't cost anything to keep these features around, why kil…

It does cost you something if that code has security holes.

Most of these features also rely on user-approvals so it is not as if every website is going to jump on and start using GeoLocation APIs just because they can.

It is a nice study showing how far these niche new features have reached, but that shouldn't affect how we are working on the new ones (except perhaps improving the security models of these).

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#12

Post by vonklaus »

Ok, this seems interesting. However, unless I am misunderstanding this, of the large table they used for the bulk of the articles content they only showed 6 features under utilized.

Obviously, we could prune the execution of some of the JS which is backwards compatible to the early 90s, and some of the html which is based on IBMs 1960s.

My super high-level first pass optimization rec for the w3c: If a feature exists for 3 years and a random sampling of 100,000 websites has usage stats of less than 1% but less than 5%, it is automatically phased out in 2 years of the spec.

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#13

Post by vonklaus »

pilom wrote: post #9

Can anyone recommend an updated browser that skips most unused features to run faster, use less memory or be more secure?

Brave software. This was created by Brendan Eich the x ceo of mozilla. Eich does seem to have some problems with equality[0] which may have contributed to his ouster at Mozilla, but Brave is a top shelf browser. Super great team, pretty security conscious and given the Eich developed JS, well, they have a pretty good working knowledge of it. Brian Bondy is a super awesome guy (thanks for adding duckduckgo BTW), Yan Zhu is a pretty well known dev & security blogger and they had the woman who wrote a couple encrypted chat clients working there (apologies her name escapes me) but she isn't on the site. I assume the rest of the team is talented. So in essence, I ove Brave. I still wish they would make a goddamn search engine, but it is an awesome browser.

[0] NaN === NaN returns false?. 0.0001 + 0.0002 !== 0.0003? weird.

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#15

Post by pilom »

vonklaus wrote: post #12

Ok, this seems interesting. However, unless I am misunderstanding this, of the large table they used for the bulk of the articles content they only showed 6 features under utilized. Obviously, we could prune the execution of some of the JS which is backwards compatible to the early 90s, and some of the html which is based on IBMs 1960s. My super high-level first pass optimization rec for the w3c: If a feature exists…

Unfortunately this would create a huge disincentive for developers to use any new features no matter how compelling. Would you learn any new features if there was a chance in 2 years all of your users would drop support for it?

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#16

Post by jbob2000 »

ScottBurson wrote: post #10
jbob2000 wrote: post #8

Kind of a silly article. Most top websites just serve static content with tons of ad-network crap, they would never need 83% of the features. This is like saying "the most sold vehicles in the world don't use 90% of the horsepower they have". No shit, the most sold vehicles in the world are Corollas and Civics, ie. "sit in traffic and commute" type cars. It doesn't cost anything to keep these features around, why kil…

It does cost you something if that code has security holes.

That's a big if. Anything could have security holes, seems pedantic to kill a feature because it might have a security hole at some point.

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#17

Post by vonklaus »

jbob2000 wrote: post #8

Kind of a silly article. Most top websites just serve static content with tons of ad-network crap, they would never need 83% of the features. This is like saying "the most sold vehicles in the world don't use 90% of the horsepower they have". No shit, the most sold vehicles in the world are Corollas and Civics, ie. "sit in traffic and commute" type cars. It doesn't cost anything to keep these features around, why kil…

I don't know this to be true, but my assumption as someone not building the interpreter/vms for JS is that if you eliminated all of that shit you could probably get a much better optimization from your engine. ALso, security was touched on above.

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#18

Post by tbirdz »

vonklaus wrote: post #13
pilom wrote: post #9

Can anyone recommend an updated browser that skips most unused features to run faster, use less memory or be more secure?

Brave software. This was created by Brendan Eich the x ceo of mozilla. Eich does seem to have some problems with equality[0] which may have contributed to his ouster at Mozilla, but Brave is a top shelf browser. Super great team, pretty security conscious and given the Eich developed JS, well, they have a pretty good working knowledge of it. Brian Bondy is a super awesome guy (thanks for adding duckduckgo BTW), Yan Z…

These are standard IEEE754 floating point behaviors.

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#19

Post by benologist »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

> ALS, “ambient light events”, would let browsers respond to the light level the laptop, phone or desktop is exposed to if anybody used it. Can someone give me a good, non-gimmicky example of what this would be used for?

Do you need an example right now or can you wait until someone does something cool with it that's only enabled because the option exists?

If we stopped adding new capabilities to JavaScript even as new sensors and w/e go mainstream we'd start needing Flash all over again.

Re: 83% of browser features are used by under 1% of top websites

#20

Post by vonklaus »

pilom wrote: post #15
vonklaus wrote: post #12

Ok, this seems interesting. However, unless I am misunderstanding this, of the large table they used for the bulk of the articles content they only showed 6 features under utilized. Obviously, we could prune the execution of some of the JS which is backwards compatible to the early 90s, and some of the html which is based on IBMs 1960s. My super high-level first pass optimization rec for the w3c: If a feature exists…

Unfortunately this would create a huge disincentive for developers to use any new features no matter how compelling. Would you learn any new features if there was a chance in 2 years all of your users would drop support for it?

That was the point. If a feature wasn't great enough to inspire 1 out of 20 developers to experiment with it, then I don't think it makes sense.
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