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Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

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Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#141

Post by jefftk »

emilecantin wrote: post #129
Analemma_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think it might be time for a big "reset", and for browsers to stop lying about who they are The problem is, you can't do this unless every website also "resets" at the same time, because the bad UA detection code will still be out there. The vendors aren't any happier with this situation than we are, but they do it because they have no choice.

Who still does user-agent sniffing? I can't remember the last time I saw UA-detection code. Feature-detection and polyfills have been a thing for more than a decade at this point. EDIT: Just for kicks, I'll try it. I just downloaded a User-Agent extension, and I'll set my UA to "Chrome 74", and see if anything breaks.

I was working on a product that did user-agent sniffing to figure out which image formats were supported (when to serve WebP). A feature-detection based approach is substantially slower because it breaks the preload scanner: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-parse-the-user-agent

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#142

Post by JohnNorman »

sametmax wrote: post #50
danShumway wrote: post #37

Most likely a user-agent check to ensure compatibility. I don't assume any ill intent. That being said, what does annoy me is that we've known for years that feature detection is preferable to user-agent detection, and I would kind of expect one of the biggest web development companies in the world to be following best practices. This isn't my local pizza shop, Google engineers should know better. Have they already f…

> Have they already forgotten the dumb "best viewed in IE" banners that magically vanished as soon as the user-agent changed? They have not. It's just that Google is the top tog now, and doesn't care. While Microsoft is the underdog, and linux is not a cancer and they love open source. And in 20 years this may very well reverse again. The bottom line is to not expect share holders driven multinationals to do what you…

That's not true, the market and the low are based on common culture and moral. If stuff like this is seen as immoral, companies that do it will have trouble recruiting, raising capital, maintaining social presence, etc.

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#143

Post by manigandham »

mattnewton wrote: post #135
manigandham wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single Google consumer app has gotten more bloated and added seconds in load time. What exactly are the metrics being used to measure UX and latency? What Google service loads faster than HN?

I mean, HN isn’t an apples to apples comparison at all. I bet Google search (where I work) loads much faster when we serve 10 blue links to an older phone or IE6, and that page is at least an order of magnitude more complex to assemble. When we serve you a live stock ticker, video results and carousel of relevant tweets though it’ll take a few more milliseconds to get that data. My point isn’t that latency is the onl…

I should've been more specific. Other than the search page (which obviously is meant to be fast), the actual consumer apps are all becoming slower: Gmail, Maps, Youtube, Play, etc.

This is a well-known complaint across many users with all sorts of devices and connections. I understand there are budgets and tradeoffs but the general sentiment is that Google is making the wrong decisions here.

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#145

Post by notatoad »

tracker1 wrote: post #123
notatoad wrote: post #12

> Ironically, the same page states “We support the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Edge.” it shouldn't be that difficult to understand that the latest version of edge means the latest production version, not the brand new complete overhaul of the browser on a different platform that's currently in preview mode.

The completely new overhaul browser should be detected as Chrome, or the new Edg, they had to add code to disable it.

The edge preview sends a different user agent string depending on the website. Maybe edge has just started sending a new UA that YouTube doesn't recognize?

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#146

Post by themacguffinman »

konart wrote: post #102
sorenjan wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Youtube still using Polymer 1.0 with the deprecated shadow DOM v0 that's only supported in Chrome without polyfills [0]? I still use the old version because the new version was annoyingly slow in Firefox last time I checked, and I have no reason to switch to the newer one with lower information density and contrast. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17611444/how-to-speed-up-...

>Is Youtube still using Polymer 1.0 Yes if you are logged in. If you switch to private mode - yt will serve you v3.2 >>Polymer.version >"3.2.0"

I get Polymer version 3.2.0 when I'm logged in. They're probably staging a partial rollout which is why switching to private mode makes a difference.

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#147

Post by zerocrates »

noir_lord wrote: post #59
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, this is actually due to a security restriction that Google has circumvented since it built both the browser and the application. If you could right click to paste, that would mean it would be possible for Javascript to access your clipboard on any site you go to. Firefox enforces the appropriate security setting here, Chrome simply has some sort of workaround built in by Google to allow them to…

> Chrome simply has some sort of workaround built in by Google to allow them to make the UX slightly better on their own site. The optics on that are potentially terrible. The dominant browser from the dominant search engine company deliberately breaks a standard it enforces elsewhere only on its own sites. Ouch.

Copy/paste on Docs at least used to be a feature you got from installing an extension or "app" in Chrome... I think maybe that now is preinstalled? (Or I've just had it for so long I don't notice)

On the other hand copy from the Docs menubar and custom right-click menu works for me right now in Firefox, with no addons that I'm aware of, so maybe this whole discussion is outdated.

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#148

Post by mattnewton »

spaceribs wrote: post #99
mattnewton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on YouTube, also speaking just personally. This isn’t practical at all in a latency sensitive environment. Feature detection works once JavaScript has loaded on the page, which means we either have to serve you a giant bundle of stuff you may not be able to use, or we have to degrade the experience of the latest browsers by detecting features and fetching more HTML/CSS/JavaScript…

It's unreasonable if you feature detect on every load. why not store feature detected capabilities within a cookie that's passed on additional requests?

If you think about it, that’s kinda what is happening, except instead of a punishing first load that appears broken and slow every time the user loses the cookie or we change our feature detection code, we do that ahead of time and the “cookie” is in a map where the key is the UA

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#149

Post by AlphaWeaver »

zerocrates wrote: post #147
noir_lord wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome simply has some sort of workaround built in by Google to allow them to make the UX slightly better on their own site. The optics on that are potentially terrible. The dominant browser from the dominant search engine company deliberately breaks a standard it enforces elsewhere only on its own sites. Ouch.

Copy/paste on Docs at least used to be a feature you got from installing an extension or "app" in Chrome... I think maybe that now is preinstalled? (Or I've just had it for so long I don't notice) On the other hand copy from the Docs menubar and custom right-click menu works for me right now in Firefox, with no addons that I'm aware of, so maybe this whole discussion is outdated.

It didn't use to be possible to manipulate the clipboard at all using Javascript, so sites would embed tiny flash applets to make "Copy to Clipboard" buttons.

Now it is possible to copy text to the clipboard using the HTML5 Clipboard API [0], (I think it might still have to be triggered based on a user input event, but I'm not positive), but reading the clipboard is still not possible, for the aforementioned security reasons.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard_A...

Re: Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

#150

Post by mattnewton »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #134
mattnewton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on YouTube, also speaking just personally. This isn’t practical at all in a latency sensitive environment. Feature detection works once JavaScript has loaded on the page, which means we either have to serve you a giant bundle of stuff you may not be able to use, or we have to degrade the experience of the latest browsers by detecting features and fetching more HTML/CSS/JavaScript…

> This isn’t practical at all in a latency sensitive environment. Other than Google Streaming / Stadia and some AMP sites I have never seen a Google site / app load in less than 2 seconds or so (which is kinda slow, all things considered). So I'm a little confused about this latency sensitive environment statement. Sure, what you say is correct in that using agent strings can provide an optimized bundle to the browse…

I wish you worked with me so I could pour over the metrics with you and try some experiments. I am not being flippant - I am genuinely interested in working with people who want to think through these hard problems. If you are at all interested in coffee and a potential referral, let me know.
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