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The Browser Monopoly

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Re: The Browser Monopoly

#171

Post by basch »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #163
no_wizard wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your points over all, but I'm still bitter and will take the time every time to sound my bitterness about the fact that Microsoft didn't back Firefox/servo (the rust implementation of their rendering engine) Why am I bitter? 1. It hands a lot of power over to chromium, regardless of how much it gets forked by Microsoft. 2. It would have put some very talented engineers onto a Chrome competitor, which I a…

I too believe this was a very short-sighted move on Microsoft's part. There might have been some very good short-term reasons for building off of Chromium rather than Firefox or servo, but long-term entrenching the Google monopoly is going to cost them big time.

It's almost gotta be a new guard of developers that though it was easier to force blink on the windows team, than abandon what they they grew up using.

Microsoft could have written any browser engine it wanted and then placed iOS/Safari like rules on other browsers, such as... "if you want us to allow your app to run in Battery Friendly mode, you must ONLY use our OS provided web engine."

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#172

Post by mcv »

darklion wrote: post #29
mcv wrote: post #20

I recently ditched Chrome and switched back to Firefox, at home and on my mobile, only to discover that a surprising number of sites don't work in Firefox. In particular: Twitter doesn't work on Firefox Mobile. Most work fine, but still, I ended up switching to Safari, to discover that it's just not quite as good an experience as Firefox or Chrome.

> I ended up switching to Safari, to discover that it's just not quite as good an experience as Firefox or Chrome. IMO, I find it to be just the opposite--neither Firefox nor Chrome are as good an experience as Safari. Maybe the difference is that when a particular site does not work in a given browser, I don't blame the browser, I blame the website.

That's a bit presumptuous. My issue with Safari isn't that sites don't work; its seems comparable to Chrome in that regard. But using it doesn't feel as nice as Firefox or Chrome. It's harder to find features I need. Though to be honest, I find all browsers a bit lacking. I want more granular control over which cookies to accept and for how long, and how exactly to treat various sites.

And I certainly don't blame browsers for badly written sites, but blaming the site doesn't magically make it work either. Having less sites work for me is still a worse experience, no matter whose fault it is.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#173

Post by mcv »

marc3842h wrote: post #131
majewsky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox on iOS uses Safari's rendering engine. Maybe mcv is referring to Gecko-powered Firefox on Android?

I've been using Mobile Twitter on Firefox for Android and it works just fine.

I'm using Firefox on Android refusing third-party cookies, and for whatever reason Twitter doesn't work.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#174

Post by pmikesell »

dao- wrote: post #126
pmikesell wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a technically minded person. I've been using web browsers since NCSA Mosaic. I switch browsers probably once per decade (mosaic -> netscape navigator -> firefox -> chrome). At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war because content creators were continually accidentally making things work in IE only. (By "accidentally" I mean that the standards were very conf…

> At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war [...] This is false. Firefox's market share was continuously rising until Chrome came along (and Google marketed it aggressively). IE was still strong but already losing.

Netscape Navigator was something like 90% at one point. Netscape fell down to single digits against IE and then started climbing back up. That's the point at which the chart in the article begins. That's what I'm referring to when I say "losing the war". 90% -> 6% is losing.

I'm not like an IE fan - I don't user Windows for anything other than gaming, I just remember what the browser wars were like in the early 2000s.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#175

Post by pmikesell »

olyjohn wrote: post #144
dao- wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war [...] This is false. Firefox's market share was continuously rising until Chrome came along (and Google marketed it aggressively). IE was still strong but already losing.

You are correct. For some reason, I keep seeing this history repeated over and over, but even the chart in the article confirms you're correct. Firefox was taking over like crazy before Chrome came along...

... I'm talking about before that. Netscape went from 90% to 6% once IE started bundling on Windows. Firefox "taking over like crazy" is a later comeback.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#176

Post by ilaksh »

The only way you are going to get a competitive landscape for browsers is to get away from the paradigm of the browser containing the entire kitchen sink, i.e. its own OS.

Maybe there could be an alternative that only supports markdown. Or maybe markdown/rst and web assembly.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#177

Post by scarface74 »

basch wrote: post #170
scarface74 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else. The first time I saw break away tabs in Safari for Windows in 2007. Before Chrome was introduced.

Werent safari 3 tabs below the bookmark bar? Safari tabs on top werent until 2009 I wanna say. I thought they quickly reverted it as well. Like Maybe it was just the safari 4 beta?

Screenshot of an early version of Safari for Windows.

Safari 3

https://lifehacker.com/safari-3-beta-now-available-for-windo...

Safari 5 http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/safari-fo...

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#178

Post by basch »

saagarjha wrote: post #62
basch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a perpetual arms race, if the spammers have access to the blocking software they can work around it. Anti-evil works best when the evil cant see the inner workings.

> Anti-evil works best when the evil cant see the inner workings. That’s just security by obscurity.

Being able to see what a spam filter is filtering for makes it easier to avoid the rules.

It's not security through obscurity.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#179

Post by basch »

scarface74 wrote: post #177
basch wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Werent safari 3 tabs below the bookmark bar? Safari tabs on top werent until 2009 I wanna say. I thought they quickly reverted it as well. Like Maybe it was just the safari 4 beta?

Screenshot of an early version of Safari for Windows. Safari 3 https://lifehacker.com/safari-3-beta-now-available-for-windo... Safari 5 http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/safari-fo...

I'm looking at the safari 3 screenshot and I don't see tabs in the title bar. I'm pretty sure it wasn't till safari 4 beta.

The safari 5 screenshot you have is EDGE with a safari installer in front of it.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#180

Post by NikkiA »

basch wrote: post #3

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords?…

It's possible that the author meant 'multi-threaded memory changes, and multi-threaded tabs' rather than 'tabs' alone. And it's true that chrome DID introduce threaded tabs afaik.
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