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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

#21

Post by vonklaus »

tbirdz wrote: post #18
vonklaus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am aware. It was a bad joke.

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

#22

Post by franciscop »

vonklaus wrote: post #20
pilom wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1. Retrocompatibility. It's impossible to assume that 99% of the users are using a modern browser with under 3 years.

2. We are not talking about experimentation, we are talking about deployment into production.

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

#23

Post by creshal »

jbob2000 wrote: post #16
ScottBurson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

> That's a big if.

Reminder that we've been issuing so many CVEs last year we had to upgrade the numbering spec to allow for more than ten thousand a year.

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

#24

Post by mcdoh »

reicher89 wrote: post #5
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?

Hmm, perhaps a text-heavy site could switch between "night" and "day" modes for ease of reading

Just last night I was happy to find that Safari Books Online had a 'night' feature, automatically switching would have saved me thirty minutes of burned retinas.

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

#25

Post by LionessLover »

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…

In addition to the reply with the pointer to the standards, sure NaN !== NaN.

NaN means "no idea what we've got here". When you get to say that phrase, would you expect it to be used for exactly one thing and one thing only? To me "I have no idea" means the possibilities are endless (infinite). We can only compare for equality when we know what we are looking at, otherwise it's just "status unknown". Yes, it might be equality - the chances are infinitely small though.

If you take the argument a step further and say "but I got the two NaNs that I compare doing the exact same operation, so even if I don't know what I've got from a mathematical point of view whatever it is it should be equal". In that case you are not actually comparing the NaNs but the path(s) that got you there.

I must say I find the whole NaN, null, 0 vs. undefined interesting on so many levels. There is a world of a difference between knowing you've got nothing (null or 0) and not knowing what've you've got at all.

"null": I have no bank account. "0": my balance is 0. "undefined" or "NaN": I lost my memory after yesterdays binge drinking and don't know who I am and if I got a bank account or not. Knowledge vs. no knowledge.

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

#26

Post by moron4hire »

To propose removing these features instead of fixing them fundamentally misunderstands the modern purpose of the web. It's not just for document distribution anymore. It is and has been for many years an application deployment system. To get rid of these features would kill whatever chance we have of getting out of walled garden app stores.

I mean, a similar study would probably find "top 10,000 apps don't use 80% of OS features." Just because not a lot of people use a feature doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.

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

#27

Post by moron4hire »

vonklaus wrote: post #17
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.

APIs have nothing to do with the interpreting of the language.

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

#28

Post by zghst »

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?

More advanced analytics, tracking your battery + ambient lights + other capabilities...

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

#29

Post by btrask »

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…

With fewer features, new engines like Servo could be built faster.

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

#30

Post by vonklaus »

LionessLover wrote: post #25
vonklaus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In addition to the reply with the pointer to the standards, sure NaN !== NaN. NaN means "no idea what we've got here". When you get to say that phrase, would you expect it to be used for exactly one thing and one thing only? To me "I have no idea" means the possibilities are endless (infinite). We can only compare for equality when we know what we are looking at, otherwise it's just "status unknown". Yes, it might be…

Again, I am aware of what the behavior is, although this was a nice refresher and I appreciate it ;)

The joke was, of course, surrounding the Mozilla incedent where Brendan Eich stepped down from his position as CEO apparently because of a perception that he was promoting inequality. This characterization was due to his support of prop 8 (a bill about marriage equality, or lake there of).

To completely ruin the joke's punchline[1], was that the "problems he had with equality" were actually his understanding of types and language development and are evident in javascript.

Of course that is untrue, was a joke, and Brendan Eich is a legendary programmer whose contributions I am grateful for.

[1] Joke's punchline could be ruined by it being both a bad joke needing an explanation, being in poor taste, and generally just not being a funny joke.

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