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Chrome is Not the Standard

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241–250 of 465 posts

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#241
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Mozilla's biggest screw up IMO was failing to disclose properly what was going on. That was not the only issue 1. Failure to Disclose it before distribution 2. Failure to Properly name or provide any support context to the Add In. 3. Using the "Studies" System designed to improve the technology and advance the web browser for this Adware "Easter egg" not really an Easter egg addin 4. Failure to Publicly Comment abo…

Then you can go back to chrome or chromium, both of which Google has pushed a binary plugin to that records voice in the past. Debian had to raise a storm over it and turned into a compile-time only option to not get the microphone listening plugin on your chromium install.

I never left FF, I have been using FF since the very first Beta Releases, I have been using Mozilla Browsers since before FF was even a concept

I support Mozilla on Ideological grounds and it is said they are dropping their Ideology in favor of a pure commercial company.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#242

At what point does the dominant market leader become the standard, though? Chrome currently has roughly 60% market share in both desktop and mobile. No other browsers are forced to comply, but web developers will prioritize targeting the platform where their users are. We see this today where tons of things are broken on the long tail of older versions of IE, and developers largely ignore them. I'm not saying that I…

If web developers refuse to treat it that way, the web stays healthier overall. Consider this post an argument for why we shouldn't let any single browser have that kind of dominance. (I'd say the same it if were Firefox, Safari, or Edge in this spot.)

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#243
post #4

I know they screwed up recently with the Mr. Robot malware, but I think it's really important for developers to get behind Firefox again. As the American government fails to provide any sort of check on its behemoth corporations (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and to protect consumer privacy, Firefox is basically the last contender for real consumer protection standing.

They didn't just screw up once . They've screwed up many times over the years with many projects and attempts that run counter to the core values that Mozilla claims to uphold. Bryan Lunduke articulated this very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY At this point Mozilla has to prove to us that they are worthy of our usage

That video ("Mozilla is Not Trustworthy") is remarkably inarticulate and inchoate all in pursuit of something we don't need to do in the first place -- trust Mozilla. And Mozilla certainly doesn't owe us.

Software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) means we don't need to trust Mozilla's free software because we have permission to inspect the code to see what the software does, change the code if we don't like what the software does, distribute the improved software (or a verbatim copy at our choice) even commercially, and run the software anytime we wish for any reason. These principles place us in control of our computers to the extent we're willing and able to put in the work. We can even hire other people to do this work if we don't do the work ourselves.

Lunduke complained about incorporation and non-profit status but never articulated an argument explaining how these things are a problem. Around 7m53s he said this "doesn't make them [Mozilla] untrustworthy" leaving me wondering why this was brought up in the first place. He consistently mispronounced the word "Mozilla" as "Motzilla" (there's no "t" in their name), and directly contradicted his own thesis (around 6m30s) in neighboring sentences: "This is not an opinion on my part. I guess that my opinion is that they're not trustworthy based on these facts...". He did that again in his own ignorance of the terms "foundation" and "corporation" around 7m where he seemed to have a problem with the difference between what he read into the terms he didn't define versus what he described to be the case (thus vaguely complaining that Mozilla made money and published free software for hire). I think it comes down to not having a good argument to raise in the first place but feeling a need to say something about a situation he found irksome. But I think his disorganized view built on a non-issue is typical of the published reaction to this situation.

This entire kerfuffle comes off to me as manufacturing a controversy out of very little. The main beneficiaries of this indignance are the software proprietors -- organizations that make nonfree browsers you can't trust because you never really know what they're doing when those programs run.

It's telling that vanishingly little of the commentary on this situation brings people to understand what software freedom is or how its practical consequences read directly on this situation by explaining how the other programs to do the same job (mostly nonfree user-subjugating programs) are not alternatives at all because they don't respect a user's software freedom. It's not clear how this issue with Looking Glass (the Firefox add-on in question) rises to something more serious than a bungled PR effort and poor communication from Mozilla. Source code analysis shows that Looking Glass did nothing unless activated and that add-on was off by default; hardly something to get so worked up over and largely a purposefully-missed opportunity to teach people about software freedom.

There's no reason to limit this examination to web browsers. Justifying use of any nonfree browser in light of security problems hinges on trusting the proprietor (which you should never do) precisely because those programs are nonfree. Users don't have other information on which to make an informed decision and the information they have is inadequate to make an informed decision. These browsers are also published by known NSA partners. There's no good reason to defend switching to any nonfree program to do any job, particularly if you're going to have a discussion centered on privacy and security.

I see the lacking discussion on this topic as a consequence of pushing for "open source" instead of insisting on software freedom. Open source development methodology was founded to separate the ethics-based principles on which the free software movement is based (the free software movement is a social movement) from the practical outcome of software freedom -- lots of useful software -- while talking chiefly to businesses about the gratis programming labor those businesses can use. This approach purposefully skips past an ethical understanding of how to treat people with regard to computers. This approach requires talking at length about this situation without drawing users' attention to what software freedom is or how it matters. But there's no substance in that approach so proponents raise ill-formed non-issues (with a heavy dose of entitlement ("Mozilla has to prove to us that they are worthy of our usage") to make it seem like Mozilla has become a persistent problem instead of seeing a long-time free software publisher make a relatively minor communication mistake that posed no threat to Firefox users. Quite the contrary is the case: we can and should continue to run and build new programs on Mozilla's free software just as we do with any other free software. Thanking them for their work and not taking an entitled attitude is also right and proper.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#244

"Safari ships new features on a much slower cadence, but they’re usually solid and always perform incredibly well" Well, clearly this person doesn't have much experience with web development... The webengine in iOS is the biggest pile of crap I've ever worked with since IE6. "Oh? You want to click this? OK, let's wait for 300 ms just in case you want to double tap to scroll!" "We finally fixed it, no more delay on cl…

I've been saying Safari is the new IE, they still can't even manage to properly implement flexbox spec and I've had a handful of rendering bugs to report on super basic things like scrolling a page with fixed elements (that's another thing fixed by using a hack to kick in GPU rendering). Edge is actually much better.

I've been using Macs for 20 years and I can't believe I'm to the point where I'm using a Microsoft IDE and praising their web browser over Apple's.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#245
post #207

I wish the author discussed the fact that Apple doesn't allow any other browsers to target the iOS platform. Chrome / Firefox are forced to be thin wrappers against the webkit engine instead of bringing their own technology. No other platform has policies like this and it greatly impacts the web platform and changes the dynamic of web standards in a way no other browser developer could.

This is an important point, but it's ancillary to what I'm getting at here. (And, contrary to sibling comment, I'm well aware that "Chrome on iOS" is just a wrapper around the Webkit view.) There's an important role of competition, and I sometimes do wish that Apple allowed alternative implementations. On the other hand, alternative implementations are also alternative vectors for security holes, and one of Apple's primary business differentiators at this point is "security and privacy"—so I'm also sympathetic to the reasons they don't allow other implementations on their system.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#246
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. The rendering, JS engines in Firefox and Chrome are state-of-the-art and take small armies to build and maintain. Mozilla has to strike a balance between revenue seeking and consumer protection seeking behavior that I would imagine is quite difficult to maintain. Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specifi…

> Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specific workflow was upheaveled by a movement to webextensions planned like 2 years in advance. They're up in arms because of an upheaval which prevents anyone from restoring their workflow : the new extensions API simply does not allow the extensibility the new extensions API allowed. Some of the changes are arbitrary (e.g. it's not possible to rebi…

I wouldn't call it permanent. It'll just take time to build up the WebExtensions API set more, which there should be more breathing room to do with 57 finally out the door.

The change to the Sync security model happened in response to years of user feedback about the usability of the system as it was.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#247
post #171

The author laments about performance without once considering security. There are good reasons why that concurrent JavaScript extension hasn't been adopted by Google: it enables very powerful timing attacks against many aspects of your computer.

This is literally the exact point I'm making in the article. This kind of pushback from other vendors (including Google against Apple) is part of what makes the web platform strong.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#248

developers grouse about the other browser makers who are “holding the web back.” Indeed, perhaps "holding the web back" is a good thing if it means websites will be more accessible overall, to even less common browsers like NetSurf, Dillo, and all the other text-based ones. IMHO the "feature war/race" between the major browser vendors has had an overall negative effect, as if all sites somehow need to turn into ridic…

I think there may even be a chicken and egg situation going on - for some reason, media websites such as CNN are pushing giant rich media content objects at us like videos, which obviously are meaningless to a text browser. Even webdev blogs are being posted with big GIFs every paragraph or two. I'm not sure why content creators are feeling the need to go multi-media - perhaps it's getting harder and harder to tell w…

They go multi-media for preroll ads. These are contextually more resistant against adblockers, and bring in more revenue.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#250
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. The rendering, JS engines in Firefox and Chrome are state-of-the-art and take small armies to build and maintain. Mozilla has to strike a balance between revenue seeking and consumer protection seeking behavior that I would imagine is quite difficult to maintain. Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specifi…

> revenue seeking Then what the hell did I donate money to them for? I thought their whole thing was they were for "people, not profit." I don't want my technology to make money off of me in any way I'm not aware of.

Mozilla Foundation employee here! You probably donated through https://donate.mozilla.org, so I thank you earnestly for that! With that donation you're supporting our work to protect the health of the internet, fueling the movement to keep the web decentralized, open and free. Some of the projects we've worked on include http://privacynotincluded.org/ and our advocacy campaigns like https://advocacy.mozilla.org/en-US/net-neutrality. We also sponsor a whole host of fellows doing deeper dives on things like the dangers of Aadhaar in India and Tech Policy in Washington D.C. (https://foundation.mozilla.org/opportunity/2017-tech-policy-...). You can learn more at https://foundation.mozilla.org/about/
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