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We Need Chrome No More

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Re: We Need Chrome No More

#31

Post by jonplackett »

ethelward wrote: post #14
mapgrep wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this post, but I take issue with the idea that Chrome was initially adopted, or served, "to break the Web free from corporate greed." Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. No one else had this at the time, and it was a big deal because Flash was still widespread so sites were even less stable than they are today. Luckily…

> Chrome's appeal was primarily technical Among the tech crowd, probably. For the remaining 99.99% of users, absolutely not. Chrome's appeal came from the pervasive advertisement campaigns, from the bundling strategy with other pieces of software, for the pre-installation on new computers or from the ads on Google SEarch homepage.

For the remaining users I reckon tech-literate family members set it as their search engine for them. I certainly switched over A LOT of people this way.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#32

Post by ocdtrekkie »

rrggrr wrote: post #26

Extensions. I am now locked into Chrome because several services I use require Chrome extensions that aren't available elsewhere. The idea that Chrome can be unseated, or isn't needed, is unrealistic for the many users who rely on Chrome-exclusive extensions.

I would be curious how many of those extensions aren't an extreme compromise of your security. (Most extensions are.)

You should be using as few extensions as humanly possible, and looking to remove extensions whenever you can.

(I currently use one, the EFF's Privacy Badger, though Firefox's new Tracking Protection makes it somewhat redundant, and I may not keep it forever.)

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#33

Post by iosonofuturista »

mixedCase wrote: post #3

Weird flex suggesting Vivaldi, given that it's proprietary and there are other open source Chromium forks.

Could you recommend some? From a quick search all I could find were things like Opera, Torch, Epic etc, which do not seem to be open source.

I must I am quite happy with Vivaldi at the moment, but a true open source browser would make me even happier.

I did try to use Firefox Developer Edition for a while, but despite being a step in the right direction, I must say I prefer the chromium developer tools.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#34

Post by dak1 »

Other browsers need to catch up to Chrome with their development tools. I'd be happy to use Safari or Firefox for development, but...

- I can't disable CORS in Firefox (yes, sometimes you have to disable CORS rather than modify the Allow-Origin header response, for example if you need to test against a production backend) (and, no, CORS Everywhere is not a sufficient solution).

- I can't inspect WebSocket frames in anything except Chrome.

- Safari does not allow self-signed certs over WSS (and there's no way to override it).

- Safari does not respect System-wide APC Config for Proxies.

There's a handful of other issues. Both Safari and Firefox do do things well, and often better than Chrome. For example, Firefox tends to actually handle standards correctly, whereas Chrome tries to be overly forgiving. And Safari's Develop and Debug menus are easily the best and quickest way to disable CORS or JavaScript, and examine service workers.

Unfortunately, some of the above issues are blockers.

I can test with Firefox on staging or in production, but not being able to test up front during development really impacts compatibility testing.

If another browser was as good or better for development, I'd be happy to use it.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#35

Post by leftyted »

ethelward wrote: post #14
mapgrep wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this post, but I take issue with the idea that Chrome was initially adopted, or served, "to break the Web free from corporate greed." Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. No one else had this at the time, and it was a big deal because Flash was still widespread so sites were even less stable than they are today. Luckily…

> Chrome's appeal was primarily technical Among the tech crowd, probably. For the remaining 99.99% of users, absolutely not. Chrome's appeal came from the pervasive advertisement campaigns, from the bundling strategy with other pieces of software, for the pre-installation on new computers or from the ads on Google SEarch homepage.

Chrome's main appeal was that it was much faster than firefox and IE. At everything. I had no technical knowledge when chrome came out, was using firefox, tried chrome, never looked back.

It's not really possible to separate out the effects of advertising from the effects of the product actually being better. Maybe I installed chrome because I saw an ad, but I stopped using firefox because it was clear that chrome was better. The fact that you're emphasizing ads over the very real performance advantages just means you've got an axe to grind.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#36

Post by perfunctory »

perfunctory wrote: post #16

> Ten years ago, we needed Google Chrome to break the Web free from corporate greed How? It never stops puzzling me why anyone thoght Chrome would be any different. Somehow less corporate.

> The company’s focus gradually shifted towards transforming their browser dominance into business growth

It hasn’t shifted. It’s always been there.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#38

Post by apfel912 »

collyw wrote: post #30
hashhar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developing against Chrome is exactly "support every browser's quirks" instead of developing against the actual standards (usually Firefox has the truest implementation of which).

Chrome is the new IE?

safari is the new IE.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#40

Post by Chlorus »

hashhar wrote: post #13
umvi wrote: post #4

> developers are increasingly shunning other browsers in their testing and bug-fixing routines. If it works as intended on Chrome, it’s ready to ship. That's me. Sorry, but I just can't be bothered to support every browser's quirks. I check Firefox every once in a while, but really, I don't mind losing a few users if it means significantly less maintenance and testing for me. It's like complaining that developers are…

Developing against Chrome is exactly "support every browser's quirks" instead of developing against the actual standards (usually Firefox has the truest implementation of which).

> (usually Firefox has the truest implementation of which).

Is there an "objective" test for standards compliance these days, like the good ol' acid test was for the box model? I agree with this sentiment, but only anecdotally - I'd like to see something concrete to back it up.

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