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A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

blog.chriszacharias.com

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Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#311

Post by progval »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #299
codedokode wrote: post #202

To anyone thinking it was a good deed: please remember that later Google used similar techiniques against other browsers, like Opera. They showed a warning about an "unsupported browser" but if the user changed user-agent to Firefox or Chrome, everything worked. Another example is Web version of Skype which is very picky and doesn't work in many browsers, like mobile browsers, or slightly outdated Firefox. For exampl…

Just because a browser is unsupported doesn't mean it won't work; it means they're not going out of their way to fix it if a problem does occur.

When Skype decides your browser is unsupported, it means you can't use it at all: https://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1556784915.png

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#312

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

darawk wrote: post #208
ljm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it away from the specific case of IE6, and consider the situation where you have a product team that says one thing and a team of engineers insist on their solution. They got lucky, IE6 in that sense was ready to die, and they basically declared mutiny with good cause. Can you imagine any other scenario where insisting your idea is correct above every alternative, to the extent you can bypass the organisation an…

> They got lucky, IE6 in that sense was ready to die, and they basically declared mutiny with good cause. Ok, and if IE6 had not been ready to die, what kind of catastrophe would have ensued? > Can you imagine any other scenario where insisting your idea is correct above every alternative, to the extent you can bypass the organisation and enforce your idea, could be utterly catastrophic? These developers in particula…

IE6 was ready to die the moment it was born. This story boils down to some influential developers saying "Fuck this shit" and doing something about it, taking most of the industry with them.

Given that IE6 was one of the worst pieces of software in all of human history, there was never likely to be a significant downside.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#313

Post by rocqua »

shpx wrote: post #273
mherdeg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good catchy name for this "oops" stuff? It's very interesting, an interesting modern take on "embrace and extend" or "FUD".

I call it "Hanlon's razor" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

What about hanlon's stubble?

I.e. something which Hanlon's razor should remove, but actually still exists.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#314

Post by sara1732 »

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See the video of this man he is catching balls and he is wearing blindfold http://bit.ly/2Vx4Mdl

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#316

Post by vetinari »

kevingadd wrote: post #253
vetinari wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are complaining about - that they are treated as second-class citizen - is exacly, how they treat Linux, for example. No OMTP, OMTC, no hw video acceleration, no smooth scrolling, buggy dark theme, etc, so Firefox on Linux is not as polished and/or performing as on other platforms. The excuse for that was, that Linux has small market share, so it is not worth for putting more resources into solving these pr…

A massive subset of Firefox devs are Linux users. Those features are missing largely because they are hard to implement reliably on Linux and customers (who are largely not Linux users) won't feel the impact. There are often flags you can set to try and use them on Linux, YMMV. If you try doing much hardware graphics (let alone game development) for Linux end-users you'll understand why features like OMTP or OMTC are…

> A massive subset of Firefox devs are Linux users.

No, they are not. A massive subset of Firefox devs are Apple users. For Linux, the occasional Redhat or SuSE dev does the most-needed fixing.

> Those features are missing largely because they are hard to implement reliably on Linux and customers (who are largely not Linux users) won't feel the impact.

Neither of these are true. It does make easier rationalizing Linux mistreatment, though.

If there was no impact, the equivalent functionality would not be needed to be implemented under other OS-es either. You have bugzilla full of feedback, that it does have an impact.

It also makes Linux itself look worse, compared to other systems.

> There are often flags you can set to try and use them on Linux, YMMV.

I know, that you can force OMTC, for example. I've been doing that for years, with zero bugs. Why can't Mozilla do that by default? They haven't reviewed the situation for years, that's how much they care.

Also, for example, the EGL situation (needed for Wayland, obviously Wayland apps cannot use GLX without X11) was purely Firefox problem, not the driver stack one. (Worked on by Redhat dev).

> If you try doing much hardware graphics (let alone game development) for Linux end-users you'll understand why features like OMTP or OMTC are late to ship on that platform, if ever.

Mesa is one of best of breed drivers, especially compared to some drivers you can find on other platforms. See here: https://code.blender.org/2019/04/supported-gpus-in-blender-2... for what Blender devs think about the driver situation.

> Even on Windows some new stuff like WebRender has to be manually opted in on specific driver versions and architectures one at a time, because it turns out video drivers are really bad and if you ship early your app will crash.

I'm fine with incremental enablement. I'm not fine with the enablement never arriving.

And again; the original post was about the irony of the situation Firefox itself finds themselves in; exactly the same excuses are used against them.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#317

Post by vetinari »

sincerely wrote: post #291
vetinari wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are complaining about - that they are treated as second-class citizen - is exacly, how they treat Linux, for example. No OMTP, OMTC, no hw video acceleration, no smooth scrolling, buggy dark theme, etc, so Firefox on Linux is not as polished and/or performing as on other platforms. The excuse for that was, that Linux has small market share, so it is not worth for putting more resources into solving these pr…

But firefox and linux aren't competing for anything?

Neither are gdocs and firefox.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#318

Post by vetinari »

icebraining wrote: post #295
vetinari wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are complaining about - that they are treated as second-class citizen - is exacly, how they treat Linux, for example. No OMTP, OMTC, no hw video acceleration, no smooth scrolling, buggy dark theme, etc, so Firefox on Linux is not as polished and/or performing as on other platforms. The excuse for that was, that Linux has small market share, so it is not worth for putting more resources into solving these pr…

OMTP is enabled on Firefox for Linux.

OK, I stand corrected then. OMTC can be forced, too. Other mentioned features are not available, and there are more, than just the ones mentioned.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#319

Post by vetinari »

Aeolun wrote: post #200
vetinari wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are complaining about - that they are treated as second-class citizen - is exacly, how they treat Linux, for example. No OMTP, OMTC, no hw video acceleration, no smooth scrolling, buggy dark theme, etc, so Firefox on Linux is not as polished and/or performing as on other platforms. The excuse for that was, that Linux has small market share, so it is not worth for putting more resources into solving these pr…

In those cases it never worked in the first place though. Nobody is in a position where they expect certain stuff to work because it never did.

Lot of HTML/js stuff never worked in Firefox either. For example, Youtube uses polymer, which uses web components v0 if available. Firefox never implemented that.

On the other hand, the above mentioned features could work, if Firefox would implement them, as they did for other platforms. Other applications on Linux are able to use the needed APIs available, why Firefox is not?

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#320

Post by irony-inthe-gui »

vetinari wrote: post #67
cpeterso wrote: post #10

Is this a charming story about helping users upgrade to modern web browsers or a dark parable about the influence of tech giants? Compare with ex-Firefox VP Johnathan Nightingale's recent thread about Google "amateur hour" and "oopses" that only affected Firefox: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686

I find it ironic that Mozilla complains about this, when they do exactly the same wrt platforms supported by Firefox.

You have to relish a moment like this, when some Linux user whines like a little bitch about a GUI app.

Hey asshole, did you RTFM? Why aren’t you surfing from the command line like a real man? It’s open source, so why don’t you roll up your sleeves and become part of the solution? You’re so smart and talented, so why don’t you write the missing pieces yourself?

Ever read about the little red hen? All the animals wanted to eat the bread, but none of them wanted to help bake it. SOUND FAMILIAR???

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