Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

pulltech.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 350 posts

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#341

Post by tastroder »

UncleMeat wrote: post #226
tastroder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome still displays bitmap images. (S)FTP is still used, there's a lot of legacy stuff on the internet, and Google does not dictate what technology people use. It's still a web browser after all, not an Instagram viewer. > It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. While I see that it is shared by many here, I do not get this sentiment. It's still out there and rarely used, yes. But…

Are you sure it wouldn't require much maintenance? "We have to support this other weird crap that nobody uses anymore" is like pain point #1 for nontrivial surgery.

I could not honestly judge that since I'm not familiar with the code base / project leadership at all. Given the project's reach I'd figure they have that part of the code thoroughly covered by tests and well enough separated to keep maintenance efforts on the low burner.

The linked Google Doc says that usage in a 28-day window was at 0.01-0.03% of users (not sure which figure to use there). Sure, that sounds horrid at first but think about how many users Chrome has, that's not nothing either. Instead of implementing encrypted connections to make their software better, they jump to deprecate yet another protocol. I just find this really hard to grok. How many people used the profiling features of the developer tools in that time frame for example? Not many? That's cool, do we get to keep those anyway?

Browsers are complex, yes, it just would be nice if we could expect a bit more of a graceful deprecation process with better communication. If you don't feel like supporting it, move it to an extension/plugin to separate it and put it somewhere the community can pick it up easily.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#342

Post by bartread »

userbinator wrote: post #315
bartread wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Like OpenSSL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed (I mean, I'm not overjoyed at the deprecation of FTP support because I used it just yesterday, but let's at least be honest here. The protocol might be decades old but the implementations aren't necessarily, and if they're being actively maintained there's always the possibility of introducing new bugs.)

It was introduced into the software in 2012 That's not the "stable protocol that's been around for decades" situation that FTP is in.

> That's not the "stable protocol that's been around for decades" situation that FTP is in.

That is literally the point I was making when I said, "if they're being actively maintained there's always the possibility of introducing new bugs."

Moreover, just because a library had its last fix a decade (or whatever) ago is no guarantee that unfixed bugs do not lie undiscovered in it.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#343

Post by Touche »

T-hawk wrote: post #261
Touche wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do dedicated ftp clients include crawling and indexing?

Neither does the browser. The search engine does that. What should happen here is the search engine still crawls and indexes resources accessible by ftp, and the ftp:// url gets passed to the operating system to launch an appropriate native program. This happens for protocols like magnet:// and discord:// . Whether Google's search engine will continue to do so for ftp:// resources once Google's web browser no longer…

Yeah, they won't, which is the point. Magnet links are not in Google results either. So having the browser support the protocol is pretty important in this case.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#344

Post by Karunamon »

tim58 wrote: post #262
Karunamon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t Chrome just hand the ftp:// link over to a dedicated client?

Sure Chrome can. However this reduces accessibility. What if someone has never heard of FTP? Learning about it and installing an FTP client is a large barrier compared to starting a download. Reducing accessibility is a breaking change IMO.

The same argument could be used for not showing PDF files in the browser.

IMO, browsers need to concern themselves with HTTP. Anything else gets handed off to an application that's designed for it.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#345

Post by ZWoz »

georgebarnett wrote: post #335
ZWoz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole solution and experience is different, even if some point uploading file by bytes over TCP is similar. HTTP server itself isn't solution. You need code implementing upload functionality, probably support for uploading many files at once and tracking progress. Now you client uses javascript and that client is remote, you need to "download" it from HTTP server. FTP client is small, local and don't have much overhe…

That’s all well and good, and has nothing to do with Chromium keeping ftp support.

Indeed, but your question wasn't about Chromium ftp support. Note, I am not lazylizard, so I don't really know, what he meant by "Ftp is fast", but I have my own thoughs and general dislike to webify everything on internet.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#346

Post by s3bast0m »

elliotec wrote: post #278
syshum wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use RSS every day, I have 3 stops when I want to check on current events, my RSS Feeds, Reddit, and here...

Please share your favorite RSS client

Bazqux, basically a GoogleReader clone if Google would still develop it. Works really well on mobile as PWA. Not free, but worth 20-30$ sub a year. Not affiliated, but a happy subscriber for 5-6 years. Everybody who still misses GoogleReader should try it.

https://github.com/bazqux/ https://bazqux.com/

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#347

Post by JetSpiegel »

elliotec wrote: post #278
syshum wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use RSS every day, I have 3 stops when I want to check on current events, my RSS Feeds, Reddit, and here...

Please share your favorite RSS client

Miniflux for me. There's a paid hosted SaaS option, or you can host it yourself.

https://miniflux.app/

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#348

Post by dmix »

scrollaway wrote: post #340
dmix wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where was this when Reader died! Looks great. The big problem at the time was there was no good options, even a year or so after and I gave up trying. Everything was 90% of the way or too fancy for such a simple service.

I found it in one of the many HN threads where alternatives were being advertised left and right just as Reader's death was being announced ;) theoldreader is another one I remember from back then.

Ah, apparently I didn't try hard enough then.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#349

Post by fucking_tragedy »

pcwalton wrote: post #326
fucking_tragedy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what I saw the last time I checked Mozilla's bug tracker, the issue has a low priority and no one is actively working to resolve it. From what I understand, it's a low level rendering issue.

That's not true. There was a roadmap posted yesterday and patches to begin to address the issue landed this week, including a new preference to opt into Core Animation. This is Markus' top priority at present. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 Source: I wrote the initial version of those patches, though I think Markus has basically rewritten them all at this point.

My mistake, I hadn't checked on the status in nearly a year. Glad to hear that progress is being made. Thanks for the update and patches!

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#350

Post by insulanian »

pcwalton wrote: post #327
insulanian wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I tried to switch to FF on multiple occasions, but it's a CPU hog on MacBook. Why is this issue ignored for so long?

"Resource consumption" in the parent comment refers to power efficiency, specifically GPU blits. That issue has not been ignored. I don't know what "CPU hog" refers to; the issue is not about CPU usage.

It's consuming ~20% CPU in idle on my machine (MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015, 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, macOS Mojave 10.14.6)
Post reply on HN