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Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

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Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#91

Post by bunderbunder »

taf2 wrote: post #53

Not even close. IE 6 didn’t get any updates or new web features for years. It was closed source. It was dead and everyone used it. float:right; zoom:1; was a common necessity… to compare them is an insult to the immense progress and effort spent over the last 24 years… (yes chrome started in 2007, but the teams from Firefox get credit too, many of them went on to build chrome ). The open source movement won, IE is de…

The open source movement has been co-opted. Its core values were laid out in a world where people owned their own computers and were custodians of their own data. There was no cloud, there was no saas, and that meant that owning source code meant you had some level of control over your digital life.

You're right. It is night and day. In 2024, access to source code is no longer, in and of itself, an effective proxy for autonomy. And using how the world worked a quarter century ago as a yardstick for measuring the relative merits of Google's influence on the digital domain nowadays is specious.

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#93

Post by 1stcity3rdcoast »

_fat_santa wrote: post #88

One issue I keep see cropping up with various corporate websites is they will only allow Chrome and will block any other browser. I would say in 9/10 cases, this isn't because the site uses features not supported in other browsers but rather, developers restrict it to Chrome because that's all their QA's test on.

Which is ironic because scores of enterprise companies developed internal systems/reporting/intranets using .NET in the early 2000s, restricting their users to Internet Explorer!

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#94

Post by darepublic »

alganet wrote: post #81
taf2 wrote: post #53

Not even close. IE 6 didn’t get any updates or new web features for years. It was closed source. It was dead and everyone used it. float:right; zoom:1; was a common necessity… to compare them is an insult to the immense progress and effort spent over the last 24 years… (yes chrome started in 2007, but the teams from Firefox get credit too, many of them went on to build chrome ). The open source movement won, IE is de…

Then why does it feel like standards lost? We don't have float:right;zoom1: but our "necessities" nowadays are even crazier. Babel, vdom, frameworks provided by browser-vendors. Those are several orders of magnitude more complex than previous "workaround" approaches to the web, all unstandardized. How about Electron? Do we see any Firefox-based desktop apps around or is that market completely dominated by the Chrome…

Babel/vdom is not necessary for web dev. Can't blame chrome for electron.

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#95

Post by alganet »

darepublic wrote: post #94
alganet wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why does it feel like standards lost? We don't have float:right;zoom1: but our "necessities" nowadays are even crazier. Babel, vdom, frameworks provided by browser-vendors. Those are several orders of magnitude more complex than previous "workaround" approaches to the web, all unstandardized. How about Electron? Do we see any Firefox-based desktop apps around or is that market completely dominated by the Chrome…

Babel/vdom is not necessary for web dev. Can't blame chrome for electron.

If something uses DOM and JavaScript, to me it's web enough to be called web, even if it is rendering outside of regular browser expectations (some React Native stuff or similar). The whole premise of this tech is to approximate app development to web development.

Anyway, it's not about _blaming_. Web technologies are being laid in a landscape by multiple parties, it's about understanding that landscape.

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#96

Post by fellowniusmonk »

No not even close by every single possible measure.

I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change.

I have no interest in the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS, lecturing me about using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed.

The most important one from an anti-trust perspective, every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome, that includes my mobile devices which used the manufactures browser by default.

If I want to use chromium I can, Safari has been VERY late in implementing certain industry spec standards (SSE's, web sockets, IndexedDB API, animations, relative color syntax, container queries, a bunch of stuff, flexbox, the list goes on and on.)

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#97

Post by crowcroft »

Yes, Chrome is the de facto standard, and often the only browser thoroughly tested against. Even now though it isn't as dominant as IE at its peak though.

No, Chrome isn't significantly behind on adopting new standards compared with other major browsers (I'm looking at you Safari). IE6 to IE7 was about five years!

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#98

Post by lxgr »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #96

No not even close by every single possible measure. I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change. I have no interest in the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS, lecturing me about using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser th…

> using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed.

99% of the time I use Chrome it's because some site does not support Firefox (and that often includes Google sites/apps). (The 1% are for APIs that Firefox, consciously or out of resource constraints, does not support.)

In what sense am I "freely installing" Chrome in this situation?

Just today I had a family member reach out to me, unable to use government e-signing on their phone after I'd switched their default browser to Firefox (they were getting tons of ads in mobile Chrome, which does not support plugins and accordingly also no ad blockers). Turns out they support only IE/Edge, Safari, and of course Chrome...

> every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome

My Pixel came with Chrome preinstalled, as far as I remember. (I don't recall if there was a browser selection screen.)

Sure, that's a Google phone, but then again Windows is a Microsoft operating system.

> the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS

Oh, I'd also not advise anyone to switch to Safari. Apple absolutely would pull exactly the same or worse as Google if they could, I have no illusions about that.

I can't wait for the day they're finally forced to actually allow alternative browser engines on iOS and switch to Firefox everywhere.

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#99

Post by bawolff »

bunderbunder wrote: post #87
wseqyrku wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it works on Chrome, no one cares or even tests for other things. We've been through an extensive standardization pass for this to not happen. Anything not matching the specification whether in Chrome or any other browser should be considered a bug. This is not at all the same as IE, where it just went its own way.

The unstated major premise of this assertion is that the standard is a spec that every browser must comply with exactly. It's not; there's not a single browser that has ever implemented 100% of whatever was the latest standard at the time, and major browsers typically also include many of their own additions that go beyond the standard. This latter bit isn't in conflict with the standard; it's an essential part of th…

> The unstated major premise of this assertion is that the standard is a spec that every browser must comply with exactly. It's not; there's not a single browser that has ever implemented 100% of whatever was the latest standard at the time, and major browsers typically also include many of their own additions that go beyond the standard.

Sure, but there is a big difference between implenting 99% of the standard and only implementing like 10%

Re: Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

#100

Post by wslh »

_fat_santa wrote: post #88

One issue I keep see cropping up with various corporate websites is they will only allow Chrome and will block any other browser. I would say in 9/10 cases, this isn't because the site uses features not supported in other browsers but rather, developers restrict it to Chrome because that's all their QA's test on.

It's clear that Net Neutrality and web standards are close to a myth. Security-wise, I trust Google over Mozilla though.
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