
Chrome is Not the Standard - chriskrycho
http://www.chriskrycho.com/2017/chrome-is-not-the-standard.html
======
userbinator
_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 ridiculously bloated web apps instead of the
simple and far more accessible hyperlinked collection of pages they once were.
Keeping the browser choices diverse is a good thing, even if it means they
will all display things slightly differently --- just find the lowest-common-
denominator and emphasise the _content_ , the stuff that people visiting sites
really care about.

There's been some other related discussion on this topic recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836027)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15943689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15943689)

~~~
komali2
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 who your audience is, or
segment your audience, or maybe the "smearing" of society is causing an
audience for a given topic (ES6 development, say) to have so many different
desires it's impossible to create content on the subject without annoying some
portion of them (either by having plain HTML and CSS for your blog post with
no helpful GIFs, or a bunch of GIFs that piss off people in text browsers or
slow connections).

~~~
asplake
Even on my iPhone I can’t browse CNN while simultaneously listening to music
or the radio (iPlayer). Even though the videos are silent until clicked, they
still take over the audio. Gets me every time!

~~~
seanp2k2
What would a better experience be on iOS? I personally wouldn’t find mixing
the audio and having to pause one or open a per-app volume mixer control panel
to be a better implementation.

~~~
asplake
Not sure, but to have this happen even for silent videos seems particularly
annoying

~~~
userbinator
From what I know, even "silent" videos can have an audio stream, which just
happens to have all its samples decode to 0 (or nearly 0.)

~~~
thesmok
Videos embedded into a webpage have a "muted" boolean attribute, so the nice
behavior would be to not pause the music player when muted video starts
playing.

------
NightlyDev
"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 clicks! Yo Apple, the delay is still
there if it runs as standalone, good job..!"

"OK, you've added the page to the home screen, now, if you click another URL
on the same domain you definitely want it opened in the browser, right? Good
guess Apple, that's why I added it.."

"Wait, are you saying that if you switch to another app and back again to the
standalone site you don't want us to reload the URL that's added to the home
screen? You would prefer us to let you continue where you left off, what!?!?"

"Oh, so you think momentum scrolling is a good idea? Too bad, we don't support
it on elements that overflow, but we do have it elsewhere, have fun! PS we do
have an experimental flag to enable it, but then I sure hope you're not using
animations with gpu acceleration, cause then we have som nice race condition
bugs in store for you, so who knows if scroll will work or not.."

Seriously, iOS is the worst of them. Sure Firefox and Chrome often has
experimental features with bugs, but both of them are much more "solid" when
it comes to features you'll actually use in production.

Safari on iOS is the IE6 of today.

~~~
tpush
Given this it's really a shame that Apple does not allow other browser engines
on iOS. Would be a prime opportunity for competition to raise the overall
quality level.

~~~
user5994461
Looks like a case for anti trust, just like microsoft had with IE.

~~~
threeseed
1) iOS is not a monopoly.

2) Apple has legitimate technical reasons for not allowing other browser
engines (well specifically the JS part). Intent matters.

~~~
riquito
> Apple has legitimate technical reasons for not allowing other browser
> engines (well specifically the JS part). Intent matters.

Oh please... source?

~~~
0x0
Efficient javascript needs to be JIT'ed, but that means your app needs to be
granted API access to map writeable memory as executable, which is a security
risk they are not willing to grant third party developers. So a third party
browser/js engine will likely be quite slow. I guess this would give users of
a bad impression of iOS perfomance as a whole then, if other browser engines
were allowed and became popular?

~~~
jononor
If other browser engines became very popular it says something about how
bad/limited the default offering is. It usually takes a lot of work before
people switch away from defaults. People continued to use IE for years for
example

~~~
millstone
Chrome as the sole advertisement on the most valuable piece of web real estate
in the universe might have been a factor too.

------
city41
I switched to Firefox, and I was blown away to find that Google Meet (the new
Hangouts) does not work. You just get the message "Meet doesn't work on your
browser".

I'm also impressed at how many of my job's internal websites don't work. This
doesn't bug me as much, but it's obvious the devs who created them didn't even
do a sanity check in Firefox.

~~~
narsil
Yeah the old Hangouts doesn't either.

~~~
steveklabnik
There's been some recent movement on this
[https://twitter.com/tsahil/status/943471207692763136](https://twitter.com/tsahil/status/943471207692763136)

------
bhawks
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.

~~~
simonh
>No other platform has policies like this

MS has a similar restriction on their App Store. Browsers are only allowed to
use the MS rendering engine.

Also plenty of feature phones only allow use of the integrated browser. You
might think that’s an unrelated issue, but it’s not. From a regulatory
perspective, how do you differentiate between those, feature phones that allow
a limited range of installable apps, games consoles with game offerings
controlled by the console vendor, and the App Stores? There are even
children’s educational toys with downloadable apps.

Vendor control of software access on their platform is actualy everywhere and
some platforms like games consoles are defined by the concept so completely we
often don’t even notice it. Dont like the games offered by Sony? Buy a Switch
or an XBox. Don’t like the software offered by Apple? Buy an Android. But you
don’t get to tell people which of these platforms they can or can’t choose.

~~~
pjmlp
Just like Google has on ChromeOS.

What do I change the browser being managed by ChromeOS?

~~~
jzylstra
On a Chromebook, open the play store and download an alternative browser. It
is that easy. Or sideload an apk if you've decided to opt-out of the play
store.

When it comes to an alternative engine, Firefox on Android is Gecko-based
rather than being based on Chromium. You can install this on a Chromebook. If
you need any more help understanding, please let me know.

------
makecheck
I’m definitely seeing several sites lately that require me to use a particular
browser, lest I see blank elements or “buttons” that infuriatingly do
_nothing_ when I click them except in certain browsers.

It’s not consistent though. Usually switching to Safari is what works but
sometimes I must use Firefox. On one government site it seemed the _only_
working combo was to _use an iPad_ , as no desktop browser worked on my Mac.

My latest gripe has to be log-in screens though (Google is guilty): forms are
as old as the web and I resent that I can’t even log in anymore because your
Unnecessarily Fancy Form just doesn’t work on all browsers!?

~~~
TAForObvReasons
> On one government site it seemed the only working combo was to use an iPad,
> as no desktop browser worked on my Mac.

Did you try using IE? I find some state government sites still work best on
IE10/IE11

~~~
newfoundglory
They had a Mac, so probably not.

------
appdrag
"Safari ships new features on a much slower cadence, but they’re usually solid
and always perform incredibly well."

I really don't agree at all with this, Safari is the new Internet explorer ...

[https://www.safari-is-the-new-ie.com/](https://www.safari-is-the-new-ie.com/)

~~~
rubyn00bie
No and I think your opinion is harmful.

IE literally refused to implement standards, rendered broken dom elements,
allowed for proprietary native extensions and had many different apis for
them. They had 90% of the market share and no other viable platforms. This
meant developers built things which exploited these broken features causing
huge compatibility issues when they aren’t (every other browser).

A simple lack of features didn’t make IE... IE. Safari is a pain in the ass
but it sure as fuck ain’t no internet explorer.

I think Chrome is propagating lazy developers who think everyone uses their
browser. Which means things only work in Chrome and no where else. It’s not as
bad as the IE situation yet and hopefully it won’t be with Firefox kicking ass
again.

~~~
octalmage
Apple is doing similar stuff by refusing to implement the payment request API
and instead implementing their proprietary Apple Pay API. So you can use one
API to target Chrome and Firefox and another for Safari. This is starting to
sound a bit like IE. They were invited to join the working group for Payment
Request and decided not to take part.

~~~
dijit
You can argue that they're not implementing $thing-you-like but lets be real;
you can't compare IE to anything if you don't include the market share.

IE was harmful because it had such incredible market share and could do what
it wanted with that.

~~~
soperj
And Apple has a major mobile market share, that HAS to use safari. If I could
get away with not supporting safari, I definitely would.

~~~
Gorbzel
Then you are not a proponent of an Open web, you are a lazy developer.

------
drvortex
Standards are irrelevant to pragmatism. _De facto_ standards are what is
important.

By virture of sheer popularity, Chrome is the de facto standard. And if they
have provided anything that becomes useful or popular, then by virtue of
popularity of that feature in what is already the post popular browser, makes
that feature part of the de facto standard.

The post is just pedantic whining about how something isn't according to the
written word in some document written some years ago by a bunch of people that
the average _user_ of the standard does not even know.

I understand the value of standardization. Everything should be standardized.
But what the standard should be is completely another question. I would say
that all enhancements/popular features should be standard. At least that way,
we'll have more people happier, rather than follow the least common
denominator approach where there is a compromise that leaves no one happy.

~~~
chriskrycho
Not only did I not whine about something in a written document, I never once
mentioned WHATWG or anything other standards body. (That was intentional.) I
explicitly call out _the vendors_ and _their mutual implementations_. The
"standard" I care about is the truly living standard of what every browser
implements. The point here is that the _de facto_ standard is _not_ Chrome,
and if it were that'd be a _bad_ thing. (We've been there before; it _was_ a
bad thing.)

~~~
jrochkind1
Every browser has never implemented exactly the same things in exactly the
same ways, and never will. There will always, at least, be bugs.

A "de facto standard" of "what browsers implement" is no standard at all. This
is why standards matter. "What the actually existing software implements" is
what you have when you _don't have standards_.

The vendor-dominated, standard-changes-every-day WHATWG "living standard" is
relevant to the situation here, I think, even if you'd rather it not be. If
it's a living standard that's always changing, and it's specifically changing
based on _what software does_... then Chrome doing something seems like as
much of a standard as anything. It may or may not be added to the standard the
next day, but the standard seems to encourage people to use things that aren't
in it yet.

The WHATWG process, if I understand it right, specifically requires (at least)
two browser vendors to implement a thing _before_ it's added to the standard.
Yes, two is more than one. But not a lot more. :)

~~~
alwillis
_Every browser has never implemented exactly the same things in exactly the
same ways, and never will._

Igalia implemented CSS Grid for both Blink and WebKit:
[https://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/2017/03/16/css-grid-layout-
is...](https://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/2017/03/16/css-grid-layout-is-here-to-
stay/)

And remember, Blink is a fork of WebKit, so they're not very different. So it
can be done and we need more of this.

They're also working on some other stuff for Apple and Google. Never say
never.

------
spankalee
It's interesting that the author chose PWA's as their example.

The "Progressive" in Progressive Web Application means that web sites
progressively become more app-like as they use certain APIs like Service
Workers, but it also means that PWAs progressively become more app-like on
browsers that support those APIs.

A site can go all-in on the PWA-related APIs and cause absolutely no
degradation in experience on browsers like Safari. Safari doesn't support
Service Workers, ignores parts of the manifest, doesn't allow PWA
installation? It's fine, your app is just a normal website on Safari.

~~~
chriskrycho
Yep, and this is one reason I like the PWA design a _lot_. It's very web-y in
the best ways.

Which is part of why the "Safari is holding back the web b/c no PWA!" response
perplexes me. Even independent of the fact that they were in fact getting
there – just not as fast as people wanted! – progressive enhancement is still
a thing.

~~~
spankalee
Safari has definitely been holding back PWAs though, because they're the
gatekeeper of feature on iOS.

I've personally had meetings with teams would would love to adopt PWAs over
their existing native apps, but can't due to Safari. I'm excited that it looks
like that will change very soon!

------
smoyer
I like Chrome but lately I've spent almost all my time in Firefox Developer
Edition. When I use Chrome it's to verify that it behaves the same way on more
than one Javascript engine.

~~~
adregan
I switched to FF Developer Edition a little over a year ago, and I have caught
several bugs that went unnoticed by my Chrome using colleagues.

~~~
fixermark
How were they unnoticed in Chrome?

~~~
scaryclam
Chrome seems to have a tenancy to paper over some bugs and not report them
back to the user (even in the console). It's the main reason none of our devs
use Chrome for primary development anymore (it's not worth the extra dev time
when QA fails on all other browsers) and it's just used during QA.

------
beisner
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 like one company controlling the web, but when you're a
small company developing software for the web, Chrome IS the standard.

~~~
chriskrycho
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.)

~~~
yeukhon
When you have dominance, and most of your users want to use Chrome, as
developers you will tend to use Chrome to compare to other browsers. “I wish
Firefox has this feature” kind of statement.

This is natural. Whether it is urban architecture to medical practice,
someone’s idea dominated the rest, and we use the dominant one as reference
and as a tool for comparison.

This is called competition.

------
headmelted
This isn't new, though.

I think people forgive Google for more because they like them. IE did exactly
the same thing before Chrome and was roundly (and rightly) admonished for it.

In fairness, Chrome's proposals do seem to be designed with the open web in
mind - at least insofar as being items that other projects could reasonably be
expected to implement in their engines if they chose to do so.

There's nothing so egregious as IE's DirectX-filters-embedded-in-CSS nonsense
- or _shudder_ ActiveX - but it's still not great for the open web as a whole.

~~~
dao-
NaCl was as bad as ActiveX but less successful, thank God.

~~~
headmelted
Was it though?

I wasn't a fan of NaCl, and WebAssembly (for example) is a _much_ better fit
for an open web, but it was at least platform agnostic (if support was
provided by the vendor) and ran in a reasonably strict sandbox. ActiveX was
neither of these things.

All that said, having any one browser be the standard is as terrible for the
open web now as it was in IE's heyday. Just because Chrome is less awful
doesn't solve the single-vendor problem.

~~~
dao-
"If support was provided by the vendor" is a big if... Google was well aware
of this inherent flaw but pushed NaCl regardless while at the same time
promising for years that PNaCl would eventually solve all problems. PNaCl
never really materialized, I think, and it feels like Google was throwing a
smokescreen there to boost support and mindshare for NaCl.

------
alexchantavy
Man, this is 2002 all over again with everyone treating IE6 as if it were
_the_ standard.

------
kevmo
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.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY)

At this point Mozilla has to prove to us that they are worthy of our usage

~~~
yoavm
I don't really understand this attitude. Mozilla doesn't need to be everything
I ever wanted from a browser in order to get my support. It only needs to be
better than Google.

Are all these people sticking with Chrome because Mozilla is not holding up to
its values really think Google is better at taking care of our freedom?!

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Chrome doesn't magically revert privacy or search engine settings in updates,
but Firefox apparently does. To quote from
[https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-
slippery-...](https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-
slope.html) :

> Not only are these experiments enabled by default, but updates have been
> known to re-enable it if you turn it off.

Chrome has some troubling defaults but Google never decided to flip the
default search engine or turn on any phone-home feature once it has been
turned off. Even though they had/have the power to do so, they know people
won't trust Chrome if they ever tried to do that. In my book that's more
trustworthy than a vendor that decides to use updates to surreptitiously
enable features that users disabled.

~~~
j605
Prove it or show code! This statements sounds like a conspiracy theory.

~~~
flyinghamster
Exactly. I ran the beta and when it became the release version, I changed my
update channel to "release." It has not reverted any settings I've made.

I also had the Shield stuff turned off (my choice), and it hasn't been
reverted, nor did the Mr. Robot extension ever show up. I agree, though, that
that was a Bad Idea.

------
ksec
Safari is the new IE. Chrome is the new IE. And then all these comment
claiming IE6 was actually very good?

May be I am old. Old, at least by Silicon Valley standard. After all Webkit is
the new IE was coined by someone who hasn't started programming in the IE 6
era and thought IE era meant IE7 onwards.

Do any of you remember what those days were? IE? Active X? Different code for
different Browser? DHTML? That was before even the word Ajax was coined.
Before we had Jquery?

The problem we had with IE6, for me at least wasn't really about its monopoly.
It was about so many low hanging fruit that they could have improve, but
decided not to, and it was at the start of the first Internet boom, we could
have had a future much brighter, but Microsoft was using all sort of propriety
tech and not working with standards, leading to Netscape and Mozilla having to
engineering its "Quirk" mode. Developing for IE was simple enough, Developing
for Netscape and IE was hell.

That was long time ago.

I guess Microsoft thought IE was good enough. Good for simple Documents with
tables and little animation sprinkled on top. Given their very low quality of
standards at the time, may be they really thought the Web was good enough.

Fast forward to today, I guess Apple thought the web, as basic web pages is
good enough. At least we cant do better without breaking lots of
compatibility. But then there are those who saw Internet as an App Platform,
much like Java, write once run anywhere. And they see Apple as something that
is stopping them to achieve that goal, much like how IE was stopping the
Internet from becoming better.

It really is two different Goal, Web Pages or Web Apps. Some people thinks web
pages is even done yet, CSS Grid is hardly the answer we were all looking for.
Some think forget about Web pages, it is good for what it is, Web Apps. It is
all we need.

For me? I just wanted simple and beautiful Web Pages, Stripe and Apple's
Website is two example I like. So i do ignore people who think it is their
right for Webassembly, WhateverDB, ServerWorker, PWA or what ever that NEEDS
to be included in every Browser.

May be the younger ones thinks I am just old fart stopping them from reaching
their goal. Just like I was thinking IE was stopping the Web becomes the Web.
I guess, is just a matter of prospective, old vs the New, the age old
question.

------
fixermark
Consider QUIC.

QUIC is a UDP-based transport-layer alternative to TCP/IP (which, to a rough
approximation, has some advantages over TCP/IP for multiplexing multiple
logical data channels between the same two physical machines). While it is
being standardized by the IETF, it is not yet a standard.

Google implements it server-side and it's enabled by default in Chrome. It is,
as a result, already around 7% of Internet traffic.

~~~
chriskrycho
Experiments are _great_ in my opinion, and this is a fabulous example. We just
shouldn't mistake "<Vendor> is trying something" for "Ergo it is now
_standard_ and everyone should support it." The beauty of the web is that
everybody _can_ try these kinds of experiments, and if they have high value,
the others _will_ adopt them. I'm not sour on Chrome for trying stuff, by a
long shot. I'm sour on people thinking "Chrome tried something" means any
other browser which hasn't yet gone along with it is doing something wrong.

~~~
fixermark
Agreed.

... but it's interesting that when Google "tries something" that crosses their
server and web browser boundaries, that "something" can quickly become 7% of
network traffic.

------
agentPrefect
Everybody favours the underdog.

Mr. Robot was stupid because - why do I want marketing in a product I use as
an eveyday utility? Chrome is the standard because of the majority market
share and also because they do a great job of delivering a good developer AND
user experience.

------
Sephr
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.

~~~
chriskrycho
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_.

------
DubiousPusher
I'm beginning to think that the best thing you can do as a user is to
distribute your information footprint as much as possible.

Personally, I'll keep on using Firefox specifically because Mozilla does not
own any of the other technologies I use.

------
tannhaeuser
The thing is that Google owns WHATWG (who write and edit HTML specs) so the
difference between Web "standards" and "what Chrome does" is moot. Other
browser vendors have no choice other than to follow suit. I'm putting
"standards" in scare quotes since what WHATWG publishes - the "living
standard" thing - doesn't qualify as standard in my book.

It's a tragedy to see so much well-intentioned work being weaponized. Actually
I appreciate the hard work of Domenic et al, and also the work being done on
CSS specs. But we're way past the point where Web specs serve a purpose other
than to keep people busy and brittle and monopolize the Web beyond
recognition.

~~~
bsimpson
"The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and
Opera Software in 2004."

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG)

~~~
hungryfoolish
Yes, but it's been pretty much taken over by Google now. All but one of the
WHATWG spec editors are from Google. No editor is there which is from a non-
browser vendor.

IMO it makes a strong case for the still existence of the w3c html spec.

------
lern_too_spel
The author misses the point entirely. People don't complain about Safari
holding back the web simply because it didn't implement service workers, WebM,
WebRTC, and payment request while Chrome did. People complain about Safari
because both Firefox and Chrome implemented those things. Nobody is
complaining about Safari not implementing APIs that only Chrome has
implemented.

------
ryanmarsh
On the web, momentum is the standard. I’ve been a web developer since the 90’s
and I’ve seen technologies and standards come and go. One constant amongst
them is the ones with the most momentum become the standard (whether de facto
or de jure).

Flash was a standard, say what you want about it but browsing the web without
a flash plugin, for a time, would have been a diminished experience. Even if
it wasn’t an IETF W3C standard

DHTML from Microsoft was really incredible at the time. It should have been a
standard. There was no momentum behind it so it died.

RSS was a standard, now how many of us still use RSS readers?

JavaScript, need I say more?

PNG was a standard but took forever for browsers to implement because JPG’s
were “fine”.

You want something to be a standard? Build awesome things quickly and get
people to adopt them.

You want something to not be a standard? Build something better, but do so
quickly.

The Chrome team has great momentum, so sometimes when they sneeze the web
catches a cold.

------
justin_vanw
Standards don't matter, interoperability and openness are what matter.
Standards are a means to that, but it's perfectly ok for one vendor to add
features and do experiments, that is how progress is made,
deviation/extension, adoption, analysis, and finally after all of that
standardization. A standard without vendors pushing the limits is the hallmark
of a dead technology.

------
shmerl
Yeah. Yet, sites like Seamless glitch horribly in Firefox, and their tech
support answers "try it in Chrome". Very annoying.

~~~
Eupolemos
Actually, it is the opposite for me. Works fine in both, but in Chrome - if I
open developer tools - I get 19 warnings and 1 error. None in FF.

~~~
shmerl
For example, their integration with Paypal is completely broken in Firefox.

~~~
Eupolemos
That's bad...

------
zbentley
Unpopular opinion: valuing compatibility and standards compliance as
engineering/design principles is orthogonal to making your website play with
obscure (e.g. Dillo, old Opera) or pointless (e.g. old IE when you're making a
website whose money is overwhelmingly likely to come from technically savvy,
younger, first-world users) browsers.

------
dvhh
Glad the author is cheering for a browser that is only available on the
platform sold by only one vendor. And is dissing developers that are
complaining that features that could make their job easier are not available
on the author favorite platform.

I would honestly be more thankful for a lynx friendlier internet.

------
partycoder
Opera, Firefox, Safari, etc are OK.

But in the case of Microsoft, they made 2 horrible mistakes:

\- Piss off the user (slow, frustrating performance, popups, leaving people
vulnerable to malware)

\- Piss off the developer (incompatible behavior)

I think Microsoft saw web applications as a competitor for desktop development
(e.g: Visual Studio), and they felt the urge to cripple it.

Your average user had IE with 100 toolbars installed and horrible performance,
you could not do anything.

As a result, IE and all successors are dead to me. Never going to use it
again.

[https://i.stack.imgur.com/82hWm.jpg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/82hWm.jpg)

^ That's why we hate you Microsoft.

Each time I delete the Edge icon, I restore it only to delete it again, and
again, and again, each time bringing more satisfaction.

That satisfaction is only surpassed by the one I get when I delete a Windows
partition.

------
kuon
I've always hated IE, and I've never been an MS fan, but I tried Edge and I
was surprised how fast it was. I just use it to test website and app I work
on, so I don't have a good idea on how good it is as a browser (bookmark,
privacy, plugins...).

------
jrochkind1
> Many times, when this latter tack happens, developers grouse about the other
> browser makers who are “holding the web back.” But there is a fundamental
> problem in this way of looking at things: Chrome isn’t the standard. The
> fact that Chrome proposes something, and even the fact that a bunch of
> developers like it, does not a standard make.

WHATWG taking over the "standard" certainly muddies the waters. It's
theoretically not just what a single browser vendor proposes or implements...
but it is whatever the browser-dominated WHATWG says it is... on any given
day... and effectively is whatever the most powerful browser vendors implement
or propose (ie, Chrome).

~~~
rimliu
What WHATWG says does not matter either. The only thing that matters is what
is implemented in browsers.

~~~
jrochkind1
That's a pretty different argument than the OP's about standards. Chrome is
obviously a browser.

------
dijit
I can't agree with the title more.

I use a rather obscure browser full time (qutebrowser) and they use Qt native
bindings.

Due to compatibility issues Qt has _two_ backends for rendering HTML content.

One is based on webkit (qt-webkit), the other (unintuitively called qt-
webengine) is actually chrome underneath.

Why chrome? because the web is now owned by chrome.

Before qutebrowser I was a heavy firefox user, but I always had chrome
installed for those sites which rendered bizarrely and were obviously only
tested in chrome. Too much market share is toxic in this industry I feel.

~~~
The-Compiler
Note that Qt officially only has one backend, QtWebEngine, which is QtWebKit's
successor.

However, it's more or less one guy (annulen) keeping QtWebKit alive as a
hobby. So far that's worked surprisingly well, though.

~~~
dijit
That is incredibly notable, since qtwebengine is not supported -at-all- on my
chosen platform (FreeBSD)

OT: heard you were going to CCC, I'd appreciate it if you swung by the
DarkScience Assembly if you get a chance. :D

And great work on qutebrowser!

~~~
The-Compiler
Is it?
[https://www.freshports.org/www/qt5-webengine/](https://www.freshports.org/www/qt5-webengine/)

I'll try, but as usual I'll probably have a lot of things I want to do :D I'm
usually at the Swiss Chaos assembly FWIW, and there might be a qutebrowser
meetup as self-organized session some day.

Thanks! :)

~~~
dijit
Yeah i have that port installed. Getting the python bindings seems impossible.

Also. That port is quite the hack. :(

~~~
The-Compiler
Looks like there's some work-in-progress here:
[https://reviews.freebsd.org/D12964](https://reviews.freebsd.org/D12964)

And yeah, QtWebEngine is quite a beast to package, I can imagine that it's
even worse on BSD...

------
evolighting
What really annoyed me recently is WEBP; Yes, I know the format is GREAT AND
GOOGLE, but none of my pic view tools on PC be able to print them on screen,
nor my None chrome browser.

That feel IE anyway.

~~~
jhasse
Well, that's the problem for _every_ new (image) format.

------
intellix
"Safari ships new features on a much slower cadence, but they’re usually solid
and always perform incredibly well" \- Also came with a torch and pitchfork to
say that this is the most wrong statement ever. Flex is still barely
supported. Transforms that are mixed together still cause the pages to flicker
and screw up.

Safari is a joke. The development experience is a joke. I wish it would just
disappear.

------
WWLink
Hurray for firefox quantum!

------
agjacobson
I was under the impression that Chrome for IOS was a shell on Safari relying
on calls to Safari code. Am I wrong?

~~~
chriskrycho
Nope you're exactly right. That's why I compared iOS Safari and Android
Chrome.

------
darepublic
Chrome has the best dev tools bar none. Firefox: make better dev tools please.
Safari: No comment.

------
debacle
Firefox's webGL support is abhorrent. Microsoft is undoing some aspects of
their browser/OS decoupling. Google is no longer Don't Be Evil. Honestly
without that getting better, I think the browser wars are pretty much moot.

------
XCSme
Chrome sux, their rendering is the worst among all browsers. If you try to use
CSS transitions, or scaling, or any other GPU-accelerated effects in most of
the times Chrome will render artifacts and have weird rendering bugs that
don't occur in Firefox or Edge. PS: I still use Chrome for both personal use
and as a developer, but I'm starting to realize more and more that Chrome is
starting to be clearly the worse modern browser. I only use Chrome now for the
Google account integration.

------
homakov
Oh, I wish Chrome was the standard. Safari is such a crap browser with dev
team unable to comprehend basic security models.

------
dba7dba
Yup agree. Something that was in back of my head but couldn't quite come up
with a way to say/write about it.

------
zxy_xyz
I use chromium because firefox and chrome remain memory hogs that are slower.
Other than that, I'd go firefox.

------
mr_toad
Designing progressive web apps with fallbacks for unsupported features is
PWA101. It’s in the name.

------
inpdx
Dev tools are huge in getting devs onboard. Chrome has a huge lead in that
regard.

------
Spooky23
You have at least three viable browsers available on popular platforms. This
is a great thing.

Developers who give a hoot about new features will be attracted to Chrome,
it's just the nature of the game. If Firefox wants to attract those users,
introduce more features.

------
subbz
When Firefox is gone from browser charts it may be too late.

------
mdevere
i am certain the ppl who write these articles have also read the other 427
articles saying the same thing

------
dillweed
Prefer Firefox

------
yuhong
I remember the recent Groupon debacle on this, where the CTO was formerly of
Mozilla.

------
feelin_googley
The problem as I see it is that the public data that users want to access is
packaged in such a way as to maximize its exposure through Googles channels,
be it a search engine with a proprietary ranking algorithm, a browser with
certain unique features/quirks[1], a new HTTP version that allows stuffing
more tracking information into HTTP headers, etc. While a mere three examples
does not do justice to their achievements, there are honestly so many examples
to list at this point it would be a disturbing exercise to be comprehensive.

It is not worth debating whether this impressive work is part of a plan by a
corporation or a conspiracy among multiple corporations to steer/takeover
"open" standards. (From past experience, it can be assumed that corporations
will try.) The important point is the _effect_ that this work is having,
irrespective of intent.

The author uses Microsoft or Apple as an analogy. Question: If something goes
wrong at the corporation -- e.g., as we see today MS is not what it used to
be, at least not in the browser market -- then what happens to the corporate-
driven "standard"? Will Chrome always be the #1 browser?

It should not matter.

If people believe it does matter, then we know people are not aiming at
complying with a open, immortal standard, they are aiming at being compatible
with a present-day successful corporation, hoping to ride on their coattails.

I submit to the reader that whatever "standards" the corporation creates may
well die out if the success of the corporation ever begins to fade. Keep in
mind also that these "features" that the corporation has introduced as
"standards" may have been introduced primarily to benefit that corporations
business (and business model). They are the largest/primary implementer. Maybe
their software is the only software that ever used the feature. If the
software "disappears" from use because the corporations business falters they
stop developing it, then what good is the standard (e.g. if it is too
difficult, not well-enough understood or for whatever reason that other
software authors did not implement it)?

I leave it to the reader to draw some examples of where this may have happened
in the past from the internet and web archives. It could be exhausting if one
were to try to be comprehensive.

1\. This is only personal opinion but when it takes a minimum of _two hours_
to compile a "browser" (as suggested by one corporation that sponsors one of
these monstrosities), then clearly that is a problem. It should cause people
to question. Instead it effectively stops people from compiling -- they give
up and just accept the binary distribution. By comparison, IME (please do not
assume I am referring to Linux) it only takes a fraction of an hour even on
modest hardware to compile a complex kernel. Kernel development may not be for
everyone, but there is no reason I can imagine why every users "web browser"
needs to be a single program of that size and complexity. Personal opinion.
Others may disagree. I respect everyones opinion but am entitled to have one
that differs.

------
hungerstrike
Chrome _is_ the de facto standard at this time and all of the irrelevant,
hyperbolic nitpicking and dubious conjecture isn't going to change that.

But here's a thought: WebKit and Chromium (and Blink) are open source, so
maybe don't worry about it?

Furthermore, if all browsers don't work the same then that's a problem for
developers. If we can't have that - I'd rather see just one browser engine in
use by the majority like what we have now with WebKit. It makes my life
easier.

Don't we have more important things to worry about than competition between
web browser apps?

~~~
WorldMaker
Chrome is not Chromium, however. Just because there is a nougaty open source
center doesn't mean that Chrome is entirely free from proprietary software
worries and worries about Google's commercial interests infringing upon user
interests/greater web interests.

Additionally, Chromium isn't WebKit either. Blink forked from WebKit some time
back and the fork continues to diverge, with WebKit and Blink disagreeing on
some implementations.

~~~
hungerstrike
Yes thank you, I understand all of that - it's very well known among web
developers. None of it changes my argument:

 _The majority of the functionality that we care about in our web browsers
comes from an open source library._

~~~
WorldMaker
Except it does change your argument: you are clearly missing a _for now_ , so
long as it pleases Google.

You can imply that if Google did something to upset consumers they may flock
to an alternative Blink-based browser or Chromium, but Google and Chrome are
the brands they know, they don't know or care about Blink or Chromium.

You may believe that Google are entirely generous and would never upset the
open source balance from which they benefit, but they've done it before. The
hard fork of Blink from WebKit is one obvious sign that if Google isn't happy,
they can and will take their ball and move on. You can also consider in this
equation the increasing disparity between open source AOSP and consumer Google
Android. The number of closed, proprietary "Google Play" APIs that
applications increasingly rely on still seems to be growing at a strong pace.
The number of APKs that you can, for instance, sideload to AOSP-based Amazon
FireOS continues to only dwindle and at this point a software developer very
much has to develop two apps, one for Amazon's APIs and one for Google's,
despite all the shared open source between the platforms.

So of course we should worry that Chrome has such a huge marketshare and that
so many web developers are essentially building "Chrome-only" websites.

~~~
hungerstrike
Incorrect. We have the source, we can do whatever we want with it. Nothing
that you said changes that.

~~~
dblohm7
Do "we" have the budget to do that?

~~~
hungerstrike
Emphatically, yes.

------
account0099099
Of course everyone knows it is Emacs EWW.

------
EGreg
Google should start an independent Chrome Foundation because honestly I would
far rather see COLLABORATION than COMPETITION.

------
dba7dba
The scary thing is some may hold up Google/Facebook/Twitter as the standard of
the internet (without even being conscious of it).

Guess I'm not that young now, knowing what the internet was supposed to be in
the beginning.

------
gremlinsinc
Chrome just screwed the pooch, at least for me... blocking .dev domains ended
my use. I'm not going to setup ssl on all my development environments for all
the sites I have. I'll just dev in firefox, and move to firefox completely.

~~~
Ajedi32
Any particular reason you think Firefox won't also implement Google's HSTS
preloads for .dev?

Google owns that TLD, so I don't see why any browser which supports HSTS
preloads would choose to ignore that particular pin, especially given that a
move towards universal deployment of HTTPS is generally regarded as a good
thing by browser developers and security experts.

~~~
kuschku
> Google owns that TLD

That’s the issue, and the part that should never have happened.

------
sbr464
I believe in free markets. If Chrome is winning, so be it. I for one am on the
wagon.

~~~
ergo14
When you will end up with monopoly it will become a problem. No one says
chrome should be regulated, but for one I would like developers to test their
applications in other browsers, at least Firefox and Edge.

------
bitwize
The _only_ relevant Web standard in every era is "does it work in the browser
most people are using". So Netscape in 1995, IE in 2000, Chrome today. That's
just the reality, unless you'd rather lose money doing Web development.

~~~
Gracana
That really depends on the values of the business in question. Some would look
at that differently, and argue that developing to wider standards and testing
on other platforms is an investment in quality and longevity.

------
reacharavindh
Is there a possibility of an alternative to Mozilla with the kind of backing
that Mozilla enjoys now? GNU project? Apache web browser? Linux Foundation?
Heck, I'm sure privacy conscious people will happily pay for a quality browser
that they can trust. I don't have the technical prowess to build a browser. If
I did, I would.

~~~
jld
Mozilla has ~$500M revenue/year.

I don't think you'll find a alternate non-Apple/Google/Microsoft player with
similar backing.

~~~
alwillis
Former Mozilla CEO raises $35M in under 30 seconds for his browser startup
Brave: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/brave-
ico-35-million-30-se...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/brave-
ico-35-million-30-seconds-brendan-eich/amp/)

------
4684499
There was a competition, Chrome won, I don't like the result, but it's the
fact. I won't tell people to save the web by suggesting using something less
competitive, that would reduce the I-wanna-save-the-web group's productivity,
making their choices/opinions less competitive, which probably leads them to
extinction. Web devs are just a small amount of browser users, general users
couldn't care less about the standard. I wish someone could bring up some
viable solution to that. Roar within the community won't change the situation,
it's not even a start, such roar has been around for years, and yet here we
are, still roaring. Sad indeed, downvotes are welcome.

~~~
rdiddly
Like it's over? You forget that one of the things that happens a lot before
losing, is winning. Internet Explorer won too.

~~~
rimliu
The problem was not IE winning, the problem was it sleeping on the laurels
after that. So when demands for what could be done on the web, for standards
compliance increased IE become troublesome. If there is a winning browser but
it is still constantly developed and improved that would be less of a problem
(though still not desirable).

