
Chrome is the new IE - Jarred
https://medium.com/@bdc/chrome-is-the-new-ie-1a21c1efc133#.3uae32q82
======
quandrum
As a web developer, this article is almost exactly opposite of the truth.

Safari is the new IE to me, and he reinforces my point.

His example is that Safari opts not to implement web standards in favor of
those things that make Apple specific websites better.

This is the exact behavior that created the stimga of Microsoft's IE. We need
more standards and collaboration and less browser vendors working to create
their own specific experiences.

~~~
rimantas
Care to name a few of those things? Besides that A LOT of the new things in
HTML5 _standard_ first appeared on Safari (and mobile, for that).

~~~
mkhpalm
WebRTC

------
iamleppert
I'm a full time engineer on the web and I don't really agree with this. I much
prefer working with Chrome than any other browser. Even IE edge (supposedly
Microsoft's fresh start) doesn't have all the full support for various
features as Chrome does -- just head over to look at the comparison tables at
caniuse (ex: [http://caniuse.com/#search=blend-
mode](http://caniuse.com/#search=blend-mode)).

And the developer experience in other browsers (save for maybe Firefox) are
vastly inferior to Chrome's dev tools. Firebug in firefox used to be the best,
but even with Mozilla's new efforts at the developer edition of Firefox, the
experience is still poor. Lack of correct support for sourcemaps, performance,
and general UI polish of their tools are still lacking.

Another point I feel should be made is that IE still doesn't have a native Max
OS or Linux release. This is an embarrassment to Microsoft, and its why I
still don't take anything they do seriously on the web. If you're going to
create a new browser, you should at least make it accessible to most of the
devs -- many of whom don't even use your OS anymore.

Chrome also has a few very useful projects, such as Chromium, node webkit and
Electron (what slack uses). Where is this kind of support from the other
browser vendors? Why doesn't Apple have a fully integrated native browser
development envrionment for Safari? Why did Mozilla's FireFox OS die on the
vine and why haven't they come up with something like Electron? The executives
and senior technical leadership at these projects and companies should be
embarrassed.

~~~
pcwalton
> Why did Mozilla's FireFox OS die on the vine and why haven't they come up
> with something like Electron? The executives and senior technical leadership
> at these projects and companies should be embarrassed.

That's more than a little hyperbolic, given that Electron and node-webkit
aren't Google projects and are in fact coded to an API Google explicitly
considers unstable and liable to break at any time.

Disclaimer: I'm probably included in the group of people you claim "should be
embarrassed".

~~~
elcritch
When last I was looking into this, Chrome's embed API is much better
documented and supported than Gecko's. It seems that the Gecko API that does
exist is largely due to the efforts the Sailfish OS / Jolly people put into
it. Hopefully servo doesn't follow the same path. I'm hoping to be able to get
into that code base soon-ish. :)

~~~
pcwalton
> When last I was looking into this, Chrome's embed API is much better
> documented and supported than Gecko's.

Sure, but WebKit2 is better than both, as only WebKit2 is a stable API that is
C-based and can be used from multiple languages [1].

> Hopefully servo doesn't follow the same path.

Proper embedding support, with a supported API, is a key goal of Servo.

[1]:
[https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2](https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2)

~~~
elcritch
It's great to hear Servo is focusing on embedding support. The developers
seems pretty responsive to feedback as well, which is great. Thanks for the
info on webkit, need to follow up on it.

------
disbelief
That's one hell of a clickbait title. In order for any browser to be "the new
IE", developers would have to hate it and dread developing for it/supporting
it. Ask any web developer today which browser is their favourite, go-to
browser for development. This statement holds absolutely no water.

Secondly, the author cherry picks a couple things that haven't been
implemented in Chrome, glossing over the fact that Chrome tends to support
_way more features_ than any other browser on the market, and is more often
than not the first and the best implementor of web standards. A quick perusal
of caniuse.com or the support matrices on MDN will drive this point home
(honourable mention to Firefox).

~~~
ubertaco
> In order for any browser to be "the new IE", developers would have to hate
> it and dread developing for it/supporting it.

Oh, so Safari then?

------
rocky1138
"Chrome is unfortunately contributing to the web’s bad reputation by caring
more about developers than end-users."

Actually, this is my favourite part about it. It's fast and it has its
priorities in the right spot: me, as a developer. If you don't like Chrome,
well, then don't use Chrome :)

Another point I would like to make is Apple's ridiculous refusal to allow
anything other than Safari on the App Store. I feel that this is holding back
the web more than anything, at the moment.

~~~
millstone
How do you feel about Google disallowing anything other than Chrome on their
desktop OS?

~~~
idle_zealot
That's not really fair, in the case of ChromeOS, the browser is the OS.

~~~
eitally
And honestly, _this_ is why people say Chrome is slow or Chrome is a memory
hog. There's so much non-web-browser stuff in Chrome it's just become
tremendously heavy. That doesn't make it bad, and Google has recently done
things to lighten it (like removing the feature of mirroring Now cards in
Chrome), but it's the truth.

------
eatsfoobars
A response from a Google engineer working on Chrome:
[https://medium.com/@slightlylate/cards-on-the-table-i-m-
an-e...](https://medium.com/@slightlylate/cards-on-the-table-i-m-an-engineer-
on-chrome-caveat-emptor-etc-etc-ec0f9dae26b7#.hiy6h2ivg)

~~~
ac29
Great response. A couple key points:

-The author was comparing an unreleased version of Safari to Chrome Stable. Comparing stable-to-stable would be more fair, and when comparing the unreleased Safari to Chrome Dev or Canary, some of their complaints are moot.

-Apple only has to support 2 platforms and a limited amount of hardware. Google supports 4+ platforms and a huge variety of hardware. That means things like GPU rasterization take longer to ship.

~~~
pcwalton
Apple has to support 4 different GPU manufacturers, in fact. And Chrome isn't
using the native Direct2D on Windows, which would have made this easier:
rather they chose to reinvent it with Ganesh. Ganesh is OpenGL only (also
Vulkan) instead of using native Direct3D. I don't think the cross-platform
burden is that much higher for Chrome in this specific area.

~~~
kjksf
That's hardly accurate summary of the situation.

Chrome uses Skia, a 2D rendering library.

Skia uses Direct2D (DirectWrite) on Windows for font rendering
([https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/src/ports/SkTypef...](https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/src/ports/SkTypeface_win_dw.cpp))

Skia has a GPU backend that uses OpenGL where that's native.

On Windows, those OpenGL calls are translated to DirectX with a very
sophisticated OpenGL translator called Angle
([https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp](https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp))

Therefore Chrome does use DirectX on Windows, via translation layer from
OpenGL.

Saying that Chrome i.e. in this context Skia, doesn't use Direct2D for
rendering is like saying "On Windows Chrome doesn't use native Chakra
JavaScript engine".

Skia IS Direct2D, except it's cross-platform and being improved by Google
literally every day
([https://github.com/google/skia/commits/master](https://github.com/google/skia/commits/master)).
It makes engineering sense for Google to have their own, cross-platform, high-
performance 2d rendering engine instead of a thin layer of whatever the
common-denominator they could implement on top of 2d functionality provided by
the OS.

~~~
pcwalton
I wasn't aware of the use of DirectWrite, thanks.

> On Windows, those OpenGL calls are translated to DirectX with a very
> sophisticated OpenGL translator called Angle
> ([https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp](https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp))

I'm aware of that. But ANGLE can't possibly be better than Direct3D; in fact,
it tends to lag behind new D3D releases for obvious reasons.

> Saying that Chrome i.e. in this context Skia, doesn't use Direct2D for
> rendering is like saying "On Windows Chrome doesn't use native Chakra
> JavaScript engine".

Yet that's still a true statement. And if Chakra were technically ahead of V8,
then that would be a valid criticism of Chrome's choice here.

> It makes engineering sense for Google to have their own, cross-platform,
> high-performance 2d rendering engine instead of a thin layer of whatever the
> common-denominator they could implement on top of 2d functionality provided
> by the OS.

I don't think that's clear at all. Direct2D is very good for what it is
(although neither Skia nor D2D is a good API for GPUs really, as NVIDIA and
others have pointed out in for example [1]). There's no architectural
advantage that Skia has over D2D; they both feature very similar immediate
mode APIs. D2D is being improved by Microsoft all the time, with a multi-year
head start on Ganesh _and_ the advantage of tight integration with the
graphics drivers. In fact, the entire point of Alex's post is to acknowledge
that Ganesh's rollout has been slower than that of CG::OGL (Apple's Ganesh
equivalent, which has been shipping in _stable_ Safari for a while) and
Direct2D (which has been shipping in IE since 9 and Firefox since 4).

[1]:
[http://developer.download.nvidia.com/devzone/devcenter/gameg...](http://developer.download.nvidia.com/devzone/devcenter/gamegraphics/files/opengl/gpupathrender.pdf)

------
Bahamut
This is a pretty terrible article. It asserts the point that Google is doing a
disservice by focusing on things that improve developer productivity, but
doesn't even entertain the idea that reducing the overhead on more technical
matters allow developers to focus more on UX.

The author should come back when Safari fixes some of its blatant
issues/missing features that directly impact being able to improve UX.

~~~
0x4a42
Well the author is UI designer. I guess that says a lot.

------
S4M
Concerning web pages, HN seems to be split into two sides: one side wants to
use the newest shiny stuff to make shiny apps while the other wants to have
simple pages that are loading fast. The OP blatantly seems on the first side,
and I am on the second one.

> The web deserves efficient, innovative, delightful experiences, and Chrome
> is holding the web back by making it hard (if not impossible) to create
> them.

Nope, the web deserves pages that are loading fast, and don't require a new
hardware that the majority of the viewers don't have to be read properly.

Also, OP works at Stripe, I see no need to add "position:sticky", "backdrop-
filter", or "scroll-snap-type" (not sure I know what those are) to a page that
does payment processing.

------
paradox95
On any platform other than iOS, Safari is the 3rd best browser on its best
day. Just because something is pretty, doesn't make it good. This guy is
clearly a student of the Jony Ive school of thought.

~~~
sosborn
> Just because something is pretty, doesn't make it good.

I understand that you are taking a shot a Apple's focus on design, but what
part of Safari makes you think they sacrificed function for form?

If you don't like Safari then give some detailed insight on why that is. A
comment like that would move the discussion forward and be interesting.

------
lucid00
The "Safari is the new IE" article was about them being slow to adopt APIs and
the yearly release cycle attached to OS updates.

This is about visuals and UI based APIs that can be polyfilled. They matter
but not as much as stuff like WebRTC and Service Workers IMO.

Google can fix these problems with updates and polyfills. Apple can't do that.
Some iOS and Mac OS users will at some point be left out.

Nothing in this article matter that much "position:sticky, no backdrop-filter,
no scroll-snap-type, gradients" they're useful, but not critical.

Doubt we'll see apps that aren't possible without these. They just make the
experience nicer, they don't make products happen though.

Meanwhile on the Chrome end we've got web apps like Emojoy
([https://jakearchibald-gcm.appspot.com/](https://jakearchibald-
gcm.appspot.com/)), Offline Wikipedia ([https://wiki-
offline.jakearchibald.com/](https://wiki-offline.jakearchibald.com/)),
Instant.io ([https://instant.io/](https://instant.io/)), PeerCloud
([https://peercloud.io/](https://peercloud.io/)) and even Facebook
([http://Facebook.com/](http://Facebook.com/)) all providing features and
services in Chrome (WebRTC, Service Workers, Background Sync) that can't be
polyfilled or will have to provide a far lesser experience in Safari because
it lacks even a way to polyfill these features (only things I can think of are
AppCache and WebSockets which don't get the job done for these services).

------
dmoy
Chrome as the new IE seems like a stretch without mentioning Firefox.

~~~
pseudosavant
Firefox can't be the new IE. It doesn't have the market share that IE did,
even still does, have.

~~~
dmoy
Sorry you misunderstand me. I didn't mean that Firefox is the new IE, but
rather that it's difficult for _anything_ to be the new IE, because of the
choice now available. Chrome, Firefox, IE, and safari all now have reasonable
market share.

The article is for some reason ignoring all but two browsers.

------
rpgmaker
Chrome is the "new IE" but for a whole different set of reasons than what the
author mentions in the piece. It seems that a lot of designers aren't testing
their designs against other browsers other than Chrome. I routinely find
pieces of web pages that don't look (or work) as they are supposed to but they
work once I perform the same action in Chrome. It's ridiculous.

------
matthewmacleod
I struggle to think of how an article could be more wrong. It's just nonsense.
All browsers - Chrome, Safari, IE/Edge and Firefox are constantly adding new
features, improving performance, and fixing bugs. Obviously they have
different priorities, but this is just nothing like the age of IE.

------
egeozcan
I find it interesting that the author himself accepts (or doesn't oppose, to
be more correct) that the title is linkbait[0].

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/bdc/status/626200664520044544](https://twitter.com/bdc/status/626200664520044544)

------
BlakePetersen
A more buttery web doesn't necessarily equate to a more bettery web ;P

------
killwhitey
> _Mobile Safari can easily handle, say, a Photos.app-like interface with a
> translucent navigation bar, native-like swipe gestures and smooth
> animations. Chrome handles none of this. No position:sticky, no backdrop-
> filter, no scroll-snap-type_

It's interesting that the things he lists as Safari having only work via a
-webkit vendor prefix.

~~~
om2
These features are all standards track but not final, much like the features
that people praise Chrome for having that are not in Safari. Chrome's policy
is not to prefix when they ship a feature to everyone, even if the spec is not
finalized yet. Safari's policy has been to prefix in such a situation but
there is consideration of changing it.

------
jonathanoliver
One big problem I had with IE was the update cycle. Whereas Chrome (and
subsequently other browsers) updated every six weeks or so, non-technical
Windows users just had whatever the OS installed by default, e.g. IE6, etc.

So while Chrome _might_ does have quirks and issues, the frequent update cycle
compensates for it.

------
riffic
Browser monocultures are bad.

------
vilmosi
The author should read the response from Chrome.

------
SixSigma
Just two web browsers, surely some mistake

------
bricss
Hell yeah!!

