

Google's playing the closed-open game again, this time with HTML5 - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/91234-google-plays-the-closed-open-game-with-its-latest-chrome-music-video

======
mrpollo
It is clear to me that this is a Google Chrome Experiment, from their labs,
and that they did not had any intention of it working on any other browser but
i got curious...

i was doing some research on it and they appear to be using sync xhr calls
which causes FF to hiccup even after all this time.

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=383304>
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=313646>

they are marked as resolved but i just confirmed the xhr sync calls dont work
in some cases.

google is using the sync calls here
<http://www.allisnotlo.st/static/js/API.js>

Here you can try this to try and play the video on FF
<https://gist.github.com/1109890>

you will notice your console throws some errors around line 42 of that file,
if anyone knows what else is wrong here please let me know.

~~~
angryasian
this article is written with the obvious intention of bashing google, the
writer didn't even do his research because honeycomb 3.2 source is available.

~~~
mrpollo
"this article is written with the obvious intention of bashing google" i
agree, it is way faster to develop for just 1 browser, plus we should be
celebrating people are trying to break ground doing this awesome videos, i can
only begin to imagine all the impressive work that what went into this video,
good one google +1

~~~
zobzu
I hope this was sarcastic, unfortunately I fear you're actually serious.

Scary.

~~~
mrpollo
out of curiosity why?

------
jawns
I tried to trick it with User Agent Switcher, but no go. It's not just
examining the user agent -- it's looking for window.chrome, too.

Having watched the video and the word-spelling at the end, there's nothing
about this sort of content that strikes me as stuff that can't be done in
other browsers. And isn't that supposed to be the point of experiments like
this?

Google should be showing us stuff that can't be done in any browser but Chrome
because of those other browsers' technical limitations or deficiencies ... not
just because they have the wrong user agent.

~~~
Funnnny
Google showed that this is Chrome showcase, a Chrome experiment, isn't that
clear ?

~~~
jawns
Oh, they certainly have a right to call it a Chrome experiment, but the
question is: What unique thing about Chrome are they trying to show off in
this "experiment"?

Google could just as easily call ...

    
    
        <html><body><p>Hello world!</p></body></html>
    

... a Chrome experiment, but that's not going to make me switch from Firefox.

------
tomlin

      This is precisely the same kind of trickery Apple 
      pulled with its HTML5 Showcase for Safari, which 
      locked out other more compliant browsers in order 
      to make Safari shine line a beacon of hope for open 
      web standards. But Google isn’t building these 
      experiences to make the web look good: it’s building 
      them to make Chrome look good.
    

I don't get this bit. Isn't Google doing the same as Apple, then?

~~~
jarin
Remove the word "But" and it makes logical sense.

------
ZoFreX
Disappointing article, given all the other ways in which Chrome is harming the
web. Example: There's a bug on a site I made in Chrome. It is categorically
incorrect behaviour on the part of Chrome, it breaks the specs in order to be
faster. How do I fix the bug? By calling a proprietary interface in Javascript
that only exists in Chrome. Yup, that's right - to make my standards-compliant
web page work, I have to do browser-specific stuff for Chrome. It actually
works fine in Internet Explorer 9, and has no IE9 (or 8 or 7) specific code in
it. This is actually the second time that Chrome has been the stand-out
browser for causing issues when building a site (unless you count Opera - I
don't).

~~~
icebraining
Have they acknowledged the bug and refused to fix it?

~~~
jmesserly
Agreed, it would be nice to see the bug. AFAIK they take standards compliance
pretty seriously. I'm sure someone would look at it, especially if Chrome is
behaving differently from FF/IE9/Safari.

~~~
bzbarsky
> AFAIK they take standards compliance pretty seriously.

As long as it doesn't interfere with their performance benchmarks.

<http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/020267.html> is an example; that
issue is alive and well in WebKit, as are various other "optimizations" along
similar lines.

------
andybak
It's quite possible that there's a valid technical reason for this. Codec
usage? Something bleeding edge to do with HTML5 Audio?

A slightly crappy but plausible reason is that they didn't want the extra
hassle of cross-browser testing and pool of browsers capable of running this
was pretty small.

~~~
jarin
Or the simplest explanation is that they wanted people to install Chrome to be
able to see it.

~~~
zobzu
The explanation is of course that they want people to run Chrome no matter the
cost.

They can force people to upgrade to chrome that way. It's a well known way of
doing stuff.

Microsoft has done that for ages in the past and got bashed for it until they
started to fall.

When Google does it, it's ok tho. Figures.

ps: this is actually doing evil

------
heydenberk
It's a shame that an exaggerated article about a browser-sniffing art project
that Google worked on is bound to get more attention from the public than,
say, the contemporaneously front-paged [open sourcing of
LevelDB]([http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/07/leveldb-
fast-p...](http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/07/leveldb-fast-
persistent-key-value-store.html)), which is a far more significant step in the
direction of openness.

------
natmaster
This is not an isolated incident, and goes to show the potential damage Chrome
can do to the web. This is very similar to the behavior Microsoft exhibited
with IE6, which left terrible damage for years after its release.

------
mvzink
Useless article. This has nothing to do with "openness", just marketing: what
is Google's incentive to building the site in the first place if they can't
make people download Chrome to view it? That said, they could at least add a
"Try it anyway" button for other browsers.

~~~
drcube
Chrome is free. Google builds websites to attract advertisers. Which makes
Google's lack of openness all the more perplexing.

And what's this about not being able to get the Android source!? I'll buy an
iphone right now if that's true. At least Apple doesn't try and pretend
they're not evil.

~~~
zobzu
Android source for Honey comb is indeed not available and hasnt ever been, so
far. Only the GPL parts (kernel, iptables basically) are open because they're
forced by law.

I don't think we'll ever get HoneyComb source. We might get Ice cream sandwich
source. Might. Only Google knows.

------
cageface
Ironically this article is presented in yet another degraded "iPad" interface
I had to break out of to actually read the article.

~~~
jannes
I can't agree more with you. I hate these stupid iPad-optimized themes which
in reality make the reading experience worse.

Why would anyone prefer faked scrolling or faked pagination (that's what this
theme does) over the perfectly good native scrolling? I simply don't get it.

The cause seem to be these guys: <http://onswipe.com/>

They created this theme which seems to have infected half of the web's
wordpress blogs. I wonder if any of those guys who install this theme on their
blogs actually have an iPad.

------
szarecor
meh -- this is not an assault on openness, it's a silly little music video.

Locking other browsers out of gmail, gmaps, youtube, etc would be an assault
on openness.

~~~
azakai
That would have been a much bigger assault on openness, to be sure. But this
is quite bad as well - it clearly shows that Google cares more about pushing
Chrome itself than pushing the open, standards-based web. As the article says,
when Microsoft's web demos are more standards-based than Google's, you know
something is messed up.

Not so long ago I don't think Google would have done such a thing. Apparently
though there are changes happening.

------
cowboyhero
Eh. They did a vanity site to promote a product.

When Goog starts adding /marquee/ tags and VBScript to their browser, I'll
start getting worried about "openness."

~~~
inportb
Chrome does not support <marquee />? Interesting.

~~~
walrus
Chrome supports <marquee>. cowboyhero was making an allusion to the browser
wars[1].

[1]
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Browser_wars#...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Browser_wars#The_first_browser_war)

~~~
dave1010uk
WebKit e.g. (Chrome & Safari) doesn't support the <blink> tag; though it can
be recreated quite easily using CSS transitions. Not that you should though.

------
jrockway
All I get out of this is that Google calls their web browser "Chrome", while
Apple calls theirs "HTML5".

~~~
jannes
I don't get why this is downvoted. You are right. At least Google explicitly
marked this as a "Chrome experiment" instead of labeling it as a "HTML5
showcase".

~~~
Sukotto
How are you seeing the vote count? I don't see a way in my profile to turn it
back on

[Edit to add] It's a serious question. Parent refers to downvotes of GP post.
That makes me wonder if there's a way to turn the numbers back on. Something I
would very much like to do.

Why the downvotes?

~~~
walrus
I'm guessing that at one point the post's text was gray due to downvotes.

------
methodin
I don't get the fuss. It's a website that says "Chrome experiment" made by
Google Japan in collaboration with some artists. It is clearly a promotional
piece. The creators have every right to do whatever the hell they want with
it. This has nothing to do with the openness of Google or Chrome. It is a
demonstration of HTML5 concepts IN CHROME. Not in Firefox. Not in IE9. Not in
Safari. This is why it's a CHROME experiment and not an HTML5 experiment.

------
whatever_dude
Funny that EVERY BROWSER VENDOR out there is playing the same game.

Funny how, for web developers, "standards" is not about something being
actually fucking standard.

------
rufo
I found this especially odd, since the Rome music video gave a similar
warning, but let you continue and worked fine in Firefox 5.

------
pettazz
So now we think that because Google wanted to lock the presentation of this
video in a very specific browser so that it runs in the very specific way they
want to without dealing with every minor complication that can occur in every
one of the 98743 browsers that "support" HTML 5 and CSS 3, it means that they
are sending a message about locking up the web for themselves?

This is purely sensationalist bullshit, reading into actions that have no
ulterior motives.

------
shapeshed
This is clearly says Chrome experiment, so this is sensationalism for me. The
HTML5 spec is still in editor's draft and browser vendors have different
interpretations in some areas. Video is an issue but criticising Google when
they open sourced the VP8 codec is unfair. If I were a journalist I'd focus on
patents as blocking the open web and innovation rather than fabricate an
agenda like this.

