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To be honest as a user, I'm glad they made this change, even though as a developer it might be a pain in the ass for a day or 2. Scrolling on the mobile web su

To be honest as a user, I'm glad they made this change, even though as a developer it might be a pain in the ass for a day or 2. Scrolling on the mobile web sucked for a long time. Yes, updating the default broke many things, but the scope of that breakage was fairly limited in the grand scheme of things (like the author said, sliders, maps, touch-and-draggable things like lists are the biggest impacted, stuff like "sticky headers" and other junk would be impacted, but not "broken beyond usage"). We've seen time and time again that simply giving a developer the ability to fix things doesn't help, and letting the mobile web suck for several years while a few percent of the web slowly learned how to fix this would end up impacting far more people than the "breakage" ever would. It's not ideal, and I wish that google provided a very quick and easy way to "opt out" of the breakage (like some one-line "polyfill" that reverted the change that site owners could use as a stop-gap until they could properly update their apps to work correctly), but I see their point and as a user I agree with it, even though as a developer this is the kind of stuff that ruins your day. I personally have not hit a single website that was impacted by this that I could notice myself. That's not to say that I haven't been impacted by the breakage, or used sites that had something break because of it (that I didn't notice). But even knowing that this change was made when it was made, I didn't see any sites that were "unusable" or "broken" because of it.

chii 9y ago
> "polyfill" that reverted the change that site owners could use as a stop-gap until they could properly update their apps to work correctly then the site owners would just use the polyfill indefinitely, since it now works again. THe more expensive option of rewriting to conform is not going to give return on investment. This is why breaking a bad thing is needed - the suffering has to happen. It's like getting the flu - to get better one must get sick first if you've been infected.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Except that millions of sites will not ever be fixed; they'll just be broken indefinitely.
  - ravenstine 9y ago
    Possibly, but if they are that useful to users, those sites either need to be maintained or forked. Your argument could have just as easily been used to argue for Adobe Flash support(OK it's still sort of around, but it's nearly irrelevant at this point).
    - Dolores12 9y ago
      > sites either need to be maintained or forked Maintained by who, forked by who? You can't just fork someone's work, there is copyright. Also any saved copy of website(think web archive) will stop working.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        Assuming you can even get at it; most useful tools have a significant server component that's inaccessible.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I am not going to go so far as to say breaking backward compatibility is never the right way to go, but "those sites either need to be maintained or forked" is not what is likely to happen; rather instead they'll just say "you have to use such-and-such a browser at such-and-such a version" and lock it in that way for a long time. Consider how big a business it was (is?) to have VMs specifically to keep running Web apps in IE6.
ksk 9y ago
How is it good for the user if it breaks the website?
- Klathmon 9y ago
  The same way getting your flu shot can make you feel worse for a bit, but can prevent you from getting the flu which will make you feel worse for much longer, and it can help prevent others around you from getting the flu. Yes, it breaks some websites, and for those users in that moment things might be worse, but it is making the web better for significantly more people, and even the users affected aren't really "impacted" by it in most cases (generally only seeing "sticky" headers warp around while scrolling outside of a few specific types of applications).
  - ksk 9y ago
    >and for those users in that moment things might be worse, but it is making the web better for significantly more people, What are you basing this on?
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      I explained this in my first comment, but I'm also basing it on my own testing in february when this came out, as well as from user feedback for years from users of mobile safari which has done this for quite a long time and it has greatly improved the scrolling performance in their browser.
      - ksk 9y ago
        But how does this apply to the majority of users as you suggest? As a user, I'd like the website to keep working. I don't agree with simply breaking working websites via a top-down dictatorial approach.
        Klathmon 9y ago
        Because in my personal case a majority of users would take smoother scrolling over a small UI bug that doesn't impact the usability of the application which is fixable in a few hours at most. Because any websites that need this "blocking events" functionality can opt-in to it quite easily. Because as I explained in my first comment, the breakages didn't affect that many websites, and the sites it did affect were mostly just small UI bugs that didn't impact usability. Yes, some sites were impacted and broken, but they were the extreme minority, and even if you accounted for all of the users of all of those sites I'd be willing to bet that it doesn't come anywhere close to being a "majority" of web users. Hell I'd wager that it's not even close to 1% of web users that were negatively impacted by this change in any way.

chii 9y ago

> "polyfill" that reverted the change that site owners could use as a stop-gap until they could properly update their apps to work correctly then the site owners would just use the polyfill indefinitely, since it now works again. THe more expensive option of rewriting to conform is not going to give return on investment. This is why breaking a bad thing is needed - the suffering has to happen. It's like getting the flu - to get better one must get sick first if you've been infected.

emodendroket 9y ago
Except that millions of sites will not ever be fixed; they'll just be broken indefinitely.
- ravenstine 9y ago
  Possibly, but if they are that useful to users, those sites either need to be maintained or forked. Your argument could have just as easily been used to argue for Adobe Flash support(OK it's still sort of around, but it's nearly irrelevant at this point).
  - Dolores12 9y ago
    > sites either need to be maintained or forked Maintained by who, forked by who? You can't just fork someone's work, there is copyright. Also any saved copy of website(think web archive) will stop working.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Assuming you can even get at it; most useful tools have a significant server component that's inaccessible.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I am not going to go so far as to say breaking backward compatibility is never the right way to go, but "those sites either need to be maintained or forked" is not what is likely to happen; rather instead they'll just say "you have to use such-and-such a browser at such-and-such a version" and lock it in that way for a long time. Consider how big a business it was (is?) to have VMs specifically to keep running Web apps in IE6.

ksk 9y ago

How is it good for the user if it breaks the website?

Klathmon 9y ago
The same way getting your flu shot can make you feel worse for a bit, but can prevent you from getting the flu which will make you feel worse for much longer, and it can help prevent others around you from getting the flu. Yes, it breaks some websites, and for those users in that moment things might be worse, but it is making the web better for significantly more people, and even the users affected aren't really "impacted" by it in most cases (generally only seeing "sticky" headers warp around while scrolling outside of a few specific types of applications).
- ksk 9y ago
  >and for those users in that moment things might be worse, but it is making the web better for significantly more people, What are you basing this on?
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    I explained this in my first comment, but I'm also basing it on my own testing in february when this came out, as well as from user feedback for years from users of mobile safari which has done this for quite a long time and it has greatly improved the scrolling performance in their browser.
    - ksk 9y ago
      But how does this apply to the majority of users as you suggest? As a user, I'd like the website to keep working. I don't agree with simply breaking working websites via a top-down dictatorial approach.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        Because in my personal case a majority of users would take smoother scrolling over a small UI bug that doesn't impact the usability of the application which is fixable in a few hours at most. Because any websites that need this "blocking events" functionality can opt-in to it quite easily. Because as I explained in my first comment, the breakages didn't affect that many websites, and the sites it did affect were mostly just small UI bugs that didn't impact usability. Yes, some sites were impacted and broken, but they were the extreme minority, and even if you accounted for all of the users of all of those sites I'd be willing to bet that it doesn't come anywhere close to being a "majority" of web users. Hell I'd wager that it's not even close to 1% of web users that were negatively impacted by this change in any way.