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I sometimes feel like Chrome is the new Internet Explorer too! There have been a number of GSuite features from Google that don't work on Firefox. Google Hangou

I sometimes feel like Chrome is the new Internet Explorer too! There have been a number of GSuite features from Google that don't work on Firefox. Google Hangouts for one! Also on that list was U2F auth and some others. Here we have Google products that only work on the Google browser. What does that sound like? Maybe Microsoft and all their ActiveX IE shenanigans in the past! The moral of the story, which I think the article highlighted very well, is that the web platform is based on standards. Build to the standards. If you don't like the standards, advocate for new ones! It's hard work but it's how we got where we are and how we will continue to have a web 100 years from now.

jrs95 9y ago
YouTube seems to be broken on Edge half the time. I don’t think they even test for it.
wrs 9y ago
That is backwards. Nearly everything in the web platform began as a proprietary extension, including JavaScript and XHR. Standardizing something that has never been used in real life is a bad idea. Convincing the other browser vendors to implement your new idea is usually impossible. So insisting that only standards ever be used would result in no progress at all.
joshuamorton 9y ago
>Google Hangouts for one! I believe this now works on FF, according to an HN post yesterday. >If you don't like the standards, advocate for new ones! I think the problem with this is it means that I can't provide something useful until the standards body updates, which could be a cadence of years. In that timeframe, a competitor will break the standard.
- jklinger410 9y ago
  Hangouts calls didn't work for me today on FF. Possibly fixed on beta channel? This would really help me switch.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    I think so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15972967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15972967
ebbv 9y ago
Hangouts uses a plugin. It's not using web standards. So using it as an example of breaking standards is really silly.
- ori_b 9y ago
  Ah. You mean like ActiveX?
  - sowbug 9y ago
    Every major browser vendor has a proprietary extensions platform. It's a good thing; it enables innovation and solution-building without needing to leave the web platform entirely. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge have Native Messaging. Safari's extensions platform uses "native APIs and familiar web technologies." Yes, like ActiveX.
    - ori_b 9y ago
      In short, nobody is breaking web standards, because they didn't submit their changes to a standards body. Because it's not standardized, it doesn't count as breaking standards. Now, if they did submit to a standards body, and it got approved, it would be standardized. Therefore, it doesn't count as breaking standards.
      - sowbug 9y ago
        Hey, if you want every browser to be identical, that's your right. I happen to think that competition among browsers is a good thing, and that means that they'll always be at least a little bit different. Shouldn't it matter which browser you use? No major browser vendor (in the modern era, at least) wants to break interoperability -- that's the bright line that separates innovation from fragmentation -- and you'll find that each works hard to stay on the right side of that line, often slowing their rate of innovation to do so. (And no, saying extensions platforms don't count isn't just language-lawyering, as I think you're trying to suggest. Most extensions platforms, particularly ActiveX and old-style Firefox add-ons, are deeply dependent on the host OS or the specific user agent's implementation, or else they operate in contexts that just don't make sense in the web's origin-based security model. I wouldn't go so far as to say it would be impossible to standardize an extensions platform, but standardizing one would necessarily give rise to a separate platform (the extension to the extensions platform) that was host-OS-specific or user-agent-specific. As I said earlier, there are legitimate needs to get stuff done that can't and shouldn't be done on the web, but that don't require abandoning all web technologies. Maybe you're right that the intent of ActiveX was to kill the web. That doesn't mean that it didn't also solve real problems that the web couldn't solve at the time and still can't today.)
sowbug 9y ago
U2F isn't a Google product. Virtually all new major browser features are built according to standards, proposals, or explicit extensions platforms. See https://www.w3.org/TR/ https://www.w3.org/TR/, where it's very easy to map recent browser features to standards or healthy proposals. Your proselytizing would be more appropriate in Redmond, Washington in 2007. I'm not sure what gives you the impression that successful standards are developed in a vacuum. You're right that some are, but most of those are terrible technologies that were designed by the "hard work" you think got us where we are today. The rest -- the good ones -- are battle-tested through gradual deployment and iterative improvement, eventually emerging nearly unrecognizable from their original vision, but genuinely useful and usable. Only then does the "hard work" of advocacy begin.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > U2F isn't a Google product. The point is that U2F on Google logins only works in Chrome. Firefox supports U2F, but Google's implementation only works with Chrome.
  - detaro 9y ago
    As far as I know, Firefox does not implement U2F exactly (one of the reasons support for it isn't enabled by default): https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928 https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > As far as I know, Firefox does not implement U2F exactly (one of the reasons support for it isn't enabled by default): https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928 https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928 Sort of. It's true that Firefox doesn't enable U2F by default (yet), but that's actually unrelated to the reasons that it doesn't work on Google domains. The real reason that Google's U2F only works in Chrome is that they rely on non-standard implementation details: https://twitter.com/ManishEarth/status/931534674224062464 https://twitter.com/ManishEarth/status/931534674224062464 For contrast, you can use U2F on Fastmail and Github in Firefox, because they don't rely on non-standard behavior.

jrs95 9y ago

YouTube seems to be broken on Edge half the time. I don’t think they even test for it.

wrs 9y ago

That is backwards. Nearly everything in the web platform began as a proprietary extension, including JavaScript and XHR. Standardizing something that has never been used in real life is a bad idea. Convincing the other browser vendors to implement your new idea is usually impossible. So insisting that only standards ever be used would result in no progress at all.

joshuamorton 9y ago

>Google Hangouts for one! I believe this now works on FF, according to an HN post yesterday. >If you don't like the standards, advocate for new ones! I think the problem with this is it means that I can't provide something useful until the standards body updates, which could be a cadence of years. In that timeframe, a competitor will break the standard.

jklinger410 9y ago
Hangouts calls didn't work for me today on FF. Possibly fixed on beta channel? This would really help me switch.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  I think so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15972967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15972967

ebbv 9y ago

Hangouts uses a plugin. It's not using web standards. So using it as an example of breaking standards is really silly.

ori_b 9y ago
Ah. You mean like ActiveX?
- sowbug 9y ago
  Every major browser vendor has a proprietary extensions platform. It's a good thing; it enables innovation and solution-building without needing to leave the web platform entirely. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge have Native Messaging. Safari's extensions platform uses "native APIs and familiar web technologies." Yes, like ActiveX.
  - ori_b 9y ago
    In short, nobody is breaking web standards, because they didn't submit their changes to a standards body. Because it's not standardized, it doesn't count as breaking standards. Now, if they did submit to a standards body, and it got approved, it would be standardized. Therefore, it doesn't count as breaking standards.
    - sowbug 9y ago
      Hey, if you want every browser to be identical, that's your right. I happen to think that competition among browsers is a good thing, and that means that they'll always be at least a little bit different. Shouldn't it matter which browser you use? No major browser vendor (in the modern era, at least) wants to break interoperability -- that's the bright line that separates innovation from fragmentation -- and you'll find that each works hard to stay on the right side of that line, often slowing their rate of innovation to do so. (And no, saying extensions platforms don't count isn't just language-lawyering, as I think you're trying to suggest. Most extensions platforms, particularly ActiveX and old-style Firefox add-ons, are deeply dependent on the host OS or the specific user agent's implementation, or else they operate in contexts that just don't make sense in the web's origin-based security model. I wouldn't go so far as to say it would be impossible to standardize an extensions platform, but standardizing one would necessarily give rise to a separate platform (the extension to the extensions platform) that was host-OS-specific or user-agent-specific. As I said earlier, there are legitimate needs to get stuff done that can't and shouldn't be done on the web, but that don't require abandoning all web technologies. Maybe you're right that the intent of ActiveX was to kill the web. That doesn't mean that it didn't also solve real problems that the web couldn't solve at the time and still can't today.)

sowbug 9y ago

U2F isn't a Google product. Virtually all new major browser features are built according to standards, proposals, or explicit extensions platforms. See https://www.w3.org/TR/ https://www.w3.org/TR/, where it's very easy to map recent browser features to standards or healthy proposals. Your proselytizing would be more appropriate in Redmond, Washington in 2007. I'm not sure what gives you the impression that successful standards are developed in a vacuum. You're right that some are, but most of those are terrible technologies that were designed by the "hard work" you think got us where we are today. The rest -- the good ones -- are battle-tested through gradual deployment and iterative improvement, eventually emerging nearly unrecognizable from their original vision, but genuinely useful and usable. Only then does the "hard work" of advocacy begin.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> U2F isn't a Google product. The point is that U2F on Google logins only works in Chrome. Firefox supports U2F, but Google's implementation only works with Chrome.
- detaro 9y ago
  As far as I know, Firefox does not implement U2F exactly (one of the reasons support for it isn't enabled by default): https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928 https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > As far as I know, Firefox does not implement U2F exactly (one of the reasons support for it isn't enabled by default): https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928 https://twitter.com/jamespugjones/status/931324766782332928 Sort of. It's true that Firefox doesn't enable U2F by default (yet), but that's actually unrelated to the reasons that it doesn't work on Google domains. The real reason that Google's U2F only works in Chrome is that they rely on non-standard implementation details: https://twitter.com/ManishEarth/status/931534674224062464 https://twitter.com/ManishEarth/status/931534674224062464 For contrast, you can use U2F on Fastmail and Github in Firefox, because they don't rely on non-standard behavior.