4 ms·

Chrome is the new IE. Chrome ships new features fast, and some of them are very cool. Because of course! "Embrace, extend, extinguish" doesn't work unless the

Chrome is the new IE. Chrome ships new features fast, and some of them are very cool. Because of course! "Embrace, extend, extinguish" doesn't work unless the "extend" part is full of shiny, delicious candy. And platform makers can make lots and lots of shiny candy when freed from pesky things like standards. It's hard to believe we're having this discussion again. Did we learn nothing from Internet Explorer 6? IE6 damn near ruined the web because it had 95% market share, was objectively terrible, and it encouraged lock-in with its nonstandard behavior and "convenient" proprietary features. Now, of course Chrome isn't terrible like IE6. And that's both good and dangerous ...because Microsoft might have "won" if IE6 was any good at all. Luckily, IE6 was so terrible that Mozilla was able to win back a sizeable enough portion of the web with a far superior product, and FF's market share was big enough that people had to start paying attention to web standards again. No such savior in the form of a "far superior product" is likely to exist this time around. Chrome's pretty darn nice, and as long as it doesn't suck as bad as IE6, we'll never see a direct competitor that eclipses Chrome in the way that FF1.0 surpassed the god-awful IE6. That means we, the developers, are the only thing between an open web and a dangerous Google monoculture. Support web standards, not proprietary lock-in. Develop for the web, not for Chrome. Stick to the standards and it's pretty easy. And fun.

Arcsech 9y ago
Chrome is 100% the IE. They blatantly ignore standards, the most obvious of which is their treatment of autocomplete=off in forms[1]. They broke the ability to disable autocomplete, and since then have been intentionally breaking workarounds people find to actually turn off autocomplete. This has been a major pain in the butt at work. Before you yell at me about password managers or whatever, we don't use this on our login form: We make an app that collects some sensitive data that it is very pointless to autocomplete, and we've had user complaints about this very issue, but there's nothing we can do about it because Google unilaterally decided they know better than us. [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22694173 https://stackoverflow.com/a/22694173 (make sure to read the comments!)
- kuschku 9y ago
  > They blatantly ignore standards, the most obvious of which is their treatment of autocomplete=off in forms[1]. They broke the ability to disable autocomplete, and since then have been intentionally breaking workarounds people find to actually turn off autocomplete. This has been a major pain in the butt at work. My solution to that is simple. I have a microservice that tells my services how to get autocomplete=off automatically. This microservice determines the required values and ids by scraping the search box on google.com every hour, and extracting the values of the tag matching input[name=q]. That way I can fully automate autocomplete=off, and ensure it works.
  - JohnBooty 9y ago
    That is filthy, and I absolutely love it.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Indeed it is, but sometimes it’s necessary. I absolutely only use it for search boxes where I provide custom history for previous entries, and custom suggestions. Without autocomplete=off, these are horrible to use. And this was the only way I could figure out that would guarantee that it would be disabled, even after browser updates.
- paulirish 9y ago
  FWIW, the HTML spec says that the autocomplete=off means either 1) the input shouldn't be autofilled or 2) the input is for sensitive information. It doesn't require handling it only as the first case. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastructure.html#autofilling-form-controls:-the-autocomplete-attribute https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastr...
  - Arcsech 9y ago
    > "When an element's autofill field name is "off", the user agent should not remember the control's data, and should not offer past values to the user." Seems pretty clear to me. The only exception I see is: > "A user agent may allow the user to override an element's autofill field name, e.g. to change it from "off" to "on" to allow values to be remembered and prefilled despite the page author's objections, or to always "off", never remembering values." But that's user-initiated action, not something the browser should do for every field just because it feels like it.
optimuspaul 9y ago
I mostly agree. Chrome worries me for a lot of reasons and I don't trust google at all.
- JohnBooty 9y ago
  Their goals are less outwardly evil than 1990s-era Microsoft, and that makes me think they have a much better chance at succeeding.
  - macintux 9y ago
    I don't know how "understand everything there is to know about everyone" is substantially less evil, especially when entirely avoiding Google is effectively impossible.
    - JohnBooty 9y ago
      I should have picked a better word! "Outwardly" probably wasn't the right word there. Google is less... bald-facedly evil, perhaps? Less overtly evil? Microsoft's hardline "screw the open web, and buy a Windows and Office license every n years while we ensure we have no competitors by any means necessary" modus operandi in the 1990s was just so blatantly unfriendly. Google's course is more... stealthy.
      - macintux 9y ago
        Yeah, I won't defend Microsoft. I was honestly convinced for several years that we were descending into a dark age of computing.
RobertRoberts 9y ago
Maybe we can split the difference. Chrome == IE because of breaking standards, and Safari == IE because it is so far behind on supporting standards. Also, both Chrome OS and iOS, both have integrated their browser into their OS and don't allow competition from other browsers on their platforms. Is that a fair assessment?
- JohnBooty 9y ago
  Yeah I think it's a totally fair assessment. And it's right to be wary of Apple. They have many of the same negative incentives as Microsoft had: if the web outshines their proprietary app platforms, then what good are those platforms? However, out of the two behaviors ("embrace and extend" versus "slow standards adoption") I think that Chrome's "embrace and extend" is the one that's actually a threat - and to me, that's what really made IE dangerous: it was a threat to the web. Safari's pace of standards adoption is merely annoying. I'm a developer too; I get it -- I want to use the cool new shit! But Safari's not going to break the web in the way that propietary browser lock-in could break it.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    I agree that Google's Chrome tactics can be perceived as evil, I won't discount that, because it causes issues when you are forced to use a particular browser. But if your client only runs iOS for their entire business, you can't even complain about Chrome to them. And if their browser doesn't support something as simple as offline html5 features properly, and you need this, across multiple platforms (cause they have a few laptops too). Then you can't use a browser based platform. Or if you do, you have to live with many compromises. This is how I see Apple working. If the market didn't force them to upgrade Safari, I think they never would. They'd just say "browsers are for html, and the Apple App Store is for everything else". But my client just wanted their stupid form to work offline. At least Chrome can do this, their adding of extra stuff doesn't _limit_ what is possible. And I don't think many of these features are "new and shiny", I think they are fundamental to the web now. If they were new and shiny only, then Firefox would have had it's ass handed to it by the big-boys. But instead, we see MS and Apple falling behind a simple non-profit in the web standards support area. Remember, Apple has more money in the bank than any company ever in the history of the world. It's a choice they are making not keeping up with web standards. So the question has to be asked, what benefit does Apple get from keeping web standards very low on it's locked down platform? (any answer besides forcing devs into their store?)

Arcsech 9y ago

Chrome is 100% the IE. They blatantly ignore standards, the most obvious of which is their treatment of autocomplete=off in forms[1]. They broke the ability to disable autocomplete, and since then have been intentionally breaking workarounds people find to actually turn off autocomplete. This has been a major pain in the butt at work. Before you yell at me about password managers or whatever, we don't use this on our login form: We make an app that collects some sensitive data that it is very pointless to autocomplete, and we've had user complaints about this very issue, but there's nothing we can do about it because Google unilaterally decided they know better than us. [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22694173 https://stackoverflow.com/a/22694173 (make sure to read the comments!)

kuschku 9y ago
> They blatantly ignore standards, the most obvious of which is their treatment of autocomplete=off in forms[1]. They broke the ability to disable autocomplete, and since then have been intentionally breaking workarounds people find to actually turn off autocomplete. This has been a major pain in the butt at work. My solution to that is simple. I have a microservice that tells my services how to get autocomplete=off automatically. This microservice determines the required values and ids by scraping the search box on google.com every hour, and extracting the values of the tag matching input[name=q]. That way I can fully automate autocomplete=off, and ensure it works.
- JohnBooty 9y ago
  That is filthy, and I absolutely love it.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Indeed it is, but sometimes it’s necessary. I absolutely only use it for search boxes where I provide custom history for previous entries, and custom suggestions. Without autocomplete=off, these are horrible to use. And this was the only way I could figure out that would guarantee that it would be disabled, even after browser updates.
paulirish 9y ago
FWIW, the HTML spec says that the autocomplete=off means either 1) the input shouldn't be autofilled or 2) the input is for sensitive information. It doesn't require handling it only as the first case. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastructure.html#autofilling-form-controls:-the-autocomplete-attribute https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastr...
- Arcsech 9y ago
  > "When an element's autofill field name is "off", the user agent should not remember the control's data, and should not offer past values to the user." Seems pretty clear to me. The only exception I see is: > "A user agent may allow the user to override an element's autofill field name, e.g. to change it from "off" to "on" to allow values to be remembered and prefilled despite the page author's objections, or to always "off", never remembering values." But that's user-initiated action, not something the browser should do for every field just because it feels like it.

optimuspaul 9y ago

I mostly agree. Chrome worries me for a lot of reasons and I don't trust google at all.

JohnBooty 9y ago
Their goals are less outwardly evil than 1990s-era Microsoft, and that makes me think they have a much better chance at succeeding.
- macintux 9y ago
  I don't know how "understand everything there is to know about everyone" is substantially less evil, especially when entirely avoiding Google is effectively impossible.
  - JohnBooty 9y ago
    I should have picked a better word! "Outwardly" probably wasn't the right word there. Google is less... bald-facedly evil, perhaps? Less overtly evil? Microsoft's hardline "screw the open web, and buy a Windows and Office license every n years while we ensure we have no competitors by any means necessary" modus operandi in the 1990s was just so blatantly unfriendly. Google's course is more... stealthy.
    - macintux 9y ago
      Yeah, I won't defend Microsoft. I was honestly convinced for several years that we were descending into a dark age of computing.

RobertRoberts 9y ago

Maybe we can split the difference. Chrome == IE because of breaking standards, and Safari == IE because it is so far behind on supporting standards. Also, both Chrome OS and iOS, both have integrated their browser into their OS and don't allow competition from other browsers on their platforms. Is that a fair assessment?

JohnBooty 9y ago
Yeah I think it's a totally fair assessment. And it's right to be wary of Apple. They have many of the same negative incentives as Microsoft had: if the web outshines their proprietary app platforms, then what good are those platforms? However, out of the two behaviors ("embrace and extend" versus "slow standards adoption") I think that Chrome's "embrace and extend" is the one that's actually a threat - and to me, that's what really made IE dangerous: it was a threat to the web. Safari's pace of standards adoption is merely annoying. I'm a developer too; I get it -- I want to use the cool new shit! But Safari's not going to break the web in the way that propietary browser lock-in could break it.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  I agree that Google's Chrome tactics can be perceived as evil, I won't discount that, because it causes issues when you are forced to use a particular browser. But if your client only runs iOS for their entire business, you can't even complain about Chrome to them. And if their browser doesn't support something as simple as offline html5 features properly, and you need this, across multiple platforms (cause they have a few laptops too). Then you can't use a browser based platform. Or if you do, you have to live with many compromises. This is how I see Apple working. If the market didn't force them to upgrade Safari, I think they never would. They'd just say "browsers are for html, and the Apple App Store is for everything else". But my client just wanted their stupid form to work offline. At least Chrome can do this, their adding of extra stuff doesn't _limit_ what is possible. And I don't think many of these features are "new and shiny", I think they are fundamental to the web now. If they were new and shiny only, then Firefox would have had it's ass handed to it by the big-boys. But instead, we see MS and Apple falling behind a simple non-profit in the web standards support area. Remember, Apple has more money in the bank than any company ever in the history of the world. It's a choice they are making not keeping up with web standards. So the question has to be asked, what benefit does Apple get from keeping web standards very low on it's locked down platform? (any answer besides forcing devs into their store?)