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For those who've switched over to Firefox recently and find Youtube inexplicably slow, it's "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow

by skndr 8y ago

For those who've switched over to Firefox recently and find Youtube inexplicably slow, it's "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome." [0] The YouTube Classic extension will speed things up: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-classic/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-class... [0] https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185 https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185

pessimizer 8y ago
I feel so stupid for not knowing this existed; thanks a lot.
boyter 8y ago
Seems that the days of "Best viewed in browser X" have come back sadly.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  When you give a browser a 70% market share it will always start abusing its position. Same as last time.
  - majani 8y ago
    It's more of an OS issue here. Google doesn't view Android as a separate line of business. It's merely a moat for the search business. There's no way for an OS to be a moat for another business without abusing the OS.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Microsoft left IE6 stagnant. They didn't "abuse their position" other than through inactivity. Google is actively involved in the standardization process, and moved Youtube over to a new API too prematurely (v0 of a spec). Now that v1 has been standardized, they're updating to that instead. These are opposite problems. Microsoft got complacent whereas Google moved too fast.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - megaremote 8y ago
    Firefox will not, because they don't control youtube or google.com, or facebook or any major website. One of the reasons they are the best.
- profalseidol 8y ago
  Haha gov't websites and banks here in my country is still best viewed (or only works) in Internet Explorer.
driverdan 8y ago
YouTube works fine for me in Firefox on OS X with 6 year old hardware.
seppel 8y ago
Is that the same reason why reddit is so slow in Firefox?
abraham 8y ago
Shadow DOM v0 is deprecated in Chrome and will be removed in April 2019. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/09/chrome-70-deps-rems https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/09/chrome-70-...
esprehn 8y ago
fwiw if you read the rest of that thread on Twitter it explains that Youtube is not using Shadow DOM v0, the slowness is likely related to polyfills for HTML Imports, and the next version of Polymer no longer uses those to resolve issues like this. Also Chrome is actively removing the web standards that didn't end up being adopted broadly: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/blink-dev/h-JwMiPUnuU https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/bli... So YouTube will end up just as slow in other browsers unless they upgrade to a newer polymer that uses the broadly implemented standards.
mccr8 8y ago
YouTube fixed something a few days after that post. I no longer experience the slowness it was describing in Firefox.
rictic 8y ago
I'm on the Polymer team at Google. We've been helping the YouTube team, who's been doing a ton of work to update to the final v1 version of the webcomponent specs. So far it's a bit neck and neck between Firefox launching version 63 with native web component support (eta October) and YouTube switching the main desktop app over. These are new standards, and there were a number of breaking changes from the v0 specs to v1. It's a lot of code to update, but we're working super hard to get all of Google onto v1.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Thanks for the update. Shame about all the conspiracy theories regarding this topic. It seemed likely enough to boil down to a logical explanation.
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
wow, the youtube design sucks
fpgaminer 8y ago
Oddly enough I haven't had too many issues with YouTube's slowness (as a Firefox user). I mean, it's slow, but "tolerable". It's the new Gmail that's horrifically slow now. It takes a good 20 seconds to get to the point where I can interact with it, and then each interaction takes another 10 seconds.
curiousDog 8y ago
This is like Microsoft and IE all over again.
stormbrew 8y ago
I mean, polymer also broke most of the chromecast functionality in google's own browser to the point that I have to use ?disable_polymer=1 to really use it at all from a browser (really I mostly just use it from my phone now), so this doesn't seem terribly surprising by comparison.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
paavoova 8y ago
Try using mpv + youtube-dl to stream Youtube. It even has playlist/mix support.

by skndr 8y ago

pessimizer 8y ago

I feel so stupid for not knowing this existed; thanks a lot.

boyter 8y ago

Seems that the days of "Best viewed in browser X" have come back sadly.

Brakenshire 8y ago
When you give a browser a 70% market share it will always start abusing its position. Same as last time.
- majani 8y ago
  It's more of an OS issue here. Google doesn't view Android as a separate line of business. It's merely a moat for the search business. There's no way for an OS to be a moat for another business without abusing the OS.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Microsoft left IE6 stagnant. They didn't "abuse their position" other than through inactivity. Google is actively involved in the standardization process, and moved Youtube over to a new API too prematurely (v0 of a spec). Now that v1 has been standardized, they're updating to that instead. These are opposite problems. Microsoft got complacent whereas Google moved too fast.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- megaremote 8y ago
  Firefox will not, because they don't control youtube or google.com, or facebook or any major website. One of the reasons they are the best.
profalseidol 8y ago
Haha gov't websites and banks here in my country is still best viewed (or only works) in Internet Explorer.

driverdan 8y ago

YouTube works fine for me in Firefox on OS X with 6 year old hardware.

seppel 8y ago

Is that the same reason why reddit is so slow in Firefox?

abraham 8y ago

Shadow DOM v0 is deprecated in Chrome and will be removed in April 2019. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/09/chrome-70-deps-rems https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/09/chrome-70-...

esprehn 8y ago

fwiw if you read the rest of that thread on Twitter it explains that Youtube is not using Shadow DOM v0, the slowness is likely related to polyfills for HTML Imports, and the next version of Polymer no longer uses those to resolve issues like this. Also Chrome is actively removing the web standards that didn't end up being adopted broadly: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/blink-dev/h-JwMiPUnuU https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/bli... So YouTube will end up just as slow in other browsers unless they upgrade to a newer polymer that uses the broadly implemented standards.

mccr8 8y ago

YouTube fixed something a few days after that post. I no longer experience the slowness it was describing in Firefox.

rictic 8y ago

I'm on the Polymer team at Google. We've been helping the YouTube team, who's been doing a ton of work to update to the final v1 version of the webcomponent specs. So far it's a bit neck and neck between Firefox launching version 63 with native web component support (eta October) and YouTube switching the main desktop app over. These are new standards, and there were a number of breaking changes from the v0 specs to v1. It's a lot of code to update, but we're working super hard to get all of Google onto v1.

SquareWheel 8y ago
Thanks for the update. Shame about all the conspiracy theories regarding this topic. It seemed likely enough to boil down to a logical explanation.

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

wow, the youtube design sucks

fpgaminer 8y ago

Oddly enough I haven't had too many issues with YouTube's slowness (as a Firefox user). I mean, it's slow, but "tolerable". It's the new Gmail that's horrifically slow now. It takes a good 20 seconds to get to the point where I can interact with it, and then each interaction takes another 10 seconds.

curiousDog 8y ago

This is like Microsoft and IE all over again.

stormbrew 8y ago

I mean, polymer also broke most of the chromecast functionality in google's own browser to the point that I have to use ?disable_polymer=1 to really use it at all from a browser (really I mostly just use it from my phone now), so this doesn't seem terribly surprising by comparison.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

paavoova 8y ago

Try using mpv + youtube-dl to stream Youtube. It even has playlist/mix support.