4 ms·

Is chromium not a browser? Surely a shell around it, which includes it, is also a browser.

Dylan16807 8y ago
> Surely a shell around it, which includes it, is also a browser. An eggshell isn't an egg. There's a browser there, but it's copied wholesale. And it's the worst thing to copy if you care about the future of web standards.
- tenebrisalietum 8y ago
  This doesn't really answer how IE is "more of a browser" than anything derived from Chrome. You are right that a Chromium monoculture is bad for the future of web standards. Google does try to make sites look like applications, and on Chrome OS, it doesn't distinguish them too well, but they are still HTML/JS and do not reach into the OS like ActiveX did. But ActiveX as it was implemented and presented with IE was horrendous. Binaries with access to the full system (and a "kill bit" hack needed to protect users from bad ones), doing things like local applications but not manageable like local applications, and security responsibilities handwaved by cryptic dialogs and warnings end users typically don't read or understand and everyone blames the IT department for. It's a shame Edge didn't take off. That was practically IE without ActiveX and it was quick if you wanted a basic browser experience, kinda like how Chrome used to be when it was first around.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    It's not "derived from" chromium. It uses exactly chromium. They are only wrapping code around it. That code is not a browser.
- chapium 8y ago
  Why not? Chromium is open source and uses webkit which has wide adoption. An eggshell wrapped around a yolk certainly is very egg-like.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    An egg is made out of shell and white and yolk. That does not make the shell itself an egg. Microsoft is promising to make a shell, and to not make anything else.
    - chapium 8y ago
      The problem I have with this description is you could describe any software that has a renderer thats separate from the UI like this. Perhaps in Java if we had an egg, we could, import egg.yolk; import egg.whites; import egg.shell; Egg fakeEgg = new Egg(brown);
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        Which ones do you develop? The whole thing is a browser. But Microsoft isn't developing a browser. The rendering engine, javascript engine, network handling, almost all the important input handling, all the things that make it a web browser, they're coming from someone else. And that source has a default shell too. Remember that the baseline is questioning whether IE counts as a legitimate browser. If you're even slightly unsure about IE, then "shell around chromium" has to be far far on the no side of the line.
- dkersten 8y ago
  But an eggshell, when surrounding the rest of the egg, is part of the whole.

> Surely a shell around it, which includes it, is also a browser. An eggshell isn't an egg. There's a browser there, but it's copied wholesale. And it's the worst thing to copy if you care about the future of web standards.

tenebrisalietum 8y ago
This doesn't really answer how IE is "more of a browser" than anything derived from Chrome. You are right that a Chromium monoculture is bad for the future of web standards. Google does try to make sites look like applications, and on Chrome OS, it doesn't distinguish them too well, but they are still HTML/JS and do not reach into the OS like ActiveX did. But ActiveX as it was implemented and presented with IE was horrendous. Binaries with access to the full system (and a "kill bit" hack needed to protect users from bad ones), doing things like local applications but not manageable like local applications, and security responsibilities handwaved by cryptic dialogs and warnings end users typically don't read or understand and everyone blames the IT department for. It's a shame Edge didn't take off. That was practically IE without ActiveX and it was quick if you wanted a basic browser experience, kinda like how Chrome used to be when it was first around.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  It's not "derived from" chromium. It uses exactly chromium. They are only wrapping code around it. That code is not a browser.
chapium 8y ago
Why not? Chromium is open source and uses webkit which has wide adoption. An eggshell wrapped around a yolk certainly is very egg-like.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  An egg is made out of shell and white and yolk. That does not make the shell itself an egg. Microsoft is promising to make a shell, and to not make anything else.
  - chapium 8y ago
    The problem I have with this description is you could describe any software that has a renderer thats separate from the UI like this. Perhaps in Java if we had an egg, we could, import egg.yolk; import egg.whites; import egg.shell; Egg fakeEgg = new Egg(brown);
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      Which ones do you develop? The whole thing is a browser. But Microsoft isn't developing a browser. The rendering engine, javascript engine, network handling, almost all the important input handling, all the things that make it a web browser, they're coming from someone else. And that source has a default shell too. Remember that the baseline is questioning whether IE counts as a legitimate browser. If you're even slightly unsure about IE, then "shell around chromium" has to be far far on the no side of the line.
dkersten 8y ago
But an eggshell, when surrounding the rest of the egg, is part of the whole.