5 ms·

Continuous deployment is a mechanism to improve reliability not reduce it, ie is sticking to the same process that has been broken for how long? chrome has prov

Continuous deployment is a mechanism to improve reliability not reduce it, ie is sticking to the same process that has been broken for how long? chrome has proved that continuous release cycle can produce the most stable and performant browser around. and your continuous dismissal of new web technology as "hypothetical / experimental" and talking about when html5 will become a w3c standard shows a complete lack of understanding as to how the web + browser development works to an extent that its really hard to not see irony in this comment calling the OP a troll

Silhouette 16y ago
> chrome has proved that continuous release cycle can produce the most stable and performant browser around. I respectfully disgaree. New Chrome releases have broken both cosmetics (rounded corners, just as the CSS3 version was starting to take off) and basic functionality (H.264 support for the HTML5 video element is disappearing in about five weeks, even though it's there and basically working today, as far as I can tell for purely political reasons). By the way, the word "performant" is real but does not mean what you think it does. Even if it did, I think you'd still be overstating the case. Chrome is probably faster than Firefox and IE in some respects today, particularly where JavaScript is concerned, but the gap has been closing for some time now. Once IE 9 and Firefox 4 are out, it looks unlikely that Chrome will still be significantly faster for typical real world browsing, which as I've noted previously, I consider to be more important than things like synthetic benchmarks or the speed of features no-one is using yet.
- daleharvey 16y ago
  dom rendering speeds even up to ie8 lag far far behind what chrome and firefox have been capable off for years, everyone on the internet uses dom rendering and RIA's are not possible without being able to do fast dom modifications, most real world performance benchmarks have problems even running in ie because it is so slow. h264 was a conscious choice, nothing "broke", I dont know which rounded corner issue you are referring to, it certainly isnt "broken" and remember you are referring to features which do not yet exist in any release of ie
  - Silhouette 16y ago
    You make a lot of generalisations about what "everyone" is doing and how "real world" things can't run on IE. If those claims were realistic then companies with widely used web apps, such as several of Google's more recent offerings, would not be able to support IE. However, in practice it appears that these web apps run on IE just fine, and IE continues to hold the lion's share of the browser market. I don't see how to reconcile that massive, worldwide data set with your version of how web development does (or, according to you, doesn't) work. > h264 was a conscious choice, nothing "broke" That depends on whether you're the start-up pushing a video-based service and trying to make use of the HTML5 video tag, doesn't it? It used to work. In the near future, it won't. To most of us, that's a pretty good definition of "broken".
    - daleharvey 16y ago
      It can hardly be disputed that 1. pretty much everyone on the web is affected by dom rendering speed, 2. dom rendering is vastly slower in ie than chrome / firefox (for their related versions) IE has a large market share, that has absolutely no correlation to its quality as a piece of software, web developers have to make their stuff work in ie because of its market share, lots of large web apps* either degrade or do not work in internet explorer even with the tremendous amount of extra effort required to develop for it comparatively to firefox + chrome * Google Wave didnt support ie, offline gmail support is firefox only? google drawings didnt work in ie last time I checked, I am sure maps degrades in parts as well
      - Silhouette 16y ago
        This is the problem: the things you claim certainly can be disputed, not least because the second hasn't been true for several versions of IE. I know, the web apps I work on do a lot of this stuff, and there has been roughly an order of magnitude improvement in performance from IE6 to IE7 and then again from IE7 to IE8, which is now close enough to the other browsers that we don't notice the difference in day-to-day use. I think you're making my point for me with the rest of your post: if you read it back, you'll see that you repeatedly contradict yourself about what does and doesn't work across different browsers, not just for IE but for Firefox vs. Chrome as well.
- chwahoo 16y ago
  Hmmm... wiktionary includes a definition of "performant" as computer jargon meaning "capable of or characterized by an adequate or excellent level of performance or efficiency" [1]. I find it hard to disagree that this informal use has entered the computing lexicon (and don't personally object to it). [1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/performant http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/performant
  - Silhouette 16y ago
    That "definition" includes eight distinct meanings. In time, any of them might be useful and the word might become an accepted part of the English language. For now, it just muddies the waters, when there are clear and unambiguous alternatives available. Perhaps that is why not one of the on- or off-line dictionaries I have just checked recognises any similar meaning of the word "performant". This post has been brought to you by the "ironic parallels with the topic at hand" department.
    - chwahoo 16y ago
      > That "definition" includes eight distinct meanings. "Performance" itself, and many other words, have lots of meanings [1]. > not one of the on- or off-line dictionaries I have just checked recognises any similar meaning of the word "performant" True, but we have many terms in computing where our intended meaning is not captured by mainstream dictionaries. > when there are clear and unambiguous alternatives available Did you honestly find that usage unclear and ambiguous? The standard use of "performant" is so rare that there can be no doubt what the original poster meant. What are the alternative words you prefer? I think "performant" fills a gap. > This post has been brought to you by the "ironic parallels with the topic at hand" department. Nice observation! (perhaps not coincidently, I think I come down on the other side of the issue from you in both instances :) [1]: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140783 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140783
- beej71 16y ago
  Which version of Chrome broke the rounded corners? What's its current market penetration? I can tell you what its market penetration will be in 3 years: less than 0.1%. IE6 could learn from this.
  - Silhouette 16y ago
    > Which version of Chrome broke the rounded corners? They had rendering problems with several successive versions, as the "bug fixes" didn't for a while. > What's its current market penetration? That's not the point. They had a serious regression, which was pushed out to all Chrome users automatically because of their update policy. That one was cosmetic, but things like H.264 are breaking changes that remove whole chunks of functionality. The details don't really matter; the danger inherent in their process is the more serious problem. > IE6 could learn from this. Your example is somewhat ironic. For one thing, IE6 is the bane of web developers everywhere because it didn't follow web standards -- not least because a lot of them hadn't been written yet. Sound familiar at all? For another, IE6 is still used in a significant number of large organisations even today because those organisations value a stable, controllable platform as a foundation for their in-house developments more than they value the latest bells and whistles on the public web. Again, there's a lesson there for Chrome, Firefox, et al.
    - twoseven 16y ago
      IE6 is still used in a significant number of large organisations because those large organisations have chosen to use implementations of fat expensive enterprise applications that have been customised sufficently to screw any chances of following the upgrade path for said fat expensive enterprise applications, meaning they'll only ever work properly in IE6. At least that's the case where I work. Sigh.
    - beej71 16y ago
      > They had rendering problems with several successive versions, as the "bug fixes" didn't for a while. Not so different than IE, right? It's really a speed of release issue, if I'm understanding you. Well, it's a double-edged sword. Speedy releases mean speedy regressions and speedy bugfixes. Slow releases are the opposite. > That's not the point For me it is... but I think that ties in, below. > significant number of large organisations even today because those organisations value a stable, controllable platform as a foundation for their in-house developments more than they value the latest bells and whistles on the public web. We're definitely talking about some different markets here. The markets I work in simply don't target IE6 any longer. The baseline, if it includes IE at all--sometimes it's targeted at HTML-only specifically, is IE8 and whatever you can force IE7 to do. When is IE6 going to cease to be the baseline in these other organizations? It's like its having a COBOL moment.

Silhouette 16y ago

> chrome has proved that continuous release cycle can produce the most stable and performant browser around. I respectfully disgaree. New Chrome releases have broken both cosmetics (rounded corners, just as the CSS3 version was starting to take off) and basic functionality (H.264 support for the HTML5 video element is disappearing in about five weeks, even though it's there and basically working today, as far as I can tell for purely political reasons). By the way, the word "performant" is real but does not mean what you think it does. Even if it did, I think you'd still be overstating the case. Chrome is probably faster than Firefox and IE in some respects today, particularly where JavaScript is concerned, but the gap has been closing for some time now. Once IE 9 and Firefox 4 are out, it looks unlikely that Chrome will still be significantly faster for typical real world browsing, which as I've noted previously, I consider to be more important than things like synthetic benchmarks or the speed of features no-one is using yet.

daleharvey 16y ago
dom rendering speeds even up to ie8 lag far far behind what chrome and firefox have been capable off for years, everyone on the internet uses dom rendering and RIA's are not possible without being able to do fast dom modifications, most real world performance benchmarks have problems even running in ie because it is so slow. h264 was a conscious choice, nothing "broke", I dont know which rounded corner issue you are referring to, it certainly isnt "broken" and remember you are referring to features which do not yet exist in any release of ie
- Silhouette 16y ago
  You make a lot of generalisations about what "everyone" is doing and how "real world" things can't run on IE. If those claims were realistic then companies with widely used web apps, such as several of Google's more recent offerings, would not be able to support IE. However, in practice it appears that these web apps run on IE just fine, and IE continues to hold the lion's share of the browser market. I don't see how to reconcile that massive, worldwide data set with your version of how web development does (or, according to you, doesn't) work. > h264 was a conscious choice, nothing "broke" That depends on whether you're the start-up pushing a video-based service and trying to make use of the HTML5 video tag, doesn't it? It used to work. In the near future, it won't. To most of us, that's a pretty good definition of "broken".
  - daleharvey 16y ago
    It can hardly be disputed that 1. pretty much everyone on the web is affected by dom rendering speed, 2. dom rendering is vastly slower in ie than chrome / firefox (for their related versions) IE has a large market share, that has absolutely no correlation to its quality as a piece of software, web developers have to make their stuff work in ie because of its market share, lots of large web apps* either degrade or do not work in internet explorer even with the tremendous amount of extra effort required to develop for it comparatively to firefox + chrome * Google Wave didnt support ie, offline gmail support is firefox only? google drawings didnt work in ie last time I checked, I am sure maps degrades in parts as well
    - Silhouette 16y ago
      This is the problem: the things you claim certainly can be disputed, not least because the second hasn't been true for several versions of IE. I know, the web apps I work on do a lot of this stuff, and there has been roughly an order of magnitude improvement in performance from IE6 to IE7 and then again from IE7 to IE8, which is now close enough to the other browsers that we don't notice the difference in day-to-day use. I think you're making my point for me with the rest of your post: if you read it back, you'll see that you repeatedly contradict yourself about what does and doesn't work across different browsers, not just for IE but for Firefox vs. Chrome as well.
chwahoo 16y ago
Hmmm... wiktionary includes a definition of "performant" as computer jargon meaning "capable of or characterized by an adequate or excellent level of performance or efficiency" [1]. I find it hard to disagree that this informal use has entered the computing lexicon (and don't personally object to it). [1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/performant http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/performant
- Silhouette 16y ago
  That "definition" includes eight distinct meanings. In time, any of them might be useful and the word might become an accepted part of the English language. For now, it just muddies the waters, when there are clear and unambiguous alternatives available. Perhaps that is why not one of the on- or off-line dictionaries I have just checked recognises any similar meaning of the word "performant". This post has been brought to you by the "ironic parallels with the topic at hand" department.
  - chwahoo 16y ago
    > That "definition" includes eight distinct meanings. "Performance" itself, and many other words, have lots of meanings [1]. > not one of the on- or off-line dictionaries I have just checked recognises any similar meaning of the word "performant" True, but we have many terms in computing where our intended meaning is not captured by mainstream dictionaries. > when there are clear and unambiguous alternatives available Did you honestly find that usage unclear and ambiguous? The standard use of "performant" is so rare that there can be no doubt what the original poster meant. What are the alternative words you prefer? I think "performant" fills a gap. > This post has been brought to you by the "ironic parallels with the topic at hand" department. Nice observation! (perhaps not coincidently, I think I come down on the other side of the issue from you in both instances :) [1]: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140783 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140783
beej71 16y ago
Which version of Chrome broke the rounded corners? What's its current market penetration? I can tell you what its market penetration will be in 3 years: less than 0.1%. IE6 could learn from this.
- Silhouette 16y ago
  > Which version of Chrome broke the rounded corners? They had rendering problems with several successive versions, as the "bug fixes" didn't for a while. > What's its current market penetration? That's not the point. They had a serious regression, which was pushed out to all Chrome users automatically because of their update policy. That one was cosmetic, but things like H.264 are breaking changes that remove whole chunks of functionality. The details don't really matter; the danger inherent in their process is the more serious problem. > IE6 could learn from this. Your example is somewhat ironic. For one thing, IE6 is the bane of web developers everywhere because it didn't follow web standards -- not least because a lot of them hadn't been written yet. Sound familiar at all? For another, IE6 is still used in a significant number of large organisations even today because those organisations value a stable, controllable platform as a foundation for their in-house developments more than they value the latest bells and whistles on the public web. Again, there's a lesson there for Chrome, Firefox, et al.
  - twoseven 16y ago
    IE6 is still used in a significant number of large organisations because those large organisations have chosen to use implementations of fat expensive enterprise applications that have been customised sufficently to screw any chances of following the upgrade path for said fat expensive enterprise applications, meaning they'll only ever work properly in IE6. At least that's the case where I work. Sigh.
  - beej71 16y ago
    > They had rendering problems with several successive versions, as the "bug fixes" didn't for a while. Not so different than IE, right? It's really a speed of release issue, if I'm understanding you. Well, it's a double-edged sword. Speedy releases mean speedy regressions and speedy bugfixes. Slow releases are the opposite. > That's not the point For me it is... but I think that ties in, below. > significant number of large organisations even today because those organisations value a stable, controllable platform as a foundation for their in-house developments more than they value the latest bells and whistles on the public web. We're definitely talking about some different markets here. The markets I work in simply don't target IE6 any longer. The baseline, if it includes IE at all--sometimes it's targeted at HTML-only specifically, is IE8 and whatever you can force IE7 to do. When is IE6 going to cease to be the baseline in these other organizations? It's like its having a COBOL moment.