3 ms·

> This argument may not make sense applied to an operating system/kernel. I don't follow your reasoning. If competing implementations makes sense for operating

by thayne 7y ago

> This argument may not make sense applied to an operating system/kernel. I don't follow your reasoning. If competing implementations makes sense for operating systems, wouldn't it also make sense for browsers, which are basically the equivalent of an operating system for web apps? Conversely, if there should only be one implementation of a browser, wouldn't it make even more sense for there to be only one implementation of the operating system, so there is only one platform for native applications to target? > whereas the web (ECMA, W3C) is an international standard. So the only functional differences allowed to exist between implementations are at a very high level e.g. UX or privacy. The benefits of competing implementations are from innovation, but innovation in a way that violates the standard is not allowed, so innovation in functionality happens in the standards space. Where does innovation matter? I think you might be a little bit confused about how web standardization happens. Browsers are very much allowed to innovate beyond what is specified in standards. And in fact most standards are based on features that at least one browser has already implemented. Innovation drives standards, not the other way around. After Internet Explorer won the last browser wars, both the winning implementation (IE6) and the web standards stagnated, until competition (in the form of Firefox and more importantly Chrome) came along. I don't want that to happen again. Maybe it will be different with Chrome as the winner since for Google uses the browser as a platform to deploy its own web apps, but it still means the direction of browser development is primarily decided on by Google, and will meet Google's needs, which may or may not be the needs of the internet community as a whole.

zelly 7y ago
> Maybe it will be different with Chrome as the winner since for Google uses the browser as a platform to deploy its own web apps, but it still means the direction of browser development is primarily decided on by Google, and will meet Google's needs, which may or may not be the needs of the internet community as a whole. Yes and that company already has huge voting rights on the standards committees and is the primary benefactor of its "competition". Chrome and the web is already one and the same. > I think you might be a little bit confused about how web standardization happens. Browsers are very much allowed to innovate beyond what is specified in standards. And in fact most standards are based on features that at least one browser has already implemented. Innovation drives standards, not the other way around. It mostly comes from demand from the community. Take this lazy loading images proposal for example. It's only implemented by one vendor: https://caniuse.com/#search=lazy https://caniuse.com/#search=lazy Its demand comes from the huge amounts of websites that use lazy loaded images with their own libraries. The browser vendors did not implement let alone invent this feature. > If competing implementations makes sense for operating systems, wouldn't it also make sense for browsers, which are basically the equivalent of an operating system for web apps? Because the web is already standardized, already a solved problem. One day the market will bring forth an ideal operating system, and we will standardize on that. The analogous event has happened for web browsers. Some people are understandably in denial, still used to the old religious warfare way tech ecosystems worked.

by thayne 7y ago

zelly 7y ago

> Maybe it will be different with Chrome as the winner since for Google uses the browser as a platform to deploy its own web apps, but it still means the direction of browser development is primarily decided on by Google, and will meet Google's needs, which may or may not be the needs of the internet community as a whole. Yes and that company already has huge voting rights on the standards committees and is the primary benefactor of its "competition". Chrome and the web is already one and the same. > I think you might be a little bit confused about how web standardization happens. Browsers are very much allowed to innovate beyond what is specified in standards. And in fact most standards are based on features that at least one browser has already implemented. Innovation drives standards, not the other way around. It mostly comes from demand from the community. Take this lazy loading images proposal for example. It's only implemented by one vendor: https://caniuse.com/#search=lazy https://caniuse.com/#search=lazy Its demand comes from the huge amounts of websites that use lazy loaded images with their own libraries. The browser vendors did not implement let alone invent this feature. > If competing implementations makes sense for operating systems, wouldn't it also make sense for browsers, which are basically the equivalent of an operating system for web apps? Because the web is already standardized, already a solved problem. One day the market will bring forth an ideal operating system, and we will standardize on that. The analogous event has happened for web browsers. Some people are understandably in denial, still used to the old religious warfare way tech ecosystems worked.