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>WebView is now based on Chromium Does that mean that there will no more be stock 'Browser' app? I refuse to use Chrome on Android because of brain-dead, non-d
by klausa 13y ago
>WebView is now based on Chromium
Does that mean that there will no more be stock 'Browser' app? I refuse to use Chrome on Android because of brain-dead, non-disablable 'font-boosting' that makes (among many others) Hacker News absolutely unusable.
If that means that the same engine is the only one officially supported on 4.4 forwards, then that's really sad and unfortunate.
- andybak 13y agoIt seems to have become much less annoying in the Chrome beta. Have you tried it recently?
- klausa 13y agoI just did, following your suggestion. Unfortunately, it's still the same unusable garbage. https://www.dropbox.com/s/rnl8m9ioi9ric5v/2013-10-31%2020.04.40.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/rnl8m9ioi9ric5v/2013-10-31%2020.04... - latest chrome beta (release looks absolutely identical) https://www.dropbox.com/s/867wrehnqsiu3oc/2013-10-31%2020.04.58.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/867wrehnqsiu3oc/2013-10-31%2020.04... - CM10.1.3 stock browser
- vladgur 13y agoI dont think news.ycombinator.com is that usable on iphone either. I use ihackernews.com for 98% of my HN browsing. Try it on your phone.
- Symmetry 13y agoWell, there's always Firefox and a whole bunch of other browsers if you don't like Chrome.
- binaryatrocity 13y agoIf your not using Firefox on Android, your browser woes are your own fault :D <3 Mozilla
- hbbio 13y agoApart from Mozilla love, what are the good reasons to use Firefox on Android? I tried it, found it slower and less responsive than Chrome. But as this is a completely biased feeling, I'd love to know more.
- ahomescu1 13y agoPerformance depends on the hardware, it seems. On my dual-core+1GB RAM tablet (a Nook HD), Firefox is visibly faster than Chrome (to the point where the latter is almost unusable). On my N4, they're about the same.
- socillion 13y agoSync is one good reason if you're already using desktop Firefox. I had problems using Firefox on a stock Android Nexus 4 (bugs with selecting text and freezing when scrolling) but it's been a flawless experience after switching to Cyanogen. I'm at a loss to explain the difference.
- cpeterso 13y agoFirefox for Android supports add-ons like Adblock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock-plus/ Firefox for Android also runs on Android 2.2 (Froyo) and later. Chrome only supports Android 4.0 (ICS) and later.
- Spittie 13y agoThose are mine: * Firefox Sync. As I use Firefox on my desktop, it's nice to keep them synched. * Addons. I know this might sound stupid on a phone, but having lastpass autofill your passwords on-the-go is awesome. * Interface. I really like the Firefox Mobile UI, but I hate the Chrome (Tablet, I browse on a Nexus 7) Mobile UI. Chrome get really bad with 3 or 4 tabs, making it really hard to switch tabs, and really easy to close tabs by mistake. * Smoothness. I find that Firefox is way better/faster than Chrome on my Nexus 7 (This might be because I run Nightly, but I've compared it to Chrome Beta too). Especially, try to open 2 or 3 pages with a video, Chrome just become unusable for 5/10 seconds for me. * Memory usage. I have a 2012 Nexus 7, and it has "only" 1gb of ram. It seems that if I open more than 5 tabs, Chrome just love dropping old tabs them out of memory. I've yet to have Firefox drop a tab, even with 10 or more tabs open. (It does drop them if I leave it in background and open something memory-intensive, like a game, but that's expected).
- icebraining 13y agoFirefox does the same.
- klausa 13y agoI just tried it, and it's even worse. While it doesn't do anything as brain-damaged as font boosting (at least not on HN), I uninstalled it after 45 seconds when I saw what it does to fonts. I don't care what it does wrong, but fonts definitely look different than on the whole OS and just generally bad. I know that getting this thing quite right isn't easy, but holy hell, is it annoying. I'm too lazy for this shit. If there's no popular, working, desktop-class browser available for this platform, then, sincerely, fuck this shit, my next phone is iPhone, thank you very much.
- judk 13y agoFirefox also has broken font-boosting
- pbz 13y agoI use Opera for this reason alone.
- chops 13y agoI don't use HN site on Chrome Browser anymore because the app Hacker News 2 is so good: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksoftware.hackernews https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...
- devx 13y agoHacker News 2 is virtually perfect.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- what_ever 13y agoLooks great. Any idea why it uses a different font than the one used by Android?
- chinpokomon 13y agoI only have three gripes. First, it removes my paragraph separation when I post. Second, when you go back to the topic list, it repositions the view at the top of the list again. The third is that when viewing articles, it doesn't use the Chrome rendering engine, so JavaScript demos suffer greatly and I have to relaunch the article in Chrome to see most of the correctly. It sounds like that last point of contention, Google may have just fixed for me. Personally, I like all the changes that I read about today. I'd also like to point out that Chrome as the default webview is a natural fit with the direction Google is taking Android. For some time now on Nexus tablets, there has been no Android browser, only Chrome. Also, you can now save "web apps" as applications, not just as bookmarked links. I think it is only natural that by the time Android 5 is released, you might even be able to install Chrome packaged apps just as you do with regular APK applications. Android and Chrome are merging, and ChromeCast, a lightweight Android kernel that only runs Chrome, is the proving ground.
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y agoReally, it is. Use it.
- 13y ago
- king_jester 13y ago> Does that mean that there will no more be stock 'Browser' app? I refuse to use Chrome on Android because of brain-dead, non-disablable 'font-boosting' that makes (among many others) Hacker News absolutely unusable. WebView is the UI class for displaying webpages as a native Android view. The Browser app contains much more than the WebView class itself.
- lstamour 13y agoThe font-boosting has tons of known bugs: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?q=Cr=Blink-TextAutosize&can=2&sort=pri https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?q=Cr=Blink-Te... Once that list gets shorter, it's slated for inclusion in Webkit, though. It's a useful feature if it works consistently. Prevents needless scrolling from side-to-side on tiny screens. (It's a lot less useful on my 21" Android Slate, however)
- Recoil42 13y agoA lesson to developers here: Don't include a feature before it's ready, even if you think it's really cool.
- keeperofdakeys 13y agoNexus devices have shipped with Chrome instead of the stock browser for quite a while. However being Chromium, it'll probably be included in AOSP sources, so I'm unsure if they'll stick with Browser or make a Chromium. If it is a Chromium app, there are chances that it will be less bloated, as I don't think they opensourced the Chrome Android UI/enhancements.
- atomi 13y agoOn the subject of Chrome on Android, why can't we have a permanent desktop view option?
- kolistivra 13y agoI'm not sure you mean exactly this but, it's added recently: https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/installtohomescreen https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/installtoho...
- zobzu 13y agoironically firefox is probably the best android browser right now. why not just use that?