5 ms·

I'm almost equally scared of the Chrome dominance now as I was for IE6.

by maaaats 12y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
I'm starting to see sites which work in Chrome but not Firefox - and not because of fancy web standards Firefox hasn't caught up with, but web page bugs showing the developers haven't bothered testing in other browsers.
- coderdude 12y ago
  > bugs showing the developers haven't bothered testing in other browsers. I see this a lot and it's clear that most designers are building for Chrome and that they trust Firefox to render everything the same as Chrome will. The assumption that following the standards ensures a page will render the same in at least Chrome and Firefox has started to feel safe. That's a big improvement from the era that preceded, when you knew with certainty that cross-browser issues would exist. But it's not a completely safe assumption yet and may never be. Always test.
  - agmcleod 12y ago
    I nearly got caught by this just 5 or 6 days ago with handling dates. Chrome would parse: > 2014-12-15 08:00 PM For example, but firefox needed the RFC3339 format.
kalleboo 12y ago
I'm far less afraid since Chrome users actually get updates to their browser.
- CmonDev 12y ago
  Well-scheduled, advanced warnings, what could possibly go wrong.
- Thaxll 12y ago
  Dominance is always bad even if the product is good. ( look at Steam )
  - mahouse 12y ago
    Not sure what to say -- Steam is horribly slow, as it is Firefox.
    - cLeEOGPw 12y ago
      He was not talking about speed, but about up to date features and treatment of customers.
      - Igglyboo 12y ago
        Steam has terrible customer service, Origin's is far better.
laumars 12y ago
I'm less scared because at least Chrome (or rather Blink / webkit) is open source so can (and is) implemented in other browsers. However I do agree with you that it isn't healthy for any single rendering engine to monopolise the internet.
- apetrovic 12y ago
  The fact that Chrome is open source doesn't helps me, a Firefox/Safari user, when I see the site that works correctly only on Chrome. Open source or not, I don't want to use Chrome. There was a time when Chrome was lean, now Chrome is a pig. Not to mention blatant Chrome push from Google - the last one is Inbox, "it works only on Chrome". Set Safari user agent to Chrome? Everything works well. Shame on you, Google. That's exactly what Microsoft did in '90s.
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    This is a developer of the site problem, not a Chrome or Firefox problem. No self respecting web developer would ever make any site work only in one browser.
    - Igglyboo 12y ago
      It has nothing to do with "self respect". If Chrome dominates why would you waste time/money testing on other browsers?
      - icantthinkofone 12y ago
        I should have said, no knowledgeable web developer would do such a thing. There are other browsers out there, including mobile, and no web developer worth his salt ever targets one browser alone.
  - laumars 12y ago
    My point is that you can still have Chrome (well, Chromium) compatibility without having to run Chrome, as demonstrated by the amount of webkit browsers in ArchLinux's repos: $ pacman -Ss webkit browser extra/epiphany 3.14.2-1 (gnome) [installed] A GNOME web browser based on the WebKit rendering engine. extra/kwebkitpart 1.3.4-3 A WebKit browser component for KDE extra/qtwebkit 2.3.4-1 [installed] An open source web browser engine (Qt port) community/dwb 2014.03.07-2 [installed] A webkit web browser with vi-like keyboard shortcuts, stable snapshot community/luakit 2012.09.13.r1-7 Fast, small, Webkit based browser framework extensible by Lua community/qupzilla 1.8.5-1 Cross-platform QtWebKit browser (Qt5) community/qupzilla-qt4 1.8.5-1 Cross-platform QtWebKit browser (Qt4) community/rekonq 2.4.2-3 A WebKit based web browser for KDE community/surf 0.6-2 [installed] A simple web browser based on WebKit/GTK+. And that's only a subset of the available browsers based on a very basic search. There's quite a number of bigger names missing from that list, such as Opera. So while I do agree that more variety of rendering engines is better (on the provision that they do follow HTML standards to minimize wasted developer time), things aren't quite so bad with -Chrome- webkit as the de facto standard as they were with Internet Explorer as webkit is open source so you're not tied to any specific browser. What's more, Internet Explorer actively pushed technologies that were not only tied to IE, but to Windows as an OS (ActiveX controls, being the biggy. But that wasn't the only IE-exclusive technology). At least with Chrome, the technologies are platform agnostic so non-webkit browsers could still support them if they wanted to / had the developer resources. I'm not trying to stick up for Google nor Chrome here. In fact aside Chromes developer tools, I don't like it much either. But pragmatically, a Chrome monopoly is less dangerous to the web than Microsoft / Internet Explorer ever was simply because all the parts of Chrome that matter are already open source and have already been forked and/or ported to other (new) browsers.
icantthinkofone 12y ago
There should be no fear. IE6 held the web back. Chrome pushed it forward.
- scarmig 12y ago
  You're looking at things from the perspective of IE6 in 2014, not IE6 in 2001. Of course it seems shitty today, but that's because browsers from then are shitty compared to browsers today. It's only a victim of its success and the fact that rolling updates weren't a plausible model then. If the contemporaneous Netscape 6 had been anywhere near as successful as IE6, you'd be cursing it now. Almost certainly more than you curse IE6, whose problems come not from the software itself but the fact that it was good enough for companies to lock it down as the standard and the fact it went for years without real competition. Netscape 6 didn't see this fate, because it was... outcompeted in the marketplace.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    Netscape 6 did not stagnate for five years. Even Netscape 4 stagnating was only because they decided to cancel "Mariner" which was a mistake.
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    I said nothing about IE6 being shitty. Only you did. Netscape failed due to the illegal activities of Microsoft as outlined in the anti-trust complaint against them back then. But IE6 held the web back by not keeping with the standards or making improvements and only letting it work on Windows. It took Mozilla and Firefox to get things moving and they took away 30% of their market share all by themselves. Then, when Chrome came along, that signaled the huge drop off. All by moving the web forward.
eveningcoffee 12y ago
I noticed that google street view has stopped to work reliably in Firefox in Ubuntu (not tested elsewhere) but still works fine with Chrome. This thing really looks intentional.

I'm almost equally scared of the Chrome dominance now as I was for IE6.

by maaaats 12y ago

I'm almost equally scared of the Chrome dominance now as I was for IE6.

I'm starting to see sites which work in Chrome but not Firefox - and not because of fancy web standards Firefox hasn't caught up with, but web page bugs showing the developers haven't bothered testing in other browsers.

coderdude 12y ago
> bugs showing the developers haven't bothered testing in other browsers. I see this a lot and it's clear that most designers are building for Chrome and that they trust Firefox to render everything the same as Chrome will. The assumption that following the standards ensures a page will render the same in at least Chrome and Firefox has started to feel safe. That's a big improvement from the era that preceded, when you knew with certainty that cross-browser issues would exist. But it's not a completely safe assumption yet and may never be. Always test.
- agmcleod 12y ago
  I nearly got caught by this just 5 or 6 days ago with handling dates. Chrome would parse: > 2014-12-15 08:00 PM For example, but firefox needed the RFC3339 format.

kalleboo 12y ago

I'm far less afraid since Chrome users actually get updates to their browser.

CmonDev 12y ago
Well-scheduled, advanced warnings, what could possibly go wrong.
Thaxll 12y ago
Dominance is always bad even if the product is good. ( look at Steam )
- mahouse 12y ago
  Not sure what to say -- Steam is horribly slow, as it is Firefox.
  - cLeEOGPw 12y ago
    He was not talking about speed, but about up to date features and treatment of customers.
    - Igglyboo 12y ago
      Steam has terrible customer service, Origin's is far better.

laumars 12y ago

I'm less scared because at least Chrome (or rather Blink / webkit) is open source so can (and is) implemented in other browsers. However I do agree with you that it isn't healthy for any single rendering engine to monopolise the internet.

apetrovic 12y ago
The fact that Chrome is open source doesn't helps me, a Firefox/Safari user, when I see the site that works correctly only on Chrome. Open source or not, I don't want to use Chrome. There was a time when Chrome was lean, now Chrome is a pig. Not to mention blatant Chrome push from Google - the last one is Inbox, "it works only on Chrome". Set Safari user agent to Chrome? Everything works well. Shame on you, Google. That's exactly what Microsoft did in '90s.
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  This is a developer of the site problem, not a Chrome or Firefox problem. No self respecting web developer would ever make any site work only in one browser.
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    It has nothing to do with "self respect". If Chrome dominates why would you waste time/money testing on other browsers?
    - icantthinkofone 12y ago
      I should have said, no knowledgeable web developer would do such a thing. There are other browsers out there, including mobile, and no web developer worth his salt ever targets one browser alone.
- laumars 12y ago
  My point is that you can still have Chrome (well, Chromium) compatibility without having to run Chrome, as demonstrated by the amount of webkit browsers in ArchLinux's repos: $ pacman -Ss webkit browser extra/epiphany 3.14.2-1 (gnome) [installed] A GNOME web browser based on the WebKit rendering engine. extra/kwebkitpart 1.3.4-3 A WebKit browser component for KDE extra/qtwebkit 2.3.4-1 [installed] An open source web browser engine (Qt port) community/dwb 2014.03.07-2 [installed] A webkit web browser with vi-like keyboard shortcuts, stable snapshot community/luakit 2012.09.13.r1-7 Fast, small, Webkit based browser framework extensible by Lua community/qupzilla 1.8.5-1 Cross-platform QtWebKit browser (Qt5) community/qupzilla-qt4 1.8.5-1 Cross-platform QtWebKit browser (Qt4) community/rekonq 2.4.2-3 A WebKit based web browser for KDE community/surf 0.6-2 [installed] A simple web browser based on WebKit/GTK+. And that's only a subset of the available browsers based on a very basic search. There's quite a number of bigger names missing from that list, such as Opera. So while I do agree that more variety of rendering engines is better (on the provision that they do follow HTML standards to minimize wasted developer time), things aren't quite so bad with -Chrome- webkit as the de facto standard as they were with Internet Explorer as webkit is open source so you're not tied to any specific browser. What's more, Internet Explorer actively pushed technologies that were not only tied to IE, but to Windows as an OS (ActiveX controls, being the biggy. But that wasn't the only IE-exclusive technology). At least with Chrome, the technologies are platform agnostic so non-webkit browsers could still support them if they wanted to / had the developer resources. I'm not trying to stick up for Google nor Chrome here. In fact aside Chromes developer tools, I don't like it much either. But pragmatically, a Chrome monopoly is less dangerous to the web than Microsoft / Internet Explorer ever was simply because all the parts of Chrome that matter are already open source and have already been forked and/or ported to other (new) browsers.

icantthinkofone 12y ago

There should be no fear. IE6 held the web back. Chrome pushed it forward.

scarmig 12y ago
You're looking at things from the perspective of IE6 in 2014, not IE6 in 2001. Of course it seems shitty today, but that's because browsers from then are shitty compared to browsers today. It's only a victim of its success and the fact that rolling updates weren't a plausible model then. If the contemporaneous Netscape 6 had been anywhere near as successful as IE6, you'd be cursing it now. Almost certainly more than you curse IE6, whose problems come not from the software itself but the fact that it was good enough for companies to lock it down as the standard and the fact it went for years without real competition. Netscape 6 didn't see this fate, because it was... outcompeted in the marketplace.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Netscape 6 did not stagnate for five years. Even Netscape 4 stagnating was only because they decided to cancel "Mariner" which was a mistake.
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  I said nothing about IE6 being shitty. Only you did. Netscape failed due to the illegal activities of Microsoft as outlined in the anti-trust complaint against them back then. But IE6 held the web back by not keeping with the standards or making improvements and only letting it work on Windows. It took Mozilla and Firefox to get things moving and they took away 30% of their market share all by themselves. Then, when Chrome came along, that signaled the huge drop off. All by moving the web forward.

eveningcoffee 12y ago

I noticed that google street view has stopped to work reliably in Firefox in Ubuntu (not tested elsewhere) but still works fine with Chrome. This thing really looks intentional.