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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

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.
- throwaway2048 12y ago
  Chrome is no longer webkit, and they have chosen to drop basically everything not directly applicable to chrome in blink.
  - laumars 12y ago
    To be honest you're just arguing semantics as Blink is a fork of the same webkit components that Chrome was using previously. So little has changed from a rendering perspective. Given the amount of redundant code in webkit due to Google and Apple pushing the library in slightly different directions, it does make some sense to fork it. And it's really no different to Apple forking webkit themselves (webkit2). However when the forks diverge more in the future, your point will be more relevant (just as the difference between kHTML and webkit is now quite pronounced). In any case, I did reference Blink in my first post. So your point isn't lost on me :)
    - icantthinkofone 12y ago
      "Blink is a fork of the same webkit components that Chrome was using previously. So little has changed from a rendering perspective." Nothing could be further from the truth.
      - laumars 12y ago
        [Citation needed] But seriously, simply stating someone is wrong is less constructive than not replying at all. I'm open to correction :)

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.

throwaway2048 12y ago
Chrome is no longer webkit, and they have chosen to drop basically everything not directly applicable to chrome in blink.
- laumars 12y ago
  To be honest you're just arguing semantics as Blink is a fork of the same webkit components that Chrome was using previously. So little has changed from a rendering perspective. Given the amount of redundant code in webkit due to Google and Apple pushing the library in slightly different directions, it does make some sense to fork it. And it's really no different to Apple forking webkit themselves (webkit2). However when the forks diverge more in the future, your point will be more relevant (just as the difference between kHTML and webkit is now quite pronounced). In any case, I did reference Blink in my first post. So your point isn't lost on me :)
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    "Blink is a fork of the same webkit components that Chrome was using previously. So little has changed from a rendering perspective." Nothing could be further from the truth.
    - laumars 12y ago
      [Citation needed] But seriously, simply stating someone is wrong is less constructive than not replying at all. I'm open to correction :)