[HN Gopher] Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)
Author : bentocorp
Score : 154 points
Date : 2024-11-17 22:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.magiclasso.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.magiclasso.co)
| est wrote:
| The only problem with Chrome: It's controlled by an advertising
| company.
| threeseed wrote:
| And you see evidence of this influence throughout Chrome.
|
| For example, Apple simply blocked third party cookies which are
| almost exclusively used for tracking. Chrome waited years until
| they could add their Advertising Sandbox feature first.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Google's competitors in the advertisement space are all lined
| up to sue Google into oblivion the moment they disable third-
| party cookies.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Why?
| int_19h wrote:
| Because Google itself can still track people if they sign
| into Chrome itself (which it actively encourages by using
| it as single-sign on for its own services), and thus
| AdSense can still serve targeted ads, but other ad
| networks cannot.
| lxgr wrote:
| You can see it much more clearly in the lack of an extension
| API on Android.
|
| Chrome on Android is an absolute nightmare for one reason
| alone: No adblock.
| DonnyV wrote:
| Unlike IE, Chrome is still moving forward with new features and
| depreciating old features.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| New features to ensure ads are pervasive and can't be blocked?
| How empowering! Advertisers say thanks. Wait, Google is the
| biggest. How self-serving.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Depreciating old "features" like supporting legacy OS versions
| which is infuriating. Firefox is an inadequate substitute
| because too many sites only work in Chrome.
|
| I blame lazy developers for this mess all around, which had
| caused a perfect storm of shit on the nouveau web.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| As a person on a front-end development team that has a
| "Chrome = success" mandate, it's not always our decision as
| to when something ships or for which platforms we are to
| target. We work on Chrome first and then hope for the time to
| get things to work elsewhere.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I've run into exactly zero sites, that don't want to update
| some firmware on some piece of hardware over usb, that don't
| work on firefox.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| Maybe in the future in lieu of additional testing, the
| development team should just check in with you, and if you
| declare it sunshine and rainbows, ship it.
| griomnib wrote:
| The degree to which Google leadership is capable of fostering
| innovation of any sort is very much in doubt, but specifically
| in chrome all they are doing is re-arranging the deck chairs on
| the titanic while regulators and user preferences tighten the
| noose on the ad tracking business.
|
| Google is using Chrome and Android to delay privacy rights
| around the world, that's it. That's the whole story.
| lapcat wrote:
| (2023)
| curtis3389 wrote:
| Mobile Safari is the new IE. Random idiosyncrasies that are
| poorly documented dictated by the whims of a single corporation.
| Apple has broken stuff multiple times in the past few years.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Then it would be quite different from IE. Microsoft was so
| averse to breaking backwards compatibility, that IE stopped
| innovating and stagnated.
| curtis3389 wrote:
| I was thinking more of every web app needing one or more "if
| isIE() {} else {}" blocks somewhere in its codebase. Now we
| have the wondrous pleasure of doing the same for Apple.
| perardi wrote:
| There are so many little bits of...weird in Safari.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/CSS/WebKit_Exte...
|
| Just this morning, I had to go down the WebKit pseudo-
| element rabbit hole to fix a layout bug in a very standard
| date-of-birth field.
| bawolff wrote:
| I don't think that is true. They stopped developing it full
| stop. Keeping back compat was not the issue.
| asddubs wrote:
| Just to (mostly) preempt this because the exact same discussion
| is had every time this sentiment comes up: Isn't safari the new
| IE?
|
| Answer: They both are like IE, for different reasons:
|
| Chrome: Pushes proprietary extensions onto the web, which due to
| their absolute dominance others are somewhat forced to adopt,
| people develop for it and don't test in any other browser, just
| like IE
|
| Safari: is coupled to operating system version, lags behind on
| implementing new features, thus single handedly slowing down when
| everyone can use new features. Has weird quirks that other
| browsers don't, just like IE (though not nearly as bad as IE)
|
| So which is like IE? It just depends on what you mean when you
| say "like IE", the label applies to both because IE was bad for
| more than one reason
| dwaite wrote:
| If I understand - Chrome is like IE for pushing proprietary
| extensions, and Safari is like IE for not implementing those
| proprietary extensions?
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Safari is like IE for not implementing _standards_ everyone
| else has agreed on and implemented.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| Did "everyone" agree on and implement them, or did Google
| implement them and force everyone else in the WHATWG to
| play catch-up since they're dominant?
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Maybe there are specific examples of that? But I can't
| think of any, and it certainly doesn't strike me as
| common. Random example:
|
| https://caniuse.com/input-inputmode
|
| Firefox: 2013
|
| Chrome: 2017
|
| Safari: Any decade now, I'm sure of it
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Your own link says it's supported on Safari for iOS, for
| years now. It's obviously not supported on MacOS because
| that attribute only applies to onscreen keyboards.
| hu3 wrote:
| What makes you think onscreen keyboards are not useful in
| macOS if at least for accessibility reasons?
| fingerlocks wrote:
| The browser feature under discussion is clearly intended
| for small screen mobile devices.
|
| Accessibility keyboards are just keyboards from the web
| page's perspective
| hu3 wrote:
| It's clearly NOT intended only for small screen mobile
| devices.
|
| There's no reason to restrict suggesting input types to
| mobile browsers only.
|
| That's exactly why desktop Chrome and Firefox has support
| it for a long time now.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| well apparently Apple disagrees
| robertoandred wrote:
| Such as?
| KTibow wrote:
| Here's a breakdown: https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+1
| 31,safari+18.1&compareC...
| threeseed wrote:
| Just because Google implements something does not make it
| a standard.
| robertoandred wrote:
| So, things that are either impossible (touch events or
| vibration) or ridiculous (why would I want a website to
| know my battery level or directly access system
| hardware?)
| hexasquid wrote:
| I'd guess for the same reason we want native apps to be
| able to do that.
| elashri wrote:
| Who said that we want native apps to be able to do that?
|
| There are some use cases for those permissions but we
| (some) would like more control into that. I can't fight
| most of the websites as a user (they will tell me to use
| chrome) but it is for them hard to tell me if you want
| the service (along a billion other user) then move to
| android. Apple for a better or worse have much more sway
| than individual user.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Where "everyone else" means Google used Chrome to make it
| the standard.
| iforgotmysocks wrote:
| Safari states their position on standards here:
| https://webkit.org/standards-positions/
|
| IMO they have good reasons for opposing most of the
| standards
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| They don't even implement the standards that they have
| agreed to properly.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| I searched that page and their github repo for
| "inputmode" (my example from before you posted) and
| couldn't find anything.
|
| https://github.com/WebKit/standards-
| positions/issues?q=input...
|
| I'd love to find out if anyone on the webkit project is
| aware of that part of the standard, and if so, the
| project's official position on it. I can't imagine why
| they'd oppose it.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Looks like it is already supported by Safari/WebKit for a
| number of versions: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_att...
| grapesodaaaaa wrote:
| Some of those unimplemented "standards" are to protect user
| privacy. I know this is not universally the case, but it's
| worth calling out.
| threeseed wrote:
| You can fingerprint a browser to > 99.9% accuracy because
| of Google's lax approach to privacy and security when
| adding new features.
|
| Of course this benefits the advertising side of the
| business immensely.
| numbsafari wrote:
| War is Peace
| asddubs wrote:
| I'm actually far more concerned with the other thing I
| mentioned, just like on old versions of windows, safari
| updates are coupled to iOS updates. So if your phone doesn't
| get any more updates, or you just don't want them, your
| browser engine is out of date, giving years old safari
| versions significant market shares. And this impacts stuff
| like being able to use "gap" for flexbox, which I don't think
| qualifies as a proprietary chrome feature
| solarkraft wrote:
| No, not only those, also actually legitimate web standards.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Safari updates are released for the two macOS releases before
| the current.
| asddubs wrote:
| not on iOS which is more relevant since you can't even
| install other engines
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| What are these proprietary extensions?
| asddubs wrote:
| if you want a really old example, pnacl. If you want a
| slightly recent one, FLoC. Not saying those are the best
| examples, they are just what comes to my head first. I don't
| really keep up super closely.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Neither of these are proprietary.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Both are.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| pnacl was an example of Google throwing away their
| homebrewed solution in favour of a common standard (Web
| Assembly). That seems like a strong argument that they _don
| 't_ push proprietary extensions.
| Semaphor wrote:
| One thing missing: Safari is like a worse IE, because not only
| does it not run on any other OS, like IE, but it doesn't even
| run on most hardware.
| handsclean wrote:
| I'd love to see these comments about Safari lagging give
| specific examples. Every time I've seen specifics, it's either
| only interesting to progressive web apps, or blatantly user
| hostile tracking/nagging "features". In my personal experience
| as a web dev, Safari is often the first to implement new
| features, and otherwise lags literally just a few months
| behind, according to their release cycle. WEBP was the
| exception that was both a real feature and very delayed, but
| now with JPEG XL it's Safari first by a mile and Chrome holding
| everyone back.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Safari. I assumed this was overblown until I had the rich
| experience of developing a Flutter app that needed to work on
| every platform. Somehow, even Androids chaos is notably better to
| work with.
| torlok wrote:
| A Google product didn't work right on iOS? Shocking.
| nerdix wrote:
| Google typically goes out of its way to make its products
| work on iOS while the same can't be said in reverse.
| pirates wrote:
| Intentionally restricting apps from using core features of
| the OS with a paywall is making its products work?
| MBCook wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If it works on Chrome, no one cares or even tests for other
| things.
|
| If there is a JS feature in Chrome they want to use, so it's
| impossible to use other browsers (instead of looking wrong)
| people do it.
|
| Performs fine in Chrome? Ship it.
|
| Yes, Chrome is the new IE in that it's the _only_ browsers
| companies care about, just like IE was for a very long time.
|
| Everything has to be Chrome compatible to succeed. That's the
| benchmark, not what the spec says.
| wseqyrku wrote:
| > If it works on Chrome, no one cares or even tests for other
| things.
|
| We've been through an extensive standardization pass for this
| to not happen. Anything not matching the specification whether
| in Chrome or any other browser should be considered a bug.
|
| This is not at all the same as IE, where it just went its own
| way.
| beej71 wrote:
| > should be considered a bug
|
| Should be, but isn't. At least not in a practical sense.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Yes it should be, but it isn't, that's the problem
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The unstated major premise of this assertion is that the
| standard is a spec that every browser must comply with
| exactly. It's not; there's not a single browser that has ever
| implemented 100% of whatever was the latest standard at the
| time, and major browsers typically also include many of their
| own additions that go beyond the standard.
|
| This latter bit isn't in conflict with the standard; it's an
| essential part of the standardization process. The typical
| route for something making it into the standard is for a
| browser to release their own browser-specific extension and
| use that as a basis for advocating that it be added to the
| standard. XMLHttpRequest, for example, started as an IE-only
| feature and didn't make it into all the other major browsers
| for several years. It got a published W3C spec a little bit
| after that, which meant that browsers needed another couple
| years to also get synced up on their behavior.
|
| In this respect, Chrome has definitely now taken IE's old
| position: new Web standards have a tendency to start as
| Chrome-specific extensions, and then the other browsers have
| to implement their own versions and get them ratified into
| the W3C specs in an effort to try and keep up. Which in turn
| suggests that a compatibility-minded Web developer might want
| to choose a similar strategy from what was done in the past:
| test on the most popular browser _last_.
| bawolff wrote:
| > The unstated major premise of this assertion is that the
| standard is a spec that every browser must comply with
| exactly. It's not; there's not a single browser that has
| ever implemented 100% of whatever was the latest standard
| at the time, and major browsers typically also include many
| of their own additions that go beyond the standard.
|
| Sure, but there is a big difference between implenting 99%
| of the standard and only implementing like 10%
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It makes a difference in how easy it is to get it working
| in multiple browsers.
|
| But if developers don't check, then either one could
| break the site for all the users.
| Y-bar wrote:
| As I wrote in a similar thread a year ago: Whenever I point
| out that some bug which happens in Firefox my colleagues
| usually responds with some variant of "we tested in Chrome,
| and that is the standard", or "can you ask the customer to
| use Chrome instead". Even if Firefox or some other browser
| may be using a proper standards implementation and the Chrome
| one being the one with some quirk.
| pjmlp wrote:
| ChromeOS and Project Fungu.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Unless you want to have customers on iOS.
| MBCook wrote:
| I run into enough sites that seem to think nothing but
| desktops exist and tell you to just not use a phone.
| int_19h wrote:
| Some websites basically force you to install the app for
| that.
| RachelF wrote:
| Yes, Chrome is necessary for some sites that don't work on
| Firefox.
| gtk40 wrote:
| I manage websites for a couple of non-profits. A very high
| percentage of traffic is from Safari (mostly on iOS) -- 40% on
| one site. Only testing in Chrome seems like a bad idea.
| int_19h wrote:
| It really depends on where in the world we're talking about.
| iOS is big in some places (like US) but insignificant in
| others.
| nobleach wrote:
| No, I dont think this is the case. While a lot of devs use
| Chrome while developing, we're all well aware that 50% or more
| of US users are using an iPhone. And that's Safari no matter
| what. So many do a ton of testing there as well. Firefox often
| gets the shaft.
| rty32 wrote:
| I know as a matter of fact that many teams'/companys'
| approach is "We'll develop and run our CI tests on Chrome
| only. If it breaks on Firefox or Safari, we'll fix it, but
| that's as much as what we care about." And I'll be honest,
| for many organizations, it's a good business and financial
| move.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I do opposite. I develop and test over Firefox. If it works on
| Firefox, would work on anything (plus I always doing
| transpilation to baseline)
| ikiris wrote:
| This isn't a chrome fault. It's lazy dev orgs. You aren't going
| to fix lazy dev orgs.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| Safari is great and very performant. Not every rushed "standard"
| Google forces everyone to catch up to is a good thing.
| intellix wrote:
| Safari, the browser that claims to support standards but always
| comes with caveats, like saying they support
| transform/transitions and then everything with box shadows
| flickering
| lxgr wrote:
| It's also very slow to support new standards, in my experience.
|
| Web push notifications literally took years to make it from
| macOS to iOS, for example. (Yes, these are commonly abused for
| spam and other user-hostile things; no, I don't think that's a
| valid reason to withhold them from the only acceptable browser
| on their OS entirely.)
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Depends what you're looking at. They're very fast at CSS and
| JS language features
|
| They adopt new web APIs much more cautiously - or they drag
| their feet - depending on your perspective
| sccxy wrote:
| and Safari finds ways to break existing features with every
| minor update.
|
| My codebase is full of Safari version-specific bug fixes.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Do you not have fixes for other browsers too?
| sccxy wrote:
| No
|
| Other browsers are updated more frequently and do not need
| OS updates.
|
| Safari users are left behind with a broken browser.
|
| I have more iOS 16.1 users (specific version) than all
| Chrome users with 6+ months old versions.
| sevensor wrote:
| Where I work, edge is the new IE, and there has never been an
| interregnum. I think people forget that institutions have their
| own logic.
| tjkohli wrote:
| But you realize Edge is just Chrome with a different interface
| right?
| defrost wrote:
| There's more to it than that alone, if you run psExplorer
| you'll find there's Edge the browser _and_ Edge the
| subterranean process that 's hooked into desktop search and
| general user activity while constantly engaged in telemetry.
|
| Sure, these are "just Chrome" components and libraries .. but
| they're engaged in more than simple web page rendering.
|
| NB: I'm not engaging in _Edge is Evil_ conspiracy here and
| there are "reasons" for what's going on there that some may
| or may not accept. Just pointing out the additional below the
| surface integration.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Are web standards the new proprietary extensions?
| skybrian wrote:
| When was the last time you wanted to build a website and _web
| browsers_ got in the way? Those days are long gone. Compared to a
| decade ago, everything is amazing.
| furyofantares wrote:
| The number of websites that only work on chrome really sucks.
| It's a small percentage, but it's enough that you run into them
| and I hate that very much.
|
| But unless I'm actively campaigning everyone I know to switch in
| an effort to save them from it, I'm going to reserve the term
| "the new ie" for another day.
|
| Not to mention the developer story. Just getting a website to
| look right in every browser was difficult, with IE very often
| being by far the hardest.
|
| IE was a nightmare for a long time.
| taf2 wrote:
| Not even close. IE 6 didn't get any updates or new web features
| for years. It was closed source. It was dead and everyone used
| it. float:right; zoom:1; was a common necessity... to compare
| them is an insult to the immense progress and effort spent over
| the last 24 years... (yes chrome started in 2007, but the teams
| from Firefox get credit too, many of them went on to build chrome
| ). The open source movement won, IE is dead - MS shipped edge. We
| can argue about how Google is evil all day but it's night and day
| compared to what the web was like in 2000
| alganet wrote:
| Then why does it feel like standards lost?
|
| We don't have float:right;zoom1: but our "necessities" nowadays
| are even crazier. Babel, vdom, frameworks provided by browser-
| vendors. Those are several orders of magnitude more complex
| than previous "workaround" approaches to the web, all
| unstandardized.
|
| How about Electron? Do we see any Firefox-based desktop apps
| around or is that market completely dominated by the Chrome
| runtime? Are app developers happy having only Chromium as the
| viable solution? (my guess: they're not, but they have no
| choice).
|
| Where we're going is even nastier than clearfixes and table
| layouts.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Isn't this a Firefox/Mozilla fault as well ? Afaik there is
| really no API or support for embedding Gecko & anyone who
| tries to do that, is on their own, having to periodically
| rebase large patch sets for embedding.
| alganet wrote:
| Possibly. I guess XUL was that API, but XUL is no more.
|
| It helps if your company uses the embedded stuff in other
| products. Like Microsoft used the Trident engine from IE6
| all over Windows components. In that way, allocating
| resources for developing an embeddable engine is
| justifiable. Can Mozilla do that? I don'know. Google can
| (and does it! why wouldn't they?).
| notpushkin wrote:
| There is GeckoView on Android:
| https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/
|
| On desktop, it used to be available as an ActiveX
| component and a GTK widget, at least: https://www-
| archive.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/embedding...
|
| Wine still uses WineGecko as a replacement for IE engine
| - might also be worth looking into.
| darepublic wrote:
| Babel/vdom is not necessary for web dev. Can't blame chrome
| for electron.
| alganet wrote:
| If something uses DOM and JavaScript, to me it's web enough
| to be called web, even if it is rendering outside of
| regular browser expectations (some React Native stuff or
| similar). The whole premise of this tech is to approximate
| app development to web development.
|
| Anyway, it's not about _blaming_. Web technologies are
| being laid in a landscape by multiple parties, it's about
| understanding that landscape.
| bawolff wrote:
| Sheesh, the existence of libraries does not mean
| standards have failed.
| alganet wrote:
| Sometimes it does.
|
| Would normalize.css exist if the standards were more
| specific around default styles?
|
| Would jQuery/sizzle exist if CSS selectors were available
| as a DOM API in the first place?
|
| Would vdom exist if DOM was faster?
| purplejacket wrote:
| Ummm ... 2024 - 2007 = 17
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > (yes chrome started in 2007, but the teams from Firefox get
| credit too, many of them went on to build chrome )
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The open source movement has been co-opted. Its core values
| were laid out in a world where people owned their own computers
| and were custodians of their own data. There was no cloud,
| there was no saas, and that meant that owning source code meant
| you had some level of control over your digital life.
|
| You're right. It _is_ night and day. In 2024, access to source
| code is no longer, in and of itself, an effective proxy for
| autonomy. And using how the world worked a quarter century ago
| as a yardstick for measuring the relative merits of Google 's
| influence on the digital domain nowadays is specious.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Chromium is, not Chrome
|
| And that's not a bad thing
|
| - open source
|
| - portable
|
| - crossplatform
|
| - efficient
|
| - always up to date
| benchloftbrunch wrote:
| It's a bad thing because Google's monopoly gives them enormous
| power to influence browser standards, while also having
| conflicts of interest re: their advertising business.
|
| See for example their recent war against ad blocker extensions.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I just bought a new computer and was curious, so I thought I'd
| try Windows first, and . . .
|
| No. Chrome is not the new IE. I am constantly pushed to use Edge
| for everything, to "make it better" for myself. It's actually
| sorta creepy . . .
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You do know that Edge is Chromium repackaged, like all other
| browsers except Safari and Firefox?
| saghm wrote:
| So then why does Microsoft try to push it so hard on users
| who are trying to use Chrome? It's hard to believe they're
| just trying to save everyone the minimal time and effort
| that's being spent installing a different browser by randomly
| deciding to force a full-screen ad on an OS update. At
| absolute best, it's benign but worth not using simply to
| avoid rewarding whatever misguided incentives lead to them to
| "market" it like this.
|
| https://www.techradar.com/news/sorry-microsoft-not-even-a-
| fu...
| giantrobot wrote:
| The Edge browser engine is just Chromium. But the Edge
| browser has loads of telemetry active. Microsoft wants you
| to use Edge because the telemetry makes them money,
| rendering websites doesn't really make them money.
| int_19h wrote:
| When you use Chrome and sign in, Google is tracking you.
|
| When you use Edge and sign in, Microsoft gets to track you.
|
| Both companies are selling ads.
| ksec wrote:
| I remember this blog. Magic Lasso Adblock is Apple ecosystem
| only. Its view on pretty much everything is basically Daring
| Fireball.
|
| >tends to be misunderstood to mean that Chrome is like Internet
| Explorer was in 2009
|
| >Despite being the market share leader, there is significant
| evidence that Chrome is trailing in speed, efficiency and
| standards interoperability.
|
| >Perhaps the browser with the most disruptive potential is from
| Microsoft with Edge...... It has also avoided alternative-browser
| compatibility issues by being based upon Chromium.
|
| Every time this subject came up and I will find people who have
| never used all three browser at the same time. Or wasn't there
| during the IE era.
|
| The phase "is Safari the new IE" was actually coined by someone
| who wasn't even there or doing Web Dev during IE era. It was IE6,
| not IE7, and definitely not 2008. And the phase somehow catches
| on to become is Chrome the new IE.
|
| IE was absolutely dominant with 95%+ of browser market share
| during its peak. Neither Chrome / Blink nor Safari / Webkit ever
| achieved that. And the most important part was that the HTML /
| CSS and IE implementation had so many low hanging fruit but _NO
| IMPROVEMENT_ were made for years. IE 7 / MSHTML released 5 years
| after IE 6 offered little to no improvement other than a few
| small fix.
|
| Both Chrome / Blink and Safari / Webkit have continuous
| development over the years. We may not like some of the direction
| they are going. But every year there are improvement being made
| with HTML / CSS / JS features.
|
| Second part being Chrome is a resource hog or slow. Chrome has
| made tremendous effort into making it memory efficient since 2021
| when complain started to pile in. By 2022 and definitely 2023
| multi tab on Chrome is far better than what it was. Safari on the
| other hand isn't doing well on MultiTabs for over a decade but
| gets _zero_ attention on the issue. Meanwhile Firefox being the
| fastest browser in terms of least janks and best for hundreds of
| tabs gets No recognition either.
|
| And lastly Interop. Since 2019 and I believe the first Interop
| was in 2021. We still dont have a 100% coverage on any Interop
| year for all three major browsers. I wish Interop could at least
| agree and publish baseline support that aims to have all browser
| support by 2025. Instead we are forever stuck in 95% with quirks
| everywhere.
| xlii wrote:
| Actually, quick search leads to [0] (not very reliable, but
| still better than nothing) shows that Chrome and derivatives
| take 72%.
|
| As other commenters mention, Safari is mostly locked to the
| Apple ecosystem, so IMO Chrome on non-Apple systems is around
| 90%. Firefox is metered to 3% which is lower than reality (due
| to adblocking).
|
| My personal experience is, however, very similar to IE golden
| age. In order to interact with state office web apps I need to
| switch to Chromium. Neither Firefox nor Safari are supported.
| Vivaldi is a mixed bag (not sure why though). For me this
| answer questions is Chrome the new IE.
|
| [0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
| ksec wrote:
| >Neither Firefox nor Safari are supported
|
| Depending on which country it is, but Safari is anywhere from
| 30% to 60% of marketshare on smartphone. I have yet to see
| any government website that is not tested against Safari.
| xlii wrote:
| It depends on the context.
|
| In US I believe that might be true (same site reports
| around 35%). But those numbers are dropping by a half when
| you move out.
|
| In India 90%+ reported is Chrome. In Europe Safari is ~20%
| on average and where I reside it's around 7% with Chrome
| being 75%.
|
| Nobody here cares for web correctness. Situation is absurd:
| e.g. using Safari to input masked password letters for a
| bank login causes a random number of fields skipping
| forward. Called that in, no one cares.
|
| When looking at the numbers I would say that US (because of
| high Safari usage) actually resists Chrome's monopoly and
| might not (yet) experience the effects of Chrome IE-
| ification.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > Meanwhile Firefox being the fastest browser in terms of least
| janks and best for hundreds of tabs gets No recognition either.
|
| This is likely subjective. Out of the browsers I use regularly,
| Firefox is by far the one with the greatest number of rough
| edges as well as the least likely to see those rough edges
| polished.
|
| To some degree this is inevitable with the difference in amount
| of resources at Mozilla's disposal relative to those of Google
| and Apple, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. In a
| relatively short time many of these issues have been improved
| by a small team in the Zen Browser fork of Firefox, which
| suggests it's more of a lack of will than it is lack of
| resources.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2023)
|
| And, No.
| znpy wrote:
| > Is chrome the new IE?
|
| Oh it's way worse than that: Chrome is the new IE, and Google is
| the new (old) Microsoft.
| sowut wrote:
| every time i get a new work machine i attempt to use a browser
| that is not chrome. last time was firefox, this time was safari.
| eventually i start using chrome on certain sites because of
| ublock origin. then, as was the case with aws, certain websites
| are flakey enough times that i just give in and use chrome full
| time.
|
| side note: hey aws, why is your rds performance insights
| dashboard broken on safari? 33% of the time it will "freeze" and
| i have to reload the page. very un-dude like.
| darknavi wrote:
| > eventually i start using chrome on certain sites because of
| ublock origin.
|
| uBO works fine on Firefox for what it's worth. Maybe even
| better because of the lack of Manifest v3 restrictions.
| sowut wrote:
| i'll have to give firefox another look, it has been years.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| One issue I keep see cropping up with various corporate websites
| is they will only allow Chrome and will block any other browser.
| I would say in 9/10 cases, this isn't because the site uses
| features not supported in other browsers but rather, developers
| restrict it to Chrome because that's all their QA's test on.
| 1stcity3rdcoast wrote:
| Which is ironic because scores of enterprise companies
| developed internal systems/reporting/intranets using .NET in
| the early 2000s, restricting their users to Internet Explorer!
| ta1243 wrote:
| And still have to maintain windows 7 or earlier machines
| running IE 7 to run internal applications
| wslh wrote:
| It's clear that Net Neutrality and web standards are close to a
| myth. Security-wise, I trust Google over Mozilla though.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's a different layer of the stack. I could get behind
| "web neutrality" as an initiative, though!
| lxgr wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm still not sure what annoys me more: Sites that
| break on non-Chrome, or sites that won't even let me try behind
| a cookie agent blocker.
| smm11 wrote:
| Chrome is controlled by Google.
|
| The US government will be controlled by the owner of X, Tesla,
| and SpaceX.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| No not even close by every single possible measure.
|
| I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make
| TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change.
|
| I have no interest in the arguments of a closed source
| subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled
| browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular
| consumer OS, lecturing me about using the 4th wealthiest company
| on earth's browser that I freely installed.
|
| The most important one from an anti-trust perspective, every
| device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and
| install/make default Chrome, that includes my mobile devices
| which used the manufactures browser by default.
|
| If I want to use chromium I can, Safari has been VERY late in
| implementing certain industry spec standards (SSE's, web sockets,
| IndexedDB API, animations, relative color syntax, container
| queries, a bunch of <video> stuff, flexbox, the list goes on and
| on.)
| lxgr wrote:
| > using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I
| freely installed.
|
| 99% of the time I use Chrome it's because some site does not
| support Firefox (and that often includes Google sites/apps).
| (The 1% are for APIs that Firefox, consciously or out of
| resource constraints, does not support.)
|
| In what sense am I "freely installing" Chrome in this
| situation?
|
| Just today I had a family member reach out to me, unable to use
| government e-signing on their phone after I'd switched their
| default browser to Firefox (they were getting tons of ads in
| mobile Chrome, which does not support plugins and accordingly
| also no ad blockers). Turns out they support only IE/Edge,
| Safari, and of course Chrome...
|
| > every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and
| install/make default Chrome
|
| My Pixel came with Chrome preinstalled, as far as I remember.
| (I don't recall if there was a browser selection screen.)
|
| Sure, that's a Google phone, but then again Windows is a
| Microsoft operating system.
|
| > the arguments of a closed source subscription service that
| wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest
| company on earth's most popular consumer OS
|
| Oh, I'd also not advise anyone to switch to Safari. Apple
| absolutely would pull exactly the same or worse as Google if
| they could, I have no illusions about that.
|
| I can't wait for the day they're finally forced to actually
| allow alternative browser engines on iOS and switch to Firefox
| everywhere.
| pphysch wrote:
| The onus is on the app developer to make sure their app runs
| on a variety of platforms. It's not Chrome's fault for third
| party developers being lazy and not supporting Firefox.
| lxgr wrote:
| >It's not Chrome's fault for third party developers being
| lazy and not supporting Firefox.
|
| What if it's Google themselves? From my original post:
|
| > [...] and that often includes Google sites/apps
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| [Citation Needed]
|
| What google site or service requires Chrome?
| nasmorn wrote:
| Meet is as shitty on Safari as Google feels they can get
| away with
| lxgr wrote:
| "AI overview" (which I happen to find really useful) was
| only available on Chrome and Safari for at least a few
| months.
|
| Sure, it's a lab experiment or whatever, but these are
| just words, and the effect is that I have to use a
| different browser to be able to use them, for absolutely
| no technical reason. (The LLM is running on Google's
| servers and provides plaintext. I think Firefox could
| handle that.)
|
| Just visit this on Firefox if you want to see for
| yourself, including a big "install Chrome" call to
| action: https://labs.google.com/search/install
| thayne wrote:
| I don't know of anything that is completely broken, but
| some functionality requiers chrome:
|
| On Google Docs, paste as markdown, copy and paste from
| menus, paste without formatting, etc. only works on
| chrome. This functionality could be done with standard
| APIs, but instead google uses a hidden, pre-installed
| extension to implement it.
|
| Offline mode doesn't work on firefox for either gmail or
| google docs.
|
| Google doodles don't show up on Firefox Mobile, unless
| you spoof a chrome user agent.
|
| Youtube has repeatedly had serious performance problems
| on Firefox.
| spoaceman7777 wrote:
| Are you objecting to single sign on or something? Or some
| browser extension that is only published for Chrome? What
| are you talking about?
| lxgr wrote:
| Some Google sites explicitly say "install Chrome to use
| this", e.g. this one:
| https://labs.google.com/search/install
| nightski wrote:
| I don't understand this because I have used Firefox
| exclusively since it first came out and never run into broken
| sites. What exactly are these exotic sites you are visiting
| that break in Firefox? You mentioned an elusive government
| website but I have used many (IRS, SSA, Edu, etc...)
| rty32 wrote:
| That's a very arrogant attitude.
|
| I'll give you one example: I sometimes can't open OpenAI
| API documentation due to some stupid Cloudflare captcha
| checks. No, on Firefox, however many times I click that
| checkbox, I can't go through the verification, just to read
| some static content. Not even if I disable adblock and
| tracking protection.
|
| I don't even see a checkbox at all on Chrome or Edge.
| lxgr wrote:
| Cloudflare captchas are an excellent point.
|
| Sure, _technically_ nobody is excluded: Just solve the
| captcha! Fraud heuristics are only reasonable, right?
|
| But it's all fun only as long as your situation occurs
| within the 90th or 95th percentile of all data labeled
| "good customer". Good luck if you're out side of that...
| poincaredisk wrote:
| This is also my experience. But to be fair I have a heavily
| modified privacy-centric Firefox, and I disabled some
| features in the config, and I disable js and large images
| and of course tracking/ads by default, and I delete most
| cookies on browser close, and I run Wayland on Linux so...
| any breakage is probably on me.
| graemep wrote:
| I almost always find that when sites do not work with
| Firefox (also Wayland on Linux) it works with Firefox (on
| the same machine) without the same plugins and settings.
|
| Enabling JS is not enough, so I think its liked to
| privacy plugins, or running inside a container.
| baq wrote:
| the cynic would say if you can't be tracked, you can't be
| monetized. unfortunately, being successfully un-de-
| anonymizable means you can't be distinguished from a bot.
| lxgr wrote:
| Elusive to you, essential to people living in my country.
| (You can't do your taxes without it.)
|
| And look no further than Google themselves:
| https://labs.google.com/search/install
| jasode wrote:
| _> What exactly are these exotic sites you are visiting
| that break in Firefox?_
|
| In my case, an example of a non-exotic site is Youtube
| streaming 4k 60fps videos. I tried with latest Firefox a
| few months ago and it was still stuttering and glitchy. But
| Chrome plays smoothly with no issues. I previously
| mentioned that 4k playback has been a long-standing issue:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783904
|
| On one hand, my computer is fairly old ... but then again,
| Chrome works fine on that same old hardware.
| vetinari wrote:
| Never seen this; however, youtube prefers pushing VP9
| over H.264. Maybe your computer cannot use hardware
| decode for VP9 and can for H.264? (Since you mentioned,
| it is an older one). Maybe the h264ify extension would
| help.
|
| What firefox cannot do and chrome can is HDR playback.
| olig15 wrote:
| I see this argument a lot. I use Firefox on my Mac, iPhone
| and my Windows work PC. I can't remember the last time there
| was a website that was broken because of Firefox.
|
| Do you happen to have any examples? I'm curious to see how
| broken/what the issues are.
| yoavm wrote:
| > Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact
| to change
|
| I think the biggest issue with IE6 was not the hostile moves
| Microosft did, it is that it didn't do anything. The browser
| was just frozen. That's why it was relatively easy for Firefox
| to take a marketshare.
|
| Frankly, with some of the APIs Google are adding to Chrome, I'd
| rather they'd do a little less.
| ajross wrote:
| So, no, the problem with IE was 100% Microsoft's hostile
| competition tactics. Yes, part of that was trying to
| deprecate the "world wide web" as a platform, so yes, IE6 got
| very crufty toward the end of its days.
|
| But by that point it was clear it was already dying and IE7
| et. al. were introduced late as an attempt to catch up.
| During the period when the real bullets were flying, IE6 was
| actually a really great browser, just one that forced you
| into using a menu of Microsoft technologies because it didn't
| support the "standard" stuff. Remember that XMLHttpRequest,
| the basic tool underneath all modern dynamic web UIs, was
| originally a non-standard Microsoft invention.
|
| And yes: eventually this proved unsustainable and innovation
| in the standards-based browser world eventually proved too
| fast for MS to keep up, and it lost.
|
| But the tool that broke the back of that monopoly absolutely
| wasn't Firefox. It was Chrome.
| yoavm wrote:
| I would say that the 30% market-share Firefox had in 2009
| was breaking the monopoly much more than the 3% Chrome had
| a time.
|
| Sure IE6 had many non-standard APIs, but even the fact that
| all hobbyist browsers back then were implementing tabs and
| IE6 never had that, speaks to its stagnant development. To
| be honest I'd prefer some things Google is now pushing
| through th W3C as standards to be left as Chrome specific
| APIs and leave the rest of us alone.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| That and browser sniffing to serve _intentionally_ broken CSS
| on Microsoft 's websites to competitors like Opera, I
| remember this because it directly effected me at the time.
|
| I mean at least we still have websites like this from over 20
| years ago that still document the bullshit, people who
| weren't there CANNOT fathom the how despicable they were.
|
| https://www.wiumlie.no/2003/2/msn/
| pjmlp wrote:
| It definitely is, I was also there, just like everyone was
| doing IE only sites, not only plenty of people do the same with
| ChromeOS vision of the Web, they ship Chrome alongside Electron
| crap.
|
| Safari is the last man standing before a ChromeOS world.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Safari is the last man standing before a ChromeOS world._
|
| Except it isn't. Maybe I'm being slightly obtuse here, but
| the world is not "Chrome Vs Safari". It's "Chrome Vs Safari
| Vs native apps". If Safari dies we'll be in a world of
| "Chrome Vs native apps", and that is what Apple wants.
| Browsers represent a way to deliver software to users that's
| outside of Apple's revenue mechanisms.
|
| Apple have every incentive to keep Safari being good-not-
| great at running web apps, so users prefer the native version
| (even though most of the time that'll be Electron.)
| bloppe wrote:
| Am I the only one left happily using Firefox? You know, the
| only "major" browser that doesn't seem to have these
| conflicts of interest?
| gray_-_wolf wrote:
| Also happy Firefox user here. Do not worry, there are
| dozens of us. Dozens!
| dudhejffj wrote:
| I use Firefox Mobile but have long abandoned the desktop
| offering. The only thing I feel like I get from the
| desktop version lately is a spiritual victory whereas the
| mobile browser actually has tangible features I prefer
| like add-ons and the search bar at the bottom.
| ajross wrote:
| Notably this desire -- to own a platform by making "native"
| code for your proprietary OS the "preferred" way to
| interact with the world -- was _exactly_ the logic behind
| MS 's "embrace and extend" nonsense in the 90's. It still
| feels weird to me that people don't react the same way when
| Apple does it.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The audience for computers in 2024 has grown to maybe 1,000x
| what it was in 2008. Everyone has to rediscover the meaning of
| being able to choose.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-
| interne... maybe 3.7x
| thephyber wrote:
| I think some of the complaints in the article were about
| websites using User Agent string to detect compatibility,
| rather than individual feature sniffing.
|
| In that small complaint, I would agree. But I think the fault
| is mostly with the website owners, not with the browser.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Yes, Chrome is the de facto standard, and often the only browser
| thoroughly tested against. Even now though it isn't as dominant
| as IE at its peak though.
|
| No, Chrome isn't significantly behind on adopting new standards
| compared with other major browsers (I'm looking at you Safari).
| IE6 to IE7 was about five years!
| ericwood wrote:
| I see so many ideological arguments around "X is the new IE"
| that neglect one of the worst pieces of IE 6's reign of terror:
| the stagnation. Working around all of its quirks and non-
| standard behavior had an extremely long half-life; the venn
| diagram of things that worked correctly across all major
| browsers at the time was very complex and messy. Even with the
| release of IE7 it took many years for people to adopt it, and
| IE7 was hardly a saint either.
|
| There's a part of my brain I'll never get back devoted to all
| of these workarounds. So many hours lost to weird corporate
| networks that had quirks mode enabled, different box models
| (before the advent of the `box-sizing` CSS attribute), random
| omissions of standards (no `:hover` on elements besides `a`),
| etc.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > one of the worst pieces of IE 6's reign of terror: the
| stagnation.
|
| This is the thing that I think developers today don't seem to
| be able to get their head around. There was a _fourteen year_
| time period between Internet Explorer 6 being released and
| when it dropped out of usage worldwide. Even if you only had
| to support the USA, it was still eleven years. People could
| go their entire careers without ever knowing what it was like
| not having to support it. It paralysed front-end development
| for more than a decade.
| neonsunset wrote:
| It is, except this time around it's worse.
| kernal wrote:
| Yes, Chrome is the new IE in only one category when IE was
| popular: market share. Everything else? Not so much.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| I always find it comforting to know that a site would work in
| chrome.
| t1234s wrote:
| Safari has been the new IE
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| I think it might be worse. Google has lied about Chrome and
| privacy so much that you can just assume it phones everything
| back to Alphabet even if you set it not to.
| amelius wrote:
| Is Apple the new Microsoft?
| mixxit wrote:
| can i run chrome on my mobile and sync to chrome on my pc and put
| an adblocker on both?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| As a Firefox mainliner for 'legacy' reasons to be fair, I often
| have to revert to Chrome to get sites to work. I guess there are
| a lott of dev shops out there that just test on Chrome/Edge (and
| maybe Safari)
| wkyleg wrote:
| Yes, in terms of market share.
|
| But the key difference is that it's leagues better than other
| browser engines on quality. From the perspective of competition
| this isn't great, but the network effects are hard to ignore.
| Firefox and Safari (webkit) just tend not to work as well.
|
| It's very different in terms of quality though. Internet Explorer
| was a terrible browser and often lagging in implementing
| standards. The better comparison would be Safari now, which often
| completely breaks many sites on mobile for me. It also doesn't
| eliminate a lot of newer CSS animations properly.
|
| This is really very unfortunate because it's good to have
| competition in browser implementations. Everything is Chrome
| under the hood now except for Safari and Firefox.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Internet Explorer was an attempt to monopolize and control the
| early internet. They intentionally left standards unimplemented
| or just implemented their own insane version of them in order
| to trap people into the platform.
|
| It's no wonder the product saw them taken to court over
| antitrust violations.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| No because Chrome is actually a good browser.
|
| We'll never see a reasonable competitor unless someone like Musk,
| Zuckerberg, or Bezos gets involved. But that's not feasible
| because their companies aren't internet ad agencies.
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