[HN Gopher] What is the value of browser diversity?
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What is the value of browser diversity?
Author : kiyanwang
Score : 106 points
Date : 2020-09-20 10:14 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daverupert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (daverupert.com)
| xg15 wrote:
| > _This can be agonizing while you wait for a much needed feature
| to roll out in all browsers, only to find out five years in the
| process one browser refuses the entire premise of the feature
| (RIP HTML Imports)._
|
| Slightly OT, but could someone explain to me why Mozilla was so
| adamantly against this feature? Allowing modular and dynamic HTML
| on the client without opening the pandora's box that is
| JavaScript seems like a clear value-add.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| More info here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/06/the-state-of-
| web-component...
| zamadatix wrote:
| Some small fraction of less than 1% consider "without opening
| the pandora's box that is JavaScript" a "clear value-add". The
| JS method already existed and worked for dynamic content as
| well. The latter part was Mozilla's reasoning. Also for a while
| they wanted to see how ES6 modules worked out and apply those
| lessens before committing to a certain import design for HTML.
| What they took back was the HTML imports proposal wasn't
| configurable enough and to make it that configurable you'd
| basically have the existing JS import method but fossilized and
| for fewer use cases. Looking at HTML imports it really breaks
| down into 2 types of use:
|
| - I want to import static HTML for the same origin
|
| - I want to import static HTML cross origin
|
| The former is relatively inefficient, the static HTML for the
| page should have been served when the client requested it not
| served as a request for the client to request it. The latter is
| odd (I'm sure there are use cases though) and wasn't considered
| worth implementing a new HTML feature for when the JS method
| gave better control of the import anyways.
|
| Mozilla's official musings:
|
| https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/06/the-state-of-web-component...
|
| https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/12/mozilla-and-web-components...
| vimy wrote:
| Are there Chinese browser engines?
| brianush1 wrote:
| They have a whole alternative to the web, it's called WeChat
| Mini Programs.
| tokai wrote:
| Opera is Chinese now, right?
| gsnedders wrote:
| And based on Chromium.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Opera Software is a public company now. Opera the browser
| itself uses Blink and V8 though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Software
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Before installing Opera, I suggest everyone quack:
|
| "opera africa lending"
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Framing this in relation to diversity is weird. The real question
| is what is the value of competition in the browser market. Which
| has an answer that is much more obvious. Because without it,
| Google would control the entire internet browsing experience.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear what would happen if Google could
| controlled the web through a browser monoculture. They would
| rapidly transform it into something more akin to a closed app
| ecosystem, with more DRM and proprietary features.
|
| They might also give less of a crap about being backward-
| compatible and not breaking your website. The relative "slowness"
| of the evolution of the web is a good thing. It's already too
| fast IMO.
| userbinator wrote:
| _The relative "slowness" of the evolution of the web is a good
| thing. It's already too fast IMO._
|
| Absolutely agree. I remember when IE6 was the most common
| browser, it was hard to find a site that _wasn 't_ viewable in
| any other browser, even the text-based ones, and JS-only "app-
| sites" (for lack of a better term) pretty much nonexistent. Of
| course a vocal subset of developers kept complaining about the
| web "being held back" and wanting to "push the web forward",
| and once Google took over, the rest is history...
|
| Related article from 2015:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961613
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Or forcing you to login in both the browser and the websites
| they own.
|
| I can't find any concrete mention of this online, but at some
| point the "identity consistency between browser and cookie jar"
| flag to disable this was removed from Chrome. People on HN were
| making a big deal at the time over Chrome forcing you to attach
| your Google account to Chrome if you signed in through YouTube
| or another Google service.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942252
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Chrome Origin Trials
| (https://developers.chrome.com/origintrials/#/trials/active)
| has some of the scent of a closed ecosystem -- Google gets to
| decide who can use certain browser features (if only for
| limited numbers of users, right now)
|
| If the idea were extended to production features, that's
| basically a walled-garden model for the web.
| jefftk wrote:
| If there's an experimental feature you want to test out on
| your site, you should be able to register for the origin
| trial. I don't think it's something where Google decides who
| can register?
|
| Origin trials are a reaction to the failure of shipping new
| features under prefixes, where those experimental features
| fossilized. By restricting origin trials only to sites that
| explicitly opt in and making those registrations time limited
| it's possible to get feedback on whether an experimental
| feature works without sites becoming dependent on it.
|
| (Disclosure: I work for Google on unrelated things; speaking
| only for myself)
| pjmlp wrote:
| ChromeOS has won already, it is not only the browsers, it is
| all that crap shipped as Electron app.
| Animats wrote:
| _... browser monoculture. They would rapidly transform it into
| something more akin to a closed app ecosystem..._
|
| That's the big problem. Unrestrained, Google will turn the
| browser into Google Web Client. We'll know that's happening
| when something comparable to Google Play Services appears in
| Chrome - a set of almost essential facilities applications
| need. By then it will be too late.
|
| If you want to see what that looks like, see WeChat. There's
| WeChat for PCs.[1] It's not just for phones. It's an
| application which plugs you into the closed WeChat ecosystem.
| You can then access TenCent's replacement for the Web. Run
| approved WeChat apps. They have a level of control Facebook
| only dreams about.
|
| [1] https://pc.weixin.qq.com/?t=win_weixin&lang=en
| rodgerd wrote:
| I find your use of the future tense puzzling.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Yes. As Chrome has to compete with more Chromium-based
| browsers (especially the new Chromium Edge), I expect Google
| will move more feature development from the open source
| Chromium core into closed source Chrome code.
|
| Android : Google Play Services :: Chromium : Google Chrome
| coldtea wrote:
| I don't think the reply tweet "We're not going Chromium" from a
| Mozilla engineer is really re-assuring.
|
| The team didn't know tons of people were going to be fired in the
| first place, so why would they know about such a change, or when
| it's their turn?
| remote_phone wrote:
| I use both browsers on my desktop simultaneously. I use Firefox
| for my Gmail and Facebook, so that my tracking is sandboxed in
| that browser along with tracking cookies, and most other browsing
| through chrome. If there's a difference in speed between the two
| it's largely academic, because I can't tell the difference. Plus
| I'm on an 8 year old desktop that I've yet to upgrade.
| jgowdy wrote:
| Zomg I love standards when they don't benefit the implementation
| I prefer, but fuck standards when they benefit the implementation
| I prefer. Great way to encourage companies in the future to
| contribute to standards you dumb short sighted hypocrites.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Language aside, I do agree. People should be happy that
| companies are contributing to standards rather than forcing
| them down people's throats by virtue of having a giant user
| base.
| chacha2 wrote:
| I've been wondering recently if you could classify Mozilla under
| the Bullshit Job heading. It seems they only exist at the moment
| to prevent Google from being regulated.
|
| Their stances on privacy and an open web don't seem to impact the
| browser any more than a chrome add-on would. Even this post is
| all about preventing Google from doing something malicious
| instead of the value they add.
|
| Is this an efficient society, to spend the lives of hundreds of
| extremely intelligent people duplicating solutions purely to slow
| down another organization? Isn't there a better solution to this?
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > Is this an efficient society, to spend the lives of hundreds
| of extremely intelligent people duplicating solutions purely to
| slow down another organization? Isn't there a better solution
| to this?
|
| Monocultures are a Bad Thing, even if it seems inefficient to
| have multiple competing implementations of a standard.
| Unfortunately the article does a poor job exploring why, it
| just rambles about slow-moving standards, so here's a short
| article from the IndieWeb folks [0]. It's good that we have
| various browsers, operating systems, compilers, standard
| library implementations, etc.
|
| (Crypto might be the exception, as implementations are very
| hard to get right, very costly to get wrong, and are highly
| reusable.)
|
| [0] https://indieweb.org/monoculture#Disadvantages
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Frank Herbert has a few writings [0] about a future galactic
| state that moves at such speed that they have needed to create
| an official Bureau of Sabotage, whose purpose it is to allow
| down the working of government to the point that it can be
| considered and understood in all its implications by the
| people.
|
| Perhaps we really are at that state in some ways/places, where
| just slowing down is a net good. Does the web really need all
| of this progress? Or is it more being dragged at increasing
| speeds in a harmful direction?
|
| [0] I know about "Whipping Star" and "The Dosadi Experiment",
| but there may be others.
| madrox wrote:
| Seeing this play out for the last 25 years (a quarter of a
| century...whoa), I think diversity in the browser space is the
| only reason we still have an open web. I worked at a large media
| company that had a stake in the way browsers handled video (ie
| DRM) when the specs were getting written. The only reason DRM
| didn't get a stronger foothold was because the spec had to be
| developed in the open as it was.
|
| View source would've been the first to go, though. I still
| remember arguments about whether that feature would survive back
| in 2005. I'm sure there were arguments about it even earlier than
| that.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Most of the web features beyond html 1.0 were 'proprietary'
| platform specific features developed internally at Netscape and
| rolled out with no consensus or standardization. Brandon Eich
| though something was a cool idea so he shipped it, end of story.
| I wish Firefox and Safari would start solving problems again and
| let other vendors decide wether or not to adopt their solution or
| develop their own. As it stands, google's vision is that all
| webpages are multi-thousand line programs that require full
| asynchronous network and local storage access just to display a
| news article. Requiring js for simply getting the user agent
| string (and increasingly everything else) is how they keep one
| step ahead of efforts to stop fingerprinting tracking and
| targeting.
| CalChris wrote:
| _Browser diversity keeps the Web deliberately slow_
|
| Would a single browser make the Web fast? No, it wouldn't. If
| Microsoft Explorer had won and locked down users and websites,
| would the Web today be fast? No, the Web would not be fast.
|
| Are there fast websites? Yes, I'm typing into one. I think the
| reason the web is slow is feature creep by both browsers and
| websites. Diversity is not the problem. Complexity is the
| problem.
| onion2k wrote:
| The difference between Chrome and IE is that IE didn't really
| benefit Microsoft in a noticeable way. They had no incentive to
| improve it once they had a monopoly.
|
| Chrome being faster, better and more feature-rich makes users
| stay in their browsers longer which benefits Google directly
| (which some might argue is actually a bad thing). But still,
| Google would have an incentive to not let Chrome stagnant even
| if they had 100% of the market.
| politician wrote:
| The article is talking about the rate of change of the specs,
| not the speed of loading a page.
| microtherion wrote:
| Yes, that was my reading of "slow" as well, but ironically,
| GP's point applies under that reading as well: When Microsoft
| dominated the web, the pace of spec evolution slowed down as
| well.
| CalChris wrote:
| _Browser diversity keeps the Web deliberately slow_
|
| It is very difficult to parse that sentence and come to your
| conclusion. I'll grant you, the author talks about innovation
| as well, but not in that sentence. You're free to mark it up
| to bad reading but perhaps it is bad writing.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Thankfully, the article is longer than that single
| sentence.
| frissonlabs wrote:
| Yes, based on that sentence alone, it would be ambiguous.
| But the author expanded on this with a whole section
| clarifying what he meant, which is about the rate of
| feature development and adoption. Not sure if you missed
| it, but it starts with "I think the Web platform's most
| frustrating aspect is also its greatest asset: it's slow.
| It's not just slow, it's " _it took 10 years1 to ship the
| <main> element which is just a spicy <div>" kind of slow.
| It's glacial._"
| CalChris wrote:
| If the author wants to conflate speed of the web with
| speed of innovation, that's on them.
| andrewem wrote:
| I think that sentence is misleading, and also that the
| author eventually gets around to making their meaning clear
| in the later section headed "Slow, like brisket." That
| section expands on the somewhat opaque initial formulation.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| Generally, I think that decentralization of power is a really
| important aspect of our society, and we should fight to preserve
| it. Just like we fight for free speech. This is because power
| tends to become centralized, unless we intentionally strive to do
| the opposite.
| ekianjo wrote:
| If the code remains open, the opportunity to decentralize power
| still exists.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I was going to link to a comment of mine that I bring up in
| response to this comment, when I realized I had made it in
| response to you. I'm still linking it here, since the
| comments there (and here) remain the same:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24327219.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Not really. There are two problems:
|
| 1) Developing and maintaing a modern browser is fantastically
| expensive and yet does not directly make any money. Few
| organisations have that kind of money to burn.
|
| 2) Chrome's (and Google's) market share gives them effective
| control of the "standard". You can fork all the code you like
| but if you ever stop singing Google's tune you've got a
| problem.
|
| Safari is the only browser able to effectively fight back
| against these two issues, and only in a limited way (mostly
| by dragging its feet as much as possible). They are only able
| to do this because the iPhone gives them a captive audience.
| Other organisations don't have this advantage.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| However today we have more than just an opportunity. We have
| a living example for a good competitive browser, and I think
| we should aspire to maintain it.
| kibwen wrote:
| It doesn't matter if Chrome's code is open, what matters is
| that Google controls Chrome's updating mechanism. The ability
| to fork the code doesn't mean anything if nobody uses your
| fork, and if you can't prove to site developers that people
| are going to use your browser then they won't go to the
| trouble of making their sites work in your browser, which
| means your fork has achieved no meaningful change.
| wintorez wrote:
| In almost everything, advancement comes from competition, and
| competition comes from diversity. Without diversity, things will
| become stale.
|
| Between the fall of Netscape and rise of Firefox; Internet
| Explorer reigned the Browsers, and to be honest web and web
| development was a boring field. Once Firefox was released, web
| and web development revived. It popularized things like web 2.0,
| table-less css layouts, using web browser as an application
| development platform, etc.
|
| Monopoly is never good, even if that monopoly is the best and
| perfect. There's innovation and strength in diversity. I always
| encourage people to never settle into one tool and always looks
| for alternatives out there.
| perardi wrote:
| So, if browser diversity is important, how do we keep it? We're
| at the point that Firefox's market share is quite small on
| desktop, and effectively zero on mobile.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers)
|
| What will plausibly change that? It's not privacy. I know we like
| to pretend people care about privacy, but people don't actually
| care about privacy, or they care about privacy in that they pay
| lip service to privacy, and go right ahead and keep using
| Facebook and TikTok.
|
| Chrome got ahead of Internet Explorer because it was appreciably
| faster, and had features like tabs. Is it possible to
| differentiate on features these days? I'd like to think so, but
| momentum is such a force.
| cxr wrote:
| > So, if browser diversity is important, how do we keep it?
|
| The same way it happened 10 years ago. If your non-techie
| family and friends for some reason have desktops or notebooks
| and not just phones and tablets, then ask them to use Firefox
| (or install it for them yourself). If they don't want to use
| Firefox but they have a MacBook, check if they're using Chrome,
| and if so, ask them to use Safari instead. If they're
| interested in getting a computer and want a recommendation,
| suggest they get a Mac instead of a Windows machine, and get
| them to use Safari or Firefox instead of Chrome. If they're
| trying to decide between an Android device and something from
| Apple, tell them that either is acceptable, but if they go for
| Android, ask them to install and use mobile Firefox instead of
| Chrome.
|
| If a techie friend is thinking about starting a project and
| there's a chance that they'll choose Electron, ask them to
| consider building on top of WebKit instead. In general, spread
| the word far and wide that WebKit exists and avoid feeding into
| the popular misconception that the only choices are Firefox or
| Chrome. If you yourself are interested in alternative, non-
| mainstream browsers, look first for a WebKit-based one, and
| maybe consider contributing yourself. However, if you're
| already using Firefox and consider it acceptable, try to keep
| using it instead of switching to WebKit. If you're looking to
| switch, try holding on as long as possible, but make sure your
| criticism is clear. (And it should be well-informed, too; as
| Frank Hecker mentioned, albeit more politely, there are too
| many people talking out of their ass when it comes to Mozilla.
| That goes for detractors _and_ advocates. The level of
| uninformedness--including the tweets quoted in the article--is
| pretty unreal.)
| saagarjha wrote:
| WebKit has a problem that nobody of consequence ships it on
| Windows and Android, the two largest operating systems by
| usage share. Until someone fixes this, Firefox is the only
| meaningful alternative.
| ckcheng wrote:
| Right, and it makes me wonder if it'd be better for Firefox
| and diversity of browser engines for FF to use WebKit.
|
| Looking at the StatCounter Aug 2020 stats [1], ignoring
| browsers less than 2% usage share (because I'm lazy), it
| looks like:
|
| Chromium based = 74.53%. Safari = 16.82%. Firefox = 4.09%
| (but effectively 0 on mobile).
|
| And that's with Apple forcing WebKit on Apple mobile
| devices.
|
| Throwing Firefox's 4% into WebKit could be like strategic
| voting to strengthen the opposition, stop splitting the
| vote, and reduce Mozilla's cost of maintaining FF (keeping
| their recent layoffs in mind).
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_brows
| ers#Su...
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I think that the general guideline here should be to enable
| good features that are disabled on chrome due to dark design
| patterns, and to emphasize and focus on these differences.
|
| For example the differentiation between Firefox sign in and
| website sign in, the mobile extensions, ad blocking, background
| playing in YouTube etc... Things that Mozilla can do but Google
| can't.
| CivBase wrote:
| > Chrome got ahead of Internet Explorer because it was
| appreciably faster, and had features like tabs.
|
| People say this all the time, but I'm not sure I 100% believe
| it.
|
| I suspect Chrome's current dominance was mostly fueled by
| Android and G-Suite. For many people, it became the default
| browser at work (thanks to enterprise adoption of G-Suite) and
| on their smartphone. People like familiarity and the incumbent
| (IE) had a _terrible_ reputation, so Chrome logically became
| the new normal. I think for the average user performance and
| features were just bonuses.
|
| It's not like Firefox performance or feature parity has
| historically been bad compared to Chrome. If performance and
| features were what people craved, Firefox would be doing fine.
| stekern wrote:
| For regular consumers, I'd say the biggest value proposition
| for Firefox on mobile, at least on Android, is the support for
| browser extensions such as uBlock Origin, and thus mobile ad-
| blocking.
|
| As an example, there's currently no straight-forward way for
| the average Joe to set up ad-blocking on a mobile device (excl.
| DoH/DoT using PiHole, NextDNS, etc.). Many non-technical users
| are, however, familiar with the usage of ad-blocking extensions
| in their desktop browsers. They might not know the nitty gritty
| of how ad-blocking works, but most people seem to have one
| installed. Installing and using such an extension is just as
| seamless on Firefox for Android as it is on a regular computer.
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| The web is a collection of standard protocols which browsers
| support because they do not have enough influence to push their
| own protocol, which would undoubtedly serve the interests of the
| company who develops and distributes the browser at the exclusion
| of other would-be browser competitors. IE6 is a perfect example
| of what happens when a lack of browser diversity allows one
| browser to push their own, self-interested, proprietary
| protocols.
| bonestormii_ wrote:
| I'm almost to the point of being indifferent whether companies
| "destroy the web" through things like a browser monoculture. It
| would be a tragedy, but you can only ask people to deal with so
| much, and the web != the internet.
|
| We are in an age of webassembly in browsers. For all the
| complexity of the modern web, riddle me this: What is the
| difference between a website executing arbitrary web assembly
| code in the sandbox of the browser, and any TCP connection
| sending a program which is loaded in a sandbox and executing on
| the user's computer? The difference seems to me to be simply the
| fact that it is _integrated_ into the web, web browsers, etc. If
| we are truly at the point where this is how we want to do things
| --like, we want to write web apps in Rust and compile for web
| assembly--The web is becoming less distinct and therefore less
| valuable as a paradigm.
|
| I'm not a user of any document-only web alternatives, but in this
| model, it would be pretty cool to see a re-separation into a web-
| of-linked-documents and network-of-sandboxed-remote-applications.
|
| Society wouldn't swallow such a thing easily, but if they push
| the web far enough into a proprietary hellscape, desirable
| services will likely start to emerge outside of it. All it takes
| is for those services to be attractive enough to start drawing
| disenfranchised stragglers, and the next thing you know, your mom
| is downloading recipes off the new not-web web without a care in
| the world.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| If you want to experience browser monoculture just buy an iPad or
| a iPhone, where every browser is Safari. The platform doesn't
| even allow proper PWAs
| madrox wrote:
| This is not really correct, since I'm writing this to you
| through Chrome on an iPad.
|
| Edit: I stand corrected. I learned something about my browser
| today.
| katsura wrote:
| Chrome is just a re-skinned Safari on iOS:
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios-
| is-i...
| tomger wrote:
| Apple requires iOS browsers to use WebKit rendering and
| WebKit JS.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
| katsura wrote:
| Wouldn't this be solved if they would switch to Chrome as well?
| Note, I'm not saying they should. But this is exactly the kind
| of problem that a global single engine would solve. The same
| things could run on every device where that engine is
| available.
| [deleted]
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Ironically this is the only reason Safari has the market share
| it does. If Apple didn't force its browser on iOS users, Chrome
| would dominate there too.
| nnauz wrote:
| The last thing I want is more mobile and desktop apps written
| using web technologies. Thanks, Apple.
| ddingus wrote:
| Oh how I wish Mozilla could be forked and a small Netscape type
| group could pose a great answer to this question!
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Those features aren't bad, just not my favorite. "Bad" usually
| comes in the form of unilaterally shipped features that take a
| long time to fix, retroactively standardize, or undo (e.g. vendor
| prefixes, <dialog>, window.event, etc). Again, once shipped,
| they're shipped. They linger around in the platform, working in
| some browsers, never in another, frustrating developers. It
| produces brittleness.
|
| This is a problem created by browser diversity, not one that
| browser diversity would solve.
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(page generated 2020-09-20 23:00 UTC)