[HN Gopher] History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today...
___________________________________________________________________
History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today (2022)
Author : phil294
Score : 126 points
Date : 2023-01-13 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eylenburg.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (eylenburg.github.io)
| gnufx wrote:
| Others I know of: MMM (CAML Light with applets, '90s), Emacs/W3
| (which Bill Perry claimed had the first CSS implementation),
| Abaco (Plan9)
| jmyeet wrote:
| Obligatory reference to the inverse relationship between Firefox
| market share and the Mozilla Foundation's chair's compensation
| [1].
|
| It is sad to see Firefox become so irrelevant. As much as people
| blame Google for this (and it is true Google relentlessly pushed
| Chrome) but people forget just how innovative Chrome was and how
| Firefox didn't respond to these issues.
|
| I remember when Chrome launched and it was revolutionary how it
| was one-process-per-tab (technically, it's site isolation not tab
| isolation but let's not get lost in the sauce). No longer could
| an errant website take down your entire browser (mostly). I kept
| wondering why Firefox didn't copy this. It took them years. What
| were they doing?
|
| Now I appreciate Mozilla bringing Rust into existence (not
| without problems and early design mistakes [2]) but the initial
| goal seemed to be rewriting the browser in a memory-safe language
| and that never seem to eventuate..
|
| [1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
|
| [2]: https://www.pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-
| calamity...
| zackmorris wrote:
| Wow I didn't know that! Looks like it's $3 million now:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
|
| An entire web browser could be written from scratch
| independently for that kinda cash.
|
| That's so disappointing that I don't think I can ever look at
| Mozilla or Firefox the same way again. As a software engineer,
| I would not work at an organization with such a huge
| discrepancy in pay. It almost makes me feel better about a
| lifetime of failure, so I guess I should be grateful.
|
| It's just looking more and more every day like wealth
| inequality is the great problem of our time, effectively
| halting progress beyond a certain point.
| vkou wrote:
| > An entire web browser could be written from scratch
| independently for that kinda cash.
|
| Only if you think you could re-implement Twitter in a
| weekend.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| noAnswer wrote:
| > I remember when Chrome launched and it was revolutionary how
| it was one-process-per-tab (technically, it's site isolation
| not tab isolation but let's not get lost in the sauce). No
| longer could an errant website take down your entire browser
| (mostly)
|
| I still used Opera 12 in 2016 when I finally searched for an
| alternative. Not only did websites crash(upside down bird) way
| more often in Chrome (multiple times a week in Chrome vs. once
| every two weeks in Opera), but every time a crashed tab took
| the entire browser with it! It's one of those times where you
| question reality. Everyone says one thing, your experience says
| something else!
|
| It literally took years for that feature to materialise.
| Now(tm) if a tab crashes, the browser stays. Since I'm a
| Vivaldi user now I couldn't even tell if that's more Vivaldi's
| or Chrome's doing.
|
| I also remember, opening a new tab in Opera 12 was without
| delay. You gave the command and it was just there. On Chrome,
| with a !EIGHT!YEAR!newer! CPU it took 3 to 4 seconds! I figured
| it must be the 4MB JPG background image I chose. Sure enough,
| it was the image. Without it, it was still 1/2 seconds to open
| a new tab, though. Only now, with an even newer CPU, it feels
| on par with Opera 12.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > This promising engine [Servo] was developed by Mozilla[...]
| Mozilla fired a quarter of their developers, which apparently
| included the whole Servo team. There have still been some commits
| to the code since then (presumably by hobbyists) but it is
| questionable if Servo will have a future.
|
| Why do people keep framing the story this way? Servo's future is
| in Gecko.
|
| always_has_been.jpg
|
| The Servo _repo_ was a testbed that allowed people to work on
| new, Rust-based browser components without anyone having to pass
| the type of code reviews that are necessary for a _production Web
| browser that is by the way already continually shipping to
| millions of existing users_.
|
| This (far too common) meme of Servo as a somehow failed separate
| browser engine that was supposed to, I dunno, be swapped out at
| some indefinite point and retire the lizard or something is very
| weird.
| santoshalper wrote:
| "Gecko (Firefox). Down to 4% market share, mismanaged by Mozilla
| which prioritizes pushing its toxic politics over improving the
| browser."
|
| Unlike the author, who clearly has no agenda or axe to grind.
| [deleted]
| Y_Y wrote:
| I love Firefox the browser, but they keep throwing stuff at me
| that I have no interest in. After the Pocket debacle and the
| Mr. Robot thing I stopped paying attention, but I bet if I
| found out what colorways was or that new little pinned tab
| thing then I'd get upset too.
|
| All that to say, I think a personal blog is a better place to
| grind axes than the start page of a hugely important software
| tool.
| sfink wrote:
| Is the presence of Pocket pushing toxic politics, or is it
| the Mr. Robot extension?
|
| I understand that people have complaints and want to hang
| onto others' past mistakes, but I fail to see how either of
| those (Pocket&Robot) can be classified as either toxic
| politics or axe grinding.
|
| They're both monetization tactics that many people disliked.
| Which somehow resulted in people finding Mozilla untouchable,
| because apparently nobody else has problematic monetization
| attempts?
| awelxtr wrote:
| I'm ootl, Pocket debacle?
| johnny22 wrote:
| really out of the loop then, because it was like 5 years
| ago or so :) Firefox add a button to integrate a third
| party service (pocket) in the default install and i think
| it added it to your current pinned icon areas (where
| extension button go). It was also not implemented as a
| proper extension, so you couldn't actually remove support
| for it, but only the icon.
|
| Later on Mozilla did buy pocket, so it was no longer third
| party.
|
| Anyways, a lot of people got super mad with the way they
| went about it.
| awelxtr wrote:
| thank you!
| password4321 wrote:
| It might be worth removing the word "toxic"; is it not clear
| that " _Mozilla prioritizes pushing its [...] politics over
| improving the browser_ "?
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The CEO of Mozilla infamous for his toxic homophobic anti-gay-
| marriage politics of hate and bigotry resigned from Mozilla of
| his own free will, and was not fired or pushed out, as his
| GamerGate fanboys love to falsely claim.
|
| (Some of many examples of people pushing that false claim:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994164
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24145537
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566200 )
|
| He confirmed the fact that he resigned in his own words on his
| very own blog. In fact, the Mozilla board begged him to stay.
| The idea that he was pushed out or fired is just yet another
| false GamerGate conspiracy theory.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/faq-on-ceo-resignation/
|
| >1. Brendan was not fired and was not asked by the Board to
| resign. Brendan voluntarily submitted his resignation. The
| Board acted in response by inviting him to remain at Mozilla in
| another C-level position. Brendan declined that offer. The
| Board respects his decision.
|
| >Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?
|
| >A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:
|
| >"I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and
| leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and
| under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective
| leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next."
|
| >Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.
|
| https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/
|
| >Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?
|
| >A: No. It was Brendan's idea to resign, and in fact, once he
| submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan
| to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.
| throw-7462637 wrote:
| How sad and tired that you have to keep dragging up this old
| story. I'm not going to go in the merits but may I suggest
| it's time for forgiveness and reconciliation?
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Lol that whole page was clearly built to make some people
| happy but goes WAY too far down the rabbit hole to make sure
| the homophobes feel included.
| wussboy wrote:
| Right? Because that's totally why Firefox's market share has
| gone down and is not at all related to a billion dollar
| corporation ruthlessly and relentlessly pushing its
| competitor...
| lolinder wrote:
| Mozilla is hopelessly mismanaged.
|
| The entire Android app was overhauled a while back, dropping
| functionally and decreasing stability, and has since been
| pretty much ignored even though it is still missing features
| and is still painfully clunky and prone to crash. The
| developer tools on the desktop app were ahead of Chrome but
| have stagnated, and they're slow to adopt new standards, but
| they somehow find time to add things no one asked for like
| Colorways and a VPN.
|
| I want Firefox to get its traction back, but it's hard to
| cheer for Mozilla or blame Google when I see them twiddling
| their thumbs like this.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _I want Firefox to get its traction back, but it 's hard to
| cheer for Mozilla or blame Google when I see them twiddling
| their thumbs like this._
|
| I don't think this will happen. I think they will just fade
| away. They are completely dysfunctional now.
|
| Some say it is due to the whole woke movement, and it may
| be, but really, I see it as due to politics.
|
| By that I mean, politics is nothing but divisive, and if
| you introduce it into a company, as a corporate culture,
| you're going to regret it.
|
| IMO, work is where you leave religion, and politics(the
| other religion) at home.
|
| And Mozilla is paying the price for letting it in.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > due to the whole woke movement
|
| yes, and forcing out there reasonable CEO for a purity
| test, long ago.. HELO BRAVE
| kome wrote:
| "The entire Android app was overhauled a while back,
| dropping functionally and decreasing stability"
|
| And yet it's the only mainstream browser for android that
| support, natively, ad-blocking. Using chrome on mobile is a
| joke.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Edge on android blocks ads.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| Regardless of how much or how strongly Chrome may have been
| advertised, we can't forget that a lot of IE and Firefox
| users ultimately decided to try Chrome, then went ahead and
| actually installed Chrome, then actively used Chrome, and
| most importantly, decided to keep on using Chrome instead of
| the other browser(s).
|
| All of that didn't just happen because of advertising. It
| happened become Chrome offered very compelling benefits over
| its competitors.
|
| For many users, Chrome was faster, lighter, more secure, and
| offered a better all-around user experience than its
| competitors did. Even now, that's still largely the case.
|
| Advertising alone can't make that happen.
| kome wrote:
| "Regardless of how much or how strongly Chrome may have
| been advertised, we can't forget that a lot of IE and
| Firefox users ultimately decided to try Chrome"
|
| Google for years installed Chrome using installers of other
| applications, like malware. I am talking of 10 years ago,
| that was common practice for google, on windows. So a lot
| of users found themselves using Chrome without even knowing
| they were using chrome.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Firefox didn't always work as well in an SSO corporate
| environment, where Chrome was able to shoe-in for IE.
|
| From a sysadmin perspective, Firefox having its own cert
| store instead of relying on system store was an extra
| hurdle for corp IT people.
|
| Then there is the fact that Chrome goes out of its way to
| integrate with Google's other properties which they market
| to corporations to replace Office.
|
| So I'm saying, I believe FF would have done better if they
| tried harder to integrate with corporate environments
| without compromising on their capability and independence.
| Name recognition is a big thing.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Mozilla had a lot of goodwill, particularly in the tech
| world. With the right strategy, they could have translated
| that into thousands of influential websites encouraging users
| to use Firefox.
|
| Things like releasing features for firefox users first,
| because devs like firefox and it had better devtools, would
| have kept the firefox userbase afloat.
|
| Instead the mozilla devtools have been allowed to fall
| behind, web apps are no longer developed firefox-first, and
| mozilla lost it's opportunity.
| mndgs wrote:
| Really surprised that FF is only 4% market share now: what did
| I miss? Never followed the browser wars, just used what I liked
| then (chrome -> opera -> FF for the past year or so..). Turns
| out I'm on the sinking ship...
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > Really surprised that FF is only 4% market share now: what
| did I miss?
|
| The explosion of mobile.
| vkou wrote:
| > what did I miss?
|
| You missed the pre-installed browser and applications bundled
| with your computer becoming good enough that ~nobody is going
| to www.firefox.com to download a browser on a fresh install.
| This isn't 2004, you no longer need to spend three hours
| downloading software to make a fresh install of Windows
| usable.
|
| That, and a weak mobile app.
| orangeoxidation wrote:
| > what did I miss
|
| Mobile is eating the web. Mobile (Android - it's all Safari
| on iOs) Firefox is a bad experience.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > pushing its toxic politics
|
| While I wouldn't describe Mozilla leadership as that... I don't
| think you'll find many people who think Mozilla leadership have
| made good strategic decisions in the last 5 years.
| [deleted]
| RealCodingOtaku wrote:
| Also, "Goanna (Pale Moon), a fork of an old version of Gecko.
| At 0% market share and always at risk of not catching up with
| _the newest web standards that Google invents_ ".
|
| Google don't make web standards
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_standards
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Ahahah... We have someone who thinks that the W3C/OWF has any
| real power. That's hilarious.
|
| This is what actually happens: 1. Google (Who is a member of
| both W3C and OWF) announces a plan/ships a feature. 2. With
| 80% of the browser market, people use it or get excited by
| it. 3. The W3C/OWF ratifies the feature as a standard.
|
| This is literally how 90% of web standards happen today.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Cool graph, but I think in cases where. Lot of your data ends up
| indistinguishable from zeros it's better to use something like a
| log scale. We all know Chrome is the biggest by far, but I have
| now well to tell how the usage of, say, Links has changed over
| time.
| acheron wrote:
| First graphical browser I used was Slipknot [0], which doesn't
| appear to be listed.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlipKnot_(web_browser)
|
| (Edit: I see it now, must have skipped over it before.)
| hiena03 wrote:
| It's a shame Opera didn't go to the open source route. Opera with
| Presto was a great browser.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Add-On topic of what I think is the most important component of a
| web browser: A timeline of JavaScript Just-In-Time (JIT) engines.
|
| https://egbert.net/blog/tags/jit.html
|
| sorry, last time I checked on March 2022, Google Chrome cannot
| negotiate for my ChaCha-only TLS website; instead try using a
| Safari, Brave, Firefox, Edge, Aloha, OnionBrowser, Orion, Links,
| or Lynx web broswer, to name a few).
|
| Meanwhile it is an ongoing crazy ride just mapping the evolution
| of WASM (in my next planned blog).
| kccqzy wrote:
| I did a Wireshark capture. It's your server that sends back a
| TLS alert for handshake failure.
|
| Now, Chrome certainly supports ChaCha20 and Poly1305, but it
| could be that your server is rejecting some other extensions in
| Chrome's Client Hello.
| password4321 wrote:
| This actually sounds like a great way to hide from most of
| Google's influence; thanks!
|
| edit: My main interest is whether or not this blocks Googlebot.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's easy enough to block Googlebot... It obeys robots.txt
| and has a distinctive user agent...
| egberts1 wrote:
| An accidental discovery on my part that came from
| strengthening my website.
|
| It was never about maximizing my readership, just the ones
| that know what they are doing.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Doesn't work on edge. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
| shadowgovt wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230113174325/Https://egbert.ne...
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| Perhaps send them a pull request to fix it, and see what they
| say?
|
| I can't really imagine why they wouldn't want to support it...
| I wonder if it was an oversight rather than a policy decision?
| egberts1 wrote:
| I merely configured the website server TLS protocol to my
| exacting specs (in cryptographic and network security
| theatre) and Chrome failed because its client "demands" the
| non-ChaCha variants despite my TLS server INSISTING "my way
| or the highway".
|
| Beside, I am quite partial toward Firefox browser so there is
| little benefit for me to file a report to help Firefox's
| competitors.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Looking again, your server is rejecting their HELO message.
| You seem to be using a modern cipher yet requiring a legacy
| (http/1.1) protocol, which I suspect is the issue. Adding
| an advertisement for TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 to every
| TLS 1.3 handshake worldwide would add a _lot_ of gigabytes
| of global bandwidth, for support of an awfully unusual
| configuration. Those 4 bytes in every http request globally
| probably isn 't worth it just for you.
|
| Take a look at this trace [1].
|
| I think it's pretty clear the client is offering a bunch of
| things, including TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256, and your
| server just replies 'nah, goodbye'.
|
| Perhaps your server doesn't like the ESNI extension?
|
| [1]: https://pastebin.com/ffP4cPJi
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| superkuh wrote:
| Yes, corporation persons desperately want people to move
| to http/2 and http/3 for for-profit reasons. They're
| terrible protocols for human persons though. Phasing out
| http/1.1 support in chrome/etc means phasing out the
| ability to host a website that can be visited by someone
| you don't know without the continued permission from a
| third party TLS CA.
| jwilk wrote:
| It's still broken in Google Chrome 109 (the latest stable
| version) on Linux:
|
| > _egbert.net uses an unsupported protocol._
|
| > _ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH_
| egberts1 wrote:
| which is what I expected given that Google Chrome chose to
| ignore the server's "my options only or nothing".
| jonahbenton wrote:
| I wrote a browser for Macs (System 7) in 1995-7 through a
| contract with James Gleick's Pipeline ISP [0], commercially
| available in the US. Don't see it listed, will reach out.
|
| 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pipeline
| gernb wrote:
| What does it mean "WebKit peak 49% market share" in 2012. That
| doesn't pass the sniff test. AFAIK, Safari never had a big
| install based on Windows and MacOS+iOS certainly didn't account
| for 49% of web traffic in 2012
| cpeterso wrote:
| The page is about browser engines, not browsers. Chrome was
| still using WebKit in 2012. Chrome switched to Blink in 2013.
| normaljoe wrote:
| Chrome used WebKit until the Blink fork in 2013. That should
| make the numbers work. :)
| no_wizard wrote:
| Interesting synopsis and confirms something I've always felt:
| There was never really a plurality of web browsers, there was
| always one that held an outsized majority vs the rest and drove
| web development practice. The closest, perhaps, was a brief
| period before Chrome became dominate and IE was waning fast,
| where I believe Safari, Firefox, and Chrome held approximately
| the same market share vs IE, which would be in the 2010-2013 era
| (peak Webkit was 2012), which I personally regard as one of the
| most interest times to be both on the web and be a web developer,
| it was also before Chrome forked Webkit fully IIRC.
|
| FWIW, I know having Chrome / Chromium as the overwhelming
| majority browser is not great, if for the sheer fact competition
| keeps everyone "honest" in a way, but they are by far the most
| "benevolent" from a developer perspective. IE was truly both
| stagnant and terrible.
|
| EDIT: that's not to say I approve the Chromium dominance, as a
| daily Firefox user especially, but I would be lying if I said,
| from a developer perspective, that Chromium hasn't been pretty
| good so far on balance. They do innovate. They do push new
| features. They do usually support the latest specs. Though again,
| I don't approve of it being so dominate, I'd prefer a plurality.
| Its a shame that Microsoft didn't use Firefox as its base for new
| Edge
| jedberg wrote:
| > which would be in the 2010-2013 era (peak Webkit was 2012),
| which I personally regard as one of the most interest times to
| be both on the web and be a web developer
|
| Oh man, it depends on your definition of interesting. That was
| the time we had 3-5 engineers at reddit, and let me tell you,
| making reddit work for all the browsers was awful (and I barely
| had anything to do with it, it mostly fell on the other guys).
| It got to the point where every reddit page had "Fuck ie6" as a
| comment somewhere in the html, because a bunch of people were
| still using it and it didn't support a lot of the stuff the
| other browsers did.
|
| While the consolidation of browsers isn't great from a market
| perspective, it's been great for developers sanity. :)
| no_wizard wrote:
| Yes, dealing with IE (even IE 11, up until the last 2-3 years
| for me) was a pain back then, as it was circa 2020.
|
| That said, it saw a lot of innovations broadly, web
| development was taken alot more seriously as a profession,
| and saw some interesting frameworks come out (Ember, Angular,
| and later React) and jQuery sure made life easier by that
| time.
|
| I even have some fond memories of KnockoutJS. My most
| favorite, and probably most underrated framework in the
| history of web development, was SproutCore, which had legs at
| this time.
|
| From a culture side (user?) it was the heyday of things like
| Delicious, Foursquare, Good Twitter (IMO) and blog rolls.
| Mobile web was rolling out in earnest. Alot of innovation was
| happening in this space.
| [deleted]
| deburo wrote:
| Haha, I was interviewing for an internship in those years,
| and I remember asking the only webdev guy there if he thought
| he had the coolest job in the company (I sure thought that
| the web was better than Windows). The guy just looked at me
| like I was crazy.
| password4321 wrote:
| Saying ' _Chrome / Chromium [...] are by far the most
| "benevolent" from a developer perspective_' is painting a bit
| of a target on your back here, I think.
|
| edit: (over Firefox, sorry I wasn't clear)
| vkou wrote:
| > is painting a bit of a target on your back here, I think.
|
| Only for anyone who has forgotten just how wretched and
| stagnant IE6 was, and how long the web ossified around it,
| and how much work it took to overcome the inertia of a crappy
| browser[1] shipped by a monopolist that _did not want you to
| use the web_.
|
| There are many legitimate reasons to grouse about Chrome,
| Google, Google owning Chrome, etc, but the problems
| surrounding it are, I feel, an order of magnitude smaller
| than what we had in the 00s.
|
| [1] The delta between IE6 and Firefox 1.0 was incredible, and
| everyone working on the web _despised_ the work required to
| make websites work on the former.
| irrational wrote:
| But... Firefox came out before Chrome. It's not like we had
| to use IE6 until Chrome came out. I started using Firefox
| as soon as it came out and have used it continuously ever
| since.
| boundlessdreamz wrote:
| For an end user, Firefox was great. But the wide
| prevalence of IE meant that
|
| * Sometimes sites worked only in IE or broke subtly in
| other browsers. The subtle breaking could be layout
| differences or functionality not available/working
| because the developers used IE specific
| technology/javascript
|
| * Developers had to code for the lowest common
| denominator - IE. It really held back web applications
|
| * Debugging any errors in IE was a royal pain
| no_wizard wrote:
| I mean, on balance, compared with the IE reigning years,
| Chromium is better than that, and its been mostly (again,
| from a developer perspective) a net positive in day to day
| developers lives that Chrome has not stagnated and new
| features ship.
|
| That however, is not to say that its okay. There's other,
| broader issues than just developer experience to care about
| here, like what a Google dominated web means, because via
| Chrome, they can push a great deal around how the web
| actually works, which is a net loss to society. It can stifle
| other innovations. Things of that nature.
|
| Good DX isn't the whole story
| smm11 wrote:
| I use Firefox for M365 access, since it assumes nothing from
| Windows, and doesn't try to suck everything in like Chrome.
| Edge for 365 can't figure out which of the 11 accounts it finds
| should be the one I'd like to use.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Common story with platforms, isn't it? It's like a huge magnet
| drawing everyone to Windows or Intel.
|
| I wonder how much is end user driven, and how much is
| intermediary driven though. Is it that the customers are only
| comfortable with one item in each category, or is it the middle
| men who prefer to sell things that are all connected by the
| same platform?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Psychology plays a big part, change and differences. Folk
| don't like change nor difference. You have to be willing to
| embrace it.
|
| You can do this yourself. Watch your mind freakout and give
| yourself a panic attack if you were to drag an frequented
| used app; icon from your phone in to an obscure new location
| or app folder. Frequent bookmark to another folder or off the
| bookmark bar.
|
| You get used to it but change is scary because its unknown
| and so unless you can adjust the user quickly and promptly
| they will reject whats given to them. Or innovate something
| whole and new thats never been done before.
|
| Add the fact that major brands have user friendly in hand,
| trying to convince someone to install Linux with its clunky
| installer as an example; really throws them off edge.
|
| Nowadays trying to get anyone to change really causes them to
| melt and its only going to get worse as we go on further
| through the rabbit hole of social media.
|
| So why change when you already have something that just
| works, that your used to and friends with. Even if it
| backstabs you with updates, missing icons and leaks your data
| to the world. It's still feels like your old friend, cosy and
| comforting.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's both.
|
| The vast, vast bulk of computer users are more interested in
| the destination than the journey. They don't really want to
| _have_ to care what browser or OS or app they 're using...
| They want to manage their finances, or make art, or surf the
| web, etc.
|
| When the destination is the point, small amounts of asymmetry
| tends to accrue more asymmetry because it's easier to solve
| problems if the help ecosystem is larger to address when the
| tool doesn't work the way the user wants it to.
| irrational wrote:
| > but they are by far the most "benevolent" from a developer
| perspective
|
| Can you clarify what you mean by this? I've been using Firefox
| continuously since version 1 for both personal and development
| purposes. I've never felt like Firefox was not benevolent.
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