[HN Gopher] Google and Mozilla are working on iOS browsers that ... ___________________________________________________________________ Google and Mozilla are working on iOS browsers that aren't based on WebKit Author : Liriel Score : 29 points Date : 2023-02-07 10:00 UTC (12 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com) | JohnDeHope wrote: | Technical question: What would a third party browser rendering | engine allow, that using the safari renderer doesn't? I figure if | you make a browser by just wrapping the safari renderer then you | can make it do whatever you want it to. Why does the renderer | make such that big of a difference? | kevingadd wrote: | Actual extensions (like ublock!), bleeding edge/experimental | web features like new webassembly or web APIs (firefox and | chrome usually implement these before Safari does), stuff Apple | has decided to sabotage because it threatens the app store | (like fullscreen). | scarface74 wrote: | Safari has supported "actual extensions" for two yeass. | jwitthuhn wrote: | Yes but their API is very limited and by design doesn't | allow a good ad blocker like ublock to be built. | scarface74 wrote: | The actual "extension" framework does. It's used by | 1Blocker. Not just the "we send you a JSON set of rules". | | But on the other hand, if you care about your privacy, | why would you trust a third party to intercept all of | your web traffic? | commoner wrote: | > But on the other hand, if you care about your privacy, | why would you trust a third party to intercept all of | your web traffic? | | uBlock Origin is free and open source, and its code is | thoroughly reviewed by many contributors every release. I | trust uBlock Origin over a filtering mechanism built into | a closed source browser such as Safari. | scarface74 wrote: | WebKit is also open source and you can see exactly how it | works. | | But did you personally download the open source version | review the code and install it? | [deleted] | dmitriid wrote: | > web APIs (firefox and chrome usually implement these before | Safari does) | | What you meant to say: Chrome implements its own non- | standards against strenuous objections if both Firefox and | Safari. | kevingadd wrote: | I said what I meant to say, I've literally drafted web | standards before and Safari is often the last to implement | them. I'm not talking about WebUSB or WebGoogleAnalytics or | whatever | robertoandred wrote: | So what are you talking about? Sticky? Has? Subgrid? | creatonez wrote: | Firefox addons on iOS, ported directly from the desktop | versions with no modifications, will be possible. Gecko has a | lot of under-the-hood knobs and dials that simply don't exist | in Webkit, but are needed by the addon ecosystem. | gnicholas wrote: | That would be great! Is it currently available on FF for | Android? | Mogzol wrote: | Yes, you can run standard desktop Firefox extensions on FF | for Android. There was a whitelist of extensions Mozilla | allowed you to install though, I'm not sure if that still | exists on the most recent versions. | rektide wrote: | Your scope is way way off. | | It's far from just the render engine that's being constrained. | The whole virtual machine is restricted. The DOM, the js | engine, the wasm engine, anything at all running or touching | web code is locked the heck down. | | There's a couple places browsers can add or supplant web | platform features, but it largely prevents browsers from doing | much at all to add to the web platform in any way. | | In the rendering case, there's always work on css features & | especially tuning that the browsers are up to. Just being | faster, lighter weight, having more or better tuning is a great | capability, a place where more than one small in-group should | be able to experiment & improve & explore. | shmerl wrote: | Good. But Apple shouldn't get away with just allowing it. They | should pay for violating competition law for years. Otherwise | this law is a joke. | fabrice_d wrote: | Here's a video of the GeckoKit demo: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-4b082Upw | chadlavi wrote: | oh good I can't wait to have to support more mobile browsers, | great | WirelessGigabit wrote: | Safari, especially on iOS is the new IE. | | What I really like to see next to this is the requirement that | when I tap a link in an app that it opens in the default browser. | | Too many apps, such as Reddit open with the WebView of Safari, | which sucks. I'm not signed in there, it doesn't add to my | history, and most importantly, they get to inject a whole bunch | of tracks that I don't want. See [0]. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32514793 | tristan957 wrote: | Doesn't Android open the Chrome web view too? On F-Droid I | think you can get a Bromite web view, but I'm not sure how | these web views work, and if I can get a Firefox one. | Kwpolska wrote: | When you open a link in an app, you're often directed to a | Custom Tab (you can recognise them by the menu in the upper | right corner being the browser's). Those are handled by your | default browser. I'm using Firefox Focus in that capacity and | it works great. | NotYourLawyer wrote: | Would love to have real Firefox on iPhone. I hope Chrome gets | banned from the App Store though. | vhanda wrote: | Could you please elaborate why you hope 'Chrome gets banned'? | | I understand not being fond of the its ubiquity, especially | with many Websites now requiring Chrome. And Google is | _allegedly_ abusing their dominant position. But banning it? | Why? | NotYourLawyer wrote: | Browser monoculture = shitty internet future. | lxgr wrote: | And the solution to that is (almost certainly illegal, | under the new regulations) market manipulation by a direct | competitor? | NotYourLawyer wrote: | Hey I'm just dreaming here, not like offering legal | advice. | kelnos wrote: | So the solution to a browser monoculture is to... approve | fewer browsers? Seems backwards to me. | NotYourLawyer wrote: | Yes, that's right. Not fewer at random though. | amelius wrote: | > Apple could still conceivably impose limitations on the way | these browsers work | | God damnit it's my device. | vehemenz wrote: | But it's not your decision to buy an Android phone? | kevingadd wrote: | A significant % of people who buy iPhones are not able to | make a truly informed decision about this at the time. They | find out way later what the actual consequences of apple or | google's walled gardens are, and can only escape the garden | if they have an android phone with an unlocked bootloader | | It's not cheap to swap ecosystems | tehwebguy wrote: | > A significant % of people who buy iPhones are not able to | make a truly informed decision about this at the time | | I mean the devices change year to year but are people | seriously finding themselves surprised by what iPhone can | do but Android can't or vice versa? | | If we were talking about a college tuition loan or a | mortgage then yeah I'd say `not able to make a truly | informed decision about this at the time` but this is like | the lowest stakes decision possible no? | | > It's not cheap to swap ecosystems | | Is that true? Seems like there is always a nearly free | phone deal out there and your network will probably migrate | everything for you anyway. | pessimizer wrote: | > If we were talking about a college tuition loan or a | mortgage | | Why are you giving examples where all of the terms are | explained completely, up front, by law? | kevingadd wrote: | Walled garden policies make full migration not possible, | at least for free. Things like your music library, | ebooks, in-app currency, etc are often not allowed to | move. | | If I were to move to iPhone now, I'd have to spend at | least a hundred bucks finding and buying alternative | apps. | saurik wrote: | FWIW, in my case, I would also lose access to all of the | books, music, movies, and--very notably--apps that I have | purchased over the years. | scarface74 wrote: | Where is this narrative coming from? Only about 20% of App | Store revenue coming from non game in app consumables (came | out in the Epic Trial) and the other big money makers are | from services like Netflix and Spotify where you can easily | use your app cross platform. Even Apple Music is available | for Android. | | Most users aren't complaining about any "walled garden" | kelnos wrote: | Buying an Android phone certainly allows you to run other | browsers that use their own rendering engines, but Android is | hardly open; you are still restricted in many ways from doing | what you might want to do, with little recourse. Installing a | third-party OS image is possible, but then removes your | access from some things that you might still like (any app | that requires SafetyNet to pass, for example). | | The bottom line is that there is no open phone platform out | there that even remotely provides feature parity with Android | or iOS. Anything you do is going to be a trade off, and for | some people, there is no way to satisfy 100% of their needs | and wants. That doesn't mean we aren't allowed to complain | about the bits that can't be satisfied. | detaro wrote: | And if they'd bought one, and were unhappy about some aspect | of that, you'd be here and write " _But it 's not your | decision to buy an iPhone?_". We don't live in a world were | you can get your perfect choice with no compromises, and | having made a compromise does not imply that you can't | criticize decisions made by the system you choose. | irrational wrote: | You could have chosen any device. This is just the consequence | of choosing the wrong device (for you). | amelius wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo | detaro wrote: | And you have no way of knowing if a "non-wrong" device exists | for their criteria among the "any device" they could have | choosen from. | irrational wrote: | It is simple, choose an Android device. There are many | premium android devices. | | If you don't know by now that on iOS devices all the | browsers are running the same engine under the hood, | especially on a tech site like HN, then there isn't much | hope for you. | kelnos wrote: | I'm a reasonably-satisfied Android user, but Android is | nearly as locked down as iOS. Sure, I can (and do) run | "real" Firefox on my Pixel, and can (and do) side-load | apps, but there are quite a few things I can't do. | | For example, my Pixel 4 just fell out of Google's 3-year | support period, so I no longer get security updates. I | would be completely happy to run LineageOS or some other | alternative that would extend the life of the phone with | regular updates, but I can't if I still want to be able | to use Google Pay and other apps that require the phone | to pass SafetyNet. Those sorts of apps are a part of my | day-to-day, so being unable to use them would be a | showstopper. (I've read various things about tricking | apps into believing the phone passes SafetyNet, but none | of the methods seem particularly reliable, and for every | user who says it works, there's another person who | couldn't get it to work.) | | So sure, it is technically possible for me to treat the | phone as "open" and run whatever OS image on it I want, | but then I become restricted in other ways as to what I | can do on it. Maybe you don't care about being able to | pay for things using your phone (etc.); that's fine. But | I do, and I consider it a critical feature these days. | lxgr wrote: | Given that there isn't an individual vote on each property of | a device/ecosystem, iOS is probably the least evil rather | than a completely optimal choice for many (if not most!) | users. | | Just imagine that type of reasoning applied to other parts of | life, like politics, work, interpersonal relationships... | "Love it, change it, or leave it" has three components, not | two. | saurik wrote: | People in this situation could also have chosen to not buy a | cell phone in the first place, eschewing that benefit for | using landlines or cordless phones; and yet, I don't think we | would consider that a reasonable limitation, right? | | Clearly, then, there is some line that we must draw where | people are buying something they think they want and yet | should still get to have full access to, and I don't see why | it would correlate with Apple vs. Google. | | In my case, I barely wanted a phone: I want a good camera | attached to a good touch screen; I have requirements past | that largely dictated by size, weight, and durability. That's | the device I am looking for. | | The devices which satisfy my needs are mostly from Apple or | Samsung, both of whom lock down their devices. (Can I install | an alternative browser on a Samsung Android device? Sure. But | is it my device? No. No it is not and it has never been, by | far. Samsung is only ever so slightly better than Apple with | respect to that shit.) | | The reality is: every device should be open. It shouldn't be | some trade-off in the space where you don't get to have a | device with any of the other key properties you want just | because it is _always_ a better business model to build a | walled garden and then shill your services, charge a usage | tax, or run advertisements. | | That said, in a world where it _is_ allowed to build closed | devices, and it _is_ some random set of tradeoffs that we all | have to tolerate, we have to get to complain about it, | because then it is just yet another property of the device, | and we get to complain about all of the shitty decisions we | had to put up with, whether that 's the pricing, the | functionality, the quality, the experience, the "tactile | feel"... or whether it is open or not. | | So like, I don't really see the framework in which this one | axis is something where people don't get to complain because | "they should have gotten some other random shitty device that | isn't at all what you wanted but was open"... this seems to | just be some broken narrative--mostly pitched by people who | clearly aren't also tracking the anti-trust work against | Google and haven't been a part of the fight to jailbreak all | of the random locked down Android devices--pitched by people | who seem to just like locked down stuff and Apple's | puritanical control over morality :(. | unethical_ban wrote: | Where in your mind does an OS cease its responsibility to | maintain device security and performance standards? | goodSteveramos wrote: | Why doesnt mozilla work on a privacy protecting replacement for | third party cookies? Because they are funded by google. | LarryMullins wrote: | They did. _about:config - > privacy.thirdparty.isolate = true_ | throwawayapples wrote: | at least they made that really easy to find and do. | LarryMullins wrote: | Follow the money. | dralley wrote: | It breaks things because a lot of websites expect it to | work. If websites stop working then Mozilla will lose | marketshare even faster. Still, it's not that difficult for | people who know what they're doing to find. | kelnos wrote: | I see a _privacy.firstparty.isolate_ , but no _thirdparty_ | variant. Was that just an error on your part, or is it a pref | that needs to be manually created, even? | LarryMullins wrote: | > _Was that just an error on your part_ | | Yes, sorry about that. It's _privacy.firstparty.isolate_ | jeroenhd wrote: | Because Firefox has a tiny user base and nobody is going to | follow their standards as long as other browsers do enable | third party cookies. Also, there are alternatives to third | party cookies for most use cases, they're just more difficult | to implement. | | Neither Google, nor Microsoft, nor Apple seem to care much | about re-engineering third party cookies. Until that changes, | any attempts from Mozilla to change the standards is a waste of | time and effort, really. | dmitriid wrote: | Apple and Mozilla did a lot to restrict the scope of third- | party cookies: isolation, partitioning etc. | | It's hard to change them without breaking most of the web. | baq wrote: | 1% of a billion is 10 million. | kevingadd wrote: | What makes you think we need a replacement for third party | cookies when we can just disable them? | orangecat wrote: | Yeah, I've never understood this. Disabling third party | cookies is the first thing I do with any new browser (uBlock | Origin is second). It takes 30 seconds and very rarely causes | problems. | yorwba wrote: | You might be interested in learning about state partitioning: | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Privacy/State_P... | [deleted] | aidenn0 wrote: | It seems that the way iOS implements W^X protection would prevent | a performant JS JIT from being created. It will be interesting to | see if/how this is worked around. | nashashmi wrote: | An anti antitrust move? | fabrice_d wrote: | Here's a demo of the Gecko port from some years ago: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-4b082Upw | | Most of the code needed is still in Gecko's repo at | https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/uikit but | probably doesn't build anymore. Would not be surprising if | someone had an up to date branch in a private tree somewhere | though... | LarryMullins wrote: | I look forward to seeing if any of the dire predictions from | Apple fanboys who once vehemently opposed this sort of thing will | come true. Will confused proverbial grandmothers get tricked into | using firefox and then pwned by scammers? Will everybody abandon | Safari and give Google a total browser monopoly? | | Guess we'll find out! | crazygringo wrote: | That is a total strawman, and please don't use the perjorative | term "fanboys". | | Not many Apple fans have ever defended Apple's exclusivity on | the browser engine. It's long been an annoyance, honestly. | | But it also has never had anything to do with scamming | grandmothers. That's always been an argument for not allowing | arbitrary untrusted app downloads and/or 3rd party app stores. | Nothing to do with browser engines, where Apple's (weak) | argument has always been about the risk of unknown browser | vulnerabilities allowing malicious code to escape the app | sandbox. | | And if iOS browser share winds up mirroring macOS browser | share, then it'll go to about 2/3 Chrome. | snailmailman wrote: | My "confused proverbial grandmother" has already been tricked | away from using safari. She does all of her web browsing | through the Google app. | | Not the Google Chrome app. The Google app. :facepalm: | | I've tried to explain why this isn't necessary but as far as | she knows, google is the internet. And I cannot say anything to | convince her otherwise. After all, every search in safari will | re-advertise to her "hey you should be doing this in the google | app" and she will click the button without even thinking. | echelon wrote: | I'd like to take a moment to appreciate how we're afraid of | which search interface Grandma uses. | | A hundred years ago, we'd be worried about getting knifed by | strangers, bear maulings, starving to death, being homeless, | eating food laced with botulism and lead, influenza, | tuberculosis, diphtheria ... | | Things are pretty good. | ultrarunner wrote: | To be fair, I think the origin of the worry may be that the | elderly and less technically inclined are prone to being | taken advantage of (rightly or wrongly). You're very | correct that things are better than ever, as it were, but | vulnerability seems to have endured in some ways. | gnicholas wrote: | Just like mine, who also accesses her photos by unlocking her | phone, going to the camera app, and then to her photo roll. | She never goes to the Photos app directly. | twobitshifter wrote: | My wife seems to only use the Google app as well. The G app | has a confusing multiple back button design. The normal | safari back button takes you back to Google homepage and the | other back button iPad the bottom in your history. Whenever | she shows me something in the Google App I always pick the | wrong one. | vehemenz wrote: | I don't make the connection between "Apple fanboys" and | preventing a Chrome monopoly. Surely one's opposition to a | monopoly is independent of one's choice of operating system. | | But yes, most likely this will result in a Chrome monopoly. | The_Colonel wrote: | It's just a strange notion that we will fight google monopoly | by _forcing_ people to use Safari. | vehemenz wrote: | It would be strange to force Apple to allow its competitors | to establish footholds on their own platform, against their | will, only for a Chrome monopoly to emerge months later. A | web monoculture will be harder to undo than enacting | smarter antitrust legislation. | [deleted] | mrtksn wrote: | > Will everybody abandon Safari and give Google a total browser | monopoly | | This one is scary. People who don't know history like to think | that IE was a backward browser and MS forced it upon people but | what actually happened is that IE was very innovative until | Microsoft diverged from the standards and lock people into it. | When the ecosystem(websites) integrates enough that your | platform(the browser) is the only way to run all that(through | Google services for Chrome?), they stop innovating and start | monetising. | | "Works with Chrome" is the new IE, not Safari. | nicoburns wrote: | The difference being that Chrome is open source (ok fine, | Chrome is closed source but the important parts like the | rendering engine are open source as Chromium). So they can't | lock anyone into anything. If they try that they'll just get | forked. Indeed we _already_ have Edge as a well-maintained | fork. | | Which isn't to say that Safari and especially Firefox aren't | important drivers of competition. But the situation is | nothing like the situation with IE. | ssss11 wrote: | There is lock in it's just more subtle than the IE | situation. Have you seen the chromium codebase? | | It may be open source but no individuals or small teams | would be able to manage a competing product, you'd need | huge investment to compete. There's a barrier to entry all | the same. | | Plus keeping up with the constant updates while trying to | build a competitor... | shkkmo wrote: | This point doesn't make any sense. | | The standards and functionality that are required in a | modern browser are already far beyond what "an individual | or small team" could build from scratch. | | The existence of Chromium absolutely makes it much, much | more feasible to launch a Chrome competitor than if | Chrome was entirely closed source. | kitsunesoba wrote: | Anything forked from Chromium can't be significantly | different from Chromium, because any change of that | nature increases divergence from Chromium and makes it | more difficult to keep pace with the firehose of changes | being pumped out daily by Google's massive Chrome/Blink | team. It means that forks can never be anything but | mostly-cosmetic reskins unless the party forking sinks | resources equally large as Google's into the fork, which | gives Google power to shape the web as they please | unopposed. | cassianoleal wrote: | > unless the party forking sinks resources equally large | as Google's into the fork, which gives Google power to | shape the web as they please unopposed. | | I imagine even this already very unlikely outcome would | also depend on said fork having a big slice of market | share before they even try to drift away from Chromium, | otherwise it won't have any effect and will likely die | exactly because of said differences. | kitsunesoba wrote: | That's true. No matter the situation, the fact that | Chromium/Blink is open source changes little due to the | sheer amount of power Google wields. | esperent wrote: | Right, but it doesn't need Google or Microsoft scale to | compete. | | Firefox is a clear example that a smaller organization | can manage the complexity of a modern browser. | | There's plenty of other examples too - like linux - which | show hugely complex open source projects are possible. | kitsunesoba wrote: | Firefox is great, but it's barely hanging on at ~4% | marketshare. That might skewed by Firefox users having | tracking mitigations set up, but the result is the same | regardless: devs and the suits above them calling the | shots will see the tiny usership and ask why they're | spending _anything_ on supporting it. It's barely | competing at all. | taftster wrote: | Yes, but in the case of both Mozilla and Linux, they had | a huge running start and have developed their moats (for | what they are) over a long period of time. | | A new organization coming in fresh and thinking, "hey I | know what, let's fork Chromium", does not seem like a | very long lived effort. I also don't see any new | operating systems coming out from an unknown team anytime | soon. | | The open source projects you use as examples are | entrenched, and it's going to take a major shakeup and/or | cracks in the large organizations for something new in | the browser or operating system space to emerge. | sbuk wrote: | Chrome uses the blink engine, which is a fork of Webkit, | which is open source. | kimixa wrote: | Which in turn was a fork of khtml | babypuncher wrote: | I always knew Konquerer would eventually take over the | browser market. | sbuk wrote: | I don't see what relevance this has to the discussion. | dcow wrote: | You don't see how adding another parent node to browser | engine code lineage is relevant in a subthread about | browser engine code lineage? | sbuk wrote: | I'm the OP. I'm questioning the relevance, which is in | response to the assertion that _" The difference being | that Chrome is open source (ok fine, Chrome is closed | source but the important parts like the rendering engine | are open source as Chromium)"_. _My_ aim is to point out | that WebKit is also open source, and that the engine | being touted by the GP is actually a fork of Webkit. Its | provenance in this case irrelevant. | kimixa wrote: | Just pointing out there's a whole family of HTML engines, | and Webkit wasn't the origin. It's also likely that it's | the reason why Webkit is GPL, and we're able to have this | discussion. | | In my experience, Apple haven't exactly been very open- | source friendly - I know working with them there's a | rejection of any GPL dependencies, even if well separated | and unmodified, or even just tools used in the build | process if they're GPL3+. | | I don't doubt if Apple developed a html engine from | scratch it would use a different license, and the entire | landscape of browsers would look very different today. | MayeulC wrote: | About as relevant as the parent... Not very relevant, but | since the parent gives a short overview of browser engine | history, we might as well point out that it started with | the then-excellent khtml from the KDE project, that | powers konqueror. That's little known, and a very | interesting history tidbit. | kajecounterhack wrote: | Up until forking, Google was the largest contributor to | Webkit. Google made Blink open source as well. | scarface74 wrote: | WebKit is just as open source as Blink. | [deleted] | WorldMaker wrote: | Have you ever seen a serious "fork war"? Open Source may be | possible to fork, but that isn't a guarantee that | everything will be hunky dory after a hard fork. The drama | and chaos of "we need a trustworthy fork" after a bad actor | does something unsociable can be awful (especially if that | bad actor remains in play). Security/safety/IP audits of | past code pre-fork after a major fork has become necessary | isn't free or cheap and takes resources. Drama can draw | weird boundaries between project attempts and create a lot | of internecine fighting among the "survivors" of the | "upstream crash". There's so much sociopolitics that may be | involved. Open source projects still involve a lot of | people, at the end of the day, not just code. Open source | applications _have_ died in a fork war. | | The situation is different from IE, but there's still a lot | of similarities and open source isn't necessarily the balm | it appears to be. They code may still "be there", but code | still needs people to believe in it/trust it/work on it. | cptskippy wrote: | > But the situation is nothing like the situation with IE. | | Google isn't trying to kill the web and grow desktop App | development, so yes it's different. And also people weren't | complaining about Internet Explorer while it was innovative | and competing against Netscape Navigator with annual | releases. It was after 5 years of stagnation, not | supporting new W3C standards, and unfixed bugs. | | Google learned from Microsoft's mistakes. They participated | in standards, they update often, and resolve bugs quickly. | Everything Microsoft didn't do. | | They also implement new features outside of standards but | just as temporary experiments mind you. If developers | happen to adopt them and implement them on their sites, | well Google's hands are tied and y'all might as well make | them standards (e.g. SPDY, QUIC). | | Or, because the control the standards process they can | propose a change to a private list, push it to WHATWG and | get representatives from Apple and Firefox to pull it into | the "living" standard without any public discourse or | feedback (e.g. removing alert();). | | This isn't to say everything they're doing is bad, but that | doesn't mean they aren't working in their own self | interest. | mrtksn wrote: | Of course they can, it's about the marketshare and not the | code. They can make some part of the browser running in | their cloud services and no matter how much you look into | the Chromium code the websites which support this will run | in Chrome only. | | Why would websites support this? Well, it can provide good | rankings in search or some other goodie like speeding up | the loading times through Google CDN or something and works | for %90 of the people(because they use Chrome). Once enough | websites integrate this, it's over. | warning26 wrote: | Sure, but forcing people to use Safari against their will | isn't the right way to approach that problem. | | If Google is indeed leveraging their market position in an | anticompetitive way to push Chrome, then they should be | stopped from doing _that_. | mrtksn wrote: | They surely can get a few billions of a fine in 10 years. | benced wrote: | Allowing a dominant OS to foist a bad browser on all of us is | not a good way to prevent a dominant internet search company | from potentially foisting a bad browser on all of us. | dcow wrote: | Safari is just as bad about not following standards though. I | could sympathize a lot more if your argument was between | Firefox and Chrome/Safari. In my mind Chrome/Safari are the | hegemony. | mrtksn wrote: | I agree that Safari should do better but Embrace, Extend | then Exterminate is a real thing and lacking functions is | not the same as having alternative "standards". | | "You need to download Chrome" is the scariest thing these | days, especially if you see it in Firefox. | klodolph wrote: | I don't know why you think that, it certainly sounds wrong | to me. Like, not just wrong in a technical sense, but like, | crazy wrong. | | Did you live through the IE5 and IE6 days? Does the term | "quirks mode" mean anything to you? Do you remember how Mac | IE was completely different from Windows IE? Internet | Explorer, back in the early 2000s, was a serious support | burden for anyone doing web development at the time. Around | 2010, Google dropped support for IE6 (in apps like GMail + | Youtube) and a ton of other sites followed suit. It made a | big splash across all the news sites and all the web | developers breathed a sigh of relief, because they could | say "we're dropping IE6 support because Google did." | | Meanwhile, there was a parallel world of IE-only sites. | Some of them were built on future widespread web | technologies like DHTML, others were built on stuff like | ActiveX. ActiveX ended up in the trash bin (where it | belongs) and DHTML became normalized. It was... common, and | annoying, to deal with corporate sites that only worked in | IE, and then build your own site and fight to get it | working in IE. It was not a fun time to be a web developer. | | Maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I remember that Safari was missing | some of the newer features that Chrome or Firefox had, but | when I investigated, it usually turned out that I was using | some future/experimental feature in Chrome or Firefox, and | it wasn't a problem with the standards-compliance of Safari | per se. Or sometimes I was relying on behavior that was not | part of the standard at all). Nowadays, my sense is that | Chrome tends to have more experimental stuff available and | a better set of dev tools, but otherwise, most stuff works | in Safari or Firefox with little to no modification. | bityard wrote: | > what actually happened is that IE was very innovative | | We remember things very differently, then. | | IE was hardly innovative, unless you count things like the | <blink> and <marquee> tags, and the ActiveX which their | blatant attempt to tie the web to Windows. | | The other thing IE was known for was missing, incomplete, or | out-right broken support for extremely basic HTML, CSS, and | Javascript functionality that other browsers had no issues | with. Leaving web developers to scatter their code/markup | with IE-specific workarounds. Compounding this problem was | lack of regular releases and updates. Except for security | fixes, Microsoft considered IE to be part of the OS and | refused to issue updates for it between OS releases, for the | most part, which is why IE stuck around so long. | | Nobody _wanted_ IE. It was just there as part of the OS at | the same point in history that Internet access became a | mainstream thing. | tempestn wrote: | You're just talking about different time periods. IE was | innovative back when it supplanted Netscape. Then it | stagnated. | sbuk wrote: | You used AJAX-based websites, right? _That_ was first | available in IE. Initially, IE unto version 6 was | _extremely_ innovative. Then Microsoft won, and they | stopped trying. | mrtksn wrote: | No, the innovation was things like XMLHttpRequest which | allowed for the early "single pages web apps" | nicoburns wrote: | Yes, and contenteditable which allowed for rich text | editing. | WorldMaker wrote: | Also `box-sizing: border-box` was how IE designed CSS box | sizing (to be simpler to math for the CSS writer rather | than simpler math for the Renderer programmer). The fact | that it is now just about "required" boilerplate in most | CSS reset/normalization steps to throw in a `* { box- | sizing: border-box; }` rule to opt in to "do it the IE | way" is a massive, vestigial, lasting testament to IE's | innovation in CSS in the early CSS standards. | nashashmi wrote: | They innovated on the side of the user. Not the rendering | engine. I loved the IE interface. | | But if one window crashed, the whole IE crashed. Then | Firefox tabbed browsing took over hungry for system | resource. But at least it didn't crash, right? | | I remember IE research pane. Innovation in the browser | became from a toolbar thing. Remember google toolbar? It | was the number one bar in many countries. | | But then Firefox extensions took over hungry for system | resource, but not like Chrome hungry. | | IE had addons. Some of them slowed the browser. And it had | plug-ins. | | It had everything independent innovation needed to thrive. | It just didn't have any vision for the "open web". No one | understood what that was then anyways. | | And where ie could not innovate on the web, they used | active X plug-ins. This was the Microsoft way. You can't | blame them for being themselves. | hutzlibu wrote: | Agreed that IE did innovate at its time. | | "It had everything independent innovation needed to | thrive. It just didn't have any vision for the "open | web"." | | But it didn't had an open source core and was windows | only. The vision was microsoft only (forever). | | "This was the Microsoft way. You can't blame them for | being themselves. " | | So the argument is, "yeah, Microsoft is a big monopolist | who do everything they can, to lock people on their | system, you cannot blame them for it, this is just the | way they are"? | | Either way, in this case luckily their monopol strategy | failed and IE died because of it. | nashashmi wrote: | > But it didn't had an open source core and was windows | only. The vision was microsoft only (forever). | | Right. I never would have understood the love for open | source if Microsoft hadnt left so much thirst for deeper | complex innovation in my mouth. | berkut wrote: | IE 4 and 5 were innovative (IMO as someone who used both at | the time - 1998-2000 - and actively converted family | members to IE) compared to Netscape: it had a cache which | worked consistently (important in 28.8 modem times) - | Netscape would ignore the cache in some situations, i.e. | resize the browser window and it would re-download images, | even though it had them in its cache, and also IE had | things like smooth scrolling which helped make things | "nicer" to scroll and feel better from a UI perspective, | and things like "make favourites available offline" | feature, where it would download a bunch of full pages | (whilst you were dialed up), and you could browse them | after you disconnected. | | After IE 6, things when downhill fast with the stagnation, | but before that point, IE was a good browser. | cogman10 wrote: | The biggest issue with IE is it was HEAVILY integrated | into windows. That in turn made it really slow to move. | To get IE 6, you needed windows 2000, to get IE 7/8, you | needed XP, to get 9+ you needed Vista. | | That particularly became a problem because the time gap | between XP and Vista was huge (and a lot of people | skipped it and went to 7/8/10). In the meantime firefox | and chrome came up and started innovating rapidly. Chrome | started it with the evergreen model and FF quickly | adopted that model. | anthk wrote: | IE6 worked in w98 too. | jeroenhd wrote: | Chrome got popular because IE grew to be terrible and Firefox | became bloated and slow over time. Opera was a decent | alternative but their alternative renderer couldn't keep up. | | If Apple keeps their browser compatible, I doubt they have | much to fear. Linking users to the app store because your | site doesn't work is a great way to drive them away from your | website, I doubt there will be much push for installing | Chrome. | | Currently, Chrome for iOS has a slither of the market share | that Safari has. Most people don't even know you can install | another browser at all. Unless Apple makes/keeps their | browser uncompetitive, they won't lose a serious amount of | market share. | timeon wrote: | Firefox did not became bloated. It was plugin based. Chrome | came with new concept (tab=process) and marketing. That is | it. | mrtksn wrote: | > and marketing. | | If I recall correctly, Google was paying 1$ per install, | so everyone was promoting Chrome and Chrome was actually | better than Firefox. | | Firefox then made a lot of missteps, tried to make a push | open video and audio codecs for idealistic reasons and | lost. They also failed to catch on Chrome's performance | for quite a long time. They spent a lot of resources into | experiments that went nowhere. | luckylion wrote: | Don't forget that batteries will drain immediately, another | often-stated argument for why Safari needs to be the only | available browser. | dontlaugh wrote: | The difference in battery usage is very noticeable on macOS. | gnicholas wrote: | I use Brave and don't notice a difference at all. Is it | only supposed to be happening on Chrome/Firefox, or any | non-Safari browser? | cassianoleal wrote: | I use Firefox and it's fine on the battery. | | I have used Arc browser for a bit. It's Chromium-based. | It didn't seem to have a bad effect on the battery. | | I haven't used Chrome in a few years now, but it used to | be a major CPU, memory and battery hog. I don't know how | it fares these days. | Spivak wrote: | I don't know if that's a good reason but it's definitely a | true reason. Chrome on Android devours power. | | The thing people are worried about is being forced to use | Chrome and Chrome being a worse experience than Safari. If | web developers en masse say "oh thank god finally we can drop | support for Safari" then we're in a worse situation for | everyone involved. We've done nothing but trade a lack of | choice for a different lack of choice and ensured that the | already dim situation for web apps being ported to non-Chrome | browsers will get even worse. | luckylion wrote: | Would Safari on Android (and with the same features) eat | less battery though? | | I agree in general regarding it being better if multiple | engines are available. On the other hand, when I build | something, and I'm developing it on Firefox, it usually | just works on chromium-based Browsers. Safari tends to be | the odd one out that has some weird behavior, although it's | much less common and much less bad than it was in the IE | days. | | Also: not having to buy a Mac every few years just so I can | test things in Safari sounds sweet, too. | | Web developers wouldn't drop support for Safari as long as | a significant amount of users use it (and especially not if | those users are premium users, which they tend to be: | higher disposable income, better trained to pay for things | etc), so I don't think that's an actual risk. At least for | anything I'm involved with: we'll drop Firefox before we | drop Safari, and we pretty much keep Firefox only because | some developers and some PMs are using it. | kitsunesoba wrote: | > Would Safari on Android (and with the same features) | eat less battery though? | | Yes, probably. WebKit browsers on other platforms like | GNOME Web/Epiphany on Linux is easier on battery than | Chrome or Firefox. WebKit is generally speaking more | efficient than Blink and Gecko. | someNameIG wrote: | On macOS where you can get the full Chrome experience Safari is | still dominant with 60+% marketshare. I presume it will be the | same for iOS. | jiripospisil wrote: | Source? | crazygringo wrote: | That's incorrect. | | On macOS, Chrome is dominant by far, with 66.22% as of | January 2023. | | Safari is 2nd place with 27.72%. | | https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market- | share.aspx?options... | LarryMullins wrote: | Yes I think so. I predict that Apple will stop neglecting | Safari now that they're forced to compete, and also that most | users will stick with the default anyway. | scarface74 wrote: | Yes because of the great choice of browsers on Android, | companies of all sizes are eschewing native apps and | telling Android users just to use their website. On the | other hand they are being forced to create apps for iOS. | | Oh wait. That's not happening at all. | LarryMullins wrote: | On Google's android, everybody uses Google's browser. On | Apple's iOS, most everybody will use Apple's browser. | alexklarjr wrote: | The thing I was never understand how can one use chrome | on android when its not allowing ads blocking? Zillions | of notifications and pop ups, fraud ads that have more | space than information you want to read. Trackers that | slow down your pages and destroying battery by sending | every move to google several times a second. Constant | redirects to google store, constant attempts to subscribe | you to mobile provider premium services. Android users | living in spyware hell. | dmitriid wrote: | That's why Google's apps ask you in which browser to open | links, with Chrome being the first, and default, choice. | And conveniently "forgetting" the user choice. | | Don't forget about Google search which will push Chrome | every chance it has. And Youtube. | vetinari wrote: | As someone who has used Firefox on Android as the default | browser for years, one thing that I must say is that | Android never conveniently forgot my choice. | | Which cannot be said about Windows. | scarface74 wrote: | What does that have to do with the narrative that PWAs | are a great alternative on Android yet no company seems | to take advantage of the fact and they still all create | an iOS, Android and web app? | freedomben wrote: | Indeed. Don't overestimate the power ofr 15+ years of | conditioning. People aren't suddenly going to switch for no | reason. | dang wrote: | Can you please not post in the flamewar style? It's not what | this site is for, and destroys what it is for. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | pcdoodle wrote: | Finally. Can't wait to use my favorite extension UBO. | someNameIG wrote: | What surprises me about this is that they have only started this | recently. At least with Google I thought they probably had an | internal build of Chrome for iOS using Blink, even just for | testing. | bgirard wrote: | A Mozilla engineer had a working toy build in ~2011 and it | didn't take them a lot of work from what I recall when they | showed me. | christkv wrote: | They already have an android version so I can't imagine it | will take them long to port it. | spandrew wrote: | Cross browser compatibility is already such a slog. This is going | to make that much worse. Maybe that's OK given WebKit's firm grip | on things. | | I've been using Arc browser since December and it's... strange? | But good. Lots of interesting ideas. | malermeister wrote: | Why would that make it worse? It's not like they would use new | rendering engines, they'd just use the same ones they're | already using on desktop. You should make sure your site is | compatible with those engines anyways. | nicce wrote: | It depends. Power efficiency on Safari with iOS is quite | optimized and many features are integrated to iOS. E.g. some | authentication workflows to Apple services. | kelnos wrote: | Why does that matter, though? Web developers don't assume | the entire world is "Safari on iOS". They have to handle | all the various desktop browsers, as well as everything | that runs on Android. | | If it's not possible to do a particular Apple-specific | authentication workflow in Firefox on iOS, then users will | fall back to whatever else is already implemented for other | platforms. | | If users don't like how Firefox or Chrome on iOS drain | their battery, then they'll stop using them and go back to | Safari. | | Giving people more choice doesn't hurt. | scottlamb wrote: | > The correlated activity from Google and Mozilla could suggest | that they're expecting Apple to drop its restrictions on third- | party browser engines in the near future, or the companies could | simply be hedging their bets. | | Ugh, imagine being an engineer on the project if it's the latter. | At a company strategy level, it may be wise to put resources into | having this ready to go. [1] At an individual level, putting tons | of effort into something like this with less than average hopes | of launching seems extremely demotivating (and doesn't look so | hot for "impact" in perf either). | | I wonder how much effort it is combine the iOS UI layer and the | non-iOS blink layer. I'm terrible at estimating effort even for | my own projects so it's hard to speculate. | | [1] A bit less wise to do speculative projects while | simultaneously laying off 12,000 people with no warning. | aikinai wrote: | Google engineers often spend years on less exciting and | interesting projects that get canceled or don't succeed. Plenty | of people would enjoy working on this whether or not it | launches, and it's also a high-profile bet, so I'd say it's in | the very top tier of desirable projects. | tgv wrote: | > Ugh, imagine being an engineer on the project if it's the | latter. | | OTOH, no users means no bugs. | Birkeholm wrote: | [flagged] | [deleted] | summerlight wrote: | The actual launch (or landing) probably doesn't really mean | much for less senior employees as long as they would get enough | attention from their management. But for those managers and | above, it might. | voytec wrote: | If Apple will be forced by law to allow apps from outside | AppStore, vendors will possibly have less restrictions. | bendiksolheim wrote: | Quite the opposite! I would find it highly motivating to work | on something like this, even if it was just a 5% chance it | would make it onto actual phones. You certainly need the right | types of people who are motivated by the right factors, but | that is not unique for this case. | dheera wrote: | > even if it was just a 5% chance | | It would be more motivating for me if in the 95% event that | Apple rejects it from the app store, a PR disaster can be | launched against Apple for it, and instructions are published | to install it on a jailbroken phone. | United857 wrote: | Don't even need to jailbreak, nowadays you can | build/sideload using a free iOS developer account, | especially if the projects in question are open source. | rcme wrote: | What's the latest iOS version that can be jail broken? With | all of the exploits on iOS, I'd be pretty nervous running | an old iOS version. | jedberg wrote: | Isn't it a requirement that the iOS be exploitable so | that it can be jailbroken? | | Is your hope that the exploit for the jailbreak is the | one and only flaw? :) | rcme wrote: | True. I guess my point was that, given the insane number | of zero-click iMessage exploits there have been, you'd | have to really not care about any of your data to use a | jail broken phone. | bawolff wrote: | Why though? | | I mean, i could understand if you were working on some sort | of research prototype that might fail, or otherwise something | new and unique, but just porting an existing browser engine | hardly seems to be instrinsically exciting in and of itself, | so what would the motivation be? | Consultant32452 wrote: | Seems like a great grift gig to me. Low pressure, possible | chance of high reward. | drewg123 wrote: | I'm looking forward to running "real" firefox on ios. If only so | that there is another alternative if a page renders poorly in | webkit. | coldpie wrote: | Real Firefox is the thing I miss most when I switched from | Android. Browsing the web without NoScript suuuucks. | dcow wrote: | I really hope firefox retains support for real web extensions | through this manifest v3 bs. | godshatter wrote: | Mozilla makes $400 million a year from Google, would they | really cut off this revenue stream if Google told them to | only support manifest v3 or else? | | Mozilla should never have gotten into a situation where 90% | of their funding comes from their biggest competitor. | kajecounterhack wrote: | Sadly, they're probably headed into a worse situation, | where they lose most of that 90% of their funding since | their browser marketshare is at an all time low of 3-4%. | Renegotiation is this year. | [deleted] | imiric wrote: | I'm not that optimistic that Mozilla is capable of building a | good iOS browser. It's been a few months since I last used it, | but the issues of Firefox on iPadOS were not because of the | engine. Tabs would frequently lose order, closing a tab would | close some other tab, broken keyboard shortcuts, | cursor/selection issues in the address bar, random non- | responsiveness and just janky UI. The issues were so obvious | that it felt like it was built without any QA process, so I | resorted to using Safari most of the time, which worked | perfectly. | | Firefox Focus on Android works much better, but it's also a | simpler browser. I haven't used the full Firefox on Android, so | can't comment on that. | shantara wrote: | Unfortunately, I had the same experience with iOS and iPadOS | versions of Firefox. Very janky, lots of bugs that went on | unfixed for months and years, and general lack of polish and | thoughtfulness in the UI. Despite using Firefox on every | other platform, I had much better experience with Safari, and | kept Firefox installed only for an occasional password | lookup. | ben174 wrote: | Once the native engine is available to the general public, | there will be more users. When there are more users, there | will likely be more resources thrown at development. | ridiculous_fish wrote: | Why hasn't this happened on Android? | leni536 wrote: | Firefox is the best Android browser, for the sole reason | of being able to use uBlock Origin with it. | wdb wrote: | Sounds more like a switch of domination at the iOS platform from | Webkit to Chromium. | | Personally, I am really happy with Safari but I am not convinced | Firefox make a big dent. | FoxBJK wrote: | Wonder how long it'll take for Blink to overtake WebKit on iOS | in terms of usage. | astlouis44 wrote: | About time. The way to free developers from the 30% app tax on | iOS is through the web. Apple has been doing their best to drag | their heels in order to keep grip over revenue from in-app | purchases inside their walled garden, but the writing is truly on | the wall at this point. | | As an aside, for anyone interested in WebAssembly and the future | of gaming in the browser - my team and I at Wonder Interactive | are bringing the full power of native gaming to the web. We're | building out a platform and suite of tools that allows developers | to publish, host, share, and monetize their games directly to | their players online, without any middlemen. | | The current focus is on the Unreal Engine (4.24, 4.27) and UE5 | support which is coming later this year. Other engines will | follow such as Unity, Godot, Open 3D Engine, and custom engines | we can provide porting for on our paid plans. We're building out | a WebGPU backend for UE5, to really enable high end desktop and | console quality games in HTML5. The goal is to free developers | from storefronts that charge a 30% tax on distribution. | | Further reading, with demos attached: | | https://theimmersiveweb.com/blog | galleywest200 wrote: | For what it is worth...the rumor mill seems to believe that | Apple will allow side-loading as of iOS 17. | | https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/14/apple-will-reportedly-allo... | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/will-appl... | dsissitka wrote: | I wonder how difficult they're going to make things. | | > To help protect against unsafe apps, Apple is discussing | the idea of mandating certain security requirements even if | software is distributed outside its store. Such apps also may | need to be verified by Apple -- a process that could carry a | fee. Within the App Store, Apple takes a 15% to 30% cut of | revenue. | throwawayapples wrote: | So, basically they're still the gatekeeper and tollbooth | operator, but it looks like the opposite. Nicely done, | Apple. | iib wrote: | If this brings us non-Webkit browsers on iOS, I think | it's still a victory. | criddell wrote: | Safari on iOS is basically the only thing stopping the | future of the web from being controlled by Google via | Blink. | jaynetics wrote: | Even if there is a choice, iPhone users might tend to | stick with Safari anyway. Desktop Safari's market share | is about 10%, roughly the same as macOS' market share, | which seems to suggest limited appetite for browser | customization. | scarface74 wrote: | > About time. The way to free developers from the 30% app tax | on iOS is through the web. | | You mean like all of the developers who aren't creating native | apps on Android and are creating PWAs? | | There are just three issues with this narrative: | | 1. It came out in the Epic trial that 80% of all app revenue is | coming from games. | | 2. Most of the other revenue derived from the App Store is | coming from services where no one pays through the App Store | | 3. Large companies have already abandoned in app purchases like | Spotify and Netflix | arcturus17 wrote: | > You mean like all of the developers who aren't creating | native apps on Android and are creating PWAs? | | I'm not sure I understand your wording right... Are you | saying that devs creating PWAs are "free?" Because it's well- | known that PWAs has been stunted by Apple and Google. The | technology is _well behind_ its potential. PWAs could do | significantly more if they had better access to system APIs. | scarface74 wrote: | So now there is a great conspiracy by both Apple and | Google? Maybe web technologies just aren't as good as | native? | | In the history of computing there has never been a cross | platform general purpose GUI framework that didn't suck. | | Not to mention most Android devices in the wild are low end | and don't handle complex web pages well | arcturus17 wrote: | > So now there is a great conspiracy by both Apple and | Google? | | What conspiracy? | | They have huge economic disincentives to further PWAs - | there is no need for any conspiracy. | | In the first presentation of the iPhone, Steve Jobs laid | out a vision where the smartphone would run _web apps_ , | using fundamental web technologies (HTML, CSS, JS). He | quickly backtracked when he realised Apple could impose a | 30% tax on transactions in the platform. | | > Maybe web technologies just aren't as good as native? | | No one said they are, but that's no excuse to drag your | feet in implementing simple things like push | notifications. | | > In the history of computing there has never been a | cross platform general purpose GUI framework that didn't | suck. | | What GUI framework? I barely even know what we are | talking about anymore. You don't need one with PWA - | again, you're using fundamental web technologies, and | enabling them to make system calls. | | > Not to mention most Android devices in the wild are low | end and don't handle complex web pages well | | So that's another excuse to not further PWAs, huh? | scarface74 wrote: | > What GUI framework? I barely even know what we are | talking about anymore. You don't need one with PWA - | again, you're using fundamental web technologies, and | enabling them to make system calls. | | Let me ask you this then. Name _one_ cross platform | framework that wasn't meant to build command line tools | that hasn't sucked? | | QT? Java Spring? React Native? Electron? | | > In the first presentation of the iPhone, Steve Jobs | laid out a vision where the smartphone would run web | apps, using fundamental web technologies (HTML, CSS, JS). | He quickly backtracked when he realised Apple could | impose a 30% tax on transactions in the platform. | | He "backtracked" because his "sweet solution" wasn't good | and everyone wanted native apps and web apps were called | "a shit sandwich" by developers. | | Do you know the history of creating "applications" using | "web technologies"? They failed for RIM, Microsoft, and | Palm. Web apps suck not to mention the clusterfuck of the | front end ecosystem. | | Every single platform that went down the "we can do great | web apps" backtracked. They have never been good enough. | | > So that's another excuse to not further PWAs, huh? | | You mean making an app that's actually performant on the | majority of phones out there? | arcturus17 wrote: | > He "backtracked" because his "sweet solution" wasn't | good and everyone wanted native apps and web apps were | called "a shit sandwich" by developers. | | Sure, the 30% cut of all sales was just a sweet | coincidence. | | > You mean making an app that's actually performant on | the majority of phones out there? | | Twitter and Uber have PWAs for countries where low-end | devices are the majority of phones. | | > They have never been good enough. | | Complete bollocks, there are plenty of excellent web apps | out there, and it's one of the most important mechanisms | for software delivery nowadays, in both the enterprise | and consumer spaces. You are a fundamentalist and there | is no point discussing anything here anymore | rektide wrote: | Brilliant move. Show what is possible. Let individual developers | download the source & build themselves, and run it. Make it real, | make the only obstruction a legal one, one that is increasingly | full of holes as a small exterior/outside hobbyist community | bypasses the longstanding trenchancy Apple has dug, has moated | themselves in with. Give people that first whiff of freedom. | | And if someday hopefully some of the anti-trust anti-competitive | legal moats do get torn down, Google will be ready. | EMIRELADERO wrote: | This has already happened. The walls have already been torn | down. The EU's Digital Markets Act has made it mandatory for | Apple to implement those changes by Q1 2024 | voakbasda wrote: | Anyone care to speculate as to whether Apple will take that | opportunity to permit users in other regions that same | liberty? Personally, I would not bet on that outcome without | similar legislation forcing the issue. | EMIRELADERO wrote: | They probably will. Google "Brussels Effect" | voakbasda wrote: | I can see how that applies for hardware manufacturers | that don't want to build multiple versions of their | products; however, software can easily be region locked | using a simple flag without the same economic | consequences. | lxgr wrote: | As far as I know, JIT is disabled on iOS at the moment, so one | thing developers would notice right away is abysmal JavaScript | performance. (Early versions of V8 didn't even have an | interpreting or bytecode path, to my knowledge, so it wouldn't | even run without major modifications!) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-07 23:00 UTC)