Comment by fouc
8 months ago
The problem is that when Chrome came out it was heavily marketed/targeted towards developers. Developers took it up and then built websites in & for Chrome. The end result is many websites work better in Chrome than Firefox or Safari. It's a vicious cycle of continuing dependency.
I'm doing my part to break the cycle by supporting the underdog by using Safari as my daily driver & developing primarily for Safari & Firefox.
> It's a vicious cycle of continuing dependency.
Or a viscous cycle of continued development. There are definitely things that Chrome does that nobody else should copy, but there's also a lot of stuff like WebGPU and WebRTC that should be standard. Firefox doesn't drag their feet in the same way Apple does, and they certainly don't resist standardization by trying to limit what a user can do on their device.
I have no real love for Google. ChromeOS sucks, Android is only tolerable when you de-Google it, and YouTube is perpetually regressing to a shittier state. But Chromium the browser is great, and it's the only browser I install on my Mac or Linux box when I get set up at work. I want to love Firefox like I used to, but Mozilla as a business is just about as functionally inept as Google or Apple at this point. I'm done trying to be a browser ideologue, I'm embracing post-browser realism here.
The data doesn’t show they drag their feet though. If anything FF is behind.
I genuinely enjoy Safari as a user more than Chrome. As a developer the dev tools suck. But as a user - the UI is far more minimal and nice. Every single action feels 2-3x faster, from opening and closing, tab opening or movement, etc. Battery lasts significantly longer. And I never really run into anything that doesn’t work, ever. Plus never worry about the latest hidden checkbox I have to find to not have my data soaked up. Hide my email is also dope.
The more responsive and thoughtful UI and battery/performance alone would have sold me. But the privacy and modern features it’s gotten over the last years make it better imo.
Just want to give a perspective as I feel people should update priors from 2021 “Safari is the new IE”
You said data doesn't show they drag their feet and then proceeded to present anecdote of your personal preferences and use cases while adding that thoughtful UI and battery life are the features and not web standards or the implementation quality of it nor the lack of 3rd party browsers on iOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31902707
Sure they have recently implemented some features like IndexedDB but the data does indeed show that they dragged their feet!
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> The data doesn’t show they drag their feet though. If anything FF is behind.
Literally no? We must not be on the same page, both of the technologies I namedropped were Chrome and Firefox exclusive for a half-decade. And they're certainly not the only features Mozilla and Google agree upon; Apple deliberately gimps features that benefit PWAs so that browsers artificially cannot compete with their native apps.
> Just want to give a perspective as I feel people should update priors from 2021 “Safari is the new IE”
I'm sorry; people will keep calling Safari "the new IE" for as long as Apple carbon-copies Microsoft's Explorer strategy from the 90s. You can run from it, insist it's not true, but Apple will clutch to their ecosystem control whether it's rational or not. This is why we have to antitrust them, to stop the market from more of their irrational self-serving harms.
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> WebRTC that should be standard
What is WebRTC good for? I've never understood. It probably has some use for in-browser video chats, but other than that?
I'm asking because at some point the Chrome you are praising prevented my Mac from sleeping for like half a year or more because 'webrtc has active peer connections'. I had no conferences open in the browser, just - i thought - regular web pages.
So what can you do with WebRTC behind the user's back then, and why is it moral to do it?