←back to thread

Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

(www.magiclasso.co)
281 points bentocorp | 3 comments | 17 Nov 24 22:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.72s | source
Show context
fellowniusmonk ◴[18 Nov 24 19:10 UTC] No.42175790[source]▶
No not even close by every single possible measure.

I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change.

I have no interest in the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS, lecturing me about using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed.

The most important one from an anti-trust perspective, every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome, that includes my mobile devices which used the manufactures browser by default.

If I want to use chromium I can, Safari has been VERY late in implementing certain industry spec standards (SSE's, web sockets, IndexedDB API, animations, relative color syntax, container queries, a bunch of <video> stuff, flexbox, the list goes on and on.)

replies(14): >>42175858 #>>42176769 #>>42176917 #>>42177125 #>>42177454 #>>42177682 #>>42177816 #>>42178643 #>>42179301 #>>42180131 #>>42180233 #>>42180546 #>>42180727 #>>42191018 #
1. thephyber ◴[18 Nov 24 22:31 UTC] No.42177816[source]▶
I think some of the complaints in the article were about websites using User Agent string to detect compatibility, rather than individual feature sniffing.

In that small complaint, I would agree. But I think the fault is mostly with the website owners, not with the browser.

replies(1): >>42180938 #
2. robocat ◴[19 Nov 24 07:54 UTC] No.42180938[source]▶
> rather than individual feature sniffing

Feature sniffing generally doesn't work for anything interactive. Many bugs in controls, animation, events are not sniffable. Yet developers still need to deliver workarounds.

Feature sniffing works best for static HTML documents - and even then the code to actually do the sniffing can be demonic code (a side-effect or correlation or an obscure discovery).

Using just feature sniffing is a great goal but it simply isn't a perfect solution. I do believe us developers should avoid parsing user agents unless there is no other good solution (never a crutch for lazy bad developers).

And detecting the browser for obsolete browsers is usually a perfectly fine solution. The bugs won't get fixed and the browser won't change. There are exceptions of course!!!

replies(1): >>42185906 #
3. thephyber ◴[19 Nov 24 17:22 UTC] No.42185906[source]▶
> And detecting the browser for obsolete browsers is usually a perfectly fine solution.

But there are a long tail of user agents and the average web developer does a terrible job at identifying those in the long tail. My password manager on iOS uses the newest Safari engine, but all websites think it is an outdated/obsolete browser because it uses a user agent string they don't recognize.

Also, my bank doesn’t use highly interactive features you mention. It’s almost exclusively links, forms and a little validation JavaScript. Feature sniffing would have been a much better experience.