[robonerd]

We're regressing to a state reminiscent of the dark IE years.

Except back then when you suggested alternative browsers, people were generally receptive once they saw the practical utility of features like tabs. Now when you suggest alternative browsers, people complain about tens of milliseconds more latency and insist on using Chrome for the speed. It's hard to blame them though, since the practical advantages of Firefox are slipping away as Mozilla focuses on more abstract advantages, like privacy, freedom, etc. Noble causes to be sure, reason enough for me to continue using Firefox even if it were a hundred times slower. But I think most people are looking for practical advantages; Firefox usage continues to decline and I don't have much hope for these trends turning around anytime soon.

[pjmlp]

Even if FOSS fans don't like it, it is iOS/Safari that is the last block preventing the Web platform to be finally renamed to Chrome OS.

[robonerd]

Liking it is beyond the point, it isn't available for me to use unless I replace my phone and computers. But yes I think you're right, Firefox has become so thoroughly marginalized that Safari seems like the last meaningful resistance to the Chrome monoculture.

[ocdtrekkie]

Unfortunately there are literally activists promoted to ending that final stand protecting the open web.

[simion314]

The reality is people want freedom to use Firefox or Chrome in iOs, they don't want a monopoly , imagine if Microsoft would not have allowed you to install a third pary browser unless it uses their engine and it accepts their rules, then we would all still use IE6 but with different themes and superficial features.

Safari needs to implement the standards and offer decent performance, adding on top of that very good integration with the OS and it should win on Apple OSes.

Also Apple users please demand Apple to sacrifice a bit of their profit and offer web developers some way to test their websites/code on Safari(including Betas for free) , either by providing test virtual machines images or some Web Based service. Safari Beta not only requiers you have Apple hardware and OS it requires you update to latest version (you maybe don't want to be forced to latest version).

[ocdtrekkie]

The thing is, the lowest common denominator folks have to support, Safari, is what forces the entire web to follow web standards. As soon as developers can demand users switch to Chromium on iOS, you'll see a massive uptick in websites which only work in Chrome.

Effectively, in this case allowing competition will permanently destroy the open web.

[simion314]

The issue with Safari browsers is not that libraries we use support Chrome only features but that Safari can have bugged implementations or small differences and we can't test Safari. For example a WebGl based library I was using (for advanced stuff not rendering static text) stopped working on iOS because Apple changed the WebGl stuff, so we put for this users a 2d ugly but functional fallback. Because this was a third party library and not something I had experience with I could not entertain the idea of attempting to debug the issue or create a fix .

Then later Apple decided to change iPad browser to pretend is a desktop, this broke my checks and instead of the 2D version the iPad users got the broken 3D version. But finally the broken WebGl was released on Apple desktops/laptops so now everyone using Safari gets the 2D version.

What we need is a way to test Safari the stable and the Beta, I can find bugs, the guys that made the WebGl library find the bugs before the browser is released etc.

What non standard API only Chrome implements and evil web developers want to use?

[ocdtrekkie]

> What non standard API only Chrome implements and evil web developers want to use?

Two things:

1. Feel free to look at the wide litany of garbage security and privacy holes Google has added to Chrome that are only supported by Chrome forks, which Mozilla and Safari have both publicly declared they will not support.

https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/

Mozilla has defined 24 items as "harmful", and that's a good start at bad ideas Google has shoehorned into calling "the web". Who wrote... basically every single harmful spec? Oh, the adtech company that is allowed to also make a web browser.

2. You're also just not understanding the problem. It doesn't actually matter what web developers want to use and don't want to use. Web developers are, and I'm sorry to insult a bunch of HN users here, really lazy. If they can demand people switch to Chrome, they will. In fact, they often do even when the website works fine everywhere else.

Next time you hit a Chrome-only user-agent check in Firefox, tell your browser to lie about the user agent and you'll probably discover the site works fine. I constantly see companies tell us their products "aren't supported" unless you use Chrome, even if they work fine in Firefox, and the issues we call about aren't caused by the browser, and can be duplicated in Chrome.

Right now, the only reason far more web developers aren't pasting Chromium checks into every single page, is they have to support Safari anyways, because they can't lose the iOS market. But as soon as it's possible for web devs to force users to install Chrome to continue on iOS, they will. And at that point, Google really doesn't need to pretend it cares about web standards anymore anyways, because alternative engines will already be dead.

[pjmlp]

Beware of one wishes for, in the end they will get Chrome everywhere anyway, because Firefox doesn't really matter, and there are no Web standards other than what Google is pushing from ChromeOS as standards, Project Fugus, Houdini, WebUSB, Web Bluetooth,...

[simion314]

So should we all suffer because Apple is greedy and fails to win in a fair fight with Google Chrome ?

[pjmlp]

What is fair about bending W3C into Chrome OS?

Ah, Google isn't Microsoft, and that do no evil stuff.

[tyrfing]

That ship sailed when developers collectively decided that browsers should be complete reimplementations of the entire operating system, and anything less was hopelessly broken. With a barrier to entry so high that trillion dollar companies don't find it worth the investment, it's no surprise that the last independent implementation is struggling to keep up.

[userbinator]

when developers collectively decided

Based entirely on propaganda from the one company that is rapidly taking control of the whole Internet.

[account42]

> Mozilla focuses on more abstract advantages, like privacy

Mozilla marketing focuses on that. Mozilla development still uses opt-out telemetry, experiments on users without consent and they still have Google Analytics on their websites.