[ndriscoll]

I've been using exclusively Linux on the desktop for almost 10 years now. If there was an unblocker, it was wine/Proton, or for laptops, NetworkManager (I remember having a bit of difficulty configuring wpa_supplicant for my university in 2008). I don't even have Chrome/Chromium. Linux on the desktop is enough of a niche/bubble still that it wouldn't surprise me if a large number of other users don't have Chrome either (e.g. I don't use or care about services with DRM, and have it disabled in my browser). Honestly besides flexbox and TLS updates I'm not sure I know of anything useful that's been added to browsers in the last 20 years.

[lukan]

"Honestly besides flexbox and TLS updates I'm not sure I know of anything useful that's been added to browsers in the last 20 years."

Wasm and webgl/webGPU are really useful for anything performance related.

[ndriscoll]

Easily over 99% of what I use a browser for are essentially static pages, so wasm and especially webgpu strike me as extremely niche. Like it's cute that you can run quake in a browser, but I can also just open my start menu and launch quake. For actual web usage (looking up information, shopping, paying my bills, bank transfers, stock trades, etc.), simple, static html is the high performance approach.

[lukan]

Google maps or other map applications are a pretty mainstream feature.

[ndriscoll]

In a browser/on the desktop? I would think everyone would use a dedicated application, probably on their phone. For Linux users in particular, I would be unsurprised if they use OsmAnd. Maps also shouldn't require webgpu or wasm. e.g. XForms made something like a scrollable map application trivial to develop years before wasm was a thing[0]. That shows what could have been a browser improvement if W3C standards were still relevant. Google maps of course predates those things by over a decade.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yYY7GJAbOo

[lukan]

If I want to use google maps, or find a new home - I am not browsing maps with my phone. I use a big screen.

With the browser.

And most real estate sites also do have a map for example.

[ndriscoll]

That still sounds relatively niche/doesn't really disagree with my statement that easily over 99% of web usage is not something like that. How often are you finding a new home? Map widgets also shouldn't really be a performance concern; they were doable 15-20 years ago (i.e. with much weaker hardware and no webasm/webgpu).

Something like improved forms with validations and databinding would be useful for actual easier document authoring. Built-in charts (line graphs, pie charts, etc. with baked in support for legends and axes) would also be generically useful in the way that tables were. Flexbox was useful for layouts, but otherwise we instead got pushes for more scripting performance to cover up the impact of mass surveillance and more ways to leak data about the underlying system to conduct that surveillance.

[fireflash38]

And they've been working quite well with not all that much in ways of improvement for years, if not decades. What's the last huge improvement in maps thats been noticeable to users in the last 5 years?

[lukan]

My google maps experience rather degrades with enshittification, but I do remember the great improvement with webgl (5+ years ago).

[raudette]

Yeah - I think the big problems are solved, and then you start moving into more and more niche cases. I really love being able to flash firmware on ESP32 devices with webserial!

The use of USB authentication devices (FIDO2) is also interesting.

[NetOpWibby]

+1 for Wine, I didn’t bother with Linux until Wine showed up.

[mananaysiempre]

Uh, Wine showed up in June of 1993[1], a full month before the first official release of Windows NT. Not necessarily in a usable form, mind you, but even now the usability is heavily dependent on what specific software you are trying to emulate.

[1] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/commit/2c25c3e9442c69b...