[HN Gopher] History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today...
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History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today (2022)
 
Author : phil294
Score  : 126 points
Date   : 2023-01-13 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
 
web link (eylenburg.github.io)
w3m dump (eylenburg.github.io)
 
| gnufx wrote:
| Others I know of: MMM (CAML Light with applets, '90s), Emacs/W3
| (which Bill Perry claimed had the first CSS implementation),
| Abaco (Plan9)
 
| jmyeet wrote:
| Obligatory reference to the inverse relationship between Firefox
| market share and the Mozilla Foundation's chair's compensation
| [1].
| 
| It is sad to see Firefox become so irrelevant. As much as people
| blame Google for this (and it is true Google relentlessly pushed
| Chrome) but people forget just how innovative Chrome was and how
| Firefox didn't respond to these issues.
| 
| I remember when Chrome launched and it was revolutionary how it
| was one-process-per-tab (technically, it's site isolation not tab
| isolation but let's not get lost in the sauce). No longer could
| an errant website take down your entire browser (mostly). I kept
| wondering why Firefox didn't copy this. It took them years. What
| were they doing?
| 
| Now I appreciate Mozilla bringing Rust into existence (not
| without problems and early design mistakes [2]) but the initial
| goal seemed to be rewriting the browser in a memory-safe language
| and that never seem to eventuate..
| 
| [1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
| 
| [2]: https://www.pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-
| calamity...
 
  | zackmorris wrote:
  | Wow I didn't know that! Looks like it's $3 million now:
  | 
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
  | 
  | An entire web browser could be written from scratch
  | independently for that kinda cash.
  | 
  | That's so disappointing that I don't think I can ever look at
  | Mozilla or Firefox the same way again. As a software engineer,
  | I would not work at an organization with such a huge
  | discrepancy in pay. It almost makes me feel better about a
  | lifetime of failure, so I guess I should be grateful.
  | 
  | It's just looking more and more every day like wealth
  | inequality is the great problem of our time, effectively
  | halting progress beyond a certain point.
 
    | vkou wrote:
    | > An entire web browser could be written from scratch
    | independently for that kinda cash.
    | 
    | Only if you think you could re-implement Twitter in a
    | weekend.
 
  | [deleted]
 
    | [deleted]
 
  | noAnswer wrote:
  | > I remember when Chrome launched and it was revolutionary how
  | it was one-process-per-tab (technically, it's site isolation
  | not tab isolation but let's not get lost in the sauce). No
  | longer could an errant website take down your entire browser
  | (mostly)
  | 
  | I still used Opera 12 in 2016 when I finally searched for an
  | alternative. Not only did websites crash(upside down bird) way
  | more often in Chrome (multiple times a week in Chrome vs. once
  | every two weeks in Opera), but every time a crashed tab took
  | the entire browser with it! It's one of those times where you
  | question reality. Everyone says one thing, your experience says
  | something else!
  | 
  | It literally took years for that feature to materialise.
  | Now(tm) if a tab crashes, the browser stays. Since I'm a
  | Vivaldi user now I couldn't even tell if that's more Vivaldi's
  | or Chrome's doing.
  | 
  | I also remember, opening a new tab in Opera 12 was without
  | delay. You gave the command and it was just there. On Chrome,
  | with a !EIGHT!YEAR!newer! CPU it took 3 to 4 seconds! I figured
  | it must be the 4MB JPG background image I chose. Sure enough,
  | it was the image. Without it, it was still 1/2 seconds to open
  | a new tab, though. Only now, with an even newer CPU, it feels
  | on par with Opera 12.
 
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > This promising engine [Servo] was developed by Mozilla[...]
| Mozilla fired a quarter of their developers, which apparently
| included the whole Servo team. There have still been some commits
| to the code since then (presumably by hobbyists) but it is
| questionable if Servo will have a future.
| 
| Why do people keep framing the story this way? Servo's future is
| in Gecko.
| 
| always_has_been.jpg
| 
| The Servo _repo_ was a testbed that allowed people to work on
| new, Rust-based browser components without anyone having to pass
| the type of code reviews that are necessary for a _production Web
| browser that is by the way already continually shipping to
| millions of existing users_.
| 
| This (far too common) meme of Servo as a somehow failed separate
| browser engine that was supposed to, I dunno, be swapped out at
| some indefinite point and retire the lizard or something is very
| weird.
 
| santoshalper wrote:
| "Gecko (Firefox). Down to 4% market share, mismanaged by Mozilla
| which prioritizes pushing its toxic politics over improving the
| browser."
| 
| Unlike the author, who clearly has no agenda or axe to grind.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | Y_Y wrote:
  | I love Firefox the browser, but they keep throwing stuff at me
  | that I have no interest in. After the Pocket debacle and the
  | Mr. Robot thing I stopped paying attention, but I bet if I
  | found out what colorways was or that new little pinned tab
  | thing then I'd get upset too.
  | 
  | All that to say, I think a personal blog is a better place to
  | grind axes than the start page of a hugely important software
  | tool.
 
    | sfink wrote:
    | Is the presence of Pocket pushing toxic politics, or is it
    | the Mr. Robot extension?
    | 
    | I understand that people have complaints and want to hang
    | onto others' past mistakes, but I fail to see how either of
    | those (Pocket&Robot) can be classified as either toxic
    | politics or axe grinding.
    | 
    | They're both monetization tactics that many people disliked.
    | Which somehow resulted in people finding Mozilla untouchable,
    | because apparently nobody else has problematic monetization
    | attempts?
 
    | awelxtr wrote:
    | I'm ootl, Pocket debacle?
 
      | johnny22 wrote:
      | really out of the loop then, because it was like 5 years
      | ago or so :) Firefox add a button to integrate a third
      | party service (pocket) in the default install and i think
      | it added it to your current pinned icon areas (where
      | extension button go). It was also not implemented as a
      | proper extension, so you couldn't actually remove support
      | for it, but only the icon.
      | 
      | Later on Mozilla did buy pocket, so it was no longer third
      | party.
      | 
      | Anyways, a lot of people got super mad with the way they
      | went about it.
 
        | awelxtr wrote:
        | thank you!
 
  | password4321 wrote:
  | It might be worth removing the word "toxic"; is it not clear
  | that " _Mozilla prioritizes pushing its [...] politics over
  | improving the browser_ "?
  | 
  | https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
 
  | DonHopkins wrote:
  | The CEO of Mozilla infamous for his toxic homophobic anti-gay-
  | marriage politics of hate and bigotry resigned from Mozilla of
  | his own free will, and was not fired or pushed out, as his
  | GamerGate fanboys love to falsely claim.
  | 
  | (Some of many examples of people pushing that false claim:
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994164
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24145537
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566200 )
  | 
  | He confirmed the fact that he resigned in his own words on his
  | very own blog. In fact, the Mozilla board begged him to stay.
  | The idea that he was pushed out or fired is just yet another
  | false GamerGate conspiracy theory.
  | 
  | https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/faq-on-ceo-resignation/
  | 
  | >1. Brendan was not fired and was not asked by the Board to
  | resign. Brendan voluntarily submitted his resignation. The
  | Board acted in response by inviting him to remain at Mozilla in
  | another C-level position. Brendan declined that offer. The
  | Board respects his decision.
  | 
  | >Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?
  | 
  | >A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:
  | 
  | >"I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and
  | leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and
  | under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective
  | leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next."
  | 
  | >Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.
  | 
  | https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/
  | 
  | >Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?
  | 
  | >A: No. It was Brendan's idea to resign, and in fact, once he
  | submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan
  | to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.
 
    | throw-7462637 wrote:
    | How sad and tired that you have to keep dragging up this old
    | story. I'm not going to go in the merits but may I suggest
    | it's time for forgiveness and reconciliation?
 
    | agloeregrets wrote:
    | Lol that whole page was clearly built to make some people
    | happy but goes WAY too far down the rabbit hole to make sure
    | the homophobes feel included.
 
  | wussboy wrote:
  | Right? Because that's totally why Firefox's market share has
  | gone down and is not at all related to a billion dollar
  | corporation ruthlessly and relentlessly pushing its
  | competitor...
 
    | lolinder wrote:
    | Mozilla is hopelessly mismanaged.
    | 
    | The entire Android app was overhauled a while back, dropping
    | functionally and decreasing stability, and has since been
    | pretty much ignored even though it is still missing features
    | and is still painfully clunky and prone to crash. The
    | developer tools on the desktop app were ahead of Chrome but
    | have stagnated, and they're slow to adopt new standards, but
    | they somehow find time to add things no one asked for like
    | Colorways and a VPN.
    | 
    | I want Firefox to get its traction back, but it's hard to
    | cheer for Mozilla or blame Google when I see them twiddling
    | their thumbs like this.
 
      | bbarnett wrote:
      | _I want Firefox to get its traction back, but it 's hard to
      | cheer for Mozilla or blame Google when I see them twiddling
      | their thumbs like this._
      | 
      | I don't think this will happen. I think they will just fade
      | away. They are completely dysfunctional now.
      | 
      | Some say it is due to the whole woke movement, and it may
      | be, but really, I see it as due to politics.
      | 
      | By that I mean, politics is nothing but divisive, and if
      | you introduce it into a company, as a corporate culture,
      | you're going to regret it.
      | 
      | IMO, work is where you leave religion, and politics(the
      | other religion) at home.
      | 
      | And Mozilla is paying the price for letting it in.
 
        | mistrial9 wrote:
        | > due to the whole woke movement
        | 
        | yes, and forcing out there reasonable CEO for a purity
        | test, long ago.. HELO BRAVE
 
      | kome wrote:
      | "The entire Android app was overhauled a while back,
      | dropping functionally and decreasing stability"
      | 
      | And yet it's the only mainstream browser for android that
      | support, natively, ad-blocking. Using chrome on mobile is a
      | joke.
 
        | mattlondon wrote:
        | Edge on android blocks ads.
 
    | VancouverMan wrote:
    | Regardless of how much or how strongly Chrome may have been
    | advertised, we can't forget that a lot of IE and Firefox
    | users ultimately decided to try Chrome, then went ahead and
    | actually installed Chrome, then actively used Chrome, and
    | most importantly, decided to keep on using Chrome instead of
    | the other browser(s).
    | 
    | All of that didn't just happen because of advertising. It
    | happened become Chrome offered very compelling benefits over
    | its competitors.
    | 
    | For many users, Chrome was faster, lighter, more secure, and
    | offered a better all-around user experience than its
    | competitors did. Even now, that's still largely the case.
    | 
    | Advertising alone can't make that happen.
 
      | kome wrote:
      | "Regardless of how much or how strongly Chrome may have
      | been advertised, we can't forget that a lot of IE and
      | Firefox users ultimately decided to try Chrome"
      | 
      | Google for years installed Chrome using installers of other
      | applications, like malware. I am talking of 10 years ago,
      | that was common practice for google, on windows. So a lot
      | of users found themselves using Chrome without even knowing
      | they were using chrome.
 
      | unethical_ban wrote:
      | Firefox didn't always work as well in an SSO corporate
      | environment, where Chrome was able to shoe-in for IE.
      | 
      | From a sysadmin perspective, Firefox having its own cert
      | store instead of relying on system store was an extra
      | hurdle for corp IT people.
      | 
      | Then there is the fact that Chrome goes out of its way to
      | integrate with Google's other properties which they market
      | to corporations to replace Office.
      | 
      | So I'm saying, I believe FF would have done better if they
      | tried harder to integrate with corporate environments
      | without compromising on their capability and independence.
      | Name recognition is a big thing.
 
    | londons_explore wrote:
    | Mozilla had a lot of goodwill, particularly in the tech
    | world. With the right strategy, they could have translated
    | that into thousands of influential websites encouraging users
    | to use Firefox.
    | 
    | Things like releasing features for firefox users first,
    | because devs like firefox and it had better devtools, would
    | have kept the firefox userbase afloat.
    | 
    | Instead the mozilla devtools have been allowed to fall
    | behind, web apps are no longer developed firefox-first, and
    | mozilla lost it's opportunity.
 
  | mndgs wrote:
  | Really surprised that FF is only 4% market share now: what did
  | I miss? Never followed the browser wars, just used what I liked
  | then (chrome -> opera -> FF for the past year or so..). Turns
  | out I'm on the sinking ship...
 
    | dblohm7 wrote:
    | > Really surprised that FF is only 4% market share now: what
    | did I miss?
    | 
    | The explosion of mobile.
 
    | vkou wrote:
    | > what did I miss?
    | 
    | You missed the pre-installed browser and applications bundled
    | with your computer becoming good enough that ~nobody is going
    | to www.firefox.com to download a browser on a fresh install.
    | This isn't 2004, you no longer need to spend three hours
    | downloading software to make a fresh install of Windows
    | usable.
    | 
    | That, and a weak mobile app.
 
    | orangeoxidation wrote:
    | > what did I miss
    | 
    | Mobile is eating the web. Mobile (Android - it's all Safari
    | on iOs) Firefox is a bad experience.
 
  | londons_explore wrote:
  | > pushing its toxic politics
  | 
  | While I wouldn't describe Mozilla leadership as that... I don't
  | think you'll find many people who think Mozilla leadership have
  | made good strategic decisions in the last 5 years.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | RealCodingOtaku wrote:
  | Also, "Goanna (Pale Moon), a fork of an old version of Gecko.
  | At 0% market share and always at risk of not catching up with
  | _the newest web standards that Google invents_ ".
  | 
  | Google don't make web standards
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_standards
 
    | agloeregrets wrote:
    | Ahahah... We have someone who thinks that the W3C/OWF has any
    | real power. That's hilarious.
    | 
    | This is what actually happens: 1. Google (Who is a member of
    | both W3C and OWF) announces a plan/ships a feature. 2. With
    | 80% of the browser market, people use it or get excited by
    | it. 3. The W3C/OWF ratifies the feature as a standard.
    | 
    | This is literally how 90% of web standards happen today.
 
| Y_Y wrote:
| Cool graph, but I think in cases where. Lot of your data ends up
| indistinguishable from zeros it's better to use something like a
| log scale. We all know Chrome is the biggest by far, but I have
| now well to tell how the usage of, say, Links has changed over
| time.
 
| acheron wrote:
| First graphical browser I used was Slipknot [0], which doesn't
| appear to be listed.
| 
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlipKnot_(web_browser)
| 
| (Edit: I see it now, must have skipped over it before.)
 
| hiena03 wrote:
| It's a shame Opera didn't go to the open source route. Opera with
| Presto was a great browser.
 
| egberts1 wrote:
| Add-On topic of what I think is the most important component of a
| web browser: A timeline of JavaScript Just-In-Time (JIT) engines.
| 
| https://egbert.net/blog/tags/jit.html
| 
| sorry, last time I checked on March 2022, Google Chrome cannot
| negotiate for my ChaCha-only TLS website; instead try using a
| Safari, Brave, Firefox, Edge, Aloha, OnionBrowser, Orion, Links,
| or Lynx web broswer, to name a few).
| 
| Meanwhile it is an ongoing crazy ride just mapping the evolution
| of WASM (in my next planned blog).
 
  | kccqzy wrote:
  | I did a Wireshark capture. It's your server that sends back a
  | TLS alert for handshake failure.
  | 
  | Now, Chrome certainly supports ChaCha20 and Poly1305, but it
  | could be that your server is rejecting some other extensions in
  | Chrome's Client Hello.
 
  | password4321 wrote:
  | This actually sounds like a great way to hide from most of
  | Google's influence; thanks!
  | 
  | edit: My main interest is whether or not this blocks Googlebot.
 
    | londons_explore wrote:
    | It's easy enough to block Googlebot... It obeys robots.txt
    | and has a distinctive user agent...
 
    | egberts1 wrote:
    | An accidental discovery on my part that came from
    | strengthening my website.
    | 
    | It was never about maximizing my readership, just the ones
    | that know what they are doing.
 
  | mattlondon wrote:
  | Doesn't work on edge. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
 
  | shadowgovt wrote:
  | https://web.archive.org/web/20230113174325/Https://egbert.ne...
 
    | [deleted]
 
  | londons_explore wrote:
  | Perhaps send them a pull request to fix it, and see what they
  | say?
  | 
  | I can't really imagine why they wouldn't want to support it...
  | I wonder if it was an oversight rather than a policy decision?
 
    | egberts1 wrote:
    | I merely configured the website server TLS protocol to my
    | exacting specs (in cryptographic and network security
    | theatre) and Chrome failed because its client "demands" the
    | non-ChaCha variants despite my TLS server INSISTING "my way
    | or the highway".
    | 
    | Beside, I am quite partial toward Firefox browser so there is
    | little benefit for me to file a report to help Firefox's
    | competitors.
 
      | londons_explore wrote:
      | Looking again, your server is rejecting their HELO message.
      | You seem to be using a modern cipher yet requiring a legacy
      | (http/1.1) protocol, which I suspect is the issue. Adding
      | an advertisement for TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 to every
      | TLS 1.3 handshake worldwide would add a _lot_ of gigabytes
      | of global bandwidth, for support of an awfully unusual
      | configuration. Those 4 bytes in every http request globally
      | probably isn 't worth it just for you.
      | 
      | Take a look at this trace [1].
      | 
      | I think it's pretty clear the client is offering a bunch of
      | things, including TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256, and your
      | server just replies 'nah, goodbye'.
      | 
      | Perhaps your server doesn't like the ESNI extension?
      | 
      | [1]: https://pastebin.com/ffP4cPJi
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | superkuh wrote:
        | Yes, corporation persons desperately want people to move
        | to http/2 and http/3 for for-profit reasons. They're
        | terrible protocols for human persons though. Phasing out
        | http/1.1 support in chrome/etc means phasing out the
        | ability to host a website that can be visited by someone
        | you don't know without the continued permission from a
        | third party TLS CA.
 
  | jwilk wrote:
  | It's still broken in Google Chrome 109 (the latest stable
  | version) on Linux:
  | 
  | > _egbert.net uses an unsupported protocol._
  | 
  | > _ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH_
 
    | egberts1 wrote:
    | which is what I expected given that Google Chrome chose to
    | ignore the server's "my options only or nothing".
 
| jonahbenton wrote:
| I wrote a browser for Macs (System 7) in 1995-7 through a
| contract with James Gleick's Pipeline ISP [0], commercially
| available in the US. Don't see it listed, will reach out.
| 
| 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pipeline
 
| gernb wrote:
| What does it mean "WebKit peak 49% market share" in 2012. That
| doesn't pass the sniff test. AFAIK, Safari never had a big
| install based on Windows and MacOS+iOS certainly didn't account
| for 49% of web traffic in 2012
 
  | cpeterso wrote:
  | The page is about browser engines, not browsers. Chrome was
  | still using WebKit in 2012. Chrome switched to Blink in 2013.
 
  | normaljoe wrote:
  | Chrome used WebKit until the Blink fork in 2013. That should
  | make the numbers work. :)
 
| no_wizard wrote:
| Interesting synopsis and confirms something I've always felt:
| There was never really a plurality of web browsers, there was
| always one that held an outsized majority vs the rest and drove
| web development practice. The closest, perhaps, was a brief
| period before Chrome became dominate and IE was waning fast,
| where I believe Safari, Firefox, and Chrome held approximately
| the same market share vs IE, which would be in the 2010-2013 era
| (peak Webkit was 2012), which I personally regard as one of the
| most interest times to be both on the web and be a web developer,
| it was also before Chrome forked Webkit fully IIRC.
| 
| FWIW, I know having Chrome / Chromium as the overwhelming
| majority browser is not great, if for the sheer fact competition
| keeps everyone "honest" in a way, but they are by far the most
| "benevolent" from a developer perspective. IE was truly both
| stagnant and terrible.
| 
| EDIT: that's not to say I approve the Chromium dominance, as a
| daily Firefox user especially, but I would be lying if I said,
| from a developer perspective, that Chromium hasn't been pretty
| good so far on balance. They do innovate. They do push new
| features. They do usually support the latest specs. Though again,
| I don't approve of it being so dominate, I'd prefer a plurality.
| Its a shame that Microsoft didn't use Firefox as its base for new
| Edge
 
  | jedberg wrote:
  | > which would be in the 2010-2013 era (peak Webkit was 2012),
  | which I personally regard as one of the most interest times to
  | be both on the web and be a web developer
  | 
  | Oh man, it depends on your definition of interesting. That was
  | the time we had 3-5 engineers at reddit, and let me tell you,
  | making reddit work for all the browsers was awful (and I barely
  | had anything to do with it, it mostly fell on the other guys).
  | It got to the point where every reddit page had "Fuck ie6" as a
  | comment somewhere in the html, because a bunch of people were
  | still using it and it didn't support a lot of the stuff the
  | other browsers did.
  | 
  | While the consolidation of browsers isn't great from a market
  | perspective, it's been great for developers sanity. :)
 
    | no_wizard wrote:
    | Yes, dealing with IE (even IE 11, up until the last 2-3 years
    | for me) was a pain back then, as it was circa 2020.
    | 
    | That said, it saw a lot of innovations broadly, web
    | development was taken alot more seriously as a profession,
    | and saw some interesting frameworks come out (Ember, Angular,
    | and later React) and jQuery sure made life easier by that
    | time.
    | 
    | I even have some fond memories of KnockoutJS. My most
    | favorite, and probably most underrated framework in the
    | history of web development, was SproutCore, which had legs at
    | this time.
    | 
    | From a culture side (user?) it was the heyday of things like
    | Delicious, Foursquare, Good Twitter (IMO) and blog rolls.
    | Mobile web was rolling out in earnest. Alot of innovation was
    | happening in this space.
 
    | [deleted]
 
    | deburo wrote:
    | Haha, I was interviewing for an internship in those years,
    | and I remember asking the only webdev guy there if he thought
    | he had the coolest job in the company (I sure thought that
    | the web was better than Windows). The guy just looked at me
    | like I was crazy.
 
  | password4321 wrote:
  | Saying ' _Chrome / Chromium [...] are by far the most
  | "benevolent" from a developer perspective_' is painting a bit
  | of a target on your back here, I think.
  | 
  | edit: (over Firefox, sorry I wasn't clear)
 
    | vkou wrote:
    | > is painting a bit of a target on your back here, I think.
    | 
    | Only for anyone who has forgotten just how wretched and
    | stagnant IE6 was, and how long the web ossified around it,
    | and how much work it took to overcome the inertia of a crappy
    | browser[1] shipped by a monopolist that _did not want you to
    | use the web_.
    | 
    | There are many legitimate reasons to grouse about Chrome,
    | Google, Google owning Chrome, etc, but the problems
    | surrounding it are, I feel, an order of magnitude smaller
    | than what we had in the 00s.
    | 
    | [1] The delta between IE6 and Firefox 1.0 was incredible, and
    | everyone working on the web _despised_ the work required to
    | make websites work on the former.
 
      | irrational wrote:
      | But... Firefox came out before Chrome. It's not like we had
      | to use IE6 until Chrome came out. I started using Firefox
      | as soon as it came out and have used it continuously ever
      | since.
 
        | boundlessdreamz wrote:
        | For an end user, Firefox was great. But the wide
        | prevalence of IE meant that
        | 
        | * Sometimes sites worked only in IE or broke subtly in
        | other browsers. The subtle breaking could be layout
        | differences or functionality not available/working
        | because the developers used IE specific
        | technology/javascript
        | 
        | * Developers had to code for the lowest common
        | denominator - IE. It really held back web applications
        | 
        | * Debugging any errors in IE was a royal pain
 
    | no_wizard wrote:
    | I mean, on balance, compared with the IE reigning years,
    | Chromium is better than that, and its been mostly (again,
    | from a developer perspective) a net positive in day to day
    | developers lives that Chrome has not stagnated and new
    | features ship.
    | 
    | That however, is not to say that its okay. There's other,
    | broader issues than just developer experience to care about
    | here, like what a Google dominated web means, because via
    | Chrome, they can push a great deal around how the web
    | actually works, which is a net loss to society. It can stifle
    | other innovations. Things of that nature.
    | 
    | Good DX isn't the whole story
 
  | smm11 wrote:
  | I use Firefox for M365 access, since it assumes nothing from
  | Windows, and doesn't try to suck everything in like Chrome.
  | Edge for 365 can't figure out which of the 11 accounts it finds
  | should be the one I'd like to use.
 
  | lordnacho wrote:
  | Common story with platforms, isn't it? It's like a huge magnet
  | drawing everyone to Windows or Intel.
  | 
  | I wonder how much is end user driven, and how much is
  | intermediary driven though. Is it that the customers are only
  | comfortable with one item in each category, or is it the middle
  | men who prefer to sell things that are all connected by the
  | same platform?
 
    | doublerabbit wrote:
    | Psychology plays a big part, change and differences. Folk
    | don't like change nor difference. You have to be willing to
    | embrace it.
    | 
    | You can do this yourself. Watch your mind freakout and give
    | yourself a panic attack if you were to drag an frequented
    | used app; icon from your phone in to an obscure new location
    | or app folder. Frequent bookmark to another folder or off the
    | bookmark bar.
    | 
    | You get used to it but change is scary because its unknown
    | and so unless you can adjust the user quickly and promptly
    | they will reject whats given to them. Or innovate something
    | whole and new thats never been done before.
    | 
    | Add the fact that major brands have user friendly in hand,
    | trying to convince someone to install Linux with its clunky
    | installer as an example; really throws them off edge.
    | 
    | Nowadays trying to get anyone to change really causes them to
    | melt and its only going to get worse as we go on further
    | through the rabbit hole of social media.
    | 
    | So why change when you already have something that just
    | works, that your used to and friends with. Even if it
    | backstabs you with updates, missing icons and leaks your data
    | to the world. It's still feels like your old friend, cosy and
    | comforting.
 
    | shadowgovt wrote:
    | It's both.
    | 
    | The vast, vast bulk of computer users are more interested in
    | the destination than the journey. They don't really want to
    | _have_ to care what browser or OS or app they 're using...
    | They want to manage their finances, or make art, or surf the
    | web, etc.
    | 
    | When the destination is the point, small amounts of asymmetry
    | tends to accrue more asymmetry because it's easier to solve
    | problems if the help ecosystem is larger to address when the
    | tool doesn't work the way the user wants it to.
 
  | irrational wrote:
  | > but they are by far the most "benevolent" from a developer
  | perspective
  | 
  | Can you clarify what you mean by this? I've been using Firefox
  | continuously since version 1 for both personal and development
  | purposes. I've never felt like Firefox was not benevolent.
 
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