Browsers Treat Big Sites Differently
Posted by Successful_Bowl2564@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 165 comments
Posted by Successful_Bowl2564@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 165 comments
nickchomey@reddit
Important to note that safari actively holds back progress on the web - especially on ios - because they make tens of billions of dollars in app store extortion fees as a result of web being less capable than native apps.
Plenty more on that in this tremendous series. https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter
adasmephlab@reddit
Safari has been the new IE for almost a decade now
levir@reddit
No, Chrome is the IE of today's internet. It's owned by a tech giant which uses it's market dominance to suppress competition, it doesn't care so much about standards anymore and rather expects every site to confirm to it.
Business-Row-478@reddit
V8 is the most widely used js engine and is pretty much the gold standard. Saying it doesn’t care about standards is absurd. It has the most cutting edge features and supports the existing spec much better than the alternatives.
IE was the exact opposite of this, just a silly comp you’re trying to make
recycled_ideas@reddit
Sure and so was whatever the hell Microsoft called theirs back in the Trident days, most widely used is the problem.
It absolutely doesn't care about standards because it is the standard. If the standard doesn't cover something they can just pick something and it becomes the standard.
Having the most features is the problem, Chrome implements things before the standards are even complete which means that in effect Chrome's solution, even if it's feature flagged is the standard.
That's super easy when the spec is your implementation.
IE had two problems. The first was that the W3C basically defined a lot of the spec as "not what IE does" because the committee members were Microsoft and some companies Microsoft put out of business when they made browsers free. Sometimes the IE solution sucked, other times it was at least as good as the actual solution and active in the wild. This particular set of shenanigans cost us at least a decade of hell.
The second was that Microsoft stopped investing in it which combined with the fact that it was the de-facto a standard but almost completely inconsistent with the actual standard (on purpose) meant that the web was stuck with this rotting carcass for ages.
Chrome behaves the same way Microsoft did, they're just more invested in the web and the standards body isn't insane anymore.
nickchomey@reddit
None of this is true and is detailed in significant detail in the link in the comment at the root of this thread.
OnlyForF1@reddit
Several of the "cutting edge features" introduced by Google and forced onto the rest of the web through a push for "standardisation" were later found to have MAJOR security flaws.
recycled_ideas@reddit
Apple sucks too, that doesn't mean that Google aren't also a bunch of bastards.
Nothing in that link contradicts anything I've said, Google have fucked the web and are continuing to fuck the web.
Available_Peanut_677@reddit
Nah, chrome does not care about standards. It also iterates like 5 versions before completely removing something or changing it significantly. Then there are websites which ended up with old standards and it becomes some support nightmare. Yet people don’t like that other browsers don’t keep up with whatever nonsense chrome does and complain that safari is too slow to adopt.
Also chrome has tendency to give access to website to as much information as it can. “You want to list all microphones in a system? Why not?”. I actually hate that website can have buggy code which selects speakers, shall be system decision, but chrome made it one way, people saw Google meet and everyone wants it like this now
CSAtWitsEnd@reddit
Yea I don't really like the fact that Google has as much of a choke-hold on the internet as it does via Chrome, but like....standards-wise, the problem is almost exclusively Safari. (Which basically leaves me using Gecko-based engines as much as I can)
FyreWulff@reddit
it has been but you'll get people going "no Chrome is the new IE6" while missing the point entirely
Worth_Trust_3825@reddit
But it's true. Google keep adding extensions to their browser to burn out other browsers so others have to follow the suite to ensure that websites run on their browser as well by adding said features. The same happened with internet explorer when it extinguished Mosaic.
WeirdIndividualGuy@reddit
All the replies misunderstand what you meant by the “new IE” smh
New IE as in “browser that gives the most headaches to develop for”, not new IE as in “browser with the most marketshare”. IE was a troublesome browser for far longer than it was as the marketshare leader
hewkii2@reddit
Chrome is
BellerophonM@reddit
No? When we say 'the new IE' we mean 'that goddamn browser that doesn't support the proper standards and makes web development 20 times harder' and that's 100% safari.
wildjokers@reddit
No, Safari is quite compliant, it is Chrome messing everything up. Did you read the article?
nickchomey@reddit
Case closed (safari ALWAYS fails VASTLY more web platform tests than even firefox): https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&aligned
MatthewMob@reddit
I want whatever you're smoking.
Devatator_@reddit
Everytime I have looked at some new feature, Chrome is almost always the first one to have it implemented, either fully or as a flag or on a separate branch
ThiefMaster@reddit
While Chrome is a monopoly which is bad, it at least supports modern web standards. Safari is a minority that doesn't support many nice things that work in every single other browser.
Haplo12345@reddit
It's close to being replaced by Chrome the last 5 years actually
iamapizza@reddit
I knew before clicking that pwa would be in here. They held back its progress and did enough damage to the web ecosystem that its recovery or re-emergence is going to be slow and painful.
remy_porter@reddit
Though the real problem with PWAs is that they’re universally a worse experience than just opening the page in a browser. Especially on desktop, but also on mobile.
Chii@reddit
The phone ecosystem/platform owners wanted it that way. They carefully and deliberately made sure to restrict web in such a way that it prevents pwa from being competitive with native.
remy_porter@reddit
To be fair, web standards are bloated and overly complex and simply can't compete with native. It's easier to write an OS from scratch than a browser.
Rxyro@reddit
It gives me back 10-20% more screen space without address bars
amroamroamro@reddit
F11 to go fullscreen if you really need all the screen space ;)
Rxyro@reddit
I meant on iOS, no one willingly uses safari on a laptop lol
terax6669@reddit
People most certainly do
nickchomey@reddit
Not the sorts who know how to go full screen/remove address bar etc
remy_porter@reddit
I can decide to hide the chrome if I want to. I don’t need the PWA to make that choice for me.
KerPop42@reddit
Ditto on firefox
remy_porter@reddit
Not Chrome the browser, chrome the UI elements that surround the content.
Absolute_Enema@reddit
I beg to differ? Browser tabs feel utterly unnecessary when the taskbar already exists.
rossisdead@reddit
How so? Given, I only use them for SiriusXM and other background media-player sites, but I don't really see the difference between PWA and having to keep a tab in a browser open?
novafunc@reddit
On iOS, web apps don't use your extensions.
So if I installed Reddit as a web app, then it's filled with ads and tracking because there's no uBlock Origin.
So I'm forced to instead use Reddit as a tab in Safari.
dmilin@reddit
Maybe try Hydra. It’s a free open source Reddit client with no ads and a much cleaner UI than the default Reddit app.
remy_porter@reddit
Well, for starters, they’re in extra windows instead of a tab. More annoying to organize. And modern browsers are offering increasingly flexible tools around managing tabs. Second, if you’re an extension user, the interaction of extensions and PWAs is fraught. But the big one is navigation- as much as they want to be “apps” they’re actually websites and being able to use browser navigation tools instead of whatever the PWA offers is always better.
gfunk84@reddit
I disagree with "always". Sometimes I want the separation from the rest of the browser. I prefer having video streaming apps as PWAs rather than just another tab in my browser. I don't need the address bar or other noise when watching Netflix, etc. it's more subjective and less objective to say one way is better than the other.
remy_porter@reddit
I can hide the address bar and if I want it in a window I can make a new window. I literally have less ability to control a PWA.
gfunk84@reddit
Why would I want to fuck about with hiding address bars in tabs selectively when I can just launch a Netflix shortcut or press Windows, N and hit enter?
remy_porter@reddit
If we’re already doing keyboard shortcuts it’s… one keyboard shortcut?
Top-Rub-4670@reddit
That's actually a benefit to using PWAs. I'd argue it feeling independent of the browser is the main point. So at this point you're just saying that you don't understand the use-case and therefore it shouldn't exist.
remy_porter@reddit
As a user it's a disadvantage- a webpage is suddenly a greed hog that wants to be a top level window for me to manage? Because fuck, I don't have enough of those at any given time?
I'd agree that this one specific feature of PWAs is fine in like, a tiling window manager, which makes it easy to organize windows. But few people use those.
rossisdead@reddit
There's no disadvantage here, because you the user chose to use it as a PWA for the very specific reason of having it as a windowed app instead of a browser tab.
remy_porter@reddit
I can have it as a windowed app without a PWA is my point. The PWA is only artificial restrictions and no additional features.
voyagerfan5761@reddit
It's mildly infuriating how often I run into this sort of viewpoint. See it all the time in "feature request" threads for any random site/game/app/whatever, people who don't know why something might be useful think those who have a use for it are weird for even asking.
elsjpq@reddit
I can open up multiple tabs to the same site on on browser. Can't do that in a PWA
lunacraz@reddit
the CONCEPT of PWAs seems great
... thats about it
shawncplus@reddit
The biggest value of PWA was the service workers, the biggest downside of PWAs is that their tech emerged at the same time the "everything is a mobile app" model so it was tightly coupled with several user-hostile UX patterns, it's really a shame
ra_men@reddit
Non technical people typically don’t like them, ux surveys showed most were confused or didn’t care that it was on the Home Screen.
Lalli-Oni@reddit
Had this discussion in a company.
"Why not PWA?"
"iPhones + push notifications"
I believe they support it now. But took ridiculous amount of time and now so many companies are already deep in (react) native territory.
revereddesecration@reddit
I’m building a PWA in Angular for one project and a React Native app in another. The PWA only needs push notifications so I figured that’s the lightweight option. The other needs Bluetooth and camera.
The PWA is nicer to build and test, that’s for sure.
DanielEGVi@reddit
The hell are y’all talking about, PWAs are not mentioned at all in the article, and the article talks about Chrome being the new IE. Wtf is this comment thread? Are we looking at the same thing?
bzbub2@reddit
The author invented or coined the term pwa
DanielEGVi@reddit
My bad, I thought the comments above were with respect to the original post. The top comment is merely tangentially related to the OP.
trykatch@reddit
I don’t support safari anymore. They deliberately don’t follow web standards so not worth the headache. Burnt my fingers with IE support
Kjubert@reddit
From what I heard they do follow web standards much more strictly than the other browsers but they don't participate in any innovation and actually just following existing standards won't drive the development of web technologies forward.
FyreWulff@reddit
They intentionally sabotaged support for features that let a website have full app-like functionality so they don't really follow the standards.
And since Apple forces Safari as the only browser engine you can't get around their roadblock with Firefox or Chrome.
Kjubert@reddit
I know this, but I thought this was about features that aren't part of any official standard, yet. Anyway, thanks for pointing it out, I happily stand corrected.
nickchomey@reddit
No they dont. https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&aligned
Kjubert@reddit
TIL. Thanks for pointing me to this.
Dreadsin@reddit
Safari feels like the new internet explorer and I say that as someone who’s usually an Apple fanboy
franklindstallone@reddit
Safari is perfectly fine especially given the fact it has content blocking built right in and it turns out most sites work perfectly fine when you remove the hot garbage ads covering half the page.
As a user maybe I would care more if web developers didn't seem more interested in attacking the open nature of the web even with something as simple as trying to break PIP because they think they know better or they want to sell it as a feature.
If anything it would be nice if the never supported all the crap standards that let web sites design their own video player so we get something different on every site which may not even work well because it's buggy, tries being too minimalist or just doesn't let you scrub back and forth because why shouldn't you just have to watch a whole 5 minute video over again because you missed a small portion?
A lot of sites even make sharing URLs a degraded experience because heaven forbid they just use the title tag rather than inventing some dumb embedded JSON blob that's shoved in the page somewhere or just sniffing out the agent and just providing nothing if they've deemed the agent to not be someone they want seeing the title.
The best thing that could happen, even for supposed problem of Safari not supporting standards, would be do away with agent strings or anything that identifies the client device. That would put pressure on everyone to support standards and it would make things more private. That's also why it won't happen because everyone wants to hoard all the data they can about their users and as much as possible lock down their website.
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Indeed. I don't use safari but I enjoy their rejection of the modern web. Who need anything more than some formatted text and maybe some forms/buttons? Only the people who decide they need 700 tracking scripts and need WebUSB or whatever crap Google is shoving into chrome as a "web standard" so they can have more ways of fingerprinting users. That and the more "fancy" the webpage, the more I fucking hate it: it takes longer to load, it gets in the way more, the UI is just poor and shitty in general.
GenazaNL@reddit
Aren't Safari also tied to the OS? Meaning people's browsers can become EOL easier than browsers that can update without OS updates
mmaure@reddit
Interesting but didn't like the AI prose
wildjokers@reddit
what AI prose?
mmaure@reddit
It's A not B.
Lots. Of. Short. Sentences.
These aren't just A...
Delta-9-@reddit
Somebody didn't make it to 10th grade English.
You know there's a reason AI writes that way, right?
It's because that's how people write. AI prose is a synthesis of contemporary style and usage. Your examples are not "AI style," that's literally standard style for non-fiction. You're looking at entirely the wrong markers if that's what you think AI text looks like.
Rokuro142@reddit
Yes, because it was overfitted and finetuned in certain ways. You're hopelessly uninformed if you think that AI models are all reflections of how people write.
This article is filled to the BRIM with Claude's brand of "it's not X, it's Y".
Delta-9-@reddit
Look, someone else who thinks LLMs won't ever change their favorite sentence structures.
You need to be looking at the robotic consistency, not any particular turn of phrase. If "x not y" is how you think you're going to spot Claude, you'll never see it again after their next update to the model.
Durende@reddit
Thank you, I will
Delta-9-@reddit
By all means!
Enjoy those false positives!
TankorSmash@reddit
This rhythm could be human but it's got the same cadence as AI. "Here's the things you need to: X, Y, Z. If you [miss the boat], bad things happen"
awhaling@reddit
Idk how to explain it but I just know an AI wrote that part
djnattyp@reddit
I mean, I hate LLM slop too, but that's just a common phrase.
Sylkhr@reddit
It is a common phrase, but it was still written by an LLM.
awhaling@reddit
No, I’m aware of the phrase. That wasn’t what made me think AI.
I guess it’s that it’s broken apart into different sentences, with the next having a technically proper but unusual comma before the “and”. It’s also contextual, AI seems to love that sort of cadence right at the end of a paragraph.
Dreadgoat@reddit
grok please translate this to slam poetry so i can enjoy it
JesseNL@reddit
Interesting stuff but the AI slop makes it unreadable
danielcw189@reddit
Which parts are AI slop?
bzbub2@reddit
saved me a click
wildjokers@reddit
There is no AI slop there. No idea what they are talking about. Everyone thinks every article is now AI generated.
Rokuro142@reddit
No, it's 100% AI-generated, specifically by Claude.
Tyg13@reddit
I dunno, I found myself noticing the telltale signs of AI writing.
Just picking on some random paragraphs:
Classic, boring prose. "It's not just X. It's Y." Listing a bunch of random things that are "fundamental" just to pad for length. "The X alone is Y."
"It's not X, it's Y."
Random, snappy-sounding but shoe-horned analogy that sort of makes sense, but doesn't really, if you think about it.
I'm not saying it's definitely all AI. Maybe the author ran their original notes/draft into an LLM and told them to write an article. Or maybe they just had it spice up the prose. Or maybe they just naturally wrote it in this manner. Who knows?
Personally, I think it's stale and boring to read these kinds of articles that all sound the same, regardless of whether they were AI-authored or not. But feel free to disagree.
bzbub2@reddit
ya I should have just clicked, it is indeed not bad. probably just a bit spruced up with llm.
ManySugar5156@reddit
Kinda wild how big sites get special-case hacks in browsers, like driver updates but for HTML/CSS/video quirks.
dgkimpton@reddit
I did not know that. Wow.
vita10gy@reddit
Iirc this is why video drivers are so big.
Both major companies want to be easy to develop for so when some big game has a bug where they forget to call x, y or z when they should, nvidia just pushes out a driver update to do it for them.
So video drivers at this point are hundreds of megabytes of "if this game does this, do that"
angelicosphosphoros@reddit
It also brokes graphics API for compliant game if it's engine name or application name matches with some other game that has that workaround applied.
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
25 years of "bundle identifier"/"reverse domain name" on Mac and Windozers are still dealing with the Single Global Namespace huh? Isn't there a developer field in the exe metadata? Or are the driver developers too stupid to query for that? Or were the windows developers too stupid to develop an API for querying that information?
angelicosphosphoros@reddit
It doesn't look into exe metadata but into the parameters of vkCreateInstance. They are same on every operating system.
Saancreed@reddit
It's not that simple. Looking at engine and application names passed to vkCreateInstance solves it for Vulkan, sure, but in the domain of PC video games, there are many more applications using D3D than Vulkan. Yes, there is https://github.com/microsoft/DirectX-Specs/blob/master/d3d/D3D12ApplicationIdentity.md but it's new, optional, and afaik nothing uses it yet.
Just look at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/blob/main/src/util/00-mesa-defaults.conf or https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/xgl/blob/dev/icd/api/app_profile.cpp or https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/blob/v3.0.1/libs/vkd3d/device.c#L599 and the next 400 lines, matches on binary file names are just as (if not more) common than whatever passes to the driver on its own.
FyreWulff@reddit
there's plenty of ways via metadata to ID an executable, but since people are very used to modifying executables on Windows but not on Mac, graphics card driver development probably considers exe name matching the safest method.
angelicosphosphoros@reddit
It does not, it looks into parameters of vkCreateInstance.
captain_zavec@reddit
That sounds like the most aggravating bug ever
dgkimpton@reddit
I did know about video drivers. It's all craziness all the way down it seems.
dmethvin@reddit
It's been this way for a long time. When Internet Explorer had 80%+ market share the other browsers had to ship workarounds so that they could make progress.
https://imgflip.com/i/artkr1
TankorSmash@reddit
Is this an AI-written article?
awry_lynx@reddit
it reads like they passed it through AI for sure, but not like they just told claude to spit out an article wholesale. huge pity considering
you'd think he'd actually like his own writing voice.
beephod_zabblebrox@reddit
oof
waterkip@reddit
This isnt googles fault? In part it is. Google sets the tone.
I thus develop on Firefox Nightlies, I then check Safari and after that Chrome. Google is 3rd class citizen in my world.
upon-taken@reddit
Some comments above seems to said Safari is not following standard and is harder to code but then the standard is set by Chrome. It’s like sucking 1 popular dick and complain that the other dicks are not the same size as this popular one…
waterkip@reddit
I think.. if you follow standards, you'll be able to run it everywhere. The quircks are non standard things introduced by market monopolies.
upon-taken@reddit
Oh I agree but then why are standards only set by the monopoly? In this case it’s Chrome, is it a good standard or a bad standard? If it’s only to gear the industry toward the monopoly, why should it be the standard??
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
I've just deprecated chrome. It's not that hard with a personal website/project.
waterkip@reddit
I don't even test some projects in Chrome (if I'm totally honest), if it works in FF it works for me (tm). I recently found out that Windows doesn't support all the flag emojis. That was a wild surprise. I need to fix my flags, but not sure which approach to take yet.
Wall_of_Force@reddit
isn't that just machine doesn't have font with all the flags? I think importing one can solve
waterkip@reddit
No Windows doesnt have the flags in their default font. It is a known and especially annoying bug or feature. It works everywhere, except on Windows. Unless you
skeptical-speculator@reddit
All of these companies wrote video code that is broken in the same way? Isn't there something a little suspicious about that?
amroamroamro@reddit
it means these sites were implemented and tested solely against chrome's behavior, regardless if it's standard compliant or not. that's what you get when you have a monopoly and every browser is basically a chromium engine with a different skin...
believe it or not there are still worst offenders, as some sites go the extra mile and try to be "extra helpful" by sniffing user agent and blocking access altogether if it doesn't detect the blessed browser
Thisconnect@reddit
my bank does not have video chat unless i spoof windows chrome useragent....
skeptical-speculator@reddit
what could go wrong
OMG_A_CUPCAKE@reddit
afaik, Chrome does not have PiP, and many sites add the "feature" to pause videos as soon as they leave the viewport. So it makes sense that many don't check for PiP and call it a day
skeptical-speculator@reddit
I'm pretty sure Chrome has PiP.
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/automatic-picture-in-picture-media-playback
UnacceptableUse@reddit
Same with games. Nvidia and AMD will often release drivers specifically for compatability with big games. It makes it harder for both smaller game studios and GPU manufactures to compete
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
I don't think they have done this for a while, they say they do but literally no one remarks on the performance increase of driver updates anymore which used to happen all of the time.
They say their game ready drivers are for certain games but there doesn't appear to be any evidence, I think its all part of some advertising now "pay to be named on our next driver release".
DemonWav@reddit
Most games use the same base engines, Unreal, Unity, Godot, etc. If the game doesn't do something crazy, it's probably going to be fine. But big AAA games are the one most likely to have custom engines or more extreme rendering pipelines. These games are very often tested for and drivers are fixed for them before they release to the public. Nvidia and AMD work directly with these large studios so if all goes well it happens before anyone plays the game and no one is aware it ever happened.
But even in these scenarios it's very often less about optimizing to make a game faster than normal, it's more about fixing issues that cause significant bottlenecks or slowdowns, making the game run artificially worse on one brand's GPU vs another. We definitely do still see those games where AMD cards don't perform as well as they could, and a driver update later brings it back up to par. But again, in AMD's ideal world, that happened before the game was released. (Okay, in AMD's ideal world it was never needed to begin with, but oh well)
nyaaStar@reddit
This case is more like game devs programming against and testing only on Nvidia hardware, while AMD/Intel have to apply game-specific patches to make the game work.
UnacceptableUse@reddit
Nvidia does also release game specific drivers though, so I have no idea what the game devs are testing against
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
No one tests these anymore so I have doubt they do anything, I think its just part of marketing now "Pay to be named on our next driver release".
max123246@reddit
Nvidia usually works with the game devs before those drivers launch. So they'll have an internal copy of the game specific driver changes as it's being developed
valarauca14@reddit
This is what Game Devs tell themselves is happening.
The reality is usually the game is mishandling Direct-X contexts, not correctly setting GPU fences, and a whole bunch of other crap. So Nvidia & AMD carve out special cases literally for that game which boil down to
There are a number of talks where ex-driver talks talk extensively about this.
It still is the case you can rename executables & dlls to get better performance because of nonsense like this.
In fact, now you can rename tensor files for the same effect as we've recently seen with the flash attention stuff. Where having
nv_flash_attention(I forget the exact keyword) within your.cufile name turned on like 4 otherwise disabled and undocumented optimizations within NVRTC/NCC.max123246@reddit
Yup, it's because unsafe optimizations or patch workarounds that they implement based on naming. They did similar with Cutlass kernels
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
This is because game development is complex and not standardized (enough), so drivers end up having to optimize the rendering pipeline for the game in order to ensure their users get the best performance. As well as handling bugs that may arise.
It's not some kind of attack on the little guys, they just don't have the manpower to optimize for every game, not to mention that would balloon the driver size (more than it already is). Further, smaller game studios often release graphically simpler games, and often rely more heavily on existing engines which already have some level of optimization.
Worth_Trust_3825@reddit
Bullshit. GPU APIs are well documented. DirectX, Vulcan, OpenGL, and many others are well documented. They are the standards. RTFM instead of skimming through indian blogs that incorrectly interpret the manual for you.
pm_plz_im_lonely@reddit
Bullshit on what?
There are games that ship today built against OpenGL and contain graphic errors or imperfect designs. It's just a fact.
And there are differences between drivers on different platforms for OpenGL that will do slightly different behaviour, particularly when you do something undefined. Also a fact.
You can call bullshit on laziness, stupidity, lack of budget, lack of care, randomness of the weather or wind direction, but drivers do end up optimizing for certain games.
FeepingCreature@reddit
you used to be able to rename apps to bf2.exe and get a speedup, lol
__konrad@reddit
I like that Firefox about:compat fixes Vivaldi page
HalfSarcastic@reddit
Well it might be just because those websites are so big and don't care to optimize the JS code so that browser tends to overconsume resources which leads to poor performance and bad impression about the browser.
voyagerfan5761@reddit
Reading just the first paragraph of the article would've prevented this comment
HalfSarcastic@reddit
I didn't see anything in article that directly explains the reason behind the decision to alter the code based on the "big websites" features.
So I offered my theory. What's your explanation?
voyagerfan5761@reddit
Sounds like you still didn't actually read it.
The entire article is about "quirks" that Safari and Firefox silently change in rendering or scripting behavior on specific domains, usually because the company behind that site made some assumption not covered by the relevant specification that "breaks" something on non-Chromium browsers. For example:
HalfSarcastic@reddit
So, how it is not about optimizing the browser to avoid bad impressions about it just because the users mostly spent time on those big websites that do not optimize the JS code for non-chromium browser?
nemec@reddit
hilarious title for the paragraph talking about User Agent spoofing, while showing Safari spoofing the Chrome User Agent that starts with "Mozilla/". Even if Chrome doesn't have a "quirks" file it absolutely participates in spoofing to broaden website support, as is tradition.
Fun fact, even Windows 95 (and I'm sure recent versions) contained fixes like this: https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-95-had-dedicated-code-to-nix-an-og-sim-city-bug/
7h4tguy@reddit
Clickbait. Oh no software uses workarounds. Call in the popo
amroamroamro@reddit
every windows still has a database with thousands of compatibility fixes embedded
you can download a tool called ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit) from Windows ADK to view this database
https://i.imgur.com/ook9iDq.png
3Razor@reddit
All Windows have application compatibility fixes, even on the driver interface level (see: Sure, we do that) because if the application / OS crashes when it didn't do so before, the vast majority of people will think it is Windows that is broken and not the software that's running on it.
Related to the article, here's a little breakdown of how broken applications could be fixed in Win95:
Behind the scenes on how Windows 95 application compatibility patched broken programs - The Old New Thing
darthcoder@reddit
Chrom(ium) is now quite literally the new IE4 (for those of us who remember how it dominated the web for so long).
jimbojsb@reddit
IE6 you mean
Blecki@reddit
Another day I am happy to be writing code in a corporate environment where everyone is forced by IT onto one browser.
ArtOfWarfare@reddit
As long as the browser is Firefox, that sounds great. But I seriously doubt it is. Firefox is actually documented quite thoroughly. The best docs for Safari and Chrome are easily Firefox’s docs, where they call out different behaviors in the other browsers. Safari and Chrome are generally just not documented at all.
I expect that someday corporations will force everyone to move to Servo. They have a version 0.1.0 now… maybe version 1.0.0 will come this summer… or maybe it’ll be another 3 or more years until then…
Blecki@reddit
It's edge unfortunately. But edge is just chrome with a terrible skin...
I don't know why it would matter if it was Firefox. The important part is its the same, so it doesn't matter if the browser is wrong: it's still consistent.
lunacraz@reddit
last time i dealt with edge it wasn't too bad
TurtlePig@reddit
I switched to edge for native vertical tabs a few years ago. given its chromium it basically felt like chrome with vertical tabs lol
arpan3t@reddit
I use edge as my daily. It is better with memory than chrome, ties in Entra ID SSO, built-in workspaces and other nice features, etc…
IMO it’s like chrome but better.
Devatator_@reddit
As an Edge daily driver, it's pretty great, especially on my laptop and phone. It still supports MV2 and has extensions on Android and iOS. Unlike some others
TheHerbsAndSpices@reddit
Let me guess, it's Chrome?
Blecki@reddit
Its chrome in a trench coat.
Booty_Bumping@reddit
Fun fact: Edge is actually two browsers, because it still supports Internet Explorer compatibility mode. Should still support ActiveX crap written for IE6.
Blecki@reddit
You have a weird definition of "fun".
voyagerfan5761@reddit
/u/Booty_Bumping is exactly the kind of person I want at my parties.
TheHerbsAndSpices@reddit
Shoot, I should have known!
psych0fish@reddit
I would have appreciated even a single example of what is being treated differently and why. I don't find this very interesting just saying "this thing happens" and "go look at source code". I don't understand the code to know what is being treated differently. Unhelpful article.
wildjokers@reddit
Did you read the article?
Rokuro142@reddit
The article's writer didn't even write it, it's presumptuous to expect people to read it tbh.
Teknikal_Domain@reddit
Why do I have a feeling you didn't actually read the article....
docfaraday@reddit
I have a personal example, but it's a little complicated, and almost an inversion of what the article describes.
WebRTC has a JS API called RTCRtpSender::setParameters. It kinda does what you'd expect; it allows the site to customize some things about how audio/video is sent to the other side. We implemented this in Firefox about 10 years ago, right after it was added to the spec. Barely a month later, the webrtc spec completely changed how this API worked in a non-backward-compatible way, and then Chrome implemented this new version of the API. Websites implemented based on what Chrome did, and did some workarounds for Firefox which still implemented the previous version. Things stayed like this for years, and about 3 years ago we updated Firefox to use the latest version of the API.
Great, right? Well, it turns out that those workarounds those websites used were incompatible with the new spec-compliant behavior. So we had Firefox/Chrome/Safari all doing the same thing, but sites were using the API incorrectly (and breaking) *only* on Firefox. So, we were forced to put in a backward compatibility mode to make it work either way, and hope that sites stopped doing the old no-longer-valid thing.
Fast forward a few years until recently. There is a yearly web-platform push to get the major browsers on the same page in terms of what we implement (Interop 2026). Firefox was "losing points" because this compatibility mode was still letting the old way work. So we removed it, which *broke Google Meet*, because it was *still* doing the wrong thing, but only for Firefox. So then *Firefox* had to allow Google Meet (and only Google Meet) to continue using the old backward compat mode.
This kind of ridiculous, frustrating situation is common for those of us working on browsers.
ddollarsign@reddit
Postel's Law
MarkusWinand@reddit
Reminds me of this: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii-chicken-and-egg-problems/#:~:text=Microsoft%20tracked%20down%20the%20bug%20and%20added%20specific%20code%20to%20Windows%2095%20that%20looks%20for%20SimCity%2E
Xipher@reddit
How about Nvidia and the "Quack 3" shit.
kranker@reddit
That was more like Volkswagon and the emissions test
Dwedit@reddit
For me, "about:compat" just shows a gray page with nothing on it.
iamapizza@reddit
Interesting read. I've wondered if this is where webcompat issues end up.