Chromium vs. Everything Else

[Mæstro]

I used to use Waterfox myself about 6-7 years ago, before I got more serious about Pale Moon.

Funny to think we might both have been using Waterfox about the same time, along the same gentle stroll towards Pale Moon! I have said before that Waterfox suffices as my browser of last resort, and my artist friend uses it as his main browser, for he came to me for advice about this during that brief time when I was using it as my main one.

[UCyborg]

Surprised FireDragon works on my home desktop. Feels heavy though and the option to turn off smooth scrolling is broken.

[Gemmaugr]

https://www.webbrowserdirectory.com/browsers/ have amalgamated and categorized existing information from various sources.

Sadly, like the title says, most are chromium versions. Electron, CEF/Chromium Embedded Framework, QTWebEngine, (Web Kit.. Sort of. Blink/chromium was forked from it, but since chromium took over WHATWG, it feels like Web Kit just lifts patches from it.. so..)

The other one is Firefox and its reskins/rebuilds.

[Moonchild]

At least they aren't misinforming people.
https://www.webbrowserdirectory.com/exp ... ne-goanna/

[Gemmaugr]

At least they aren't misinforming people.
https://www.webbrowserdirectory.com/exp ... ne-goanna/

I admit that I've talked with them on reddit and posted a few things in the suggestion box

[Mæstro]

Just for fun, let us try to imagine a browser even worse than Chromium. Whoever proposes the greatest abomination wins.
My bid? Imagine if Facebook joined Microsoft, Google and Apple in trying its hand at managing a web browser.

[andyprough]

Just for fun, let us try to imagine a browser even worse than Chromium.

The way that @athenian200 has been talking about it recently, that browser exists right now and it is called modern Firefox with e10s:

For me, though, Firefox's implementation is particularly bad even compared to say, Chrome... which I would say ironically did it first and did it better, even though I really don't like Chrome. The reason is this... Mozilla did not simply run one full browser process per tab, with all the processes ignorant of each other like a full-on virtual machine (which is the only remotely secure way to do it). That would have been very bloated and consumed a ton of resources, yes, but it might have at least been more sound than the architecture they wound up with, and I would have understood intellectually why they were doing it and thought it was a sound approach. Mozilla punched multiple holes in that sandbox and wound up trying to have their cake and eat it too, by splitting various browser components into their own processes that don't always get duplicated between tabs and reusing pieces where they could to try and regain performance, resulting in a ton of interprocess communication going on, which means they regress back to a pre-e10s state in terms of any claimed security advantage, and still have something a lot bigger and heavier than a non-e10s browser. So they've wound up with something that's big, heavy, and very vulnerable... but feels fast most of the time. ...

His post continues on for quite a bit, and it's well worth reading the entire thing. Highly informative.

[UCyborg]

Some weird things about Chromium, it rushes with requests before extensions can even intercept. So uBlock can miss things to block and user scripts you have that are supposed to run early can miss their window. Quite apparent with session restore. Best to start session with some internal page or some page that isn't problematic. Needs Lazy Tabs for Firefox-like behavior so only one tab is loaded at start.

In text boxes, say you double click the word in a written statement, it selects the word and the space afterwards. I've not seen other programs do that, they all tend to select the word without space.

Small bits of customizability may be in chrome://flags. Depending on the fork, some have more than others. Out-of-box, tabs shrinking to the point only icons are seen when you have more of them...I wonder what kind of % of people prefer that over tabs shrinking less to be able to still see some of the text.

Now, I don't feel like I need whole download manager per-se, but since no browser that I'm aware of comes with the setting to preserve original modification timestamp of the file...well, nothing like DownThemAll! / GetEmAll! here, but diverging downloads to JDownloader for instance is possible. Still missing an option to select on the fly to dump into %TEMP% and open.

I don't know what's up with my work laptop, but Thorium at least (that I'm working with recently) just doesn't see proxy settings in Windows. I have it set to use configuration script. It doesn't see it even with --proxy-pac-url command-line parameter. I can access the file in the browser normally. Why do I have the feeling it's something to do with old and deprecated Win10 version?

About the fonts, while better out-of-box than they used to be, still not quite there. But ChatGPT helped me tune the user script to enhance the contrast while keeping blur to the minimum, I can say I no longer experience fatigue.

Funny to consider polyfills when it comes to "modern" browser, but, I have an older script last updated in 2020 that adds remaining time display to YouTube video player, doesn't work as-is in either Chromium or Firefox these days. Quickest fix was adding polyfill for Mutation Events.

Code: Select all

// @require      https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mfreed7/mutation-events-polyfill/refs/heads/main/src/mutation_events.min.js

[athenian200]

The way that @athenian200 has been talking about it recently, that browser exists right now and it is called modern Firefox with e10s:

Yep. To put it bluntly... I've come to believe that Firefox lost to Chromium for a reason beyond just Android, as tempting as it is to blame it all on that (though that certainly played a role). I think the most damning thing is really that Brendan Eich, of all people, forked Chromium instead of Firefox. I would think if anyone would pick the Mozilla codebase as a thing worth forking and saving, it would be a former CEO who was connected with Netscape. If someone that deep in the company wasn't interested in forking Mozilla code and instead built on Google's foundation (remember this was back in 2016 when Mozilla still had more mindshare), I think that speaks volumes about how far gone it was even back then.

Just because I don't like Chrome doesn't mean I can pretend Mozilla is sitting on something special. I've seen the code we inherited... how many problems it has, and how much worse shape Firefox is in today even compared with that state. I've seen the code Chromium was built on, and how much of KHTML/WebKit's clean design is still present despite what Google has done to it. And I have to admit, Google's developer tools beat Mozilla's every time.

If I were to sum up my feelings on this in a nutshell. It's that Google's programmers think like competent engineers who are building a project with goals diametrically opposed to ours, and show the kind of ambition and prowess you'd expect of a project that wants to be the foundation of everything on the web. Meanwhile... Mozilla's code really looks like it was written as a collaboration between CompSci students still in university looking to get experience and average Linux hacker types who just pull a "good enough" solution out of their butt and toss it on the pile of hacks every time someone complains.

TL;DR:
Chromium = competent design by skilled people with bad values who want power.
Mozilla = incompetent design by people with shaky principles and big egos who want attention.
UXP = a principled attempt to clean up incompetent design with limited resources and manpower while preserving the best ideas, by people who mostly just want XUL, NPAPI, a good theming engine, and maybe some privacy.

In other words, this is not the IE6 situation, at least not yet, and it would take a long time to get there. Chrome isn't using its dominance to hold web standards back. They do the opposite... they build close relationships with standards bodies and popular frameworks, and push new web standards so fast smaller teams can't keep up. Web developers are happy they have all the features they want and fewer engines to target, advertisers are happy no one can easily get a more privacy-respecting browser, Google looks good, and competing implementations become nearly impossible. They may slowly be drifting towards the IE6 approach over time, but for now I would say they are maintaining their monopoly in a way that precludes anyone ever doing to them what Mozilla did to Microsoft in the late 2000s. They've instead built a browser engine that web developers, framework developers, and advertisers like... which means the opinion of the users is all but irrelevant because those making and selling the content we're consuming have decided for us. It's like this... if you want to watch Netflix, you don't get any say in whose DRM is used. The web is slowly becoming a content platform where those making the content dictate the terms under which you consume it, and whose technology you will use to consume it. Just like streaming video.

[UCyborg]

So the issue is both Firefox and Chromium refuse to proxy localhost requests through proxy server. Apparently, you now need flipping network.proxy.allow_hijacking_localhost in Firefox, which works.

And in Chromium, it's supposed to be this cmd-line:

Code: Select all

--proxy-bypass-list=<-loopback>

But doesn't work for me...

This is stupid, if proxy.pac says to proxy localhost, then it should be done.

[moonbat]

I think the most damning thing is really that Brendan Eich, of all people, forked Chromium instead of Firefox. I would think if anyone would pick the Mozilla codebase as a thing worth forking and saving, it would be a former CEO who was connected with Netscape.

Given that he became a former CEO because of his personal political choices that had no relation to how he ran the company or treated non-heterosexual employees^*, it isn't surprising.

^*- Which is to say, he didn't discriminate against them or insult them in any way.

[Gemmaugr]

Well, well, well..

"Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without user consent & Re-downloads it if the user removes it manually."

[Night Wing]

Well, well, well..

"Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without user consent & Re-downloads it if the user removes it manually."

And this is another reason and the "worst" reason I have seen so far, why I will never use the Chrome browser.

[jarsealer]

Well, well, well..

"Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without user consent & Re-downloads it if the user removes it manually."

I hope this doesn't affect chromium forks like Brave.

[Mæstro]

A proud tradition has been revived. A decade and a half ago, random software installers would bundle Chrome. Now, Chrome itself bundles the random software! How time passes.

[BenFenner]

this is not the IE6 situation, at least not yet, and it would take a long time to get there. Chrome isn't using its dominance to hold web standards back. They do the opposite...

A distinction without a difference.

Chome/Chromium is 100% another IE6 situation and it's been that way for over a decade now.

[Mæstro]

The distinction is mostly in that web developers in the IE6 days were annoyed that Microsoft refused to comply with the W³C’s standards while presenting its own fixed target (since there were no updates for years) to match, but today, the W³C have surrendered control over to Google and friends for them to draw up whatever ‘living standards’ they like, and web developers appear, by all signs, to be happy with this.

[athenian200]

The distinction is mostly in that web developers in the IE6 days were annoyed that Microsoft refused to comply with the W³C’s standards while presenting its own fixed target (since there were no updates for years) to match, but today, the W³C have surrendered control over to Google and friends for them to draw up whatever ‘living standards’ they like, and web developers appear, by all signs, to be happy with this.

Yeah, I think the distinction is important and feel like the similarity is superficial.

To make it simpler... IE6 dominance was all about the W3C moving forward and Firefox moving forward, but web developers not able to take advantage of new features they wanted because everyone was using IE, which had a frozen feature set. It wasn't that Firefox wasn't keeping up with IE... it was that IE was holding back adoption of new standards everyone had already agreed on.

Chrome dominance is harder to dislodge and works differently. Instead of a frozen feature set that holds things back, Chrome maintains dominance via a firehose of half-finished features that no browser developer could keep up with... so developers get their new features immediately, and anyone developing a non-Chrome browser is left playing catch-up. The old IE6 dominance made it easy for alternative browsers to distinguish themselves as superior and use standards compliance as a selling point. The new Chrome dominance makes all other browsers look like IE6 to web developers by comparison... their competitors (like us and even Firefox) are now the ones that are seen as holding back web development and all the web devs wish everyone would just use Chrome because it has all the latest goodies they want to play with.

[moonbat]

A better way of putting it is IE didn't care about the standards due to having > 95% of the market until the early 00s when Firefox appeared. Google simply took over the standards bodies and made standards themselves irrelevant by constantly putting out changes to Chrome so that everyone only ever tests their site against Chrome and web developers are guaranteed employment to constantly update sites and frameworks for keeping up with Google. Of course this leaves any alternate browser engines out in the cold.

[Moonchild]

Chrome maintains dominance via a firehose of half-finished features that no browser developer could keep up with...

Important distinction: no browser developer other than Chrome could keep up with. And that is by design, because it's the infamous implementation-first manipulation. "Standards" aren't standards because they were created from the community of web developers who were asking for specific new features, in the overwhelming majority of cases, but rather, new features are being implemented in Chrome because Google wants them, and then this gets pushed through by forced adoption and writing standards to match the implementation details of that singular product. The parallel with IE6 is that both would determine what could be used on the web by way of frozen implementation (Chrome has enormous resistance to changing anything in their implementation once established) and network effects of their feature use. The difference is that Chrome's way does not leave room for independents to actually agree on standardization and provide push-back, because they also control the standards bodies. So in a way it's IE6 v2, with the distinction that they learned from the IE way and hammered shut the Firefox/W3C way of resistance.