I am not aware newer browsers break backwards compatibility. Newer browsers usually work better at the things they were already good at. If you want to target a larger audience, pull your analytics and draw your line at the set you want to serve. Usually any reasonable line will cover mostly everybody.
This is the kind of excuse Microsoft uses - when you can't improve your software, you call it "stable" and "mature".
They have decided not to support h.264 at a time when every developer had to already have implemented a fallback anyway, again its not broken.
Here's an example bug where the antialiasing was screwed up:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=20064
And here's one demonstrating the (much worse) problem that you could get completely different colours showing through, although the screenshot isn't great because it only shows a small issue, not the much more offensive result if you had a larger corner radius:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=128
Spending literally one minute with Google would find you numerous related problems with screenshots attached.
Pretending this wasn't a problem with Chrome and related browsers is like an IE fan pretending that no-one ever really needed CSS hacks because (insert excuse here). There were numerous complaints about this for several months from practising web developers.
> They have decided not to support h.264 at a time when every developer had to already have implemented a fallback anyway, again its not broken.
If we all have to implement fallbacks anyway, why bother supporting any modern browser features at all?
They had H.264 support. They took it away. That means stuff that used to work in Chrome won't any more. It doesn't matter what words you use to describe that situation, the result is still the same.
> If we all have to implement fallbacks anyway, why bother supporting any modern browser features at all?
because graceful degredation is how the web works, if we enforced every browser implemented every single thing exactly the same way then nothing would ever happen.
since firefox will never have implemented h264, chrome removing it is a step towards a consistent platform, not away from it.
Considering the repeatedly defensive position about ie and bringing up fairly minor points to criticize chrome, plus the fact you replied to this hours after it went of the first few pages, are you really not Elepsis and a microsoft employee?
As I told you in the other thread, I have nothing to do with Microsoft. Not everyone who disagrees with you, or indeed with the majority opinion in any given discussion, is a troll/sockpuppet/astroturfer. And this discussion is still on my HN home page right now, never mind when I posted my previous comment several hours ago.
h.264 was never a standard for browsers to implement. It is widely in use, yes, but not a standard. This is why there was such a huge issue over <video>, because Firefox, Opera, and Chrome didn't want h.264 in the standard.
Firefox and Opera have much larger marketshare, and they weren't implementing h.264. It was DOA as a "standard" long before Chrome dropped it.
the bottom line is that that it's the nature of the beast; it creates [your choice quantitative adjective] inconvenience.
No, it's not. There is a reason not to implement h.264 - it's patent encumbered and eventually there will be licensing costs that will make free implementations impossible.
There is a difference when company G takes a stand against a bad standard and company M that can't implement simple features correctly despite the fact that it can dedicate humongous resources to its development.