Comment by soraminazuki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by soraminazuki | Hacker News Reader

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This is precisely why I use non-Chromium browsers as my daily driver. It's their constant push for non-standard APIs and aggression towards other browsers that doesn't implement their favored APIs that's cementing their dominance. Not having support for Google features shouldn't be a reason not to support other browser engines.

Some examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606027

https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1220412711768666114

Some additional rants:

> I like that I can search Google by voice in Chrome,

Chrome is a blessing for enthusiastic Google users, but not all people feel the same way.

> MIDI support

More access to HW is the last thing I want from the web at this moment. I'd rather that browser vendors focus on making the privacy footprint smaller, not bigger.

> And I hate the ads and recommended sites

You're going to see more of those on Chrome when uBo ceases to stop working along with all other manifest V2 extensions.

> More access to HW is the last thing I want from the web at this moment

This is a big deal, and an irreconcilable philosophical divide. On the one hand web apps need to be able to compete with mobile. They should have access to gyros and cameras and location and offline and push - everything. Mobile apps are modern day Flash and we should strive to be rid of them in favor of a non-proprietary shared platform.

On the other hand the majority of useful information in the world is in document format. We need some sort of non-print-focused (pdf) format that we can use to share documents. Delivering basic documents through what are basically user-land operating systems (browsers) is overkill in every sense of the word: performance, security, accessibility, efficiency, etc.

What to do? The web is already on its march towards being an app platform. The next steps will be tough since Apple and Google also own the much more valuable mobile app ecosystems, and will try to protect them - but it's too late for the web now, the march is on. I think eventually there may need to be some sort of fork of the web to better satisfy both needs.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's hard to take Google's push for these sorts of APIs as a push for a "democratic shared platform," let alone see how all this would harm Google in any way.

"Democratic" may not have been the best term to use (edited the original comment), even though, as far as platforms go, the web probably is one of the more democratic ones. I was more aiming for "non-proprietary", "cross-platform" and "shared". Mobile apps are closed ecosystems.

> how all this would harm Google in any way

Owning half the mobile app ecosystem is more valuable than sharing a web.

> some sort of non-print-focused (pdf) format that we can use to share documents

HTML?

>> I like that I can search Google by voice in Chrome,

>Chrome is a blessing for enthusiastic Google users, but not all people feel the same way.

My six year old isn't so much an enthusiastic Google user, but she sure does like voice search, since it is really the only option.

>> MIDI support

>More access to HW is the last thing I want from the web at this moment. I'd rather that browser vendors focus on making the privacy footprint smaller, not bigger.

I'm not really seeing Chrome suffering from privacy problems coming from MIDI devices.

But, you know, if you aren't into making music or learning keyboard or what have you, I guess you wouldn't care about MIDI. It's kind of a big deal to me (and again, 6 year old), so I'd miss it badly. Likewise, if you aren't into videochatting you'd probably be fine if your browser doesn't talk to your webcam or microphone. Etc. Ok.

BTW, if the browser doesn't support MIDI, and you want to use MIDI, you need to install native apps. Those are often a bigger threat, need to be made for each platform, etc.

I use my browser to read, watch, and listen, as do many others. I have never heard of people creating music with Chrome. Support for MIDI should be the last thing browser vendors should be concerned with right now.

You probably hadn't heard of people watching videos in a browser until someone made a compelling app. Same goes for so many other things that run in browsers.

I'd suggest trying it out before writing it off.

The question you haven't answered is why would I want to use a browser for that? Why do you suggest that native apps are unfit for creative purposes? Browsers are somewhat unique in that it's a runtime that runs untrusted code from the internet, and I simply don't want such a security-critical runtime acquiring more capabilities without second thought. Especially for things like access to HW. Remember the fiasco with the Battery Status APIs? Remember how it's main usage in the wild was to enable user tracking?

I agree with you. "Politics" aside, Chromium-based browsers just work better. It's odd that the 10xer super-hacker influencers here think that if you use MIDI, you're part of the problem.

Have you tried using a Chromebook? It should check a lot of boxes for you, and there are no native apps to worry about.

Firefox can absolutely talk to the webcam and microphone.

> I'm not really seeing Chrome suffering from privacy problems coming from MIDI devices.

Here's a CCS paper detailing why it's a bad idea for browsers to expose HW details without careful consideration:

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/OpenWPM_1...

> if you aren't into making music or learning keyboard or what have you, I guess you wouldn't care about MIDI

Considering the aforementioned problems, why would it make sense for browsers to prioritize MIDI above all else? And I highly doubt your six year old would refuse to use native apps, given the chance.

> (native apps) are often a bigger threat

I choose my native apps with care. For many apps, moving to the web doesn't mean that I would have to stop caring about trust. It just means that I would have to start being more careful about which sites I visit if browsers keep on exposing random HW details.

> need to be made for each platform

If you're only supporting Chrome, then you've stopped caring about portability. You're making it the user's fault if they don't use Chrome.

"why would it make sense for browsers to prioritize MIDI above all else?"

Who said above all else? That's pretty black and white. You could make the same argument if Firefox didn't support, say, microphone or camera. If you don't happen to use them (say, you don't use video chat as many didn't prior to 2020), you could ask why they are so important.

It's just one thing that Chromium does (and has done for year), that Firefox doesn't.

>And I highly doubt your six year old would refuse to use native apps, given the chance.

Which native app? The one she uses only works in a browser, and wouldn't work natively because it uses other things a native app can't use (such as YouTube interaction/synchronization). Also the graphics are far superior to anything I've seen not done in a browser, because it taps into other things that would be immensely difficult if the browser didn't make them available at a pretty high level.

https://youtu.be/64PkqQuE9h8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV6rdmdZnkA

And that app works on her Chromebook, as well as on my Windows and Mac machines.

I get that you like Firefox, but I don't see "you can just do that with a native app" as a great advertisement for it.

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