Web browsers need to stop. Enough is enough
drewdevault.com
drewdevault.com
You can see that this is the case when you look at Safari which tried to limit features. It's arguable whether that's because Apple limits the best APIs to native apps, or those features don't make sense or because of a combination of the two. But it's undeniable that web developers mercilessly criticized Apple and relentlessly put pressure on them to keep adding all sorts of nonsense to the browser. Ironically this is why today Safari has a partially negative reputation, which the author seems to be unaware of.
To put it bluntly, the web as shaped by these two forces is fucked. There is no one that matters which still cares about the idea of a user-focused, privacy-respecting web. There's too much money to be made in an ad and tracking laden, kitchen sink APIs web.
Even extreme ones like WebUSB: between the choice of "download an application and run it with normal privileges so it can update the firmware on a connected device" and "go to a website, confirm in a browser prompt the specific device the website can access, have it update the firmware and know that it didn't leave any traces elsewhere on the system and couldn't access other hardware", the latter has some good about it.
On the contrary, you make it seem like native developers all have a superiority complex.
The world of already filled with people wanting to divide us, can we please not try to ostracize one group of developers?
> Safari is a joke.
Why? I use it daily as my primary browser. I am a software developer.
Anytime I enter a discussion about this, I get a lot of responses that are _completely irrelevant to me_ about plugins or ... rendering? or whatever other stuff I honestly can't even remember. None of that stuff matters to me. Safari is a great browser - it's simple, fast, and the only annoying thing about it is there are sites that will display modals saying I should use a modern browser like Chrome. Get real.
If you dismiss Safari as a 'real' browser, your opinion loses credibility to me. I honestly wonder if you've ever used it, or are hopping on some bandwagon about it.
The browser that has been holding the line in this respect, Safari, is dismissed without explanation.
(content blockers are opt-out - and you have no ability to even know what is loading)
What I don't like about this post is too much emotion, not much action.
> If you’re a Google engineer who is still working on AMP, you are a disgrace to your field.
Really? Career shaming? That's very low of the author to do. Why are they a disgrace?
I used to really be happy about computers - they made people's lives better. But business interests have really changed how computers work and I truly hope we can get them to work for us again.
There's always a price for someone to bend their ethics.
That doesn't make it any more OK for you (ie, any specific developer) to bend your ethics.
Also, increasing the cost for unethical practices will at least discourage some corporations from engaging in them.
Recently we learned on HN of the revolving door between Mozilla and Facebook, straight from the mouths of former Mozilla/current Facebook employees. They were even proud of helping the people that were recently let go by Mozilla with jobs at Facebook, as if it were totally normal to switch from privacy and open web defender to privacy and open web villain. I mean it is totally normal apparently.
And really, I think that the moment of shame those people will feel at being called a disgrace, if they're even capable of feeling that any more will go away latest at the time that their fat paycheck hits their bank accounts. To be fair, they probably don't even read HN, Drew's blog or give a crap about any of this.
I mean, Google bankrolled Mozilla for years, nobody questioned or even opposed it, yet Mozilla criticises them on privacy, and now look what happened.
But what do we do? I would like to take action against this, but this post doesn't really do anything about this. I fear that we will see more posts like this screaming into the blog post void and nothing comes of it, since you said they don't even read HN or Drew's blog.
That's the problem! These are developers who don't care about the ecosystem. Drew is entirely right, they should be ashamed of what they've done, and use any and all influence to end this experiment.
https://www.stateofdigital.com/facebook-browser-biggest-brow...
Going to work for the open web villain is about as bad as the doctors who did the leg work to fuel the opioid epidemic, in terms of harm to society.
>>I am an Engineer. In my profession, I take deep pride. To it, I owe solemn obligations.
As an engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance and respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession. I will always be conscious that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of the Earth's precious wealth.
As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given, without reservation, for the public good. In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give my utmost. <<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer#Oath
So.. who here is a software engineer; a digital electronic engineer; datasystems engineer etc. Can you live up to the obligation?
I remember he said something very similar about people working for FAANG.
Public shaming may be successful at the former but often fails at the latter. If anything it often causes people to reinforce a position they might have otherwise conceded. The other negative effects of shaming are well discussed in the Jon Ronson book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.
If you work on AMP, for example, it’s easy to dismiss Drew’s rant as that of a fanatic. Many people don’t think their work is unethical or immoral.
It’s much harder to dismiss a reasoned argument that acknowledges the benefits of AMP and gives examples of the deleterious effects of AMP.
Other than the fact that they work for Google, I assume?
In all seriousness I think it's fair to judge people by their actions and tell them in simple terms that you don't approve of them. Not just fair; I think it's fundamental to society that we are able and willing to do so, and that the recipients are able to feel shame as a result. This curbs antisocial behavior.
https://drewdevault.com/2018/06/05/Should-you-move-to-sr.ht....
https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/
Problem here is, that Chromium and Firefox based browsers use a huge amount of RAM, and keep increasing amount of features and code. Also, new versions of Chrome etc have broken features that did previously work fine.
Then, web developers are adding even more code to webpages, causing web to just feel a lot slower:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21835417
It would be nice if:
- webpages would use less code at frontend
- so web browsers would use less memory
- with less features in browsers, there would be less code to audit for security
- with less code in browsers, compiling browser would require less time
It is a fair criticism of Apple that they limit new experimental features to promote native apps, but looking at this a user perspective (OK, just my perspective) is that I want functional web apps that perform a service (good examples our the web interfaces for ProtonMail, FastMail, and Gmail) for use cases that truly need a web app, but for most "content centric" web sites I want great content and pleasant looking layout - things that can be achieved with HTML and CSS.
To continue my little rant, the noise to signal ratio is getting so bad on the web that I now try to find people who really have something useful to say (Ryan Holiday, Azeem Azar, Matt Taibi) and pay for content.
I think tech like WASM is cool, but its proper use cases are few and far between.
- the web is technically open but the browsers are the gatekeepers.
- browsers are FUCKING HARD to build. Very very hard. So many details. And you are the #1 target for malicious hackers.
- Rewriting the renderer for things like Firefox Quantum takes a lot of work, because every freaken webpage has to work on firefox. Every single one ever. That has been a HUGE challenge.
So at the end, yeah, lots of companies are trying to make money making a browser that everyone else (especially google) is giving away for free. So of course they are gonna try to do anything in their power to make money. Of course Mozilla is gonna start positioning themselves as the "privacy focused" browser and sell a VPN. The list goes on.
The question is: What can we do differently?
Older versions of I.E are nimble and fast compared to it.
There used to be Windows version of Safari, but it is not updated anymore.
Safari is based on Webkit/KTHML/Konqueror source code, some of the source code is public and has been contributed back from Apple to Webkit. But full source code of Safari is not public.
We can't even debug mobile Safari pages without a Mac. So it ends up as 'probably works' because it works in Chrome.
Google has monopolized the power over the web. And soon they are going to use it to their advantage.
There's a fine line between improvement and churn
I don't think critics disagree with this notion. Rather they disagree that the bloat gives meaning/improved user experience/value. It admits the existence of incompetence and perverse incentives. The latter seems like a natural consequence of profit-driven development when user satisfaction is only loosely and partially tied to profit.
But hey I guess serving ads is really important?
Not disagreeing with the rest of this, but I love Pocket.
Obviously, that depends on a lot of things, but something that would recommend, cache/archive, catalog things I find interesting/care about. I would be willing to pay for something like it. I already pay for pandora, I'd absolutely pay for something that expanded my knowledge base.
Given this, I moved to Pinboard, which isn't open-source either, but is faster, easier to use, cheaper, and has taken no VC funding.
I'm interested to see if their increased focus on products that generate revenue, like Pocket, will mean that it'll finally be open-sourced... although it doesn't seem like something that will significantly increase revenue, so I doubt it's a priority.
[0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po...
The trend to make everything an app annoys me more (ie each news service, Reddit etc). Whole point of a browser is to avoid that.