We'll need Servo to counterbalance Chrome's dominance. I'll chip in $5.
We managed to write cross platform games and applications across 8 and 16 bit home computers, but apparently that is too complicated to architect for Chrome as App adopters.
If it is to be Web stack, maybe learn how to support various browsers, instead of shipping one with the application.
> We managed to write cross platform games and applications across 8 and 16 bit home computers, but apparently that is too complicated to architect for Chrome as App adopters.
I'm not sure what you mean. For past 40 years making app run on Windows, Linux, Mac, and now iOS and Android has been a pain unless you wrote a webapp. Or shipped it in a container (Electron).
> If it is to be Web stack, maybe learn how to support various browsers, instead of shipping one with the application.
The issue as developer I experienced is justifying thi effort to management/money-holders.
- I spent last day optimizing our CSS for Firefox.
+ How many of our customers use Firefox?
- 1%
+ I'm going to file that as unpaid leave.
I just don't see a way around the monoculture in web browsers. Web developers don't bother testing it (works on my chromium), management doesn't want to bother with it (what is firefax?), and users just want website to work (how come Firex doesn't work as good as Chromum? Also why do I have 300 toolbars).
Management of browser engines are absolutely opinionated. It's chock full of opinions. Decisions to not deprecate, decisions on which features to add, decisions on which features to refuse to add, all align around the incentives of the people who control the browser engine. For the last fifteen+ years the internet has primarily been driven forward by the needs of Apple and Google. There's no reason we have to continue like this, though.
Third party cookies are a great example of how chrome is actively hamstringing the entire internet with its dominance and control by a for-profit multinational.
Maybe you don’t see the irony in your comment, but that is exactly how you get opinionated engine. If there is only one party that controls the only engine, that is the definiton of ”opinionated”.
Google is no less opinionated with Chrome than Netscape, Microsoft and Apple have been. Google's opinions for the most parts align with our own, but that doesn't make it any less opinionated. And a Servo-monopoly would be better but still not great. Firefox started to stagnate after it took over from IE and vastly improved once Chrome appeared. Competition keeps things healthy
Here are some “opinions”
“The engine shouldn’t allow the user to block select parts of the content”
“Telemetry should always be on”
“The engine should restrict access to a list of websites and domains provided by the government”
“All encryption should have a backdoor”
If another browser engine is good enough they might _fork_ it in order to add these kind of predatory features. Kind of like they already did with WebKit, now that I think about it. :-P
I think browser based Apps took over in business because (1) Windows had shit security and shit App deployment, (2) Microsoft somehow forgot about developers developers developers.
Exactly what I was saying. They had the goodwill of developers and then they burned it. Any developer through the 00's got burned multiple times - like the terrible Kiddie Server 2008. They are still burning us with Telemetry and unprofessional choices like advertising within the OS.
Before that they delivered mediocre but functional software. It worked. Now it doesn't work so well and is a masterclass in ugly graphic design and usability flaws.
And why not use a cheap primitive and if a lock is detected to be shared between multiple processes then upgrade it to the "expensive emulation"?