I used to switch between Chrome and Firefox all the time before finally Chrome won me over with the most convenient cloud sync for bookmarks, passwords, etc.

What did you like about Chrome's sync that Firefox sync didn't do (well)?

Same for me. Boggles my mind there still isn't a p2p (IPFS-like) system that allows you to take control of your bookmarks and use them with any browser. Then again, Chrome doesn't allow you to specify your own bookmarks server... :(

Password sync in browser is a piss-poor password manager solution. You should just use a password manager

Why is password sync in browser bad? Care to explain? I hate to have another password application; Dropbox sync t everywhere. Remember Firefox sync encrypts everything before upload. So does chrome.

At rest the data isn't necessarily encrypted. Also browser hacks are a dime a dozen. It is the most exposed interface on your computer.

You are freely executing untrusted code from unknown parties, coming over insecure and unencrypted channels. You really can't be sure who is sending HTTP.

And don't talk about sandboxes. There is a sandbox escape fix in every version of Chrome. This isn't on google, there are way more attackers then fixers.

Basically webbrowsers are under constant concerted attack by every single bad actor out there. And you trust them to sync and secure your passwords?

You have more faith in humanity then I.

Well, for one, for most of the life of your browser, it took no security for anyone staring at your desktop screen to read plaintext versions of all your passwords. (Yes, physical access is complete access and all, but there used to not even be a casual attempt to prevent someone from stopping by your PC when you stepped away having a look at your passwords quickly.)

Later versions of Chrome, IIRC, will trigger a UAC prompt on Windows before displaying passwords, or something similar.

It's also generally been trivial for software to mine saved passwords from all browsers. I'm not fond of password managers personally, I prefer outright memorization, but password managers generally at least try to keep their contents secure, usually.

What standards do they not follow?

The biggest issue is the experimental features webmasters use and then force rest to use Chrome. I'm not so sure Chrome themselves not caring about standards.

I meant web devs stop caring about standard compliance ("already works in Chrome, moving on to next interesting feature").

Does this clarify?

That clarifies it a bit yes. I read your sentence the devs of Chrome.

But it's true, interestingly Safari is often holding them back because so many devs use Macbooks and Safari.

Chrome doesn't have enough market share for any sensible developer to behave like this.

I thought Chrome had over 50% of the market share? https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx

That's true but in part because Safari isn't available on Windows anymore (and never was on Linux).

Chrome is still dominant but way less so when you filter down to only OS X users. This is especially true if you filter down to only the US where Macs are more popular than worldwide.

Unfortunately it seems like both that site and StatCounter require a payment to view browser percentage by platform. This info is out there for free somewhere.

What the hell are you talking about? Chrome's support for standards is stellar. It's actually better than FF's.

https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es2016plus/

http://caniuse.com/#feat=async-functions

http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,edge+14,firefox+50,chrome+...

It's not really about standard compliance, it's more an issue of how the browser behaves in non-standard situations and other fun edge cases. If devs only test with chrome then it's very easy to become dependent on behavior specific to chrome.

For example, yesterday I was implementing a server that uses http multipart to stream images to a browser. multipart uses two methods to frame messages: a length prefix and a boundary token. So when you send a message you prefix it with something like

    Content-Type: image/jpeg
    Content-Length: 12345

And you end it with something like

    --MagicArbitraryBoundaryTokenPreviouslySpecifiedInHead

In principle these are redundant, you could frame the content with either one but both are provided. And that's where the problem started. I misspelled a property name and because I'm using javascript it helpfully inserted 'undefined' in the "Content-Length" header. Firefox refused to display the images but chrome happily displayed them as if there were no problem.

If I had only tested in chrome I probably wouldn't have noticed that my code had a problem that was breaking other browsers.

I actually meant web devs stop caring, not Chrome devs.

Apologies for creating the misunderstanding.

You mean.. it's not just me? There's someone else who likes Netbeans?? I thought this day would never come!