This way users will have to upgrade, and the web can move forward.

One thing is to keep supporting something that costs hundreds of dollars (like an iPhone), but there is very little sense IMHO to spend a lot of effort and—potentially—make everyone's experience worse just because some users won't bother downloading a 50MB free update.

A lot of things happen in 3 years in this field!

Google was smart in making Chrome updates automatic. I doubt the average user cares the slightest anyway.

That is exactly the same justification for "deprecating" America's public transit infrastructure in the 1950s, and replacing it with highways. I don't consider a lot of updates to be upgrades.

And the cost associated with updates isn't 50Mb. The cost is losing essential features that I rely on.

So, you're saying that I should lose the ability to log into my router, all so you can use the latest template bullshit that will be abandoned in a year.

And it's not even that a major feature will be deprecated specifically, it's the threat and uncertainty that the constant update cycle creates.

I deeply miss the good old days, when I could trust that my computer would behave as I expected it to. The fact that things have become so damn unreliable is itself taking away from the UX, and more than offsets any improvements. Google has an awful UX, because of how unreliable it is.

All the financial websites that I use over the last two years have been ruined in the pursuit of UX. Information density has plummeted. I used to be able to copy and paste data on screen in a predictable manor. The browser responded instantly. Now, it's a messy, slow, and far less readable.

I'm thankful that I don't rely on accessible technology.

The direction the web has taken recently is horrible. And I'm convinced that this time will be looked back on with disgust.

I was a web designer from the late 90s to early 2000s. I vividly remember everyone saying how Flash needed to be pushed on users, and how HTML was obsolete. And that unskippable flash intro pages were cutting edge UX. And playing sounds in the background was a great idea. And that all users were 800x600 resolution.

The attitudes have not changed. I think they've actually gotten worse.

Sorry, I don't have time to go into the specifics of all the APIs that modern browsers have started supporting since 2014, but they're a lot.

> That is exactly the same justification for "deprecating" America's public transit infrastructure in the 1950s, and replacing it with highways. I don't consider a lot of updates to be upgrades.

Why are you comparing public transportation with web standards? Web standards evolve about 100 times faster than public transportation.

> So, you're saying that I should lose the ability to log into my router, all so you can use the latest template bullshit that will be abandoned in a year.

I don't see why you'd lose it. More modern browsers will still be able to interpret old code (http://info.cern.ch/)! The problem is the other way around: old browsers can't understand new code. Also, although I take it that you don't like updating your software, if something doesn't work if you updated your router firmware or software you might find out that it starts working again. You can also keep an older browser installed if you need to access some specific software, but I don't think it's a good idea to use an obsolete browser as your main browser, if anything for security concerns.

> he direction the web has taken recently is horrible. And I'm convinced that this time will be looked back on with disgust. I was a web designer from the late 90s to early 2000s. I vividly remember everyone saying how Flash needed to be pushed on users, and how HTML was obsolete. And that unskippable flash intro pages were cutting edge UX. And playing sounds in the background was a great idea. And that all users were 800x600 resolution.

Then, I find it hard to understand how you believe that things have gotten worse, since all browsers follow the standards now, most things are open source and build on open technologies.

> The attitudes have not changed. I think they've actually gotten worse.

Judging by your tone and attitude, I actually agree with you on this one.

> Sorry, I don't have time to go into the specifics of all the APIs that modern browsers have started supporting since 2014, but they're a lot.

> Why are you comparing public transportation with web standards? Web standards evolve about 100 times faster than public transportation.

Web browsers and public transit are both infrastructure that everyone relies on. And we have a responsibility to think carefully before we make big changes that can harm, or even inconvenience people. And I think that too often, we make the wrong choices for the wrong reasons. We take for granted that things like ATM machines, or door knobs will remain pretty much the same. The are infrastructure, too.

And the language used to describe these changes are often misleading. Slashing the number of buses that service a neighborhood is an "optimization". Or like downgrading a proposed light rail line to a bus rapid transit, and then finally to a regular bus line. And then selling it to the public as some sort of improvement.

I strongly dislike when people use the word "progress", to imply some sort of change is an improvement. Donald Trump bulldozing low income housing in order to replace them with gaudy luxury condos would be called "progress". I do not think that much of the changes that we have experienced could be called "progress".

I don't think that updates are "upgrades". And often times this language is used deceptively, to hide value being subtracted, and features being removed.

> I don't see why you'd lose it. More modern browsers will still be able to interpret old code (http://info.cern.ch/)! The problem is the other way around: old browsers can't understand new code. Also, although I take it that you don't like updating your software, if something doesn't work if you updated your router firmware or software you might find out that it starts working again. You can also keep an older browser installed if you need to access some specific software, but I don't think it's a good idea to use an obsolete browser as your main browser, if anything for security concerns.

Um, if I update my software, I might find that features are removed or radically altered. Like when Cisco decided to completely change the operating system on their routers, to one which had far fewer features, and would phone home to them[1]. There are too many examples to list, but, just off the top of my head, most Android updates remove useful features. iOS is so awful, that Apple goes through amazing lengths to force users to update. Do you really think they're doing it out of concern for the user experience? They're doing it because users are less likely to complain if you don't give them a choice.

> Then, I find it hard to understand how you believe that things have gotten worse, since all browsers follow the standards now, most things are open source and build on open technologies.

Yes, I am happy about that. However, websites themselves are as awful as ever, in new ways. We've taken everything bad about Flash, and baked it into html5. Just as many pigheaded assumptions are made about the end user's computer setup as in the late 90s. We're actually regressing in a lot of ways. I've actually seen popups when I try to load a webpage, telling me that I need to have higher resolution. That is geocities crap.

> Judging by your tone and attitude, I actually agree with you on this one.

I guess we have different visions of what the web should be. And your vision is winning.

[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/06/29/1425210/cisco-pushi...

It's hard to have a discussion like this, though. You're comparing software to door nobs, trains, Trump bulldozing houses...

We probably just do have different views. That's totally fine, too.

So what if Flash's bitmapped text isn't parsable, why would anyone want to parse it? And so what if it isn't scalable, everyone should be at the same resolution as what we designed it on! It's the users fault for not supporting our ActiveX controls! What kind of a weirdo doesn't use Internet Explorer??? Users like it when we play soothing background music for them. What? Who uses tabs anyway? Users like informative popups that offer them helpful offers from our advertising partners! Hah, Mozilla is obsolete. LOOK, this is just the way things are, OK? They can't be changed!

And the starry-eyed optimism that /this/ technological ecosystem was great, and utter certainty that this was the correct path. And how I was some sort of weirdo for saying that things could be done way better.

However, unlike 15 years ago, there is no Mozilla Firefox. The Mozilla foundation has been corrupted. If things had been the way they are back then, culturally, then things never would have changed. Ubuntu would have been obsessed with emulating Windows XP perfectly, and Firefox would have been trying to support the latest Microsoft standards.

    So, you're saying that I should lose the ability to log into my router, all so you can use the latest template bullshit that will be abandoned in a year.

Non-broken HTML from the dawn of the web onward works fine in modern browsers. Had your router manufacturer done something sensible in the first place, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

    And it's not even that a major feature will be deprecated specifically, it's the threat and uncertainty that the constant update cycle creates. [...] The direction the web has taken recently is horrible.

But, this is due to bad site design, not the fact that browsers are more capable now. You could argue that today's more-capable browsers enable and encourage this crap, which is kind of true. But in the old days site owners did the same horrible crap; they just used Flash and Java and ActiveX to do it.

    And I'm convinced that this time will be looked back on with disgust.

    I vividly remember everyone saying how Flash needed to be pushed on users, and how HTML was obsolete. And that unskippable flash intro pages were cutting edge UX. And playing sounds in the background was a great idea. And that all users were 800x600 resolution.

But, I don't see what harmful assumptions and proprietary closed technology have to do with one of the jewels of the open-source software world (Firefox) continuing to improve itself while remaining open.

If a router manufacturer used completely correct and standard SSL and Java implementations in the past, it would likely be inaccessible today. A reasonable assumption should be made that if you implement something correctly today, that it will be accessible by a web browser in the future.

I understand that these technologies have been found to be insecure. But some people still need them. And it is possible, and not even that hard, to run Applets securely. I do it. They can be sandboxed externally.

I'm actually thinking of putting my "distro" of Firefox on github, for running applets. Appletviewer is not enough.

These features are not removed for our benefit. They were removed under pressure from commercial entities. For example, Facebook pushed hard to kill flash with extreme prejudice two years ago [1]. If it had been up to them, everyone's Flash would have stopped working back then, and been very hard to re-enable. Facebook didn't do this out of concern for safety, they did it because it financially benefited them, and shrank their support window.

[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/14/0112229/facebooks-n...

Fear not, my friend. If we accept the premise that everyone should be forced to switch software every few weeks to retain access to useful content, even if doing so means losing access to other content in the process, then much of this time won't be looked back on at all.

For example, I'm pretty sure multiple decades of little visual aids developed by academic tutors as Java applets just became inaccessible to almost everyone. There was nothing wrong with many of those demonstrations in the content they presented, nor is there anyone responsible for replacing them. That valuable content has effectively now been lost.

There are discussions going on about Firefox 52 today on every relevant technical forum I follow online, and all of them (including this one) have threads showing a variety of other useful content or services that relied on these plugins.

There is no reasonable argument that this was necessary because maintaining support was too difficult. The same browsers eliminating NPAPI support are the ones adding things like WebAssembly.

There is no reasonable argument that this was necessary for security. Most of the plugins were click-to-play in all major browsers already, dramatically reducing the risk associated with them, and more importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that browsers won't suffer from a similar level of security vulnerabilities as they add ever more native functionality to replace what the plugins were used for before.

I realise I'm posting on HN, where the culture and interests are often more about building throwaway web apps and worrying about longevity later, but most of the Web and most of the world isn't like that. There is a price to pay when support for standards that have been around for 20+ years is dropped.

So don't update your browser. Or at the very least, use an ESR.

> So, you're saying that I should lose the ability to log into my router

You're using the wrong tool to connect to your router. The web has always been in flux. If your router only supports web login and requires mildly fancy web code which might get deprecated, that's a problem with it, not the browser.

Similarly, it's not the browser's fault that google has bad UX, and you can make sparse-looking pages with ye olde html as well.

My browsing experience has been made significantly worse than it was 5 years ago by websites abusing new browser features. I have had to start running uMatrix to disable JavaScript except on whitelisted websites, and have had to start using youtube-dl to download videos instead of viewing them in the browser. Firefox Reader View is a must because of bad CSS everywhere. I use Firefox for most browsing but keep Chrome around just to view problem websites.

Most websites serve up text, the only reason they "need" new features is for serving intrusive ads. I also regularly use Lynx and think it continues to be a good browsing experience. Most websites can be (and historically are/have been) very usable and quick to navigate in text browsers. I continue to design personal webpages to work in text browsers.

The fact that web technologies have become powerful enough to make using complicated software a click away instead of forcing you to install a native app for every little thing..?

They claim that "videos are not supported in your browser" but on occasion the video begins playing before being paused. Sometimes the "what version is your browser" check takes long enough for the entire video to finish playing. The videos are obviously supported because they work! I know this because the same video that tells me "it isn't supported" will sometimes partially or completely play (so it isn't that different videos are being served differently).

So why is Twitter telling me they don't work?

I'm agreeing with the GP comment - and that forcing updates on users that don't actually need to happen is for tracking/ad related purposes.

Few sites need the new features and many are abused for tracking/ads - which is largely why the Battery API was removed. It wasn't being used for its intended purposes.

With as many ways as you can have your machine compromised by simply browsing to a website that had some malicious advertising code embedded, I can't imagine why anybody would use such an old browser if they weren't absolutely forced to.

I work with a visually impaired PhD student, and we had to turn off browser updates because of the hell it was causing him (eg why are my search results different all of a sudden? why are pdfs opening differently?).

This isn't limited to firefox, google voice recently got a UI update that lowered the information density. Where he used to be able to see who he was talking to now there is a big colored shape surrounded by whitespace, etc. If he didn't limit the updates, probably 25-50% of his time would be spent dealing with interface changes.

Your comment makes it look as if you never worked with someone who suffers due to needless design changes.

I changed that policy and moved to tracking upstream as closely as I can manage. While it was very hard at first, users have adapted and become better at adapting to new changes quickly. Five years later, I do not see nearly as many "this changed and I don't know how to do it anymore"-type questions as I used to. The initial break was quite hard, but I'm very glad I did it.

It is clear that we value shiny bullshit more than being accessable and inclusive.

And nobody can even make the case that cutting off more and more people from the web even benefits us.

Yup. It's also the go-to strategy for startups and tech companies in general once they have run out of real ideas for their product and one of the quickest ways tech companies' products degrade into shit.

The fact that us techies tend to downplay those challenges does not make them any less real for others.

It's not our responsibility to work around someone Else's updates. If something works now, why should it be changed because it's more convenient for Google?

It's also more secure, because of my external sandboxing.

I also have my own container mechanism for Firefox that I have been using for years.

And this is what the web is all about. It used to be that the web was accessible to people in remote parts of the world, using old hardware, and anyone could write and add to it.

Now it's quickly becoming a black box that only wealthy people can access.

The performance gains that come with newer browsers (generally) should allow websites to run on older hardware. Not to mention support for new protocols and compression that lead to smaller assets being sent to all devices.

I really shouldn't have to do this. Mozilla should have put more effort into add-on compatibility. Add-ons are the only thing that Firefox has going for it.

Oh right, Google and the cabal that runs the web decided so.

Just because something is "old" doesn't mean it is obsolete. This mentality is very wrong, and needs to be opposed. It isn't helping the users, it is helping the platforms.

Up until a few years ago, it was the responsibility of the developer to gracefully fall back and support as many users as possible. Now, instead, we design under the assumption that everyone has a computer made within the last 12-18 months, with the latest updates, on a high speed, low latency connection.

And that is awful, because it is cutting out users who aren't privileged enough to afford the web.

The new "improved" Google Voice is utter trash. It makes my 2011 Macbook grind to a halt. And for what? So that it cosmetically resembles their new phone app. And most tech reporting websites are gushing about how it looks.

And what is the justification for all of this garbage? Is the web faster? more reliable? More accessible to people with disabilities? NO.

And I don't particularly respect updates sold as "security" when they often move the furniture around, or remove features, or flog whatever new feature they think we want in our browsers.

Web browsers should be more stable, not frantically updating themselves every 5 minutes. Browsers are windows to online content - the online content is what changes and updates all the time. The browser, as viewer of those changing and varied websites, should be relatively static and stable.

Firefox 33 is a three year old point release intended for eight weeks of operation, so things being broken shouldn't be a surprise. So sites have the choice of feature-sniffing and keeping an updated list of all the rendering bugs in all browsers going back ... what, a decade?; or kicking out people using old non-ESR browsers. They could be more gentle about it, but the choice is fairly obvious.

If sites use bleeding edge features with no programmed fallback or error handling apart from "miserable failure", they have a responsibility to at least inform users of their limited browser support rather than pretending to be a website on the internet - which by its nature should be accessible to an official release browser from 2014 without failing miserably.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

Staring at a blank wall, for example.