Me: Hey, I'd like to add a work-item to our current sprint that reworks semantic attributes into our site.
Them: What would that do?
Me: It improves the underlying architecture making the markup more usable and extensible.
Them: How does that benefit the users?
Me: Over time it will reduce the TTM for features and allows us to adopt a common standard others use on the web.
Them: So there's no UI and it won't affect their workflow?
Me: Well, no.
Them: Then why would you suggest it? We don't have the budget to add meaningless development tasks.
I might be biased towards thinking there are plenty of developers and engineers out there thinking about this stuff but we don't always get the final say in what is done. Also, a lot of enterprise applications were and continue to be around before many of these standards. It's a struggle to improve what doesn't directly add to the bottom line.
You must decide that it's necessary. As an engineer, you are the most qualified individual to determine if something is technically necessary. Just like you decided that proper indentation, unit tests, refactors, etc. are important, so must we decide that other elements are.
That's exactly the point and you're essentially nitpicking (with anecdata) the fact that he pinned the problem on developers instead of product managers. Regardless of who is making the decision in companies, the end result is pretty much the same.
It brings the site closer to recommended accessibility guidelines, making it easier for e.g. people who have vision loss to navigate. It also reduces our potential legal liability to such users for not meeting accessibility requirements.
so what's the problem?
>Individual developers working for individual companies are rarely if ever thinking about the good of their users, except in a very narrow profit motivated sense, and never thinking about the good of the ecosystem as a whole.
>Google is also "breaking the web" by not auto playing videos, not allowing alerts in one tab to block the entire browser, etc. Those all seem like good things to me.
Its interesting that you're calling for a browser to not implement standards.
In any case, an advertising company would be the last entity who I would trust to do anything "good" with regards to the web.
The "standards" are created by the browser makers. It is up to them to decide what the standards are by choosing what to implement.
For instance, Apple can decide to not allow 3rd party cookies, which "breaks the web" and "doesn't follow standards" but it is also the right thing to do.
You're half right: standards are created by W3C & IETF, which includes browser makers.
> It is up to them to decide what the standards are by choosing what to implement
Kind of like IE and ActiveX, right? Right?
............Right?
The changes some browsers have made to autoplay videos or alerts do not contradict what is in the manual.
WHICH IS OKAY, if we're talking about security/privacy, but performance ... not really. Let the market (and the users) decide. If a site takes forever to load, and scrolling is impossible because it takes ages to scroll, and burns a mark in your palm in that time, then maybe you'll reconsider visiting that site ever again.
WHICH IS OKAY, if we're talking about security/privacy, but performance ... not really.
It's not automatically OK to break functionality even for security/privacy reasons, IMHO. Browsers are used for many useful purposes that do not involve visiting sites run by large organisations with full-time development teams assigned to ongoing maintenance. Intranets. Embedded UIs in devices. Personal sites full of useful information but with no-one actively maintaining them.
The number of breaking changes browser developers have been willing to make in recent years does not bode well for the future of the Web, a platform which became what it is today precisely because it was a known target for developers and for a few years the industry standards actually meant something.
The Brave New Web is one dominated by ego-stroking contests between the major browser developers and huge, centralised sites with effectively unlimited resources run by just a handful of organisations. Notice that neither users nor original content creators appear in that previous description. The original author here is quite right to call the big players out for that. We saw Microsoft's infamous embrace-and-extend strategy and the way the Web was held back for years as a result. We should be just as wary when the likes of Google sing the same song.
And there are non evergreen browsers for those environments.
I agree that unilateral moves are bad for the web, but the reality was always that. Vendors have their own agendas, and usually the overlap is large enough.
Plus the change was always there too. Framesets work just as 'fine' today as they did back in '96, and the same goes for tables, divs, and falling snowflakes in the background DHTML snippets. The churn we see today is because the web became a lot more diverse, a lot of things were and are still live on the edge, some are in terms of performance and creative expression (just think about CSS Houdini, giving even lower level access gradually to the rendering pipeline), some in terms of security (because they depend on some implementation detail of browsers - such as CSRF protections, that took a decade to get sort of right with the Same Origin policy).
Then chrome Devs say to use autocomplete=something-stupid to get the specification behaviour of 'off' WTF is that?!
Donate to Firefox.
Chrome is the new IE
Websites consist of code to be interpreted by browsers as they see fit, for the benefit of their users. Those users do not necessarily want exactly the experience the site authors want them to have.
So, along the same lines, it may make sense to improve the UI for autocompleting users, or for hinting about the use of the field, to make it easier for sysadmins. But that shouldn't break the more common case of handling sites that just think they're Too Special or Too Important to allow saving login information.
And I would actually argue that blocking before closing the tab should be a decision up to the developer, not the browser.
The shop controls the server the user rightly controls the experience on their machine. The browser vendor provides an application that runs on the users machine. If the shop doesn't like it they can pound sand or suggest the user would be better off with a different browser.
They can perhaps rightly say that the deviation from standard is unfriendly or sub optimal but one would hope they wouldn't appeal to imaginary authority derived from a bad analogy.
A raven isn't like a writing desk and a client server interaction isn't like a user visiting a physical store.
Analogies can serve to communicate but when you use them to prove a point the only thing you prove is your lack of understanding of the matter.
I didn't realize until now that it doing the right thing from my (the user's) perspective was because it was breaking a web standard, but damn if I don't find it useful.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Fo...
I'm all for moving the web forward and addressing stuff like this is a critical part of that, but this is not moving the web forward, this is moving Chrome forward, and in so doing breaking thousands if not millions of sites, and placing the burden of their repair on their developers with no notice and no better solution, just a different hack than the hack they were using.
Chrome is breaking 'autofill=false' on webforms because its really bad to have autofill=false most of the time. For example, this was breaking password managers, forcing users to have a worse experience around something as security critical as entering a password. If the goal is to have the user never remember their passwords to avoid phishing, this is a really important thing.
I'm entirely, 100% in support of them ignoring 'autofill=false' because most of the time I see this as a security flaw on websites. This isn't anticompetitive - they aren't trying to break websites on Firefox, they aren't contacting websites to get them to do some Chrome specific thing. They're ignoring a really bad default that hurts users.
While Chrome has the goal to destroy everything else.
Example 1: Google Chrome spam on youtube, gmail, every website on the internet. I can't count the amount of times my parents called and asked why Google asked them to "upgrade their browser" (hint: It wasn't a new Firefox-build).
Example 2: Sending email SPAM to all Google-users where they are advised to install Chrome if they ever sign in to their Google-account on a new machine using anything except Chrome.
Example 3: Installing Chrome unasked as drive-by installers when you install anything lots of freeware, because Google paid third-party developers to host Chrome as a spyware-like installation in their installer.
Google is using spyware techniques to deploy their fucking browser. Google is literally working on killing all other browsers.
And for the good of the web, this should be reason enough to instantly and permanently uninstall Chrome.
Had Microsoft done a fraction of this for anything they did, you'd seen social media and the EU causing a shit-storm. How come Google gets a free pass?
Cite? I've never seen this, and I use Firefox regularly.
> Example 3: Installing Chrome unasked as drive-by installers when you install anything lots of freeware, because Google paid third-party developers to host Chrome as a spyware-like installation in their installer.
Again, cite? Because, again, I've never seen this.
I don’t have articles to link to, but I’ve experienced this on numerous occasions.
Me working with manual testing where we regularly set up clean environments from scratch probably has helped me notice the problem more than a regular webdev.
Because this is absolutely a problem.
> Example 3 cite
I’d say Google it, but it really is a known and documented problem:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+chrome+bundled+installers&t...
Goggle is in no way playing fair.
Also: "For most modern browsers (including Firefox 38+, Google Chrome 34+, IE 11+) setting the autocomplete attribute will not prevent a browser's password manager from asking the user if they want to store login fields (username and password), if the user permits the storage the browser will autofill the login the next time the user visits the page. See The autocomplete attribute and login fields."
(From: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Fo...)
Netscape is irrelevant. The fact is Chrome is using it's market dominance to affect the implementation of standards and in doing so, is breaking numerous websites. That IE is famous for but because Chrome is made by Google, it gets a pass.
> Chrome is breaking 'autofill=false' on webforms because its really bad to have autofill=false most of the time.
That is not the Chrome web-teams decision to make. The point of standards is that the standards should be followed, regardless of your or anyone elses opinion. If you disagree with a standard, you work to change the standard, you don't just change your browser's implementation of the standard, break a ton of functionality all over the web, and then sit there saying "well that's how it should be."
> This isn't anticompetitive - they aren't trying to break websites on Firefox, they aren't contacting websites to get them to do some Chrome specific thing. They're ignoring a really bad default that hurts users.
I agree with this in principle, but then they should be working to see that the standard is changed, and do so in such a way that the other browsers can follow suit and allow the standard to be improved. I don't disagree with the stance Google is taking; I don't like that one company is allowed to make such a sweeping change, and all the people who would get all over Microsoft's or Apple's asses about it if it was done in IE/Edge or Safari, are just all cool with it because again, Google is the golden child.
Netscape is entirely relevant. The question was raised about how different Google / Chrome are compared to Microsoft / IE and the answer is Netscape. Microsoft tried to tie the internet into their own platform, Windows + IE, due to them pushing non-standard rendering and ActiveX. Whatever your opinion of Chrome's break from standards might be, Google simply are not trying to lock people into Chrome on Android / ChromeOS. Remember that Google's revenue comes from ads, not software sales (as was the case with Microsoft). Chrome, Android, etc are just platforms to help leverage ads but they still make money from people running Firefox on Windows, Linux and OS X. So while you might dislike the standards Google are breaking in Chrome, the intent is very different from Microsoft in the 90s with Internet Explorer as Google are not trying to control the web (or at least not with the examples given in this discussion. I'm less convinced their intentions are honorable with AMP).
That assertion is laughable on it's face. Of course Google does brand lock-in, the fact that their brand is further reaching across more markets than Windows/IE were doesn't negate that they attempt brand lock-in at every opportunity they can. In fact Chrome largely was started because Google wanted to control the browser aspect of the experience, otherwise why would they make it?
There isn't any benefit in Google locking users into their free software if it means users on other platforms can no longer use Google's revenue generating services.
Your point about brand awareness is valid but not really the same as what I was originally discussing (software lock ins). Eg Google's products work fine on other browsers so there's no actual technical lock in however users are encouraged towards Google because of brand familiarity and browser defaults for search and home page.
How? Advertising budgets follow those eyes. Google is a nobody in TV ads, so doesn't get any part from the (big) money advertisers are currently spending there. If these would switch to targeting the web (where Google is the dominant actor), chances are that huge chunks of those ad budgets will be inserted into Google's giant ad placement machine.
If your litmus test is “as bad as Microsoft” then that’s exactly what we will get.
Complaining wouldn't change anything. Corporations don't change their policies because a few nerds moan on a few message boards.
> If your litmus test is “as bad as Microsoft” then that’s exactly what we will get.
It wasn't my litmus test. I feel you're missing my point because others are making that comparison and I'm saying the two don't compare. In Microsoft's case they broke from standards to lock people into their paid platforms. Clearly that's bad. But in Google's case the platforms are free and the break from standards doesn't lock users into any platforms. You can make arguments against Google break from standards if you want but comparing the two because they involve a web browser is just clutching at straws.
Now, if you wanted to argue about Google corrupting the web then AMP is a far better example. There are far more similarities between MS+IE and AMP even though AMP isn't a web browser:
• both are a free product that locks users into the company's revenue stream (ads in AMP for Google, Windows for MS)
• both push their product through their massive market shares (Google promoting their AMP CDN on Google Search above the search results, Windows shipping IE)
• both onboarded developers with promises to better user experience while locking them into a non-standard platform.
I could go on, but in short AMP is where you guys need to be worried about with regards to Google shifting the web landscape. Not whether Chrome follows spec on a small handful of specific tag properties. That's a whole lot of hysteria over nothing.
> both are a free product that locks users into the company's revenue stream (ads in AMP for Google, Windows for MS)
Ads on AMP sites don't have to be from google
> both onboarded developers with promises to better user experience while locking them into a non-standard platform.
AMP, while a particular subset of HTML/JS, is still just a subset, aka part of the standard platform and can run in any browser. Calling it non-standard would be like calling it non-standard to use React. It's just a library/framework.
AFAIK they do if you want to be on the carousel above the search results on Google Search. It's part and parcel of using the Google AMP CDN. Sure you can use other CDNs (even roll your own) but then you do not appear on the AMP carousel above Google search results (which is highly valuable real estate).
> AMP, while a particular subset of HTML/JS, is still just a subset, aka part of the standard platform and can run in any browser. Calling it non-standard would be like calling it non-standard to use React. It's just a library/framework.
The fact it's a subset makes it non-standard because you cannot then write standard HTML / JS.
To flip the argument, this debate started because Chrome was accused of not following standards because it ignores some HTML properties (eg autocomplete). You could argue the same as you were for AMP that Chrome is following a subset.
Personally I find it a stretch to argue that x being a subset of the standard means x is a standard.
How very wrong you are on this one point, your argument was going on the right line but here it took an unexpected turn. Microsoft was the one truly not trying to control the web. The web was a causality for something else (killing java). Now, Google. Google is the one that must control the web. Chrome and android and AMP serve the exactly same goal!
While you can argue that Chrome and AMP serve the same goal, they're approaches are very different. One helps diversify a market place and doesn't lock developers onto its ecosystem nor users into its product via anti competitive practices; while the other seeks to create a "second web" who is controlled by Google by locking companies into their promise of reduced bandwidth and users into their hosts and advertising via leveraging their massive market share in search as an effective sweetener/bribe (use us and be placed before the search results).
You can complain about Chrome all you like but overall have more browsers on the market is better and Chrome doesn't lock people into anything aside brand loyalty. Where as AMP is a very different beast.
this is what gates calles the figth for the web. saving windows. thats why they integrated IE so heavily on explorer. ...again, they did hit very hard in the actual internet ecosystem, but that was a side effect. and they would be silly not to try to take some advantage of that too since they were getting this for "free" while fighting for windows dominance.
You're exaggerating the point of standards, and/or confusing them with specifications. Standards have always been open to (ed: some amount of) interpretation with regards to how they are implemented.
Chrome is the most used web browser
Chrome is deciding how the web should work unilaterally.
These are the exact conditions that produced ActiveX and resulted in many websites with an IE6-only requirement. As much as developers dislike having to design around the various browser quirks, the situation will get much worse if any one browser becomes "important" enough that you can forget the others.
Next lets look at the actual technology we're complaining about. ActiveX wasn't just an Internet Explorer-only feature, it was Windows only as well. Furthermore it wasn't the only feature in IE that wasn't supported on other browsers (VBScript, JScript, WebForms†, different support for HTML and CSS, etc). Where as Chrome doesn't diverge from other browsers all that significantly in comparison.
Chromes changes could be compared better to Internet Explorer with regards to how IE4 changed the way frames were used (inc the addition of iframes). This was really annoying as a developer but actually these changes were for the better - particularly the iframe - and eventually those features landed in other browsers. Including Netscape Communicator.
The W3C are pretty glacial at updating their specs so it's often required browsers taking things into their own hands, eg the browser CSS prefixes. Developers would moan about having to add lots of extra junk to their code just to get new features to work but it was the price to pay for having access to new features that hadn't landed in the various web specifications. So as much as they would moan about vendor prefixes, they'd welcome browsers extending the specification.
The above paragraph wasn't all that long ago and the difference between then and now was that Chrome, Firefox and Opera were all at it with IE still playing catch up with regards to compliance; but now the browser market has consolidated where Chrome (read: Blink) has absorbed Opera, IE has largely died off and Firefox is sadly slowly falling out of fashion. So people are paranoid Google might abuse their advantage. However I really cannot see that happen - or at least not with regards to Chrome. Not only is Chrome's market share small compared to IE in the 90s / early 00s but also the web is viewed from a multitude of different devices. As someone who has managed online shops, games and other popular web-based services I can testify that product owners do NOT want to lose business from portable devices. If just because some product owners are so technologically inept that their primary computing device outside of the office is an iPad and/or their business iPhone.
† I think it was called. But basically it was their 90s tech for writing apps that looked like Win Forms.
Yeah. Where other devices are mostly Android phones running Google's fork of Webkit. I.e., Chrome
However that all said, when it comes to product support, I've found product owners generally only care about Blink (Chrome / whatever) on Android and Safari on iOS. So there's usually little interest in all the other random browser + platform combinations seen in "other devices".
Also, do you agree, in general terms, that sometimes changes can be good whereas other times changes can be bad?
The only big ones that are independent are Safari (since Google forked Webkit to create Blink), Firefox, and IE/Edge.
And the impression i have is that Safari is lagging, Mozilla is directionless and struggling to keep Firefox relevant, and MS is, well, MS.
Ever since Opera folded and made their browser a Chromium clone, only Mozilla have been carrying the banner for standard correctness. And even they seem more and more bow to Google's decrees (whole virtually cloning the Chrome look and feel with each Firefox update).
https://www.w3counter.com/trends
Hopefully they are on the upswing recently because they have found more focus and direction.
Have we not been there yet? Can we agree that that is a place of endless pain for developers, project managers and users as well?
Are you serious? No one thinks this way? I've worked at several companies where the software I've written was EXPLICITLY written with others in mind. To claim "rarely, if ever" shows that you know very little about this industry. Or, you surround yourself with a bunch of selfish people who shouldn't be doing software development.
But the megacorp Google is acting all altruistic and not at all abusing it monopoly powers?
Give me a break.
It's simply not realistic the 1000th time it's offered as the obvious solution.
If its not they should probably just work how everyone else works.
No, it's better for users who read the auto-filled boxes to make sure they are sane (which is what I do). It's not good for users that don't understand what auto-fill is (i.e. they think the website is suggesting it to them).
Easy to miss things.
Once those autofill, it's anyone's guess whether you have put the right data in.
Except that whether it's better or not is probably contingent on the particular web site and particular user.
Its super trivial to bind hotkeys to shell functions that operate on the current directory or files or whatever. I know that some of this can be done with custom actions but its nice to be able to a) bind keys not just provide a context menu item and b) create a custom command with a few clicks.
Example something like autojump or what have you is a common tool for shell users. Its nice to bind a key to pop up a prompt key in a string and have this jump to a directory in your file manager using the same source of info as autojump.
This took like 30 seconds to figure out and set up.
Another example a hotkey show a thumbnail gallery of every image recursively below current dir.
The settings that come with the markup are best understood as a recommendation, a slight hint that autocomplete might not be appropriate here. The final say is always with the user, though.
Sadly, through over-usage on the part of website operators, this hint has become utterly useless.
I think the solution is to follow the hint, but give users an override button next to or inside form fields that have it set to off.
They claim they are making these decisions based on user data which I have no reason to doubt.
> and breaks the web.
Breaks crap websites that are broken already from performance and usability perspective.
I personally think this is exactly what is needed to make the web better as a whole.
Individual developers working for individual companies are rarely if ever thinking about the good of their users, except in a very narrow profit motivated sense, and never thinking about the good of the ecosystem as a whole.
Google is also "breaking the web" by not auto playing videos, not allowing alerts in one tab to block the entire browser, etc. Those all seem like good things to me.