Google learned it can be "standards compliant" if it submits a draft spec to WHATWG/W3C, and while the comment and revision process is still ongoing, roll out that spec in Chromium and start using features in YouTube, Gmail, Google docs, and AMP. Now Firefox and Safari are forced to implement the draft specs as written by Google or users will leave in droves. Soon enough, Google's draft spec is standardized with minimal revisions because it's already out there in the wild.
The debate, revision, and multistakeholder aspects of the standards process has been effectively bypassed, a la IE6 and ActiveX, but Chrome can claim to be on the cutting edge of standards compliance.
This is a case of Goodharts's law.
Push for mail, webgpu for maps (iirc) and I believe WebUSB is used for Android flash/debug.
Who knows.
Not us, we’ll never know.
And to those rushing out to point out the excuse part about OpenGL on Mac not having support for compute, WebGL already back then wasn't backed up by OpenGL on all platforms, see Windows (DirectX), PlayStation (LibGNM).
Also eventually Safari also moved their WebGL implementation from OpenGL to Metal, and Chrome did as well, replace their WebGL to run on top of Metal on Mac.
So not really that much of a problem regarding the state of OpenGL on Mac as "required" implemenatation layer for WebGL.
If you're looking at fugu in particular (especially in the latter stages) we had external developers or businesses wanting the features.
Note: there are some apis that a Google customer wanted to use first.
- All of hardware standards. WebHID's timeline is especially egregious https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#is...
- Most of standards advertised on web.dev as "new exciting opportunities you can try now". E.g. WebTransport https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/webt.... The status of that spec is "scribbled on a napkin", but somehow already released in Chrome.
- Other "standards" and "specs" here and there like web share target https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/
Can I Use had to create a special UNOFF tag for all the web APIs that Chrome (mostly Chrome) ships. If you go to MDN and look at all APIs marked as "experimental", you'll find that most of them are already shipped in Chrome: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API
MS was not smart enough to do this. Google was smarter.
WPF XAML was originally designed by ex IE team members, and they were the same that a few years later proposed XAML Grid concept as CSS Grid initial design.
Many JavaScript devs have to thank their abuse of JavaScript in the browser to XMLHttpRequest introduced by IE.
Yeah, people forget that IE was a great browser. It was easily the most performant, I think driven by the Outlook web (I believe the first web app to make use of XMLHttpRequest) team demanding IE team make it so. The issue, like you said, is they won and then stopped updating.
Internet explorer became the dominant browser for one reason only: it came by default.
Default helped, but IE was the far superior browser for a long time. People chose to use it.
I was also a FF user and it came out a few years later than IE6. When FF came out IE6 was still the superior browser, though it was eventually overtaken by both FF and Chrome.
"Leading" being the operative word. Ship a new feature, submit it as a standard and encourage its adoption so things only work on chrome and further increase market share when people find other browsers "broken".
MS did exactly the same shit with IE - the only really difference was that the standards body (w3c) was independent, so they couldn't self declare it as a standard. Now the "standards" body (whatwg) is mostly google...
Yes, Chrome has leading standards™ [1] support!
_________
[1] A so-called standard™ is a piece of source code that sits on the main branch of the Chromium repository. Not to be confused with actual standards!
Except no support for:
CSS Canvas Drawings
CSS filter() function
Video Tracks
Audio Tracks
FIDO U2F API
SPDY protocol
JPEG XL image format
HTTP Live Streaming
HEIF/HEIC image format
SVG fonts
CSS hanging-punctuation
CSS font-smooth
CSS Initial Letter
Speech Recognition API
CSS -webkit-user-drag property
CSS3 Multiple column layout
CSS text-indent
Synchronous Clipboard API
HEVC/H.265 video format
TLS 1.1
text-decoration styling
CSS display: contents
CSS Container Style Queries
CSS clip-path property for HTML
CSS Counter Styles
Ruby annotation
WAI-ARIA Accessibility features
Media Fragments
autocomplete attribute: on & off values
DOMMatrix
SVG effects for HTML
X-Frame-Options HTTP header
DNSSEC and DANE
WebXR Device API
DeviceOrientation & DeviceMotion events
Permissions Policy
asm.js
Network Information API
theme-color Meta Tag
Document Policy
The whole "Chrome is the leader in standards" meme is a lie.
- CSS Canvas Drawings is not a web standard. It's a WebKit-specific feature, only Safari implements it. Chromium removed it in order to replace it with an actual web standard (CSS Painting API).
- Likewise, the CSS filter() function is Safari-only.
- U2F API has been deprecated for years, was replaced by WebAuthn, and only Safari still implements it.
- Same with SPDY, which was replaced by an actual web standard (HTTP2). Only Safari still ships it, but has marked it deprecated.
- SVG Fonts were removed from the SVG spec.
- HLS, JPEG-XL, HEIF/HEIC are essentially Safari-only as well.
CSS hanging-punctuation and audio/video tracks are new features that haven't been widely implemented yet.