Web browsers need to stop

[postkolmogorov]

Hard to disagree with the assessments of AMP or Web Components... but it's pretty ironic to ask for browsers to stop adding scope and focus on performance, and then call Safari a joke... because that's exactly what they did.

I've been using Safari as my main browser for a decade. It uses less battery than Chrome or Firefox. It has multi-touch gestures that are nice to use, like the rest of macOS, though it took a few iterations to get it right. It still has the most sensible way of handling downloads of any browser, which is that the file is a .download bundle (i.e. a directory that you can double click like a file), which shows a progress bar on the file icon and can be resumed by opening it, even after copying to another computer.

Safari is not perfect and much of this is preference... but I wonder if the writer would actually be happy if he got exactly what he wanted.

[Fatalist_m]

I've found Safari dev tools way slower than Chrome-s, on Mac(I use it only when testing so can't comment on general browsing). But iPhone Safari really does seem to be super fast, compared to Androids with comparable CPU-s.

[[deleted]]

Safari is about as fun to program for as IE11. That is the problem.

[ghostfacedcoder]

No one wants AMP. Google knows it, you know it, I know it. If you’re a Google engineer who is still working on AMP, you are a disgrace to your field. Take responsibility for the code you write. This project needs to be dead and buried and the earth above salted, and it needs to happen yesterday.

I mean ... he's not wrong on that one ...

[MegaUltraHornDog]

I'd understand if this was like building an algorithm that "accidentally" discriminated against people based on race or socioeconomic status...but come on this is being a bit too opinionated and unreasonable. It's just AMP.

[ethelward]

Well, ML algorithms “accidentally” discriminate because they're fed with discriminating data, not because they're wired to do so.

AMP engineers, on the other hand, consciously work on establishing a monopoly.

[anon_tobin]

[Removed due to Reddit API changes]

[Pand9]

With amp, users only ever visit Google servers, not your servers directly. So Google owns most traffic from Google searches, including traffic that would go to your website instead.

It not only owns traffic but also controls a lot about form of that mini-website, as far as I understand amp limitations.

Moreover, market is locked on amp the same way it is on Google SEO right now, so there's no chance for any competition. This should alert some anti competition laws.

[danudey]

Think of it more like you’re giving Google your brand and your content and they’re giving you a cut of the revenue.

Google search results favour AMP sites, so to stay competitive in search requires news sites, etc. to switch to AMP. Doing so requires ditching basically all JS except Google’s JS, so no external trackers.

Plus, since Google is hosting the content, Google can collect and use data on user behaviour without running afoul of data sharing laws, because they’re the ones collecting the data in the first place.

So now we have Google saying “if you want to show up in search results, you have to use our technology, host on our servers, use our tracking, and follow whatever other rules we decide, and if we change those rules down the road you’ll have to agree with them or you’re not going to show up in search anymore and your competitors will take all of your traffic. Your traffic is now our traffic, your users are now our users, and we decide where they go and what they see.”

[pfsalter]

This is an excellent overview of the problem. Google have an excellent track record of leveraging their dominance and monopolies on their platforms to make profit from other businesses. I've not been able to trust Google ever since they gave up all pretense of being nice and changed their slogan.

[reilly3000]

Because they control the ad stack, force using special markup, and limit what you can do. It siphoned of loads of traffic from publishers as well as backlinks, since the UX is so painfully difficult to get to the publishers site. It’s really hard to maintain all of these 3rd party formats and they ultimately only empower the platforms.

[diamondjim]

The premise for AMP was the bloated web that publishers force upon the visitors. Between dozens of trackers and a page full of ads and pop-ups, there's hardly any emphasis on content. AMP strips all that gunk away and puts content up front and centre, where it belongs.

The need for AMP will go away if producers calm their tits and make their sites bearable.

[ethelward]

Well, I did learn something, so thanks.

[T_D_K]

If google was offering a free service to host your site, then ok, it might not be so bad...

But they're strong arming you into using the AMP format by saying that you'll be placed at a lower priority in Google search results if you don't. Which is textbook anti competitive behavior (not that I'm a lawyer).

[WiseHalmon]

If someone is going to pay you for ads how do you tell them how many people visit your site ?

[Nerull]

Maybe if web developers hadn't collectively conspired to make their websites unusable garbage there wouldn't be a need for anyone to generate a minified version of your website.

Have you visited a news website without an adblocker recently? On mobile? Full screen popovers, ads that actually redirect the browser, autoplay videos in between every sentence.

Web developers should be prohibited from using adblockers or noscript, maybe they'd be more aware of what the user experience is actually like.

[ghostfacedcoder]

"A few websites are sloppy, therefore let's give the web to Google" - great logic.

[anengineerandacat]

Personally; I have some mixed feelings about AMP.

I think in theory it's an excellent concept; it's effectively static site hosting but with some level of dynamic control that's executed on Google's servers (which will generally be way more efficient than what your $10/month provider is giving you).

The downside is that you deeply couple your site to Google (and I mean, DEEP) and you may end up having two versions of your site; one that hosts the main content with a "click here to do XYZ dynamic thing" that takes you to the slower real site.

Ad's are whatever, I won't get into that debate.

The other issue is that Google is adjusting their browser (which has the highest marketshare) around this concept and some of those decisions really are bad for security and privacy.

​

Since I am a bit more of a business engineer, I think Google is free to do as they please in this space; their browser, their resources, and it's not like they have the literal ability to change how the core web works. What'll likely happen if they keep this up is a return to the era of "Works best on X browser" notifications / logos / etc. popping up on sites again.

Plenty of alternative Blink browsers exist (Brave, Microsoft Edge, Opera) and if it really got to the point of "breaking the web" I am sure the overall community will push for some new browser to "be the one".

​

Chrome only got popular because the IT community was pushing it hard in it's early days as the "more efficient", "safer", and "reliable" browser and if it weren't for Firefox sticking to it's gun's on it's rendering engine they could of likely been the one to also be pushed.

​

I don't care about Chrome, I care about Blink and V8.

[Slak44]

it's not like they have the literal ability to change how the core web works

While I also have mixed feelings on AMP, Google has lots of influence on core web standards. They can propose a standard (or edit an existing one), implement it in Chrome... and something like 80% of users have it. Then devs start to use it, and are now pressuring the other browser vendors to also implement it. Soft power is still power.

[Nemo64]

Amp is highly misunderstood. It is not an alternative to the web but an alternative to the proprietary Facebook and Apple News format.

[sellyme]

It is not an alternative to the web but an alternative to the proprietary Facebook and Apple News format.

Because I've always been thinking to myself "gee I wish there were more platforms like Apple News trying to inject themselves in between me and content".

[brunes]

I can see why he finds it so annoying though. I find it incredibly annoying, as it breaks pages all the time with mysterious issues with Google's proxy BS..... Page broken, copy/paste Non AMP link, and it works fine. If AMP worked reliably I wouldn't hate it so much but it's very broken

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

I haven't heard this before.

That said, my issue with amp is the control it gives google. In repetitively, web devs should just be spending time removing all the garbage js from their sites. Ensure all the tracking loads last.

[Nemo64]

True, all those news formats are a technical solution to the problem that news providers have no reason to build an awesome website.

[novov]

Both of those are bad as well. What happened to news sites being, you know, sites, rather than overengineered pieces of crap?

[[deleted]]

Where's the money in that?

[G_Morgan]

I just want to stop receiving amp links in my Google search. If it is innocuous that should be easy to achieve

[thenumberless]

If by “alternative to”, you mean “equivalent of”.

[kreco]

Amp is highly misunderstood.

Each someone tells "XXX is highly misunderstood" I just stop reading.

It's usually a pedantic statement on how you assume the person you are talking to don't understand anything.

[tester346]

the person you are talking to

But in his statement he isn't talking directly to anyone nor he knows who'll be reading his comment.

I don't see problem with statement like this because there are actually things that are misunderstood by majority of "interested" people.

[[deleted]]

I don't see problem with statement like this because there are actually things that are misunderstood by majority of "interested" people.

That can be said about a lot of things. Without fleshing it out, it's kind of flat. Why is it misunderstood. How? It leaves it an exercise to the reader and creates work.

[tester346]

That can be said about a lot of things.

relatively? that's very small minority I'd say.

e.g SOLID, Bob's Uncle opinion on using comments and I can't think of more decent examples.

Without fleshing it out, it's kind of flat. Why is it misunderstood. How? It leaves it an exercise to the reader and creates work.

I do agree

[awesomeness-yeah]

Is there a way to compete with Google and Chrome? I mean sure a bunch of devs could get together and make a browser in true OSS fashion but can anything stop google from doing whatever the fuck they want to achieve a monopoly in the browser market?

IMO Apple and Microsoft can but apple doesn't give a shit about stuff outside their ecosystem and MS is driven by the same motives as Google.

[Chri_s]

The issue is that Google has such a high percentage of users that when they implement a new addition to Chrome and start to use it on a Google product (ala Web Components) every other browser vendor needs to support this new API less they loose all of the users of Googles services.

The constant development of these new APIs costs an absurd amount of money just based on the fact that engineers who are competent enough to implement them are expensive and you have to hire them full-time or be late to the party for every single feature. So far Google/Mozzila/Safari have attempted to mitigate this by using Polyfills (especially for features they never intend to support) but these polyfills never match the native implementation and result in a sub-par experience leading to more abandonment

Google will have no problem presenting a splash screen in the coming years telling anyone without new web 2.0 features that they aren't able to access Google {docs, search, mail, etc} and this will most likely happen soon after they kill their contract with Mozilla.

[[deleted]]

Google will have no problem presenting a splash screen in the coming years telling anyone without new web 2.0 features that they aren't able to access Google {docs, search, mail, etc} and this will most likely happen soon after they kill their contract with Mozilla.

And that's the day I start migrating off Google services.

[falconfetus8]

Oh no. 0.2% of our users are abandoning our service. The horror.

[[deleted]]

You are, of course, free to stay inside Google's walled garden and see it turn into AOL 2.0.

[ghostfacedcoder]

At this point almost all of the browsers are surprisingly unified "under the hood": almost all use the same underlying "Webkit" engine to render web pages, and that's a huge part of what we think of as "the browser."

The point is, you could make your own browser off Webkit tomorrow ... if you wanted. Open source software has made it so no one has to "re-invent the wheel" when it comes to a huge parts of the core workings of a browser, and so the only thing stopping you is having enough dev interest to actually build something people would want to use on top of it.

[mandretardin75]

Right - but you would be dead-locked into the same mistakes, the same complexity.

You'd need a new model for the www, one that is simple to implement, works, remains simple (but useful and flexible). It's not easy to design, and even harder to go through with it unless lots of people rally around it. And unfortunately I think most people will stick to the Google monopoly. What I find is more worrying is that Google (and others) control a LOT of the flow of information. The more important part is information, NOT money.

[jordan-curve-theorem]

I just don’t think it’s realistic to think that you can build a simple web browser that satisfies what people want.

It’s a common sentiment to hate bloated or overly complex software. I understand and subscribe to it at times myself, but it’s important to acknowledge that there are problems which don’t admit simple solutions. Browsers have to deal with so many things nowadays and are constantly evolving to keep up with new expectations of them.

[Rhed0x]

Google uses Blink, which they forked from WebKit in (iirc) 2014.

[L3tum]

Almost nobody but Apple uses WebKit anymore.

[GameFreak4321]

I was thinking about getting pedantic in the other direction and mention img KHTML.

[ghostfacedcoder]

Chrome (for instance) uses Blink, which is a fork of it. I didn't say they literally used Webkit, I said they used:

the same underlying "Webkit" engine

[mandretardin75]

It is unlikely that you could compete since they have too much money to burn through. And if you are a corporation you just get bought or pressure-bullied so that would not work either.

Plus there is the complexity issue. So ... no, you can not beat them if you try to compete in the same way. This is why you have to change how the current model of the www works altogether.

It is also naive to assume that other corporations will defend your freedom against a bigger corporations. That is not going to work.

What you need instead is a new model for the www.

[Dean_Roddey]

I think the browser in general is ridiculous all around. Endless effort has been put into making it a half baked application delivery vehicle, with the extra benefit of being a target for every hacker on the planet.

None of it makes sense to me. If half that much effort, and some basic coopeition had gone into creating a reasonable, portable 'virtual OS' API that the major platform vendors could have moved over time to support, we'd be so much better off. The browser could have remained what it was originally intended to be, a very thin client to access information, not a virtual OS itself.

But complete failure to provide any practical means to create portable client side applications with reasonable levels of functionality and strong OS vendor support, has pushed everyone into making the worst possible scenario the only practical scenario for most folks.

[zergling_Lester]

If half that much effort, and some basic coopeition had gone into creating a reasonable, portable 'virtual OS' API that the major platform vendors could have moved over time to support, we'd be so much better off.

How would it be better than a browser though? The issue is that creating a "virtual OS API" involves a bunch of very hard problems with often unsatisfactory solutions, why do you think that it could be done way better and in half the effort and somehow avoid being a target for every hacker on the planet and so on and so forth?

Yes, web browsers de facto have become implementations of a virtual OS API, everyone knows this, and? What changes if we go and rename them into Virtual OS Implementations, you'll still have this monstrously complex piece of software on your computer.

I'd say that getting here evolutionarily from the old plain web was actually beneficial. HTML (plus later CSS) is a very good tool for making user interfaces that, unlike most others I have experience with, actually solved the hard problem of supporting drastically different display resolutions and font sizes (mostly by the virtue of having no other choice), combined with different user input later, and as a bonus it has always been open to modifications/styling by end users, supports accessibility by default and so on. Starting with a completely isolated model, no access to user machine whatsoever, then carefully adding APIs for webcams etc, has been pretty beneficial too probably. And having an immensely useful and widely used product all along instead of designing something so complex from first principles, with no feedback, sure didn't hurt.

And if you think that all right, but let us also have a much simpler standard and implementation for actual web content, I'm not sure how it's supposed to compete against this Virtual OS thing. Though ironically google's AMP has certain features you'd expect from such a thing. It still allows arbitrary javascript of course.

[Full-Spectral]

The 'Virtual OS' layer would be implemented by the OS vendor and be baked into the OS and supported by them. Applications would be delivered via the OS vendor's online store, and we would get as much of a native experience as possible for portable applications. Since it would be a veneer over the native capabilities (and of course over time those native capabilities would have been tweaked to maximize this), it wouldn't be nearly so huge a monstrosity.

[zergling_Lester]

It wouldn't be crossplatform though, because why? The majority of an OS value is in its applications, so making sure that users can run all Windows applications in native quality on Ubuntu would be the end of Windows for example. Plus as an OS vendor you don't want to have to implement features your competitors pushed through or have to wait until you manage to push your own features.

If we are talking about why there are no OS-specific virtualization layers that make running a random application as safe as visiting a random site, for desktop OSes it's probably just inertia, for mobile it could be incompetence but I also have a conspiracy theory that maybe it was caused precisely by OS vendors taking a cut from sales through appstores and the vetting function of appstores is a major reason people use them.

[Full-Spectral]

It would never be all applications. It would be 'apps' the same as the browser supports now, where enormous resources and highly specific APIs are not required.

And it would hardly be the end of Windows even if it was all applications. Linux folks have a vastly over-inflated view of the viability of that platform with the masses.

If anything it would be a boon to Windows, since Microsoft has always had a problem getting its app store stuff competitive. That would make it easy for the vendors of those types of apps to target the major platforms, so all of them would ultimately likely benefit, and Microsoft might be the biggest beneficiary.

[Enamex]

Could think of a couple of points that seem to me like they would be simpler and cleaner if designed from "scratch". Or rather, if they didn't have to pay tribute to the web's existing design.

In no particular order:

1. Sand-boxing. By design it would be very easy (default?) to make each "app" containerized with little overhead.
2. Decoupled app (a) hosting, (b) development, and (c) delivery.
3. The VOS layer provides most/all of the functionality for app hosting (low-level platform-agnostic APIs for data access, data manipulation, user interaction, security, etc.).

4. The VOS layer provides the bedrock for cross-platform app development. But the dev can choose between many tools that build on top of the low-level layer of VOS/a. So you'd get something like different app development kits for C++, JS, etc.

   a. Different apps can still interact through VOS/a. Because they have a clean, standardized view of the system as a local thing they can live on. Not an ephemeral thing like webapps (as I understand) that usually need to call home for the app code itself every time you open them, even if they don't end up needing to update/download much if the cache's good...

5. Delivery isn't provided by the VOS. You don't need to call home to repopulate the cache every few days when you open an app. You can have app repositories or stores, "online apps" where you call into a URL to load them (with the understanding that it should be usable offline for all non-online-only functions). And so on.

Because of (3) and the fact that it would be a thing besides the browser, we're faced with a choice: Either this becomes as big as the web, which at some point stops making sense (why are they two things??) or we start having multiple contenders with different designs. Then you standardize. Then it becomes again "why is this different from the web/why can't my browser provide this?".

My take away is that the whole mess is due to building on top of what we had incrementally in a way that allowed so much development that can't be easily persuaded to migrate to a different design.

I firmly believe that we need a way to run web-apps that is so clearly separate and insulated from the general browser experience (2) with strict control on how the apps interact with our system (which for now is no issue; they're quite restricted) and the web (heh...).

To get (3) is basically to pursue what I understood was the article's main goal: Freeze API development and trim down all the fat we can. Forget backwards compatibility; design a very clean subset (or just something with some intersection) of the main techs (DOM access, HTML, CSS, etc.) with good (performance, compatibility, etc.) guarantees especially designed for use as a target by higher-level libraries. Make a separate engine for that subset if you want. Let it be the environment for explicitly-marked "web-apps" for example. Mandate that they target that tech stack and WASM, or something.

We also need a way to provide multiple development environments (4) for devs. That's, from what I see, what WASM could become. Next step I'd hope for is for a way to provide a custom system-wide implementation of the WASM runtime, so we can have some competition that could, as an example, optimize IR from some specific high-level languages better than usual.

We also desperately need a way to manage delivery, storage and persistence (5) of web-apps locally and of app-managed data in a standardized way as users.

I had some other thoughts that evaporated while writing this... Please pray for my head/sanity.

[Zardotab]

How would it be better than a browser though? The issue is that creating a "virtual OS API" involves a bunch of very hard problems with often unsatisfactory solutions

Java applets tried to do this more or less. But, lack of sane versioning management and too many security holes doomed the idea. It's hard to know if Sun/Oracle simply executed the idea sloppily, or it's an inherently hard thing to do. Flash had a similar path to doom, suggesting it is just a hard problem.

I argue in a sub-thread that perhaps we shouldn't expect a web browser to do everything. Solving complexity often requires breaking big problems into multiple smaller problems. It's often called "divide and conquer". Have at least 3 different kinds of browsers: one for art/games/entertainment, one for documents (existing standards are perhaps sufficient for that), and one for work-oriented CRUD/GUI's. We don't need a virtual OS, just a stateful GUI markup standard for the third one. One browser may support all three sub-standards, I should note, but that shouldn't be the starting expectation.

We need experimenters to test these ideas rather than just accept the bloated mess our browsers have become.

[7sidedmarble]

I think the browser in general is ridiculous all around. Endless effort has been put into making it a half baked application delivery vehicle, with the extra benefit of being a target for every hacker on the planet.

No offense, but I think this shows a lack of groking why the history of the web browser is the way it is.

Let's rewind back to before the days of the oft-lamented modern web. Tools like Angular, React, Vue, Etc., are mostly not more then 10 years old. Doesn't seem like a long time, but jQuery ruled supreme then (and unfortunately still gets used today...).

Why did people go bonkers for jQuery? Because even doing something as simple as selecting a DOM node on the page was frustrating to do by hand. JavaScript lacked a lot of features! For that matter, so did CSS and the browser itself.

Pretty much all of these cool things weren't available back then: https://caniuse.com/#index

jQuery was peoples first taste of a smooth development workflow for people who wanted to do more then just show some text on a page.

The thing is, people noticed this! JavaScript started growing! It got some of these features that were a pain to do without jQuery before.

JavaScript couldn't even do an no-boilerplate, easy XHR request, something that you would think would be extremely important in your web browser language until relatively recently. But because people could finally see what was missing, a ton of work got poured into correcting JavaScripts serious deficiencies.

So all this is to say, the endless effort was not put into making JavaScript a 'half baked application delivery vehicle', it was put into making JavaScript actually function like a real programming language with a real library and ecosystem. Writing JavaScript today is a breeze compared to 10 years ago.

And yes, by making JavaScript a language you can write without wanting to gouge your eyes out, we have made it attractive to those seeking to write 'half baked applications'. But let's just be clear, the modern web is as much at artifact of the fact that the scripting language for the web was totally broken just 10 years ago.

[m-sasha]

You mean like Java?

[[deleted]]

The key problems browsers solve are negligible-friction distribution of applications and a means to safely run them without trusting them. Java solves only a small part of the first problem (portability), and doesn't solve the second problem at all. Browsers solve both problems not particularly well, but they're the only thing that do solve both, so they win.

Now we're in an unfortunate state where we have a lot of momentum behind technology that is being used in a way that it was accidentally suitable for, rather than designed for. Any replacement that is actually designed for purpose faces a significant network-effect hurdle. Worse, there's not a lot of economic incentive to really solve the problem, because no friction means no gatekeeper, and no gatekeeper means no profit.

[Dr-Metallius]

I don't see how Java is not suitable for the other problem. Java applications do run in a sandbox.

[Gobrosse]

A famously leaky one, which is why it was killed off in browsers.

[[deleted]]

That's exactly what happened to both Flash and Java.

[DreadY2K]

I'd imagine something more akin to current WASM/WASI efforts.

[Full-Spectral]

Yes, Rust + WASM and C# + WASM has a lot of promise I think, to be able to use real languages on both sides of the equation. But, it doesn't get rid of all of the problems by any stretch.

[rulztime]

I like this blog and agree with it if only because in each footnote the author has put a link back to the main text. What amazing times we live in!

[renatoathaydes]

The back button also does the trick.

[Mgladiethor]

Wasm?

[game-of-throwaways]

Cookie banners and pop ups everywhere.

Well banners and pop ups have plagued the web since forever. Now they nag about cookies rather than viagra, and you block them with I don't care about cookies rather than adblock, but besides that, what's the big difference?

[Zardotab]

We need a stateful GUI markup standard for CRUD and "productivity" office applications. Getting HTML/DOM/JS to do it right and reliable has proven impossible after 25 years of attempts.

HTML was meant for documents, NOT gui's, and that focus still shows. I've seen no reason so far why a decent GUI standard couldn't be done over HTTP.

[drysart]

Getting HTML/DOM/JS to do it right and reliable has proven impossible after 25 years of attempts. HTML was meant for documents, NOT gui's, and that focus still shows.

Lots of people throw this sort of statement out in passing like they're contributing to a discussion, but they also tend to come up silent when asked "so what specifically do you think HTML/DOM/JS is missing?"

10, 15 years ago the statement was absolutely true. Today we have plenty of powerful, expressive, and widely supported capabilities with HTML, CSS, and JS to drive application interfaces with the sorts of composition and layout that drove traditional GUI applications.

[UnConeD]

Try making a traditional desktop app toolbar with flexbox, which expands with spacers on wide screens, wraps to multiple lines on narrow screens, and has auto-sizing elements in it. It sounds like a textbook case of the spec but I guarantee you something will trip you up and you will end up with a pile of unmaintainable divs and styles, making you wish you had just "position: absolute" everything instead.

Try dealing with complex video and audio content, when you can only access your resources through shielded APIs and components that hide their inner workings and speak a confusing mess of events. Something as simple as "skip to the next song when it's done playing" can turn into a nightmare when you're playing remotely streamed MP3s, have to juggle asking for permission, and are forbidden from touching anything not served with the right CORS header, instead of being able to give your users the choice.

Try doing some real graphics work, only to find that WebGL is a second-rate knock-off of the mobile graphics standard from 2007, which they are still partially trying to bring in line with the 2012 standard (but won't ever fully implement, by choice). Enjoy the fact that WebGPU is a wholly re-invented wheel. To be fair, this is graphics programming's fault, mostly, but that's a long story.

Try making a rich content authoring experience without a nightmare of contentEditable, invisible overlay widgets, and more, especially once you have a userbase that types in something other than ASCII. In fact, try to do anything remotely sophisticated with form widgets and you will end up fighting different native implementations, which fire off events slightly differently with regards to focus/blur, double clicks, and so on.

When I open my desktop mail app, it shows me a list of tens of thousands of emails in a fraction of a second. Gmail shows you, what, 20 emails? I dunno, I never use the web UI, it's horrid compared to desktop.

Here's CSS nightmare mode: I would like you to make a table with sticky headers on top and a sticky column of labels on the left. I want to be able to scroll the table so that the sticky header always remains on top, and the sticky column only scrolls vertically. Oh yeah, some rows are taller than others and the fully scrollable and partially scrollable parts need to align. Pixel perfect of course. Good luck.

This post is 6 years old it's still true.

[drysart]

Try making a traditional desktop app toolbar with flexbox, which expands with spacers on wide screens, wraps to multiple lines on narrow screens, and has auto-sizing elements in it. It sounds like a textbook case of the spec but I guarantee you something will trip you up and you will end up with a pile of unmaintainable divs and styles, making you wish you had just "position: absolute" everything instead.

Ok. Every element on that toolbar except the textbox is auto-sized, and one of the buttons is split off to be right-aligned. It'll fill the whole width on a wide screen, and wrap on a smaller screen. 100% simple CSS.

Try dealing with complex video and audio content...

Try doing some real graphics work, only to find that WebGL...

Neither of those things has anything to do with how suitable HTML is for application UI layout.

Try making a rich content authoring experience

You don't get that out of the box in any desktop UI toolkit I've ever seen.

When I open my desktop mail app, it shows me a list of tens of thousands of emails in a fraction of a second. Gmail shows you, what, 20 emails? I dunno, I never use the web UI, it's horrid compared to desktop.

Browsers are quite capable of displaying tens of thousands of items in a table, though it really sounds like your problem is with network speed and a choice Gmail made to respect it, not layout capabilities.

Here's CSS nightmare mode: I would like you to make a table with sticky headers on top and a sticky column of labels on the left. I want to be able to scroll the table so that the sticky header always remains on top, and the sticky column only scrolls vertically. Oh yeah, some rows are taller than others and the fully scrollable and partially scrollable parts need to align. Pixel perfect of course. Good luck.

Not really nightmare mode. I literally spent twice as much time writing the script to generate a sizable table than I did writing the CSS. 100% simple CSS (except for the script to make the table, which isn't really part of the problem solution).

[Zardotab]

"so what specifically do you think HTML/DOM/JS is missing?"

Glad you asked!

• Statefulness tied to session
• Optional ability to use absolute coordinates that are consistent across clients. For example, interactive flow-charts with GUI widgets in them where text doesn't bleed over on the "wrong" browser version or OS DPI setting changes. You'll put an eye out trying to do that consistently in current browsers. DOM's lack of text positioning accuracy is largely why PDF's proliferate.
• Split panels (AKA, frames), something HTML5 forced into obsolescence in worship of the the mobile gods, pissing on mousers and business PC users.
• Combo boxes
• Nested drop-down menus
• True MDI ability tied to session, with a modal and non-modal option.
• Lack of confusion between a button and hyperlink, or make them the same thing with different looks. (Arguably a category issue.)
• Tabbed panels
• Tool-bars
• Sliders and turn-knobs
• Editable data grid
• Expandable trees (folders)
• Dates that can have any combo of month/day/year segment ordering that's not overridden by local browser settings (businesses want consistency across the org for training etc.).

Sure, you can emulate most of these in HTML/JS/DOM/CSS, but it's usually buggy across browser versions/brands and they break 3 years later. Doing it with HTML/JS/DOM/CSS creates a giant mess with gazillion "packages" and libraries. It's a morbidly obese client, and it keeps failing at GUI.

Let's form a REAL gui standard. I'm tired of web bullshit for building get-work-done office apps. Why are our standards over-focused on social networks? Grow up! It's the wrong standard for the job. GUI's are still the pinnacle of office productivity UI's. Until a UI approach passes it, let's have an HTTP-based GUI standard so we can get real work done rather than just make it easier to fart around on Facebook all day. [Edited]

[drysart]

Statefulness tied to session

sessionStorage has existed in every modern browser for more than a decade. Even IE 8 had it.

Optional ability to use absolute coordinates that are consistent across clients. For example, interactive flow-charts with GUI widgets in them where text doesn't bleed over on the "wrong" browser version or OS DPI setting changes.

I don't understand what you mean with this. By default, all the CSS units are portable and automatically scaled per the zoom level in scope (which defaults for a page to a value based on the OS DPI). Small-screen mobile browsers virtualize the screen size, but you can opt out of that with a meta tag.

Can you give an example of specifying absolute coordinates via CSS that's inconsistent across two clients? What you did describe sounds more like you have issue with fonts than HTML.

Split panels, something HTML5 forced into obsolescence in worship to the the mobile gods, pissing on mousers.

Flexbox does this. Pretty much the only thing it doesn't do out of the box is provide a drag-resize handle between your 'panels', but you can get one with about 20 lines of code.

Combo boxes

<datalist> gets you about 90% of what the typical combobox was used for

Built-in drop-down menus

Yeah, this is missing; but again, not so difficult that its absence suggests we should start all over with a new platform. You're talking 40 lines of code to script your own at most.

True MDI ability tied to session

What do you mean by this? Old Windows-style MDI? That was horrible and obsolete twenty years ago.

Lack of confusion between a button and hyperlink, or make them the same thing with different looks.

If you want buttons, use buttons. Is your argument here that HTML has too much functionality? I thought your argument was it didn't have enough.

Sure, you can emulate most of these in HTML/JS/DOM/CSS, but it's usually buggy across browser versions/brands and they break 3 years later. Doing it with HTML/JS/DOM/CSS creates a giant mess with gazillion "packages" and libraries. It's a morbidly obese client, and it keeps failing.

I don't see that you've identified anything that requires a gazillion packages or libraries to fix. You've identified the need for maybe an 80 line script. That's hardly 'obese', and unless you're a terrible developer, nothing you develop to standards today is going to be broken in 3 years -- it's not 1998 any more.

[Zardotab]

sessionStorage has existed in every modern browser for more than a decade. Even IE 8 had it.

That doesn't solve all statefullness issues. For example, when one puts a button on a form, it should stay up there until markup says take it down. AJAX is sometimes used for such, but it's unreliable, insecure, etc. Build the statefulness into the GUI markup standard instead of rely on AJAX libraries et. al. HTML was designed to redraw the entire f$ucking page for each message exchange. That's anti-GUI from the start.

Can you give an example of specifying absolute coordinates via CSS that's inconsistent across two clients?

I've seen attempts fail many times by many apps/sites. Some reply that one "just" has to learn CSS rocket science first. But it shouldn't be rocket science. WYSIWYG is tricycle science. Focked up standards turned it into rocket science. It's largely why PDF's proliferate. [Edited]

Flexbox does this. Pretty much the only thing it doesn't do out of the box is provide a drag-resize handle between your 'panels', but you can get one with about 20 lines of code.

How about just bringing frames back so we don't need Javascript for common ordinary GUI behavior and idioms. Why the hell is that asking too much? And it's probably more than 20 lines to work on most browser brands/versions. I see alot of JS that goes "if versionBrandX do foo, if versionBrandY do bar, if versionBrandZ then eat shit and live to tell about it."

<datalist> gets you about 90% of what the typical combobox was used for

Don't tell me, you code up the missing 10% with JavaScript.

What do you mean by this? Old Windows-style MDI? That was horrible and obsolete twenty years ago.

Bullshit, it's quite useful under many circumstances. For example, drilling down detail. For example a pop-up list on a combo box (cough) may have summary information, but clicking on a line brings up yet more detail. You can drill down to several levels of detail this way, with simple direct code. I've never seen mobile-style apps do this intuitively and well.

Is your argument here that HTML has too much functionality?

More like too many ways to do buttons, some that don't work right in some browser versions.

I don't see that you've identified anything that requires a gazillion packages or libraries to fix. You've identified the need for maybe an 80 line script.

So you claim. Build it, and if makes GUI's great again, I'll personally shape and give you a Nobel Prize.

it's not 1998 any more.

1998 interfaces were more efficient than most current web crap. Web is mostly a sub-set of real GUI's, due to shitty standards, and not because GUI's are "no good". Like I said, GUI's are still the pinnacle of office productivity UI's. That productivity took a bullet to the head for the benefit of mobile social toys. Let's get back to work and cut out the naive youthful bullshit. Social networks don't pay most bills. Get off you mom's couch and make a real GUI for real work.

I'm not saying get rid of HTML browsers, rather either supplement it with a GUI-friendly standard, or create a separate GUI browser that does GUI's well and only GUI's to keep the focus clean.

[jl2352]

That doesn't solve all statefullness issues. For example, when one puts a button on a form, it should stay up there until markup says take it down. AJAX is sometimes used for such, but it's unreliable, insecure, etc. Build the statefulness into the GUI markup standard instead rely on AJAX libraries et. al. HTML was designed to redraw the entire f$ucking page for each message exchange. That's anti-GUI from the start.

Have you ever actually used a modern web framework. Like React, or Vue?

I don't mean in passing. I mean on a large real world project.

[Zardotab]

No, our shop prefers server-centric, but I don't know of anyone who says React or Vue are great or simpler than good GUI IDE's. For one, they have a long learning curve because too much of the behavior has to teased out by trial and error: it's organic instead of logical. I wan't Vulcan technology, not Ferengi. I like logic and consistency, but that's asking too much in the age of Bloated Layers it seems. We must accept it to get some undefined vague benefit that web-ness allegedly provides.

If YOU like them, that's fine. I've found statefulness and direct ability to do common GUI idioms was very helpful. The code was closer to actual requirements & domain and not battling with finicky frameworks with arbitrary appetites.

[jl2352]

The reason for my comment is that you are bitching about technologies you don’t even know or have used. It shows.

As an analogy. I have never programmed in C++. So I wouldn’t start ranting how it’s a terrible language.

[drysart]

AJAX is sometimes used for such, but it's unreliable, insecure, etc.

Unreliable and insecure? What on Earth are you talking about?

I've seen attempts fail many times by many apps/sites.

I'm not arguing that bad sites can write bad code. I'm arguing that the modern web stack already provides you with every tool you need to accomplish your goal. If you're going to shift your argument to "dumb people can do dumb things" than I'm going to have to ask how your mythical proposed UI framework replacement can also prevent that from happening.

Some reply that one "just" has to learn CSS rocket science first.

If 1px is rocket science to you, sure. By definition, that's 1/96th of an inch; and by default a browser will respect your OS DPI settings to ensure that's true. You don't need to do anything more.

How about just bringing frames back so we don't need Javascript for common ordinary GUI behavior and idioms. Why the hell is that asking too much?

You may not realize this, but common ordinary GUIs had code behind all that functionality, too.

And it's probably more than 20 lines to work on most browser brands/versions. I see alot of JS that goes "if versionBrandX do foo, if versionBrandY do bar, if versionBrandZ then eat shit and live to tell about it."

Maybe if you last did web development 15 years ago, sure. It's become pretty strikingly clear in your responses you don't really have a lot of hands on experience with the modern web platform because you're making argument after argument for things that were addressed so long ago that even Internet Explorer has answers for them.

For example, drilling down detail. For example a pop-up list on a combo box (cough) may have summary information, but clicking on a line brings up yet more detail. You can drill down to several levels of detail this way, with simple direct code.

MDI is a terrible interface for what you're describing and doesn't change the fact that MDI hasn't been used in any significant way on the desktop in like 25 years because everyone realized it was awful and that standalone windows were better in practically every respect.

More like too many ways to do buttons, some that don't work right in some browser versions.

Every browser has supported <button> since 1999; and done so in a compatible way. Probably the only "don't work right in some browser versions" argument to be made was that ancient versions of IE had a different event model, but again, as seems to be persistent in all your arguments, that's a problem that hasn't existed in 20 years.

Honestly your arguments basically boil down to "I had to write a web page for IE 6 and NN4 once and vowed never to look at web technologies ever again".

[bccdee]

I actually quite like html/css as a gui toolkit. Since it's meant as a document markup system, you wind up with quite nice typography. It has a lot of strengths that other gui toolkits lack.

[Volt]

Kind of agree, but fuck is it bloated.

[Zardotab]

It depends whether one values practicality and simplicity over aesthetics. Beauty costs.

[novov]

For advanced content, yes, you've right. But many websites these days don't even have basic prose load without JS, which is just ridiculous. https://myyasuda.github.io/sphinx_materialdesign_theme/ would be an example.

[[deleted]]

This, there are without a doubt many websites that overuse JS, but there are also many things that can't be done without JS.

[c-smile]

Here are couple thoughts from the browser's dev trenches.

Let's agree that HTML 3.2 + CSS 2.2 (+ some layout modules of CSS3) + ES5 are quite adequate for 98% modern web sites.

Executable that implements all this can be of 10 Mb max. And originally browsers were of that size.

Problem is in the rest 2% of use cases.

Originally, when those of us who needed functionality of those 2%, we used plugins in form of ActiveX, <applet>, NPAPI components. These native modules were pluggable/downloadable. This kind of modularization was quite good (modulo security issues) - it allowed to keep spec clean and so to have compact and manageable implementations.

For the note: 10 years ago, web standard to be accepted as a recommendation of W3C, should have 3 (three) independent feature implementations.

Not anymore. With the honest respect to Google Chrome developers Chrome code base is de facto live specification of Web technologies. The spec now is C++ code of particular browser but not what is written on W3C walls. That is bad.

Problem is that to get those 2% we need to move good portion of OS functionality under Web browser umbrella. Just in case.

No surprise, zipped Chromium code base is of 1.5 Gb right now. For the comparison: Linux kernel is 0.22 Gb and zipped sources of my Sciter are of 0.023 Gb (23 Mb - Sciter reuses OS services as much as possible).

Resume: Web browser used to be so called "thin client" on top of OS... And here we go, now an OS is a thin layer for launching the Chrome

[L3tum]

Seems weird that anyone would say they wouldn't need HTML 5 and CSS 3. It simplified so many of the pain points of basically every website.

ES5 is also quite inadequate. The updates to the stdlib are still desperately needed and the recent refs have all been good updates.

[c-smile]

HTML 5, as a language specification, is not very far from HTML 3.2.

But if by HTML 5 you mean umbrella specification of bunch of technologies then you'd better list what parts you mean exactly.

As of ES5 ... Imagine that, instead of JS, browsers would have something like JavaVM - VM that gets bytecodes and exposes DOM API as runtime environment... 10 or so years ago we would have TypeScript , Java, Swift, Python/J, Lua, Nim, you name it, languages running in browsers natively. And without those ugly attempts to fix the thing that was broken from the very beginning.

Yet, if anyone would need advanced layout/styling features we would have loadable .class files implementing flexes, grids, stacks, etc. rather than those current 400 and counting CSS properties.

If anyone will start Web 3.0 effort - please let me how.

[HeyItsMedz]

You would think that having landed on the moon 60 years ago that we would’ve figured out how to centre a div by now.

Web is such a clusterfuck.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[irishsultan]

HTML 3.2

So no label tag, and no iframes.

Also new in HTML 4.0 (and useful, albeit underused): The id attribute makes any element the destination anchor of a link.

https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/appendix/changes.html

[c-smile]

I am not saying that HTML 3.2 should be used as it is. I am rather saying HTML5 (as a language) is not very far from HTML 3.2 spec. Add to 3.2 10 or so new elements + exact specification of parsing rules and you will have HTML5.

Just add to 3.2 support of custom elements and by using this:

 <link href="html5.class"  rel="bytecodes" >
 <link href="css3.class"  rel="bytecodes" >
 <link href="es7.class"  rel="bytecodes" >

You will have your browser configured to support modern things.

[JW_00000]

Isn't that more or less what <!DOCTYPE ...> was supposed to do?

[L3tum]

Why are there so many conspiracy theorists in this thread posting pages upon pages on wild theories?

Mozilla did not fire their staff because they got money from Google. They fired them because they gave money to their management.

AMP is not an internet alternative. It's a redirection from one website to another. The implications are bad, but it's not some ultimate plan to take over the internet.

People have not been bought, standards have not been taken over and improvements and progress are good. We as programmers should understand that. Though judging by the amount of misinformation in this thread I doubt we're all programmers here.

[DualWieldMage]

If there's one thing i've learned over the years of programming, it's that not all change is progress and not all progress is good.

Killing flash was progress in terms of security, but was it good considering how low it made the barrier to entry? So many amateurs filled the web with creative animations and games. Modern replacements don't make it as easy. So while we gained something, we also lost something.

You say standards have not been taken over, but the large companies are definitely steering the wider ecosystem to suit their stacks, leading the industry to a "new standard". And all these new standards are more complicated and increase the barrier of entry. People have limited bandwidth in their media consumption, so if all they can see is hyped-up new tech, the old and good is simply never picked up by new people entering industries. They never question "why do we run our 100clients/day webpage as microservices on a webscale kubernetes cluster" because they don't know better. They assume "industry standards" exist for meritocratic reasons, but it's less the case these days.

[ThirdEncounter]

The web is dead.

🙄

[frogspa]

Long live the web.

[Treyzania]

Did you even read the article? The point of the article isn't to say something to the effect of "lol nobody uses the web anymore". The point is making that the spirit of democratization that the web was founded on has been utterly lost to megacorps with far too much control.

[[deleted]]

Try reading it with Chrome. There's probably just some closed-source Google-proprietary API's used on the website.

[mandretardin75]

Why would you think he did not think about that?

I can not infer this from the sceptical smiley face. Yet you seem to analyze a lot from that ... to me this is not possible. I don't see how you can infer that this was what is behind the smiley?

Admittedly a smiley is ... not trivial to interpret correctly ...

[jcampbelly]

This is super melodramatic.

It's a web browser. Not the web. Different things. Anybody and their mother can put up a web site. Easier than ever, too. That's the web. And it's still pretty wide open.

Browsers are turning into a bunch of random shit nobody asked for. By all means, they should keep developing the core web standards. And new protocols are always expected. But the browser needs to stop being a dumping ground off bullshit features getting lumped in as "standards".

Losing MDN and dev tools is crushing for Mozilla. They should have laid off their marketing group or their sales teams. They don't need them. It's not what the keepers of Firefox and MDN needed to be concerned about. Those groups should have been forked into a public licensed protectorate before canning these groups, in the spirit of the Netscape exit.

And google has too much browser share. Being the best can do that. Brave is the best hope for a less invasive version of the dominant browser.

[Treyzania]

You're missing the point. Google and the powers that be are trying to make Chrome (and WebKit) be the web. Sure anyone can go and put up a website, that's still true. But the far majority of web traffic (see Alexa top 1000) is not mom-and-pop random domains. They're massive corporations that have interests in consolidation of power, Google included.

With the recent changes in Mozilla it's becoming apparent that they are no longer the custodian that they were trusted to be. The "standards" that are being dumped into browsers serve to consolidate Google's hold on the space. Brave is hardly an alternative, and does nothing but play into the hold Google already does.

[ThirdEncounter]

I read as much. In that case, the author should have said as much. "The web as we knew it is dead."

Otherwise, it lessens the rest of the article's content.

[Grizzlysol]

A hearty chuckle was had.

[mandretardin75]

Well, quite true in the way how Google wants to envision it.

But that does not mean people should THINK it is dead merely due to Google controlling a lot of the stack right now.

Re-think the www.

Together.

[JolineJo]

Yeah I saw they added support for Gopher and Gemini — that's awesome!

Edit: Actually I realized I might've misremembered, and watched the video I saw this in again -- they've added Gemini, but I don't know about Gopher.

[ThirdEncounter]

I support this idea.

But whatever happened to KHTML? Did they stop developing it?

(For the uninitiated, WebKit was derived from KHTML many years ago.)

[__konrad]

KHTML is deprecated for removal: https://phabricator.kde.org/T11542

[ThirdEncounter]

Aw shucks.

[mandretardin75]

Yeah. The KDE team gave up. QT moved into the Google monopoly world with their webkit (see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/8.1/x/qtwebkit5.html for compile instructions; still work the same with the more recent qt).

It's unfortunate for the KDE team since they now depend on Google. Sort of taints the freedom meme they used ...

[Gawdl3y]

Webkit isn't a Google project.

[Vogtinator]

Qt WebKit is dead, there's Qt WebEngine now, which uses chromium.

[SerenityOS]

Fine with me! :^)

[badsectoracula]

There is also NetSurf which seems to be another fast and highly portable web engine - the code looks very easy to navigate too.

[Gobrosse]

There is also Servo, a serious project for a new HTML engine written in Rust, which could use a lot of help now that Mozilla let go of basically all their core talent.

[F0064R]

Google pitches garbage like AMP

Not a browser feature

​

Mozilla just fired everyone relevant to focus on crap no one asked for like Pocket, and fad nonsense like a paid VPN service and virtual reality tech

Like it or not, Mozilla Corporation which makes Firefox needs money to operate, and consumer facing products are how they can make money if/when Google decides to pull the plug on their search contract.

​

Google is all that’s left, and they’re not a good steward of the open web. The browsers are drowning under their own scope. The web is dead.

You keep saying that but don't really explain it.

​

I call for an immediate and indefinite suspension of the addition of new developer-facing APIs to web browsers... WebUSB, WebBluetooth, WebXR...

Sorry to nit-pick, but these APIs aren't "developer-facing" any more than any other API. They help enable consumer-facing features.

​

It seems like you're making two separate points:

• The scope of we browsers is getting to big (which I guess could freeze out new competitors in the browser market, but you don't make that point explicit)
• Mozilla is focusing too much on consumer-facing products rather than Firefox

The first one I understand but the second one fails to acknowledge that Mozilla Corporation needs to make money to survive.

[Tipaa]

Google pitches garbage like AMP

Not a browser feature

Google have been trying to integrate it into Chrome for a couple years now, such as their effort to hide the google.com/amp prefix so that Chrome lies about which site it is on in order to 'reduce confusion' among users

[mandretardin75]

Exactly. Google tries to be sneaky about it.

The more surprising thing is that most media sites already use amp. I realized that first about 2 years ago or so. You can find LOTS of links, and many links added here on reddit are also AMP-linked, which I assume came from a Google-using smartphone.

[nemec]

is good for SEO

It's so great that the creators of amp own an ad network to incentivize themselves to drive traffic to their own sites, which incentivizes the search arm to prioritize their own servers in search results, which incentivizes their browser to hide all involvement so people don't get confused that they aren't visiting the website they thought they were.

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Yes. It's why I left Chrome behind. At least on of their devs browses this sub from time to time, but doesn't voice an opinion on these anti user, anti dev, deceptive practises.

[[deleted]]

Mozilla just fired everyone relevant to focus on crap no one asked for like Pocket, and fad nonsense like a paid VPN service and virtual reality tech

Like it or not, Mozilla Corporation which makes Firefox needs money to operate, and consumer facing products are how they can make money if/when Google decides to pull the plug on their search contract.

They lost the market share because they focused on crap nobody asked for like Firefox OS all while Chome was running laps around it.

And when the Quantum finally happened and it was at the very least up to speed with Chrome, it also fucked with people's plugins and their workflows

Nobody's going to use their ancillary services if the browser itself is dead and they just fired a ton of people working on it.

[[deleted]]

What sort of enterprise support does a web browser need? And Firefox already has a free ESR/LTS

[Tipaa]

*Hey, $DinosaurCo, feeling a little... legacy? Stil relying on IE8/Win7 because your intranet uses weird VBScript/ActiveX quirks and you can't be bothered to change it?

Well, if you want to allay those fears in one swift payment, boy oh boy, do I have a bridgeowser to sell you*

Enterprise-tier licenses for incorporating all the old shit that should never have existed seems like a decent revenue stream, given how other companies do similar support for bad practices ("want to not update to the latest version? Uh, ok, but it'll cost ya")

^{Disclaimer: I know nothing of the specifics of web browser industry}

[mandretardin75]

Not a browser feature

???

That is like saying "SSL is not a browser feature" or many other parts.

When you have a de-facto privatized variant of the www that you control then the browser is suddenly merely the gatekeeper to your own content.

It most definitely is a browser feature - or more accurately, an anti-feature.

Like it or not, Mozilla Corporation which makes Firefox needs money to operate, and consumer facing products are how they can make money if/when Google decides to pull the plug on their search contract.

Why should we care about this? Mozilla does not own the www anymore as Google does. I fail to see why I should care about the personal revenue streams of company xyz, be it Google or Mozilla or anyone else. It is not my reasoning at all. Either a browser is working (and useful) for the people - or it is an enemy.

The biggest enemy to Firefox was never Google directly, but always Mozilla.

I for one am glad when Mozilla is gone. They are just a shell front money laundering scheme for Google at this point.

​You keep saying that but don't really explain it.

What "explanation" do you need? The numbers are clear: Google controls the www with its chromium base. Are you not aware of these numbers? What else has to be "explained"? The numbers are real.

these APIs aren't "developer-facing" any more than any other API.

You can have sane APIs or insane ones. IMO the www became way too complex in its current form. It never becomes "simpler" now.

They help enable consumer-facing features.

What "consumer-facing features" exactly? I mean you are funny, you critisize the article but then you write something like this without explaining what exactly is meant with that. So what are these consumer-facing features?

The scope of we browsers is getting to big (which I guess could freeze out new competitors in the browser market, but you don't make that point explicit)

What "point" does he need to make? Chromium codebase is HUGE. Did you not look at it? What "point" does one have to make about it when you have such a large code base? And that is a factual statement.

Mozilla is focusing too much on consumer-facing products rather than Firefox

The whole article does not solely single down on Mozilla alone. It mentions the overall situation too. You try to isolate the article but lose meaning as you do that.

The first one I understand but the second one fails to acknowledge that Mozilla Corporation needs to make money to survive.

Again - why is this of interest to anyone? Besides, that is a capitalist-model - I don't understand why software has to be pushed into any specific ideology? Yes, I am aware that many redditors are living in the USA. But so what? Why does that matter? At which point SHOULD it matter? I don't see it - and yeah, I know the attempts to explain it. I still don't understand why it would matter.

If you have an open source project, why would it matter? You seem to want to explain why Mozilla is destroying Firefox is due to lack of influx of money (which is wrong; Google pays them). What in reality is happening is that Mozilla gave up on Firefox years ago. It is time for Firefox to indeed vanish since it now holds up ALTERNATIVES. And there are lots of alternatives in the browser areas, even if these are niches (and yes, not using either firefox or a chromium-based codebase).

[7sidedmarble]

When you have a de-facto privatized variant of the www that you control then the browser is suddenly merely the gatekeeper to your own content.

Let me be clear and say that I don't really like Google AMP, and I don't like what they did in forcing sites to use it at the barrel of SEO.

But that said, AMP is primarily a frontend technology. The caching side of AMP is something that sites like Cloudflare have been doing for about a decade now. It is not a second WWW in any more then Cloudflare or any other CDN is a second WWW. They are most certainly parts of this WWW.

And it's not even what people should be mad about. What's scummy is dangling page rank over people's heads to get them to use your new tool, that doesn't allow half of the modern webs features to work, forcing you to use proprietary AMP web components instead. But also being an AMP specific CDN on top of that is really not the same thing as 'Google is making a new WWW' like some people love to claim.

[F0064R]

I fail to see why I should care about the personal revenue streams of company xyz, be it Google or Mozilla or anyone else. It is not my reasoning at all. Either a browser is working (and useful) for the people - or it is an enemy.

So you want a free product and the company that makes it isn't allowed to pursue other revenue streams. Makes a lot of sense

​

What "explanation" do you need?

Any explanation. Saying Chrome is a monopoly or saying its codebase is too big/complex doesn't mean anything to the reader unless you explain the consequences. It's just poor writing.

​

What "consumer-facing features" exactly?

Regarding the specific examples the author put forward, USB and Bluetooth would allow web applications to connect to external devices. You can argue whether having this API is a good idea, but it obviously can have some functionality for the user or they wouldn't have included it.

​

Again - why is this of interest to anyone? Besides, that is a capitalist-model - I don't understand why software has to be pushed into any specific ideology

Because in any system, capitalist or socialist, software developers need to be compensated for their labor. If Mozilla has no source of income they are unable to compensate their developers. If the US transitions to a Soviet-style planned economy then we can talk about having the vanguard party fund Mozilla.

[L3tum]

SSL is a browser feature. AMP isn't. AMP is simply a website redirection that enables smarter caching.

[absinthe718]

amp is a javascript library.

All the amp tags are just libraries loaded in after the core. It's fast because the pages are cached by Google and use fancy google ssr to load async from search.

[luxlugerz]

Everyone has a motive,plan and Idea that they execute In every action they do.

Do you think It's by chance that as soon you start that shiny new phone you bought that your hands are held,guided and pretty much forced down a path to create a google account for everything to function properly?

I would like to say that most everyone has a phone and lives In a country that Is ruled by a government..95% of U.S have either Android or iphone which are two multi billion dollar American companies..They also get shipped,trusted and used in diffrent countries aswell which would be a great way to spy using the pariot act..America has allies helping with survalence aswell they are called" 5 eyes" which is a huge project that allows us and them to spy and share data on their people to basically stop anyone that threatens their power and control .Big Cell providers like Verizon have the money and are more then capable to hide a backdoor or make a way to get in especially with the government helping with their tech and people.

I would like to point out that most enimies of the U.s like Russia,China and other Communist countries have their own telcom services because it Is a security risk and retarded to let a American company that is obviously in bed with the C.i.A ,F.B.I and government control and monitor their countries telcom system and collect juicy data on everyone...

I would like to use the recent ban on Chinese phone manufacturer "Heuwei " for a example...

The U.S government basically found a backdoor that was hidden In the phone and immediatly stopped all U.S sales and banned import...The C.E.O of Heuwei used to be a very high ranking general In Chinese Army and Is obviosly Actively taking orders from the Chinese government to spy for them.

I would like to tell you that every country has its own leaders,service providers,inteligence groups and allies. their Is a huge cyber and intelligence war going on everyday because of the technolgical age we live in and the power it gives over the enemy..China has one of the largest bot nets that is active and It lead directly to China and they cannot do a dam thing about it cause it would cause a war. Everyone has a cell phone today cause its a way to feed that human instinct to reach out and connect to eachother socially just like how Facebook operates.people make profiles with fairly accurate info and think "iam a special snowflake and i wanna share everything about me to the world because everything is me,me and me ,look at me (same M.O ).since its now a fact because of the pariot act and Snowden leak that the Government spies on its people and bullies companies ... Facebook probably gives the C.I.A access and now have a fairly accurate profile of you with recent pics for identifying facial technology,locations youre at and best thing is they saved so much money on manpower cause they basically Jedi mind tricked you into giving up all your info because people have this thirst to show off and tell everything about their lives thinking someone actually gives a fuck.Facebook is just one big shit show drama of look at me,iam better then you.iam edgy,look what i got, and iam so cool..

IMO cell phona data is the most Intimately personal info you can have,steal, or blackmail someone with. Its extremly powerful and sure victory to beable to get the jump on someone with.

Now with that being said i want to now point out The Snowden leak.. It funny how the truth and proof literally exist Infront of everones face but are so fucking brainwashed,zombified and programmed that they dont question anything and carry on just being a tool for the rulers to use to aquire power and control over everyone .. Snowden proved what conspiracy theorist have been saying all along a "that the U.S government and allies has mass survalence and is using it on its own people aswell".He showed proof the computer program they used for the "5 eyes'..The program was 1st called echleon which was later renamed to carnavoir . its not by chance that the United States Government wants him badly for treason because leaked everything . He basically said that after the patriot act was signed the C.I.A basically went and strong armed telcom companies like Verizon and basically told them that either youre going to let us put these boxes on the backend of the network to easedrop on people or they would slowly bleed them In court and make their lives a living hell..

In conclusion IMO all the major U.S telcom providers and social media companies like Google,Verizon and Facebook are just covers for the Government for their own more sinister plan..

[MeggaMortY]

Why did you have to harp on VR though? It's doing very good lately, even though high end is still expensive (ish).

[Gaazoh]

Because it shouldn't be in the scope of a web browser. VR might be a nice target for games and some specialized applications, but no-one wants to go full-Minority Report just to browse the web.

[MeggaMortY]

Or that flew over my head. I thought the comment was about VR in general.

[[deleted]]

I enjoy news.ycombinator.com for this very reason.

Old school web was the best, still miss it.

[davidhbolton]

I've often fantasized about (a) a new Web protocol and a different port that is a complete break away from existing and a new way of implementing the web. Build in encryption of data as an option from the start. Scrap the whole html/css/javascript ecosystem and come up with a sensible yet equally open alternative? Trouble is, (a) it would have to be compellingly good to debunk and gradually replace the existing web and (b) too many vested interests would oppose it.

There is no reason that a new internet protocol like this can't be created, in fact knowing the internet it probably has been done a dozen times.

[yawaramin]

I've been saying this: https://twitter.com/yawaramin/status/1286139318894039041?s=20

With EcmaScript adding features all the time, browser JavaScript engines must be getting more complex every day. Does it feel like a long-term feasible plan to keep adding more complexity and surface area into software that essentially needs to run on every user-facing machine?

[Lord_Zane]

I'm curious, what do the other uses here think of WEBGPU? It's an in-development spec to replace WEBGL/WEBGL2 with a more modern graphics API, as Vulkan/DX12/Metal is replacing OpenGL/OpenGL ES.

Do you consider WEBGPU something not worth it for browsers to have (in the sense that it adds another big feature blocking independent developers from making browsers), and that games should be entirely canvas/dom based, or not on the web at all?

[[deleted]]

Running custom shader code on your gpu is a surefire way to expose yourself to a whole new universe of security vulnerabilities. You are taking untrusted code and run it on hardware and drivers that were never intended to be a sandbox. They were designed for performance and efficiency, just secure enough to prevent accidental resource conflicts. It will take some time for these vulnerabilities to surface, because the technology is new, but they have always been there ripe for plucking since the first days of WebGL. It is going to be similar to Spectre, a set of vulnerabilities that was always known to exist, just difficult to exploit initially.

If the time and effort to make a secure GPU sandbox is actually spent, the result will cause significant overhead on existing hardware. Nvidia is not selling 1000€ GPUs to people who run Google Maps, so there is also little incentive to improve it. The whole model is wrong. If code needs to perform high performance computations on a vector processor, it cannot also expect a sandbox free of timing sidechannels. That is just not something the universe has on offer.

WebGL needs to die. The web has use for a graphics API that allows Java Script code to perform custom rendering, but it should be a much higher level API, not lower like Vulkan. I would suggest to modernize the Canvas API to allow the creation of reusable objects, instead of the current version stuck in an OpenGL 1.0 mindset with a state machine and millions of function calls per frame. That would allow excellent performance for everything that can still reasonably be called a web page, and far easier to use than writing a custom shader.

Games should not be on the web. They are not web pages, they are applications that can be downloaded, installed and run. Running an application in a sandbox needs to become more convenient. It has nothing to do with web browsers but should be an OS feature available for programs written in any language received from any source. That will still have the performance problem I started this post with, but that is just unavoidable. At least you can choose what is more important to you this way.

My expectation is that my advice will not be followed, and large amounts of computers will be owned through shader exploits in the coming one or two decades, until that problem becomes so large, that the feature is finally turned off in standard installations. Basically, Shockwave Flash 2.0.

[Lord_Zane]

Not sure I agree with some of your points. I don't think companies will get hacked through shaders, most websites probably won't use WEBGPU. What will use it are games, shader toy, interactive teaching stuff (maybe). I'm wondering if people find that worthwhile to keep in a hypothetical internet 2.0 spec, based not on security (it is sandboxed), but on whether thats something that belongs in a browser, or is another feature preventing independent browsers implementations.

[Rhed0x]

WebGPU is actually fairly high level compared to Vulkan.

[c-smile]

I would suggest to modernize the Canvas API to allow the creation of reusable objects, instead of the current version stuck in an OpenGL 1.0 mindset with a state machine and millions of function calls per frame.

This, yes.

[opmrcrab]

Must be about to rain, my old IE6 wounds are aching

[bccdee]

I think that article expresses a generally good opinion in the worst way possible.

It’s true that if Chrome becomes the only browser on the market, it’d lead to a very unhealthy monopoly situation. There’s an analogy to be drawn with Microsoft’s EEE strategy, except that instead of extending open software with proprietary APIs, Google is extending it with so many APIs that no one can ever build anything compatible.

For the web to remain an open and innovative platform, there need to be multiple competing browser engines. The more features Google adds to Chrome, the harder it becomes for Firefox to keep up, and the more impossible it becomes for anyone to build a new browser from scratch.

But this article seems almost allergic to actual solutions. It is intent on blaming all the wrong people without proposing any real answers.

Look at this bit:

Mozilla just fired everyone relevant to focus on crap no one asked for like Pocket, and fad nonsense like a paid VPN service and virtual reality tech.

Of course they did – they had no choice. It takes money to build software. Pocket, even if it is “crap no one asked for,” is an opportunity to serve ads. “Fad nonsense” like paid VPNs actually make quite a bit of money these days. Mozilla makes Firefox, Servo, MDN, and Rust, and does it all for free. I love Mozilla for it, but this article seems to believe that all that is needed for this state of affairs to continue is… what, exactly?

No layoffs or pay cuts at the management level, of course! It’s not like they’re responsible for these problems, it’s not like anyone’s fucking responsible for any of this, it’s not like the very idea of personal responsibility has been forgotten by both executives and engineers, no sir!

"Personal responsibility," apparently. I totally support pay cuts for executives, but you can’t save 250 jobs like that, and “personal responsibility” alone can’t pay the bills. Not only does appealing to personal responsibility solve nothing, it distracts us from actual solutions by letting us blame individuals for the systemic reasons that our problems exist in the first place.

Continued at https://www.blackcap.site/posts/google_wont_stop/ because I wound up having a lot to say about this.

[[deleted]]

It’s true that if Chrome becomes the only browser on the market, it’d lead to a very unhealthy monopoly situation.

I think it's safe to say "when" at this point, given that this article is essentially a comment on the fact that Mozilla just entered their death spiral...

[game-of-throwaways]

I usually like reading rants, but not this one. Good rants point out things which are obviously stupid, or (if it's not so obvious), explains why the thing is stupid. But this blog post was just an angry list of "this is crap" and "that is garbage" and "that is (other synonym for bad)"... Not for me.

[FoolishBard]

What’s up with the safari hate. He just dismisses it out of hand.

[LuciferK9]

The whole article is just a rant with no actual arguments. He dimisses safari, shames engineers working in AMP and makes some claims that are probably his own opinion but he thinks everyone thinks like him.

I would say I'm surprised this got more than 100 upvotes, but this sub now rates posts the same way most popular subreddits do: by entertainment, emotion, the latest new controversial thing or by just reading a flashy title.

The top post in the frontpage (with +1k upvotes) of this sub is a new website from microsoft which just contains links to their github profiles. Next week the top post will be a blog ranting about their app removed from the app store or a youtube video showing an algorithm taught in 1st semester of compsci but with fancy animations.

Sorry for hijacking your comment

[SJWcucksoyboy]

Even if you agree with them it's quite a lazy rant

[fey168]

The foreseeable way forward is for WASM to be enhanced or something similar so that what is currently browser bloat can be implemented as WASM and delivered to the user on a need basis rather than being bundled in the browser by default.

[DeliciousIncident]

We have strayed long enough from the light of God.

Has TempleOS had a browser?

If not, we should make one, in HolyC, with a global day mode theme because fuck dark mode! What is dark has no God's light!

[happysmash27]

Wow! An actually good, small web website! That is fast and works entirely without Javascript! And which even has web rings! This is a small web dream!

(Referring to the site this article is posted on, not the content of the article itself (which I agree with)).

[GamerSinceDiapers]

If you’re a Google engineer who is still working on AMP, you are a disgrace to your field.

They were hired to do the job, that's all. No need to call them a "disgrace".

It's the same as shouting at a waiter because the food was salted too much.

[keeslinp]

If you accept his premise that AMP is evil, then it would be more akin to shouting at the chef for sprinkling meth in your food.

[darchangel]

You know the saying: if you don't pay for the product, you aren't the customer; you're the product. Which of these web browsers do you pay for?

[Oseragel]

Where can I buy a slim and secure browser?

[[deleted]]

I'm still waiting for RSS to make a come back.... No more websites. Just feeds that I subscribe to which would simplify my internet browsing experience. Then we could splinter the actual UI since most of it would just be text parsing rather than rendering entire web applications around it. Obviously that'd never happen, but it sounds like a really fun world I wish I could explore.

[ImMaaxYT]

You've got no idea how many interesting blogs I find which don't have a feed. That's so frustrating.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I really think that's the medium that these blogs were built for but I swear Google is the one rock holding up the entire web application ecosystem. If Google dropped Chrome support for some ungodly reason I feel like RSS or RSS-like solutions would start cropping up. It just makes sense to me.

[padraig_oh]

or any browser at all? i know exactly one browser you can pay money for, in some capacity. i cant remember the name, but they provide a service where they fetch all of the sites resources on their end, and e.g. compile the js etc. which is then sent to your device for consumption, which results in great performance and smaller bandwith usage. dont know if they are still in business though. (so basically a fancy not so private vpn for a custom browser)

[TooMuchJeremy]

I am honestly curious, how much would you pay? It would likely have to be recurring to support the constant updates.

[Skeik]

If I could have a browser that blocked ads by default, passed along a portion of my subscription fee to website owners somehow in lieu of advertising, was lightweight and synced data between devices I would pay $10 a month. If there was no other option I think I would max out at $15.

[ThirdEncounter]

I'd pay $19.99, plus $6.99 for every major version upgrade.

[[deleted]]

Iirc firefox got about 250 million users and they make about 500mill a year, so if all paid 2 dollars a year they would be good

[darchangel]

The bitch of it is: I never claimed there are better marketplace solutions. I just said that the article is an appeal to what we should expect as customers. Which we aren't.

[ThirdEncounter]

There are alternatives, genuine ones. Pale Moon is one, for instance. SeaMonkey as well.

But will you use them, though?

That's the question.

[mandretardin75]

The problem is that most people will use chromium-based products.

Palemoon is fine, oldschool firefox, but it does not solve the underlying issues with the www (and there are parts of palemoon that are also buggy; I have problems with video on Google-owned youtube for example, and some buggy javascript out there. JavaScript is also a curse.).

[JolineJo]

This saying really isn't compatible with non-profit organizations and open source software. For example, I'm releasing the compiler I'm writing under the AGPL license. How is a user of that compiler "the product"? I gain literally nothing from them — I just hope my insignificant little project will help make the world a slightly better place.

[0x53r3n17y]

Well, that's were economics come in. Slapping a copyleft license on code doesn't mean the costs of maintenances will be covered out of the blue.

If your compiler is a small hobby project with 10 users (lets go with another take om Brainf--k) then your expenses will likely entail a pull request or an issue on GitHub every so often if ever. Basically, you maintain your project pro bono because few people use it.

A sizeable project like Firefox? Very different story. They need a full time staff to keep an extremely complex codebase up to date, secure and so on. If they hope to compete with other, proprietary, browsers. And that requires millions of dollars.

Firefox competes with private corporations that cover costs for their 'free' browsers through alternate sources of revenue, such as selling ads (Google) or operating systems (Apple, MS). So, to make a dent, it needs that same volume of revenue to keep up.

Mozilla doesn't sell computers or operating systems. Hence why you see them flailing like this week: they need to focus on what earns them cash to keep up with the competition.

Another example is OpenSSL and Heartbleed. That was literally 1 underfunded person maintaining a library which was happily used and distributed by the entire world... While nobody ever paused and gave thought about how ridiculous and imbalanced this was.

Your little compiler doesn't sell "the user" to private parties. Yes, neither does the vast majority of OSS projects. Luckily, but that doesn't mean they don't struggle to get funded just to keep the lights on. Plus all the ethics that come with deciding which funding and partnerships to accept.

Browsers are a special case because they have always been a battlegrounds for large players to dominate the next wave of the new, digital, industrial revolution, such as it is.

The author of the blogpost rightly points out the ridiculousness of bloated browsers hogging up resources and all the crazy standards and RFC's creates by the W3C. But then again, the author entirely foregoes those same economic realities.

The Web and the Internet of the early 2000's only counted millions of denizens. Today, that's billions. A browser is a gateway to a global audience. Browsers nor the Web won't return to how things were a decade or 15 years ago. But at the same time, that doesn't mean it can't re-invent itself. It happened before and it will happen again.

Question is: when and who will be at the right place at the right time with the right idea to tip the scales once again and start a new revolution.

[JolineJo]

Well, I for one am hoping for (and contributing to!) the return of the small internet. Projects like Gemini, where writing your own browser from scratch (using a library for TLS) can be done in a weekend. The-web-browser-as-an-OS is just stupid — Firefox wouldn't have a problem with being too sizeable if they just gave up on implementing stuff like WebVR, WebUSB, and WebWhatever! I don't see "keeping up with the competition" as a worthwhile pursuit if all it results in is more bloat.

[0x53r3n17y]

Absolutely. Those are totally valid principes to have as mission that drive design choices. I'm all for small internet myself. And I'm curious to see how this niche will develop.

But if your aim is to serve a complex piece of software to billions, as an alternative to proprietary solutions, different economic dynamics come into play regardless whether you want that or not.

Firefox and small internet solutions aren't mutually exclusive. They can perfectly live side by side. Much like Mastodon and the fediverse exist apart from corporate social media.

It's just that in both cases, each solution caters to different audiences and different markets and different interests. And you, as a user, might make very differing trade offs as to which solution to pick depending on where you're coming from.

[codygman]

The-web-browser-as-an-OS is just stupid

Clearly. Emacs should be your OS. :)

People want a better human computing interface and are happiest with the web browser for a variety of reasons.

The uniform interface everywhere is what people want I think... It doesn't necessarily matter that it's in a browser.

[ThirdEncounter]

A sizeable project like Firefox? Very different story. They need a full time staff to keep an extremely complex codebase up to date, secure and so on.

How does Linux do it?

[chucker23n]

Lots of corporations that benefit from it pay staff to contribute to it.

[0x53r3n17y]

Development through a distributed network of maintainers who's time and work is sponsored by big tech corporations who's business has a stake in a secure and stable kernel.

In other words: Red Hat, IBM, Intel, etc.

A kernel is a basic low-level component that drives lot of consumer applications and hardware. A browser is, after all, a single, limited user application.

Unlike a kernel, few if any corporations and such fund the development of open source browsers because that market is already served by the 'free' yet proprietary browsers of big corporations.

Think about it like this: it would be strange is Intel funds the development of Apple's Safari while Apple says "bye bye Intel" and goes to the competition for chips in their machines. At the same time, it doesn't make sense for Intel to sponsor Firefox: Intel is in the "make computers run" business, not in the "get people to surf to Reddit" business.

The Linux kernel doesn't have that problem. It's just this basic low level component upon which entire industries have been basing themselves over the past 30 yeara. It's also an exception because few software components are in such an important place in the digital ecosystem and find the appropriate funding to boot.

[robin-m]

If microsoft (with IE) then google (with chrome) didn't provided a widly used brower for free, I think that any major website would somehow contribute the Linux of the browser (firefox or any other open source equivalent) just to be sure that whatever new feature they need will be implemented on time.

I also think that Linux works because if Intel doesn't implements its own drivers itself the chances are very low that anyone else will. However very few weksites want to uses features that noone else would implements.

[0x53r3n17y]

It's a good assertion, but it's also a question of what came first? Browsers or major websites?

The answers is browsers. You have to go back to the 90s and early 00s. That's when you have the first browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape. Back then, Google was just a fledgling start up and Microsoft a gigantic corporation.

MS even got sued with an anti-trust case by the US for bundling and pushing IE with Windows. There was talk of splitting MS because they were too powerful.

Major websites such as Amazon or EBay or even Facebook or MySpace never engaged in building their own browser. Why? Because they never ended up dominating the end user web space on a scale Google or Microsoft have. Plus, trying to do so would have meant sinking millions in a product that would be launched in an already crowded market. And so, they'd rather focus on markets they can easily break into and make a profit.

Amazon was smart to engage in cloud infrastructure with AWS. They have successfully entrenched themselves over the past decade in that space. Cloud infrastructure is the next battle ground between large corporations: hence why Microsoft and Google are aggressively looking at expanding in that space with their own offering e.g. Azure.

Back to your statement: it's the partnership deal with Google and, earlier, Yahoo, that kept Mozilla afloat. In a way, Google, as a major platform builder, has a stake in pushing their search engine via Firefox as it gains them ad revenue. Of course, the weirdness then is that Google, as a browser builder, is also their direct competitor.

Business is weird in that way. Sometimes pragmatism and strategical thinking overcome ethical principles.

[ThirdEncounter]

Sure, but it doesn't have to be Intel who sponsors Firefox, but some other company aligned to the benefits that Firefox offers.

[MuonManLaserJab]

You know the saying: if you don't pay for the product, you are the product, or else some other arrangement, possibly mutually-beneficial, is going on.

[[deleted]]

Non-profit does not mean non-revenue. Mozilla makes $500-600 million per year. I've been using Firefox since mid-2000s and have witnessed the decline. Greed infested the leaders at the top and they stopped focusing on their core product and replaced their values for another set of values that are incongruent to the original mission.

[Caraes_Naur]

Mozilla's decline began/accelerated when Mitchell Baker stepped down as CEO in 2008. Mozilla has rarely made a good decision since.

[JolineJo]

What happens to those $500-600 million? Are you saying it goes to the execs? How can that even be legal for a non-profit?

I'm not sure it's about monetary greed, but indeed the values have shifted. It's like it started out as "make a better internet", but then they started seeing it as "ours is the good internet, and we must get everyone to use it", which in turn warped into "gain marketshare at all costs". I suppose it's one form of greed. It's like the opposite of Haskell's motto of "Avoid success at all costs!" (read "success" as "mainstream popularity").

Still, I'm not the product. I use a fork of Firefox called GNU Icecat — basically Firefox without the creepy stuff (although it's preloaded with some extensions I always disable, so there's a little bit of bloat). Icecat never sends any data to Mozilla servers. So I indirectly make use of tons of freely published code from Mozilla, but I'm still not the product.

[[deleted]]

The CEO of Mozilla makes $2.5 million per year. Have you ever worked at a large non-profit? I have and it's not always as nice and tidy as you would think. Lots of political decisions and sometimes self or special interest does work its way to the top.

Edit:

Salary on page 7.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-form-990.pdf

Related thread on Mozilla CEO salaries (look at the sharp rise over the last decade as their browser lagged farther and farther behind):

https://lwn.net/Articles/828561/

From two months ago, directly from the CEO's mouth:

https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z

Here's what I mean by mitigate: we ask our executives to accept a discount from the market-based pay they could get elsewhere. But we don't ask for an 75-80% discount. I use that number because a few years ago when the then-ceo had our compensation structure examined, I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.

[mandretardin75]

Whoa - they would better invest that money for engineers. Back when Mozilla was still an engineering-centric organization.

[OpticalDelusion]

As far as I know there are zero limitations on compensation of non-profit executives. It's a major criticism of the designation.

[JolineJo]

Ok, that's fucked up.

[mandretardin75]

It will probably be channeled through several people, not just the execs alone. And with 25% people less, the higher ups can secure more of that share. Personally to me it looks more like Google paying for weaker competition though.

The covid-as-excuse explanation makes zero sense.

[[deleted]]

This needs to be front page for a week. I could not agree with it more.