I still hand code HTML pages. The thing that's most noticeable is the speed with which they display. As almost everything has a web browser, I recently produced a user guide in HTML. It looks good, has copious cross-links and is trivially easy to maintain or upgrade.

This. The internet was never meant to be a walled garden and many forget this at their peril.

And websites were never meant to be bloated shit piles. Remember Front Page? How did that work out? Many forget this at their peril as well.

My brother-in-law's website needed urgent changes, but the "friend" who had written it for him no longer spoke to him.

It needed doing quickly and didn't need much in the way of maintenance. I knocked up a CMS system in about an hours, using a couple of dozen lines of PHP and it simply loaded text files, with little or no markup in them.

Simple and effective. The menu structure was just another text file loaded into another DIV, a bit of CSS in the background, job done.

We could quickly add a new page or change the menu. It did what was needed. Putting WordPress or Drupal on the server would have taken longer and then there was the creation of the pages themselves...

For a nearly static site, that changed once or twice a year, it was more than enough. If you have a simple site, sometimes a bit of simple code is all you need.

Ah yes using the 90 day social memory loss tactic, then try it again. Well done chrome devs. Oh how quickly we regress to the bad old days

I find myself increasingly turned off by sites that are so obviously overengineered. I've started to notice the beautiful simplicity of an HTML page.

How very true. I use NoScript to block some of the crap, and for most pages I find 4-6 sites listed including the almost-ubiquitous Google pair. Just occasionally it's a true joy to find a website with at most a couple of internal scripts, and no Google.

There's also the occasional horror site, where NoScript lists 20-30 sites pulling in all sorts of crap, most of it for no reason whatsoever. Those tabs just get closed, never to be revisited.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... uMatrix has warned me of having blocked "999+" scripts on some relatively simple looking pages! Which appear to work quite well without the blocked scripts, at least from my point of view.

Only the occasional horror site? Most of them today, especially news sites, seem to have dozens of included domains.

I've switched away from NoScript to PiHole, I have around 2.5m blocked tracking sites (most of Google and all of Facebook included).

Last Saturday my esteemed spouse said unto me. "I have couple of promotional coupons from a new deli. I'm going to pick up dinner there after work. Let me know if you'd like me to pick up something for you." "Fine" , said I. "Their menu will be on their website. I will visit the website and see if anything appeals." As it turns out, no I won't, three different browsers show me a blank page. So I applied wget or curl (I forget which) to the home page. 1,8Mb of utterly incomprehensible Javascript. That's 1,800,000 characters. None of which have any readable content. ... and it doesn't work.

Seems to sum up Internet-2021 pretty well.

BTW, I think I can code a blank page in about 13 bytes of html. (Haven't tried it. Might need a bit more) What do the other 1,799,987 bytes do?

Keeping mind this is for me, and my family - everyone's gotta make a sensible switch if it's going to make a difference:

Brave - a jumbled mess of privacy strategy, anti ad networks, whilst trying to build it's own, ahem, 'sustainable' ad network. AKA gatekeeper with a different mask. It. Will. Never. Work.

Chrome - First rule of Internet Club, F**k google

Edge - Microsoft? We might not hate you like we used to, but trust you? Please.

Firefox - almost entirely funded by Google, presumably to bypass anti-competitive laws and, presumably, easy to switch off when it gets bored it;s plaything.

Opera Lol. The perennial tryer, and failer, now on its squillionth attempt at reinventing itself.

Safari Yes, join us, you're safe here, whilst we morph into a slightly less sinister but equally controlling version of Google

Sea Monkey Yeh right.

Anyone fancy building a new browser - DM me!

Oddly enough I'm reading (and posting) this using OperaGX.

I've switched back to opera dureing the pandemic, and was surprised it how good it (once again) is.

It may not have everything you need (though I would be interested to hear what) but it certainly has everything I need, and things that I cannot really do without anymore (workspaces for the win).

Isn't Opera based on Chromium these days?

Like Edge.

There are only 3 renderers in that post.

WebKit, Blink, Gecko.

Blink of course being a fork of WebKit.

Opera is a fantastic browser, by the way, and some the features make it well worth using. Its built in print to PDF function is just better than others I've used, for one.

I've been using Firefox as my main browser for many years, but I sometimes lose patience with it. The way they ruined extension support a while back still stings, and I find that now and then it just messes up in ways Blink based browsers don't seem to. It just has a slightly jankier feel about it, which is sad. So then I open Opera and get on with things... Vivaldi is also a reasonable choice..

but I sometimes lose patience with it (firefox)

Indeed, it appears that many useful websites have security certificates that expired on Sept 30. That includes Wikipedia and Stack Overflow amongst many others. Did they remember to renew the certificates? Of course not. Apparently failure to update your security certificates is a sign that you are human. (Maybe we could somehow use that characteristic of humanity to replace captchas?) Firefox won't let me see those sites. Chrome -- which I normally avoid -- warns me, but lets me see the site if I really want to -- which I do. So I am using Chrome this week even though I'd rather not.

How strange - my Firefox has had no problem with Stackoverflow/Wikipedia - maybe I just missed a very short time window. I would also expect it to be big news. And yes I leave "on" the default setting to reject out of date certs.

To say that Firefox is funded by Google as if it's a charitable deal is a bit of a stretch. I don't say that Tesco is funded by me because I sometimes shop there, it just happens to be the nearest big supermarket and I need to eat. For me shopping at Tesco is a function of ease and expenditure, not because of some attachment to the brand or company.

Mozilla just sells the position of the default search engine to the highest bidder, a purely commercial decision. Sometimes and in some regions that is Google but not always and not everywhere. I believe Yandex is the default search engine in Russia for instance and I recall Google having been outbid by another company (a combination of Yahoo! and Bing or something along those lines) for the duration of one of the contracts. For the duration of that contract Google was not the default search engine.

For Google it makes perfect commercial sense. They need data to feed the beast and Google Search is a good way to achieve that. That means that there is a commercial reason to spend acquisition cost on getting people through the Google Search front door. For Google spending between one and two dollar a year per Firefox user is a no-brainer. A purely commercial decision.

You missed Lynx browser. Always good for a laugh, a lot of sites see its use as an attack! :-D

Am sitting here with Vivaldi.

But tbh, the kind of browser you want would probably be Otter. Its also ol' Opera-inspired, but FOSS.

Vivaldi is good, it's Chromium-based but they tend to ignore Google's "improvements". And it has vertical tabs...

Vivaldi hurts my eyes, and I'm not willing to spend the time to customize it so it doesn't. Pale Moon is a good fork from what Firefox used to be, And the UI doesn't keep changing lika a kalidoscope. Works for me.

>>>That is, as Keith puts it, "absolute bollocks."<<<

A more succinct description of big techs prevailing attitude to standards on the web is hard to find.

A pure 'web standard'* browser would be a nice thing for any dev to prove basic compatibility before they add the go-faster stripes for use with different userland browsers.

*maintained by the standard bodies, it doesn't have to be fast (just work) - can't be that hard a task.

Sounds very like you are suggesting that the first two steps of, embrace, extend and extinguish, are a good thing but are forgetting about the last stage.

Either Google are being stupid or arrogant in not going through a proper change discussion and process sequence, I believe the latter and gives another round of ammunition to those wanting the company broken up.

At our place the cult of devops refuses to engage with the traditional change process as they say its outdated and doesn't fit with their devops/move fast methodology. They say breakages should be expected.

Try telling that to the head of finance when the finance system goes offline before end of month reporting deadlines.

Oh, it won't go offline... It'll just round fractions of pence/cents differently.

We are in an industry, where it just has to work, full stop, end of story.

No devops, just working solutions that need to be stable. You don't mess around when mixing chemicals, so if the system suddenly goes tits-up mid mix, you better have your protective gear on and be able to leave Kris Akabusi in your dust!

Likewise, at a previous company, we wrote slaughter house software. If the system didn't work reliably, it was a no-go. If the system halts, you have a maximum of between 15 and 30 minutes to solve the problem and getting it running again, otherwise, everything that is in the cauldron has to be thrown away, so major costs.

In most industries, you can can't "devops it", you need stable, reliable software. Reporting, you might be able to get away with trial and error, but the important stuff needs to be rock solid.

> those wanting the company broken up

Who can join those wanting world peace.

Both equally likely.

W3C actually became grew some balls and became a real standards body and issued certificates of conformance, then these sorts of behaviors from browser manufactures would be more apparent.

> W3C actually became grew some balls

And what would it do with those?

Whatever they do, Google will simply ignore them. If Google can ignore governments, why would they heed a random bunch of geeks?

The problem is that Chrome can do and be whatever it chooses, because it has succeeded in infecting conquering a solid majority of users. There is absolutely no leverage left to force it to do anything, since all web sites are now forced to stay compatible with it: The legions of Chrome's users are behind it and will defend it (Chrome being touted the "cool" and "modern" browser the 21st century (wo)man deserves).

So you're saying we're back to the same point as when Microsoft Explorer dominated the browser (non) market?

Sure, Chrome can do whatever it wants, but it's a risk: While some are happy living in Chromeworld, others will take their money elsewhere, and that's lost profits to companies that went pure Chrome. More over: It's an opportunity for those who want to avoid Chromeworld: They'll market to the 'free' customer and build up their own world, free of Chrome, and people will hear how good it is outside of Chromeworld, and they will leave and think it good, and then Chromeworld crumbles.

Or, to put it simpler: People are fickle. They change their minds more often than they change their clothes.

People may change their mind often, but that usually leads back to what they originally thought, so do not change, as change is bad, people don't usually like change.

One word - "leverage".

Stating that the whole world must comply every time Google decides to change something.... the hubris is just staggering

Don't forget Google = the Internet...

I thought the Microsoft 'e' was the Internet

You know, "The king is dead, long live the king!"

Don't forget Google = the Internet...

Here's hoping that it goes the way of "that little blue e is the internet", and before that "AOL is the internet"...

M.

This restricts what 'third party' Iframes can do.

So in other words , advert slingers can't use popups.

Eliminating these harms purveyors of advert slinging popups.

Something I can live with, personally

> Eliminating these harms purveyors of advert slinging popups.

Google is the biggest, baddest ad slinger, so rest reassured they won't harm anytime soon the mechanisms needed to constantly bury you under shrill adverts for stuff you don't need.

At least not concerning their own adverts, and since they are the biggest and baddest ad slinger, you won't see any difference.

in other words , advert slingers can't use popups

I wonder if it also affects those frames popped up by Verified by Visa or Sagepay for ecommerce sites that aren't big enough to run their own payment systems? That would break a lot of the internet, particularly small traders, and I'm doing my darndest to use small, local traders where possible rather than Amazon or another behemoth.

M.

So in other words , advert slingers can't use popups.

" other advert slingers" you mean. Google is forbidding others doing alert() while it has managed another_way() for itself to do the same.

> web standards – so developers don't have to do ridiculous things like continually test their websites to make sure they're still working

That's the quaint old world only bearded oldies still remember. Now Google's whims rule the world, and everybody has to scuttle and try to adapt or die trying - till that whim is abandoned or another replaces it.

It's management by rich kid's whims, just look at all those projects Google started and eventually abandoned, always without any real reason beyond a passing fancy. They have more than enough money to waste after all.

This article is a sad attempt to boost Firefox. Firefox is the next browser that websites will stop supporting. Get over it.

No. The author spends 99.9% explaining how the Chromium developers are not adhering to an established practise before making changes to the way their browser works. In the final line they point out that Firefox is a good alternative.

Whether FF is going to cease to work/survive is a separate issue.

Enquiring minds would like to know if you work for google.

And I specificity don't test with Chrome because the Android version of Chrome insists on buggering around with text sizes with no opportunity to turn this behaviour off, so I just ignore it. It does what it does and I don't give a crap. Stuff is still visible, if the relative sizes of different parts of the document are all messed up, that's on Google, not me.

As for breaking changes, maybe this is true if you use all the cutting edge still implemented because "this feature is awesome!" and later withdrawn when the size of its risk is actually understood (battery status API, anybody?). But if you stick with proper standards and not what some browser dev is currently wanking over... Guess what, it'll work from MSIE (remember that) to the latest Firefox, and everything in between.

Plenty of browsers got there before MSIE, which actually in its early incarnations did an awful lot to "break" the web in the interests of trying to gain a monopoly position.

Speaking personally, the first "proper" web browser I used was [1]ArcWeb which did marvellous things in 1MB of RAM, loaded from a floppy disc. I still occasionally use [2]Netsurf which has no Javascript and for many websites is all the better for it. Netsurf's current executable is somewhere around 6MB on Windows and Linux, less on other platforms, oddly enough rather more on Amiga (7MB) and Atari (10MB).

M.

[1] https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Browsing-the-Web-with-ArcWeb/

[2] http://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/

Upvote for ArcWeb and Netsurf.

ArcWeb was my first browser too, and when I'm not using Firefox on my phone, I'm probably using Netsurf on RISC OS.

I mentioned MSIE because websites these days use CSS a lot and look kind of shit on a browser that doesn't understand that, which is why I didn't mention a really old browser like ArcWeb or Arachne. I'm aware of what IE did, I lived through the Browser Wars...

Several months ago they decided (with no reasoning given) to double space menu's, tab list, etc. resulting in only about half the number of pages being visible when you have more than about 20 tabs in a list:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1346810

Apparently this is being reverted later this month.

I found it a real pain and suspect some disabled users will have found it extremely awkward. I'm not sure if it didn't break disability access legislation!

Back in the days of 56k modems, I'm sure I heard something along the lines of "if a webpage doesn't load in under 2 seconds, people will cancel the page load and move on"; the impetus being to make your pages compact with minimal large images. These days, many of us can get 56Mbps to our houses and pages take longer to load than they did in the modem days.

The company I work for has some new fancy HR crap that they expect us to use for preparation for our annual interview.

I swear to god, we're looking at at least forty five seconds to load the intro page (which is actually a pretty simple looking "dashboard", it's not like a big image or anything).

I rather imagine I'm liable to tell my boss I lost the will to live waiting for it to do anything useful for me. If she doesn't buy that, I can always point out how utterly and completely it is broken on mobile devices. It seems to understand mobile because it's slightly better behaved when in desktop mode. As for mobile? Well, let's see, an insane screen width and disallow manual zooming and resizing.

I dunno who made this crap, but if IT procurement was my responsibility, all of this would be flushed to the null device. If the user facing aspect is this bad, I dread to think what it's like under the hood.