this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Technology

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Chrome is the new Internet Explorer. (fedia.io)
submitted 1 year ago by paco@fedia.io to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.

If you were on the web in the 00s, you remember web sites saying things like "This site works best with Internet Explorer" or, even worse, using technology like ActiveX which meant "this site ONLY works with Internet Explorer on Windows, the rest of you can get stuffed." (There was an Internet Explorer for Mac at that time, but it was garbage and couldn't run ActiveX content).

Today, that's Chrome. But this time it's different. It's not driven by web sites who explicitly make a tech choice to only support a single browser. What's happened is that all the developers, testers, and frankly the end users have all just decided they'll only use Chrome. They only test web sites on Chrome and all their users who report problems are reporting them on Chrome.

At work I am increasingly using enterprise software that throws errors if I use Firefox, but magically just works if I use Chrome. It's different this time because the developers don't seem to care (the web site/software doesn't include non-Chrome accommodations the way web sites used to include "if IE6 do X" code) and the business isn't even advertising "this only works if you use Chrome." I don't find this in FAQs like "Q: X doesn't work, A: Try using Chrome." It's just that a lot of stuff breaks in weird ways if I use Firefox, and doesn't break at all if I use Chrome.

Monopolies are bad for the end user/customer. Diversity forces innovation. We need significant numbers of people using something other than the same thing most people use.

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[–] Banjo@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I seem to be using multiple browsers at the moment. On desktop, Arc (chrome wrapped in a fancy UI) On mobile (iOS), I primarily use Orion as it does an amazing job of blocking intrusive and endless ads. Finally Safari or Firefox on iOS for compatibility on occasional sites. The main day to day feature I like is vertical tabs. Both Arc and Orion have this out of the box.

[–] notepass@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't iOS only allow safaris browser engine? So all browsers there are just different UIs for it?

[–] Banjo@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Good point and at the moment yes. Hopefully that is ‘soon’ to change.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/google-and-mozilla-are-working-on-ios-browsers-that-break-current-app-store-rules/

I mainly use Orion on iOS as it has built in Ad tracking blockers. I’m not against ads on sites, but they have become so intrusive and make browsing on the move very disruptive.