[conspire] Browser 'Wars'

[Micah Lee]

On 02/10/2011 02:51 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> I wish, however, that most Web developers were not under the delusion
> that they are, and should be, in full control of the remote user's user
> interface, and would stick to reasonable content with semantically
> meaningful content and tasteful styling, leaving all the baroque crap
> and the gratuitous JavaScript dependencies on the floor.

It depends. There are endless examples of horrible uses of js hurting
the usability of websites. But Google Maps, for example, would not be
nearly as useful if you couldn't drag the map around and have it load
new map tiles with ajax.

> I just had to jigger the user-agent string of my Web browser (Iceweasel
> on Debian) to 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)',
> using User Agent Switcher, just to use my bank's online banking site.
> Why?  'Your browser does not meet [Bank Foo's] security needs.'
> 
> Some Web developer (working for Bank Foo) should be taken out and shot.
> That's inexcusable idiocy.

I've had to jigger my user-agent string ("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux
x86_64; rv:2.0b12pre) Gecko/20110210 Firefox/4.0b12pre") for the same
purpose. Those web developers are idiots.

>> We no longer need to use Flash to make flashy things.
> 
> I have a better idea:  Shitcan the flashy things.  We don't want them,
> we're not impressed, and you're mostly just pissing us off, wasting our
> time, and obliging us to use Greasemonkey scripts to de-junkify the work
> of Web developers.

So you would prefer to run Flash to watch streaming video than use the
new open web standards that make Flash irrelevant?

Flash is a pain in the ass to get working in linux, especially 64-bit
linux. Even with the convenient flashplugin-installer package in the
ubuntu repos, I still had do extra crap to make fullscreen video work.
The new <video> tag is awesome.

> You're obviously (1) a Windows user, and (2) very poorly informed for a
> 'Web developer'.  Chromium and Konqueror are very real, major, worthy of
> respect, and open source.

Obviously.

>> The web has changed a lot recently. 
> 
> I consider it a serious indictment of 'Web developers' that almost all
> of the _improvement_ changes have been the result of client-side browser
> enhancement work from the open-source community, e.g., NoScript, Adblock
> Plus, Greasemonkey, Firebug, CustomizeGoogle, BeefTaco, HTTPS
> Everywhere, EditCSS, (Chris Pederick's) Web Developer.  By contrast,
> there's been not only a distinct lack of leadership from 'Web
> developers'; you've been nothing but corporate lackeys working pretty
> much entirely _against_ the user's interests.

You do realize that most of those Firefox addons, especially
Greasemonkey, Firebug, EditCSS, and Web Developer, were all written by
web developers, right?

I wrote the Android and iPhone apps for The Next HOPE, and about 80% of
the code was HTML/CSS/Javascript. I saved myself a lot of time by
writing re-usable, cross-platform code thanks to modern web browsers.

I'm sorry that lots of websites are annoying and insecure, and I highly
encourage running Adblock Plus, NoScript, and other plugins that give
you control over your browser. But that doesn't mean that open web
standards and powerful modern web browsers are a bad thing, it means
that web developers need to stop making shitty websites.

Micah