Slashdot Mirror
Chrome Passes 25% Market Share, IE and Firefox Slip
An anonymous reader writes: In April 2015, we saw the naming of Microsoft Edge, the release of Chrome 42, and the first full month of Firefox 37 availability. Now we're learning that Google's browser has finally passed the 25 percent market share mark. Hit the link for some probably unnecessarily fine-grained statistics on recent browser trends. Have your browser habits shifted recently? Which browsers do you use most often?
Chrome is added as bloatware to a lot of products which makes it hardly surprising that it gains an advantage in market percentage.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Unlike all the others? The most infamous such case was that of Microsoft and Internet Explorer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U....
Unfortunately it is often not so much compatible with latest Google web services. I do not say it is Firefox's fault but nobody cares about that part.
Why is it that when I look at wikipedia , they show all the various counters more or less in agreement, except netapplications which vastly overcounts IE and undercounts Chrome, android and safari? Why is it that of all the various counters netapplications is the one most often quoted, even though they appear to be using a bad methodology.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
That'd be FF with a slug of extensions like noscript, adblock, ghostery, refcontrol, betterprivacy, maybe some others.
It's your best bet right now. Not sure if it's still true, but not too long ago the adblock extensions for Chrome would still download the ads, just not display them, which is useless as it still lets the tracking companies see everywhere you go.
I used to test compatability between Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, as a desktop browser. But now we have one PC and two phones and a tablet, and Chrome is native on all the mobile devices. That's where Firefox is losing to Chrome. Personally I installed Firefox on my Android Tablet, but Chrome still lurks in the background.
Well, yes, it's like I.E. in that respect. Where I work it's now the mandatory browser.
Is that the mantle of praise now?
It's fast enough. It renders properly. It lets me override font settings.
Chrome's big "death knell" in my books is the inability to override font settings. I don't know why so many web designers use magnifying glasses when testing their pages. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's a trap
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Google's Web Services aren't designed to 'service' the user.
Remember that Science Fiction Story: "To Serve Man"?
Chrome is added as bloatware to a lot of products which makes it hardly surprising that it gains an advantage in market percentage.
And don't forget Firefox*, that is added as a bloatware to almost all distributions...
But maybe now, that many/most people (even usual, not only "power-users") are comfortable enough to choose their web browser, we should just accept the numbers:
* yes, i know, about Explorer, the point is that competition does exists now.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
I switched back to Firefox few months ago.
In Ubuntu, Chrome is a resource hog. I usually have several tabs opened at the same time. Just compared the RAM usage: 7GB in Chrome, 1.1 in Firefox.
Additionally, Firefox is a bit faster (in UI), and it just respects my look and feel (colors, borders, font sizes, etc).
And for address bar searches, Chrome privileges the google search instead of navigation history, which I really don't like (I usually visit the same sites, and even with several hits in a day for the same site starting with the same word, Chrome prefers, for few ones, to search when I type the word instead of display the known URL as first result).
I just changed few settings in Firefox (increased scroll speed, click in URL behaviour to select the entire address), and voilà.
Just annoying that every Google service keep suggesting to use Chrome until you dismiss this message.
I abandoned Firefox for Chrome long ago for one reason: I can kill individual tabs with runaway CPU usage without fscking the whole browser.
Mozilla's been working on adding this feature for years, but AFAIK it hasn't yet made it into a stable release: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Elect...
Once that makes it into a stable release of Firefox, I'll give it another spin.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
It's the default browser in many Android devices, is that what you're talking about?
If so, then he's wrong; the figures referenced here are for desktop browser usage. There are a separate set of figures for mobile/tablet (Safari at 40%, Chrome at 30%).
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Is that the mantle of praise now?
I believe the point that Antique Geekmeister was making is that if Chromes numbers are inflated because of "bloatware", why is IE slipping?
yes, i know, about Explorer, the point is that competition does exists now.
Competition also slowly convinced Microsoft to at least try to keep up with the HTML living standard rather than stagnating. Users of Windows 7 are eligible for Internet Explorer 11, which supports new web platform features reasonably well according to caniuse.com. Right now the biggest headache is Internet Explorer pre-10, such as the IE 8 used by Windows XP diehards.
But it might be financially sound to just ignore the market of users of IE on Windows XP. Here's my reasoning: Operating system holes render browser security meaningless. If Windows XP is no longer supported, Microsoft is no longer patching known vulnerabilities that allow a miscreant to install a keylogger or other backdoor. And if a machine has such malware, any payment credentials or other private information sent to or from that machine isn't secret. A criminal could compromise Windows XP on a customer's PC, copy the credit card number that a user keys in, and then make fraudulent charges to that account. If you don't let users of known insecure browsers make a purchase, you won't have to worry as much about chargebacks.
.
One would think that the Mozilla developers would take their heads out of their collective arse and look at the reality --- the new UI is little more than a Chrome clone, and a poor one at that. If people wanted the new UI, they'd move to the better implementation of it, i.e., Chrome.
Oh wait, they are moving to Chrome....
I am very surprised to see that IE is still up at 56% while Chrome is at 26%. Seriously, that many people still use IE?!
In my own testing, I typically assume half screen 960x1080 (press Win+Right to use Snap) and occasionally test on a 10" laptop whose screen has about the same width. The narrower layout works well with tablets as well.
And before you get on me about Chrome not being proprietary I wouldn't consider any program which includes non-free bits free software.
If you're a purist, which PC do you use that has a free BIOS and CPU microcode? Besides, there are other distributions of Chromium Browser without the proprietary parts.
I've been pissed over this same crap for a while now. ever since they tried to do away with the tool bars. What took me over the edge was that fiasco where someone had to resign because of a political donation made half a dozen years ago despite being part of the founding team and no known instances of any discrimination ever happening during his professional career.
Since then, I took a look at chrome and pretty much install it on everything. I don't care so much about being tracked as I do about exploits and holes in the OS or browser transferring through the other and the constant complaints about crap-ware infections slowing everything down. From a stability point of view, it seems that apps created for chrome work longer then apps created for Firefox so its a plus anyways in business environments.
Is it all post Eich or pre Eich and/or did Eich's departure hasten the decline?
Chrome is truly awful at opening multiple tabs at once on my mac. unbelievably slow loading times compared to Safari. And when a page is loading in one tab, other tabs don't continue to update swiftly. I find this really a weirds because chrome uses a separate process for each tab so one would think they would not step on each other. My guess, wild, is that tabs are contending for some resource like network or GPU and actually slowing each other down. In general I much prefer safari or firefox, but I use chrome because I also own a chromebook and I can't run safari on that. Basically, google is doing the same thing microsoft did to make IE dominant by not allowing other browsers on their platform.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Want old-school Firefox without the new-age crap? Try Seamonkey.
There is lots of valid use for http, including developing something real quick without bothering to get/create an ssl cert for your internal box
The forthcoming Let's Encrypt project will allow "get[ting]/creat[ing] an ssl cert" without any "bothering" beyond an install command.
Things where you just transfer bulk data that is of little value.
Is it really of so little value that you care not a whit whether the data you received is identical to the data that was sent? If so, extract an identical number of bytes from /dev/zero. If not, then you need to at least use signing, and HTTPS does this for you.
I've seen it included with CCleaner and Avast. It's a plague.
Required reading for internet skeptics
>"Have your browser habits shifted recently?
No because
1) I don't want Google even further spying on me or my users.
2) Chrome is not open source, further allowing Google to do who-knows-what.
3) Chromium (which IS open source) apparently has build issues and isn't even in the normal Fedora repos.
4) Chrome is not community driven.
5) I hate the minimalistic UI with zero user control of Chrome.
>" Which browsers do you use most often? "
Only Firefox. It is multiplatform, open-source, community driven, fast, available in every repo, secure, and still has much better addon/customization support. This is not to say I don't have issues with Firefox- them trying to turn it into Chrome and pulling crap like not allowing us to have tabs-on-bottom, having the menus, hiding the URL prefixes, combining the buttons, etc is very irritating (yes, I know about Classic Theme Restorer). And the memory footprint of all browsers is crazy now. I also don't appreciate them throwing unnecessary crap into the browser like the web developer stuff, the "hello" junk, and other things.... all of which should be add-ons.
A lot of sites are laid out so inflexibly that zooming in causes a horizontal scroll bar.
I use chrome because I also own a chromebook and I can't run safari on that. Basically, google is doing the same thing microsoft did to make IE dominant by not allowing other browsers on their platform.
Apple is free to port Safari to Windows or X11/Linux, but it chooses not to. It used to port Safari to Windows but no longer does.
Most nerds have 2 parents
For instance Chrome and Internet Explorer are both proprietary applications. And before you get on me about Chrome not being proprietary I wouldn't consider any program which includes non-free bits free software.
Who cares? Even Firefox is developed by a tight group of developers who can pour anything in the absolutely massive codebase. I don't think there is any practical difference between free and non-free. That something is proprietary does not automatically mean that the makers want to screw you. I don't know why that attitude is so widespread in Slashdot. Both parties, free and non-free, strive to create a product that works for the users.
Chromium (which IS open source) apparently has build issues and isn't even in the normal Fedora repos.
Fedora's fault. In Xubuntu, a Debian derivative, all I have to do is sudo apt-get install chromium-browser.
And the memory footprint of all browsers is crazy now.
Is this the fault of the browser or of the sites you visit? Back when sites weren't as image- and script-heavy, like Better MF Website, a graphical browser could actually fit on a 16 MB machine. Nowadays sites are covered with carousels full of high-DPI photos, plus developers think they still need jQuery and all its bloat just to get the site out the door faster.
I also don't appreciate them throwing unnecessary crap into the browser like the web developer stuff
Browser developers distribute the debugger with all copies of the browser to keep sites from intentionally detecting a debugger's presence and stopping working if one is found. If everyone has a debugger, the site operator can't block people who want to tinker, learn, and make a site more usable without blocking everyone.
Seriously, that many people still use IE?!
Why wouldn't they? It's right there, on their computer, the moment they buy it.
Forgive them, for they know not what else they can install.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Some pages only load on it, because startups often require features that are only available on it. The new whatsapp for web comes to mind, at first it was available only for chrome.
Computer manufacturers often bundle chrome preinstalled.
In my country Venezuela few people went to download firefox, but venezuelans love google search, so you see ads to upgrade from your old IE 8 to chrome.
Here are my website's stats (insurance company):
Chrome (55.31%)
Firefox (21.87%)
Internet Explorer (19.00%)
OS:
Windows (89.72%)
Android (4.80%)
Macintosh (2.57%)
iOS (1.54%)
Linux (0.54%)
Windows versions:
7 (60.97%)
XP (29.26%)
8.1 (6.15%)
8 (2.33%)
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Forgive them for being pragmatic instead of dogmatic. Forgive them for using a perfectly good browser that's preinstalled instead of wading into some obscure nerd-war against Microsoft. In other words, forgive them for being normal people.
It's also often a corporate standard, especially for companies and their clients with older, Windows specific software tools. And many proxies are configured to lie about the web client they are proxying for, in order to provide access to upstream websites which demand IE. There are many examples, such as:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/...
Netscape? It is the one true browser, with a truly stable interface that makes a complete mockery of all the new shit
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So you work with a browser based on Nexus?
The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web's continued development, and is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation. His browser was called WorldWideWeb and later renamed Nexus.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Like most people, I use curl these days.
I've seen it included with CCleaner and Avast. It's a plague.
You're referring to CCleaner and Avast, I assume? The AV industry is certainly a plague on the world.
Anyway, thanks for the specifics. I found some information that says CCleaner's installer asks if you'd also like to install Chrome -- it isn't bundled; it prompts for an additional download, AFAICT. I don't see anything about Chrome related to Avast other than that Avast has a Chrome extension.
Even assuming those are true, are the any other packages bundling Chrome? Is it just AV vendors? The claim is that it's added to a "lot" of products, and that that explains its growth and its presence on millions of machines. I don't think CCleaner and Avast are enough to move the needle significantly, even if they both always installed Chrome.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Why not? IE 11+ is a pretty good browser.
Do you even know why Microsoft is creating a new browser? I'll tell you: It's because IE has a BIG reputation for being prone to security breach, in addition to being very uncooperative with web standards to the point of very badly breaking them.
the browserchoice bullshit in europe expired at the end of last year... so all non-microsoft browsers, like firefox, lost that free exposure... so no os default like windows, no pay-for-installs distribution like chrome, means firefox falls. not surprising
So from a capitalist perspective, Firefox is the number one browser, because Firefox is the most frequently chosen browser for people who on purpose install a particular browser.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't think Avast had a Chrome bundle. AVG sure did and that is why I stopped using AVG. Either they offered me a choice, but didn't make it obvious, or just didn't give me a choice and just installed Chrome. Either way, I did not want Chrome installed and they installed it, so Chrome AND AVG got uninstalled.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Although I had Firefox on my computer for many years as an alternate browser, I considered myself a pretty late holdout since I kept using IE as my default for a pretty long time after it seemed most people had opted to move on. But I finally caved when so many websites just stopped working properly with it. I can't remember now what version that was on. So I just had the impression I guess that it was a pretty sucky experience.
Adblock Edge, Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript.
That's all I want, and to not have the interface shift around every version.
And a menu bar on the top, please.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...is that Firefox is getting really bad.
I just switched to Chrome about 1 month ago, I just couldn't stand Firefox bloat anymore. It's just slow and unreliable (try to open Amazon in Firefox and it slows to a crawl... a page seen by millions of people everyday) (try to open Atom editor Github pages and Firefox crashes more often than not).
Firefox developers really need to get down from their high horse and address the issues with the browser instead of keeping adding bloatware and obscure new codecs that only a small fraction of people actually use.
If by old-school Firefox you mean, "eight years prior to its existence Netscape Navigator", then yes.
I really wanted to switch to Seamonkey; but: it can't do fullscreen video playback, it has no "inspect element" functionality, and its cookie/popup manager is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. It's also not fun writing a custom extraction tool to get the resource files out of their intentionally-corrupted omni.ja(r) file to drag the interface kicking and screaming out of 1995. Learning magic trick with userChrome.css only gets you so far with Seamonkey, but can't make the tab bar even remotely sensible.
Even assuming those are true, are the any other packages bundling Chrome?
Flash.
I will switch to the next browser that's fast and supports tree-style tabs to the left of the window. (No, not in a separate window.) (And Firefox isn't fast.)
I thought those numbers were bizarre since I recalled that IE usage dropped had below 50% years ago. Now I see what the issue is. This survey is geared towards desktop usage only, and since the majority of desktops run Windows, and Windows comes with IE, it's no mystery that IE comes out on top. What is surprising is that looking at only desktop usage, IE is only barely a majority and not a slam dunk. That tells you how bad IE must be that people are actively switching away from IE. Hell, Microsoft itself is ditching IE for a new browser codenamed "Spartan" to get away from IE. What does that tell you?
Meanwhile, here are some links to actual web traffic usage patterns seen on the internet here and here. They tell a different story.
There are free software implementations of those but that's not really the point. Claiming the Chrome is free software is simply incorrect even though it is based on free software. If people used Chromium that would be fine but the problem is that they don't. The only reason why some people use Chromium is because some GNU/Linux distributions package it for them. The vast majority of Chrome users don't even know that Chromium exists. If Google really cared about free software they should remove the non-free bits and make it just free software.
It's the default browser on a lot of Android devices though, and I think it's pretty uncommon for people to use other than the default browser on a phone or tablet.
I don't think it's right to call the default browser that comes with a device bloatware.
I would like to use Waterfox for everything as it is currently the browser that is close to good.
But Google is so bad at programming that their code only works well with chrome so I use chrome for Gmail, Google maps and so on. So I have a chrome window up with 3-4 tabs normally. But as chrome takes so much memory extra for each tab it cannot be used for more uses.
Too many products like old firewalls boxes, Microsoft remote connector and similar require IE. Thus I find myself running it almost every week for something.
And finally Firefox is really really bad with bad certificates. I have to often do things like manage networking gear that has expired certificates and similar. Firefox just says "you cannot do that" where with Chrome I can say "yes I know it is insecure, but I really do not care" Thus I have to use chrome almost weekly for such.
But for the rest of it.. yes Waterfox is the way to go. Currently 5 open windows with 150+ total tabs in waterfox.
When Mozilla gets their Windows 64 bit Firefox version running and stable I will likely switch to it.
I switched to Pale Moon across the board.
Oh yeah, that's gonna work out well for you. I used to be the biggest Pale Moon booster around (at least in hyperbole-land), promoting it to IRL friends, to thousands of socialmedia follower/friend/stalkers, my wife loved it especially when it came to Linux (she's using Mint).
But then "Moonchild" went off the rails of reality in reaction to Australis, and to and Firefox Accounts replacing the "Sync formerly known as Weave". Pulled the "Firefox" identifiers right out of it, including in the Application ID. Which guess what, breaks the hell out of many extensions. Then posted manifestos about how extension authors only have to make a few simple changes to have their extensions work with Pale Moon. And how website owners should stop being stupid about browser strings and allow Pale Moon.
For anybody with a sense of history, as in, pre-relase "Mozilla" in 2001 or thereabouts, how did that work out for y'all? If the successor to still-then-known Netscape had a hell of a time getting websites to accept Mozilla, what the heck does Moonchild think will happen with his browser being a spinoff of Mozilla's successor product, Firefox? When Firefox itself is now essentially a "niche browser" with barely double-digit share?
Further egotistic actions abound: Coming out with a half-assed (and about to be abandoned) variant of Firefox for Android (with a bad-UI replacement start page that makes you unnecessarily open a new tab before you can get to your bookmarks), for the sole purpose of having a mobile product that can sync to Pale Moon, now that he refuses, for reasons, to use the new Firefox Accounts sync. Despite a long public exchange with a key FF Sync developer who was trying to help him realize there was no risk. He had a massive problem getting an own-server version of Firefox Sync 1.1 (Weave) running. And expecting that people will on his say-so distrust Mozilla Foundation/Corporation's "Firefox Accounts" in terms of privacy, but hey, having a sync server run by "Moonchild" is perfectly fine? (Yes, I know that Sync 1.1 supposedly encrypts only with the key at the client, never at the server itself, but no, I didn't audit Moonchild's code variant of it to see if it does what he says it does, because, I have a life.)
One the extensions issue, they've even started making their own "static copy" versions of popular extensions they broke, including Adblock Plus, and a spinoff of Adblock Edge called Adfblock Latitude. Because, rightly, nobody is going to make a variant for Pale Moon.
Seriously, WTF? You're a minor variant (yes, minor, no matter how much you want to be seen as a totally different browser) of Firefox, and Firefox itself is now a minor browser, and you expect site developers and extension developers to change their code for you? I get that he hates Australis UI. I hate Australis UI. I'm using Firefox beta right now in one window and Waterfox (to have a 64-bit Firefox) in another, and over on my Linux side I use formerly-Aurora Firefox Developer Edition. All with Classic Theme Restorer extension, and Status-4-Evar statusbar restoration/customization extension added. So it still works just like pre-Australis, plus more flexibility. Pale Moon already baked-in / borrowed Status-4-Evar as an inherent part of Pale Moon - no reason he couldn't have added CTR to that same mix, if he wanted to deliver a "Non-Australis" variant of Firefox with his other code tweaks, module removals, and optimized compiles. Without breaking extension and websites compatibility.
Which makes Moonchild's anti-Australis follow-on decisions even stupider in proportional consequence than Mozilla's own stupid Australis decision, or Sinofsky/Ballmer's stupid Windows Metro decision.
Pale Moon was great. It's dead to me now. Too much stupid ego leading to stupid development decisions. Given its miniscule marketshare, doing things that make it harder for Jane Q Public and Joe Schmoe to use, was idiotic. Doing things that made it harder
I have been using Firefox on the desktop since it was Netscape. About the only time I fire up Chrome is to check CSS compatibility in a web page. I dislike Chrome very much. Last time I recall checking, the Chrome executable was about 10x (!!!) the size of my Firefox, and slow, slow, slow in comparison.
One of the first things I did when I got an Android phone was disable Chrome and install Firefox.
And finally Firefox is really really bad with bad certificates. I have to often do things like manage networking gear that has expired certificates and similar. Firefox just says "you cannot do that" where with Chrome I can say "yes I know it is insecure, but I really do not care" Thus I have to use chrome almost weekly for such.
Umm, no!
If anything, Firefox (and all FF-based browsers like Waterfox and Pale Moon) are far better for things like self-signed certs, expired certs which you happen to know are still real-life valid because it's your own site. Firefox lets you permanently store the exception so that it doesn't bother you every single time you go to your self-signed Webmin/Virtualmin VPS management page (or in Thunderbird, to your own domain name with TLS on when you don't have a cert under your own domain and mail subdomain for your webhost's email server.)
Chrome bugs you every single time. If that's your reasoning to be against FF and for Chrome, you're 180 degrees backwards. There are plenty of other reasons why you might prefer Chrome and you gave reasons why FF has issues for your use cases, but on this particular use case, Firefox would be better than Chrome, bigtime.
When Mozilla gets their Windows 64 bit Firefox version running and stable I will likely switch to it.
If you're waiting for Mozilla Corporation/Mozilla Foundation to release a 64-bit, official FF release for Windows, your wait will be long. Waterfox basically is that release, and Mozilla has long made clear that they are never going to release it themselves. Pale Moon used to be my go-to for 64-bit FF, but as I explained at length upthread in response to another comment, they've gone off the rails of FF compatibility. Including on extensions. Waterfox was seemingly dead for a long time post FF18, but the one person running that project has now gotten caught back up. If you want Firefox Windows 64 it's called "Waterfox".
Ive been using FF or more recently Waterfox for I dont even know how long but with each release it gets slower and slower. When having 7-10 tabs open including ebay, amazon and other shopping sites it stops for 5-10 seconds at a time. It never use to do that, that problem showed up in the 30 somethings. Memory use climbs to 1GB+ after in first few website, I got tired of sitting and waiting for it to continue while Im at work and yes, disabled adblock and other plugins and did not solve the problem.
I must admit, even though I loved FF in the past, but Chrome is much better, it's faster and says faster.
Mordac and his associates as Preventers of IT at my company insists and demands that only an older IE exists on our machines. so half the websites I visit lock the machine up. this is, of course, the usual silliness about keeping creaky old code, as well as the insistance that IE is the only safe choice with all the mayhem out there.
at home, I have given up on resize-happy Firefox and use Chrome exclusively. if Mozilla would fix that freakin' bug, I might reinstall it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Microsoft itself is ditching IE for a new browser codenamed "Spartan"
I think they just announced that Spartan will be called Edge. </eyeroll>
.: Semper Absurda
Chrome, Dooble, Pale Moon, Superbird, Vivaldi ...
Chrome is added as bloatware to a lot of products which makes it hardly surprising that it gains an advantage in market percentage.
You are taking it wrong.
Chrome is not gaining any advantage in market share. That sad excuse for browsers that compete with Chrome is that are loosing market share.
Since Chrome is practically the only player left that still plays something right, people are going to it by lack of choice.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
... will be the first day of the last days of the internet as we know.
I'm pretty scared, by the way.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
If everyone has a debugger, the site operator can't block people who want to tinker, learn, and make a site more usable without blocking everyone.
You're kidding? Sites actually do that!?
See Netflix disables use of the Chrome developer console.
Why?
Ostensibly, protecting inexperienced users from the social engineering exploit known as "self-XSS". Self-XSS occurs when an attacker convinces an inexperienced to paste malicious code into the developer console. This is why Facebook also disables the developer console (though Facebook reportedly provides an opt-out). But the real reason is probably three words: digital restrictions management. It's similar to how Google Play Movies refused to play on rooted devices prior to mid-2012, and other apps have needed things like "RootCloak".
Don't forget Adobe products. Chrome has been bundled with both Flash Player and Reader at times.
Chome for private use, Firefox for work, Opera for communicating with my wife, Safari for the girlfriend on the side, Explorer for the other girlfriend...
Okay, I'm over-exaggerating, but you get the point. There is probably a plug-in for Chrome or Firefox that achieves the same effect, but in practice I find it easier to just use a bunch of different browsers as sandboxes for different situations.
2003 is calling, and they want their rant back!
Would you want other users to be able to post as Dog-Cow? Because if you don't subscribe, you don't get HTTPS, and if you don't use HTTPS when posting, others can intercept and clone your session cookie.
If Google really cared about free software they should remove the non-free bits and make it just free software.
Most people are not free software purists and thus would prefer to use a web browser capable of playing Hollywood movies instead of a browser that is free software. Shipping a binary distribution of only the free parts would incur extra quality assurance costs that Google is likely unwilling to pay. So how should Google remove the SWF player and DRM components without compromising functionality that the end user expects?
The behavior you describe appears to qualify as a defect in Google Chrome. Run Chrome on a Retina or other high DPI display, take a screenshot, then report the problem to Google. Or did Google already mark a report as "WONTFIX"?
Most PCs do not include range finding hardware. If they do include a webcam, it isn't stereoscopic. So you'll need to tell the window system explicitly how far away you plan to sit. Divide 2688 by your viewing distance in inches (1 m = 39.37 in), increase it somewhat if you have poor vision, and put that into your window system's DPI field.
Yeah, I installed Lubuntu on an old laptop, and it installed Firefox by default.
Oh wait a minute...
Also known as the "I wasn't the only one speeding" defense.
The main reason I dislike using Chrome on a PC unless I have to is that the scroll speed when using the mouse wheel, or more likely the scroll slider on a laptop touchpad, makes the page zip up/down so fast it's really difficult to have any sort of fine control over where on the page you scroll to. Why the fuck they changed that I have no idea, I tried a scroll plugin to get the scroll speed back to the norm (ie FireFox) but no matter how I tinkered with the settings I never got it to feel comfortable. So it's FireFox all the way with me.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Firefox still remains my browser of choice: it has it's problems, yes, but for me, configurability is king. (Chrome, what do you mean I can't - even with an extension - mousewheel to change tabs or set up a mouse gesture to minimise the window?) And IE is a total non-starter on that front: it's rubbish defaults are pretty much all you are going to get. Things like Adblock (and now, Noscript) are essentials as far as I'm concerned, and (since Opera, see below), so is the ability to configure tabs and set up mouse gestures - it's just so much faster having proper control and the ability to configure things. This is also why Safari will never be an option: a while back, when we had a weird proxy issue, Safari was the only browser that didn't let you into the proxy config enough to fix it - the stock answer for Mac users then was "You'll have to use Firefox".
Over time, it has been something like: Netscape (for the tiny bit of my internet-accessing days where that was relevant), then Internet Explorer (because there was no choice when Netscape imploded), then Opera (this was a good decade ahead of the others in terms of features for quite some time), then Firefox (when I finally gave up on having to keep switching to IE for all those sites that didn't support Opera - at the time, Firefox was more supported in more places). And Firefox it has stayed, for a long time. Chrome has never sat well with me: too much memory hogging, not enough ability to configure it (and not as good on the extensions front); minimalism is fine for some, but I want to be able to put exactly what I want, where I want (and yes, this means I have no less than 6 buttons on my toolbar for extensions - and I use all of them).
Also, Firefox is one of the only browsers that still separates the search and URL bars. If I want to search, I will use the search bar - I do not want you trying to hit up Google Search just because the slightly unusual URL I typed doesn't look like a URL to you.
Having said this, browser use in recent times has become more heterogeneous. There are times at work that I can't avoid IE (e.g. intranet; also, specifying that IE is the only browser we should be using is an utterly retarded decision on the part of our IT department - but thankfully Portable Apps exist). Chrome tends to get used for times when we don't want to reload a session of 10+ tabs for one thing, or for video streaming, when we don't need to be multitasking. At times, it's now "whichever browser is closest", although Firefox to me is still the best, as it's one of the few that actually still lets me make decisions for myself on how the browser should behave.
This idea of Chrome-only apps that's starting to emerge is horrid. Please do not do that. (I have an Android app that I would use on the desktop as well, if it had a version for anything other than a Chrome version - it's not worth another browser just for that).
Another reason I want to keep using Firefox is that it keeps a third rendering engine in the game (although I am getting concerned that this is starting to be lost): Firefox was a hero back when it finally managed to eke out just enough market share that "Designed for Internet Explorer" ceased to be valid, and we finally saw innovation return to the browser scene (arguably, this paved the way for things like Chrome to exist). The three-way Trident/Webkit/Gecko* scene we have had has seen more browser innovation than ever, but I worry that if we drop back to only two, we might see a duopoly that stifles innovation. Oddly enough, Microsoft's decision to revamp but not go Webkit was actually worth applause I think (not that I'm going to use it) - they apparently did this because they wanted to avoid a single-browser-engine world (though the irony of that shouldn't be lost on the audience here).
*Sorry Opera, you were great, but never quite big enough to make the difference you deserved; RIP Presto.
2001 called, they want their slogans back.
IE has been a perfectly reasonable browser alternative any time these ten years, but some people just Will. Not. Let. Go.
And yet for those people who don't know or care about that reputation, it is still the perfectly good browser as the OP said. It shows all the websites they want (so as far as they care it does adhere to the standards) and they are far more likely to get hacked due to social engineering than any browser hack.
Want old-school Firefox without the new-age crap? Try Seamonkey.
Pale Moon (www.palemoon.org) is a quite good fork of FF pre-Australis.
Sigh....do you not remember your history AT ALL, not even a teeny tiny bit?
Alright boys and girls, time for a lesson from the greybeard society...You took IE NOT because of any bundling, because, just as was the case with many other MSFT early successes the other guy did something REALLY fucking stupid. MSFT was able to easily win the browser wars because Netscape (which for the record I bought and used) went and shot themselves square in the face by going "Ya know what? Lets just shitcan our browser that has made us all this money and do a top to bottom rewrite, fuck we don't need a 'plan B' because our shit don't stink and we are super geniuses!" which gave us Nutscrape 4, so called because it would have been less painful to scrape your nuts with a cheese grater than have to use that abortion for any length of time! It was so buggy if you saw 4 websites in a row without crashing the OS (yes not just the browser, it leaked so much memory it would BSOD the OS like it was nothing) it was a miracle, it was a fucking disaster!
So nobody had to "force IE" which just FYI IERadicator was free and would remove IE in less than 30 seconds, which was one of the things they busted MSFT for, the "you can't remove IE" bullshit, you took it because your "choices" was a free and not nearly as buggy IE, a buggy as fuck NS4 for $$, or ad ridden Opera, again unless you ponied up $$ but Opera did things in such a bizarre way that many websites (and yes this was before "works best in IE" existed) just came out all wonked, it was not fun at all in those days....so we took IE, not because it was great, but because the alternatives were MUCH worse. Now that there is choice wadda ya know, we actually choose and no browser dominates anymore...yay!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't use IE or linux. Not sure where you get that information.
Yes, AVG has a free version (and a paid version) and that is all well and good, but just because it is free doesn't mean it should be allowed to clandestinely or deceptively install other software on my computer. As there are other similarly priced alternatives that do not install unwanted software on my computer, I installed the other software instead.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm afraid your "history" is too recent. You seem to be referring to the feature filled but UI altering rewrites over the last 5 years. I was referring to the even older history, where Microsoft _lost_ various lawsuits about their abuse of their monopoly to enforce the use of Internet Explorer in the USA, back in 2001.
If you'd please stop cursing, you can look at the court history and the hands-on memory of admins, including me. The fraud by Microsoft about inability to remove IE was a problem. The punitive licensing for OEM's that dared to include Netscape on their systems were profound, non-technological abuses by Microsoft against Netscape. The requirement of IE to access Microsoft updates was a third.factor, partly technological, but primarily a policy decision. Netscape market share grew in spite of these illegally monopolistic practices, so they clearly used to have serious advantages, and your claims that older versions of IE were ever "not nearly as buggy" are not based on any reviews or experience I can find. It worked well with Microsoft's own web server, but both the web server and web client violated published standards at every opportunity.
The "works best in IE" coding practice is documented in software I continue to work with, 20 years after it was written, and was in place when it was first released. It was a problem for web authors who actually followed the RFC's and various coding practices.
You seem to remember the Netscape vs. IE vs. Opera wars rather differently than I do. I admit that Netscape was quite buggy until it went open source with Netscape 4, when it improved and stabilized rapidly.
I'm curios if webmasters are treating IE the opposite relative to the once-dominance of IE6.
/><![endif]-->
Maybe now all the "if IE" conditionals result in a purposely shitty experience, instead of targeting quirks in specific versions.
<!--[if IE]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="shitty-on-purpose.css"
Anyone going to thank the EU anti-monopolistic laws for forcing Microsoft to add alternative browsers or is that against the libertarian streak of Slashdot.
The basic problem I have with Chrome is font rendering. The fonts are (still) too light, and have much worse readability than those in Firefox. Seems to me they don't respect cleartype settings at all. This is all tested on vanilla Windows installation, so hardly a problem on my part.
Also, especially on wide-screen displays, the omnibar is overly long and its' space is just wasted. More buttons should/could be (optionally) on the toolbar instead. I am especially missing a "bookmarks" button, that would display available bookmarks as a menu. I know about bookmarks bar, but that eats up precious vertical space. And "(three bars) -> Bookmarks" is just inconvenient (one precise mouse movement - and wait/or click - away).
On the other hand (previously an Opera user) I do like the possibility of Duplication of tabs in Chrome. Most probably there is an extension for Firefox doing the same thing, but I consider it such useful option, that it should be in by default.
I used Opera for nearly 10 years, but they stripped out a ton of features with their newer versions.
I've started to use Vivaldi. It's only in tech preview, but it's relatively stable. I wouldn't yet recommend it for day to day use, but the team behind it is the old Opera team, and they seem to be focused on rebuilding that old functionality (the side panel has bookmarks, notes, contacts, downloads, with mail to come).
As a die-hard Opera fan, it's a return to form that I'm really enjoying.
Except that Firefox refuses to show some sites totally with no option to bypass, with Chrome you can say "yes I want to bypass your warning" in those sites.
There has been a long going on process to create FF 64 bit for windows, they have already released a official developer version and there is ongoing work and an official proposal to get the 64 bit version out by end of the year, but it has not yet been accepted so it may or may not happen.
The last few versions of chrome seem to be pretty crappy. At work we have been telling people to use Firefox since Chrome has issues with dropping chat connections and slow response in sending emails. The website that teachers use for attendance and grading also has issues with chrome, but works fine in Firefox.
For me it is the least objectionable of the four.
The claim is that it's added to a "lot" of products, and that that explains its growth and its presence on millions of machines
That is not the claim at all. The words that OP used were "hardly surprising" and "gains an advantage". Do you deny that paying people to use Chrome (which is what this is in essence) doesn't give Google an advantage? Perhaps they just like to pay companies to bundle products for no return.
Capcha: sincere .. lol
Nice selective quoting. The original claim was that it "gains an advantage in market share" due to being added "as bloatware to a lot of products". The claim was specifically that growth in market share was due to being bundled.
And what evidence do you have that Google is paying anyone to include Chrome?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Ah, browser wars. Makes discussions about Hitler look perfectly reasonable and rational...
(None. He's dead.)
I just need to point out something to all the people bitterly complaining about how IE "got better" and no longer deserves it's reputation:
It doesn't matter that IE is better now. It's too late.
Even by Microsoft's "it takes 3 tries to get it right" reputation, IE is still a failure. IE didn't get even remotely functional until, what, version 10? That's 9 major previous versions, spanning well over a decade, that IE was varying levels of shit. For over a decade, IE not only didn't support web standards, but actively broke them in an attempt to segregate and silo the web. And by the time it finally occurred to Microsoft that they were losing that war, the IE code base had become such a steaming craphole that it was unrecoverable. Not only the code base, but the IE brand.
Finally, all you people shouting, "But but but..." are clearly not web developers. If you were, you would realize how much of a mindblowing pain in the ass it is to make a website that supports IE. You essentially have to make one website for IE, and one website for everybody else. Who cares if IE11 finally has support standards that other browsers have supported for 5 years? That still leaves the IE10, IE9, etc users, most of whom don't even have the slightest concept of what version of IE they are using. And it is these people that will complain that you are lying and are dishonest because your website says it works with IE when it clearly doesn't.
There are only 2 rational solutions to this: Write off IE entirely and say you just don't support it, or you charge your clients triple what it would normally cost, to cover the cost of the additional aggravation. If you're lucky, the company will at least do testing to verify that the site will at least work on a relatively modern (ie: 9+) version without exploding horribly.
Microsoft is abandoning IE and releasing Edge because they have no other choice if they want to remain even the slightest bit relevant. IE has been a zombie for years now, just plodding along and waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.
I am very surprised to see that IE is still up at 56% while Chrome is at 26%. Seriously, that many people still use IE?!
For a lot of installed applications, especially in the medical field, it is as mandatory as Windows XP is (there are hardware reasons why that is still in use many places).
In addition, lots of businesses have client-server software that really only works with I/E (altho they may call their internal thing a web-based system)
Uhhhh Nutscrape 4 was beta in 96, released 97 so sorry kid, your idea of "history" is too damned young. FTR I was using NS before there even was an IE, back when you had to use Trumpet Winsock just to get to your BBS with Windows, so I think I'm a liiiitle more experienced when it comes to ancient OS and browser history than you sonny.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
IE6 was a total joke, but IE7 didn't do much other than add tabs, IE8 and IE9 still retained broken web standards. IE10 still wasn't even feature complete for a web browser and it alone held several very good HTML5 standards (such as WebGL) from gaining widespread use.
It wasn't until IE11, in 2013, that Microsoft finally had a browser that wasn't incredibly far behind everybody else. A major fault of it though is that its support for things like addons suck dick. (Why do you think they are advertising compatibility with Chrome addons as a major feature in Spartan?)
what kind of "market share" is this? the article itself links this as the usage market share source http://gs.statcounter.com/#bro... (at the bottom of the atricle) however, the statistics there state that chrome has 47% market share, while ie has 20%
some more stats, since Jan 1st for my site (online puzzle site):
Chrome: 35%
Safari: 22%
Firefox: 19%
IE: 19%
Android Browser: 3%
Opera: 1%
OS:
Windows: 60%
iOS: 18%
Mac: 11%
Android: 8%
Linux: 3%
Windows versions:
7: 62%
8/8.1: 25%
XP: 8%
Vista: 5%
and even:
NT: 0.1% :-)
Server 2003: 0.1%
98: 0.005%
2000: 0.0005%
I recently switched to Pale Moon (a fork of Firefox focused on stability) and I haven't looked back.
Everyone else likes to bitch about Firefox's ramrodding of shitty UI choices down their throats, but to me the vast instability of modern firefox just cannot be borne. In large part this is due to shockwave flash being a pile of shit; the current version has a bug where it reports itself as out-of-date (despite not being) which forces you to click every flash window to confirm that yes, you do in fact want the goddamn thing to play. Pale Moon has that same problem; because it's Flash, not Pale Moon's fault. However, when the shitty fucking app finally crashes, Pale Moon usually survives. When it crashes in Firefox, it takes the browser down with it.
I remember back when Firefox 2.0 was the latest and greatest thing - I was on a 28.8k dial-up connection at the time; so I'd never, ever, ever close a loaded page if I could help it. My personal record for open tabs was somewhere north of 4,000 - I have a screenshot of it somewhere. This was on an old laptop with a grand total of 2 gigabytes of RAM. On my modern desktop - a gaming rig with a beefy processor and 16 gigabytes of RAM - the idea of getting to even 1,000 open tabs is a goddamned joke. We've been told that Firefox's memory leaks were being fixed, but if anything Firefox is far less stable than it used to be.
YOU. Yes you, opening the reply window to blame all my problems on "dodgy plugins." Shut up. Shut the hell up. I tried a reinstall of Firefox, a complete nuke-and-pave to eliminate the instability that so plagued me, but it was all for naught. It doesn't surprise me one damn bit that Chrome is pulling ahead of Firefox in the browser wars - it's because Chrome actually works, and has much better stability and crash recovery.
Goodness, you're reaching back. But I also remember Trumpet Winsock quite well, and also the superior TCP stacks from FTP Software that preceded it and the collapse of that company when Microsoft released their own, inferior TCP stack. If we're going to compare the length of computing experience to prove whose memory is correct, I remember quite well the awkwardness of installing getting DEC hardware support for systems that were running BSD releaes, the sales of the first Macintosh personal computers, and the fascination when Tim Berners Lee first published HTML and the "world wide web" was born.
Those were heady days, and very exciting for nerds and geeks who were tasked to get it all working together. I can reach back further, but no one was paying me before those experiences. But I suspect your experience of the browser wars does not predate mine.
With that in mind, I was referring to specific periods of browser evolution, not to the earliest history. In particular, I was referring to the tendency of OEMs to provide multiple bulky subtly incompatible browser versions on the same hardware at sales time. Chrome is only the lastest among the suite of such tools to be included by OEMs. And the only one that has been _mandated_ for desktops has been Internet Explorer on Windows systems. Chrome, at least, can be gracefully removed. Removing IE is not graceful, by deliberate design. It was a key point in the Microsoft monopoly lawsuits.
Its understandable to be bothered by the bloat of a browser you didn't want. But compared to the IE desktop monopoly abuses, Google and Chrome have been quite polite.