Any Google Chrome/Chromium or Opera experiences/reviews?

[Walter Dnes]

On Fri, Jul 02, 2010 at 11:06:21PM -0400, Andrej Marjan wrote

> If you want "HTML5"-like functionality with any performance, you'll
> end up with something the size of Firefox, or Chrome, or Opera
> (10.5). And most people do seem to want that.

  Most people want a few specific extras.  Those specific extras are
different for each person.  Microsoft Office got bloated because they
added every feature that 1% of their users asked for.  Remember the joke
about how an elephant is a mouse designed by a committee?  At first, the
Firefox extensions paradigm held great promise for avoiding that problem.
But then the Mozilla developers started building in the functionality of
every extension that had more than a few downloads, including spell-check,
Google-Gears, database, etc.

> Personally I'd rather have a big, open source browser running apps
> directly than a small browser hosting a suite of closed plugins
> which then run the apps.

  Non-sequitur.  What's wrong with a *SMALL*, open source browser
running "helper applications", many of which are available as open
source?  Got a spreadsheet to edit?  Launch Gnumeric/Excel/whatever.
Got a fancy document to edit?  Launch Word or AbiWord or whatever.  But
fercryinoutloud, please do *NOT* incorporate Open Office or MS Office or
Google Gears into the browser's source code.

> The trend is toward Flash-equivalence directly in the browser, plus
> offline application support, etc.

  I agree.  That's exactly what I was ranting about.

> These days that means...

> robust video, 3D

  Should be an OS implementation, not a browser implementation.

> multithreading,

  Should be an OS implementation, with the browser taking advantage of it.

> web app-accessible in-browser database...

  That's where you lose me.  Remember just how "wonderful" Microsoft's
web-app accessable ActiveX (aka "Active Hacks") interface was... !NOT.

  A lot of "web-apps" would be better off with a VT100 (telnet/ssh)
or remote desktop or VNC or X-Window interface, rather than a web
interface.  Secondly, a lot of applications would be better off as
"internet-enabled" apps.  E.g. you can "mplayer /misc/pornmovie.avi" and
you can also do "mplayer http://bad.example.com/misc/pornmovie.avi".
The same approach should be implemented for spreadsheets, documents,
etc.

  At work, several years ago, 2 different regional offices used apps by
2 competing contractors.  One was a standalone internet-enabled app, the
other one was a web-based app.  The contractor with the web-based app
was always crowing about how "universal" their app was.  Then Internet
Explorer was upgraded from IE4 to IE5.  The web-based app no-longer
worked.  The standalone internet-enabled app kept humming along.

  IE6 is still being used in many places, because apps were written to
expect it.  If web-apps become the norm, watch for extreme breakage with
every major web-browser upgrade.  And watch also as corporations hang on
to old deprecated, insecure, browsers because they have enterprise
applications that depend on them.

> Not to mention the other 10 firefox extensions I've really grown to
> enjoy using.

  Enjoy the extensions while you can.  Most of them will be replaced by
built-in code as of Firefox 4.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
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