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- Published on September 2nd 2008
- Categorized under Features
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2008 / September 2nd/ Why I am so cynical towards new browsers
The talk around town today was all over Google Chrome. It’s a new browser from Google that does have a lot of very good ideas. A lot of ideas that are going to push other browser manufacturers to rethink their own codebases. Ideas that will push long paradigms of performance and stability.
But I am sorely disappointed in the quality of the rendering engine. Almost every site I visited had problems in Chrome. Which for as many good ideas Chrome brings to the table — is equivalent to about 50 huge steps backwards.
We’ve come to a point in browser maturity that passing 99% of layout tests just isn’t that impressive any longer. That 1% will still be broken. And you’ll inevitably run into that 1% over and over again (good old Murphy’s Law in action). As a web developer who makes websites every day, I am more frustrated with real-world rendering problems (such as rendering border-radii accurately) than engineering-world problems like the Acid3 test.
But Chrome is just in beta, right? Calling a browser ‘beta’ is great for fielding “It doesn’t work right…” questions from people. But it doesn’t stop the fact that people will download and use the browser. Gmail is still in beta. But thousands of people use it daily. If it breaks, people complain. Any (rendering) bugs that exist will be blamed on the websites, not the browser. People use the internet, not browsers.
And the scary part to me is that there’s enough compelling reasons for the Average Joe to use Chrome that it may actually have a chance at eating away some market share.
So, here I am, web developer. I’ve now got yet another browser to test things on. What it signals to me is the return of This site is best viewed on… statements that were so popular back in the day. Am I really going to test all my sites in Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Safari 2, Safari 3, IE6, IE7, IE8, and Google Chrome next year?
Magic 8-ball says very doubtful
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September 2nd | #
Google ain’t about pretty.
September 2nd | #
The first thing I did was to test our website in Chrome. Luckily, apart from problems with installing the Flash plugin, it worked fine.
But I can see your concerns and I agree with them, because as much as I love doing the right CSS and bugfixing, it’s annoying having to do another browser because it’s released in Beta and as you say, it’s released to everyone.
It’s unnerving.
September 2nd | #
Call me silly, but I believe Google is slowly coming out with its own operating system. The features of the Google Chrome is a sign that leads towards that. While I was watching the tutorial (as the beta is not available on OS X yet), I noticed several things that mimic both windows and os x functions.
Whatever happened to simple yet powerful browsers?
In the end, the best browser will still be the one that more people will use. And for me, the simpler, more secure, the better. I’m sticking to Safari and Firefox.
Google Chrome is way too much for my needs. It could work for those people who don’t know what their needs are. Google is trying to catch that market… and it is a HUGE one!
September 3rd | #
“In the end, the best browser will still be the one that more people will use.”
Not true. As long as browsers are bundled with OSes, and as long as the bundled browser is “good enough”, that’s what the average person will use. Since Windows is still the dominant desktop OS by far, people will mostly use Internet Explorer. At the end of the day, people only care about browsing the Internet as mentioned above.
September 3rd | #
We, the Developers should create webpages using W3C standars, and browser developers should fix their browsers to accomplish with the standard.
Google Chrome uses WebKit so it should render in the same way Safari does.
September 3rd | #
[...] are some really terrible rendering issues due to what looks like Chrome’s use of a adjusted version of Webkit. Overall, I’m [...]
September 3rd | #
NetVicious: that’s a naive statement in every way. Chrome is based on WebKit. It does not use WebKit. Otherwise the screenshots above would not work. You can go tell the browsers what to do, I’ll sit over here in the real world though :)
September 3rd | #
I completely agree with your comments. I currently test all my sites on IE 6&7 and Firefox 2&3. I honestly don’t see myself testing on any other browsers any time soon. Some people may say thats not thorough enough but I work mainly for small businesses and they are more than satisfied with the results. I’ve looked at some of my sites in Chrome and there are a few rendering issues. I would advise Google to ensure that page render exactly as in either Firefox or IE or they will surely have some trouble on their hands.
September 4th | #
Although I haven’t gotten around to installing Chrome (partially because I haven’t booted into Windows in years), I do see a lot of reports that some of the rendering stuff inside of Chrome (ie. Webkit) has been “turned off”?
The reports vary but I’m pretty sure that if they play the first update right… they’ll be able to fix these really quickly because their use of Webkit is going to afford them lots of time to not have to think about rendering as much as they would if they rolled their own.
All of that being said… I like the idea of a super simple browser being offered by someone like Google. It should clean up all of the users that use IE and not Firefox (if they market it right).
September 4th | #
Well, it’s not so much that things are turned off (hell, I’m fine with that, progressive enhancements all the way), it’s that the rendering engine is the same, but the drawing engine is completely new. So, for example: border-radii are displayed the wrong values & not anti-aliased, PNG images work about 50% of the time, and using text-shadow has a 90% chance of making the text 100% unreadable (like the picture of Avalonstar above).
And that’s not counting the Javascript the new V8 engine breaks…
Sure, people say beta. But like I said: people are already using it. And complaining that their sites aren’t working in it. To me, that’s a full release.
September 5th | #
Don more people use Internet Explorer, but that does not necessarily mean that it’s the best.
Why don’t you criticize Microsoft for unfairly implementing IE in its OS the majority of the world uses?
Kyle, I’ve been following your writings, and now I have the impression that you’re a bit far of a pessimist. Referring to your “reasons for not jumping into OpenID’s train”, most of which was pretty reasonable, i guess you like more criticizing rather than appraising. Don’t get me wrong about my impression but I had to admit that.
Like it or not, the engineering part behind Chrome is magnificent, and to my opinion, any comment against that is simply naive and ignorant.
Firefox 3 has been around as a beta for quite some time, but that was necessary for they need users feedback, the same situation is with Chrome I suppose. Even in full versions Firefox has the Crash Report implemented.
And why blame Google for trying to take some market share, but forgetting about Microsoft trying to capture all that market through insisting to acquire Yahoo!?
The way I see it, Google has just come up with Chrome, to simply allow it’s users/customers to interact with Google products the best way possible.
I wouldn’t be surprised even if a new OS would hit us soon, developed by Google and stating Beta.
September 5th | #
Arian: Did you read my post? Please read the whole thing, not the parts you like. In fact in the second sentence I gave huge praise to Google. Chrome has some great ideas.
The problem is that one browser can have an impact on every page on the internet if enough people start using it. That’s a responsibility many browser manufacturers take for granted, and one Google certainly abused in my opinion (where’s the private beta?).
I come off as a pessimist, but it’s because I’m an implementer. I do a lot of work on the web every day. I live and breathe this stuff. As much as I want to love new advances, many times these advances come at the cost of living, breathing people’s time (ahem). I’m an engineer at heart and look for the best possible solution. There is never a ‘good enough’ solution; only continuous improvement.
P.S. Reading two of my articles is hardly ‘following’ my writing :) I have over 200 posts written over 4 years here.
September 6th | #
Oh Kyle, c’mon now, it’s not necessary to take it close to the heart for we’re only discussing, right?!
Indeed, we (the web developers) where always the ones who suffered it all, but this painful engagement was our duty for the client wants to see his site ready and fit, regardless of the browser he’s using. Google has a serious impact on the wide internet community, but again why never a serious commitment was made about bashing IE, or when Firefox came out, or Flock? From what you claim makes me think that you’d just stick to the “good old IE6” rather than having a different browser with higher security and standard compatibility, which would particularly ease our job and lower the agony.
Moreover, I’m sure that you (as any other employed developer) get paid for being an implementer.
P.S. I found your site couple of months back, and I seriously lack the time of full-commitment here or in any place elsewhere.
Your comments on was a good start of building my impression then I land down here as the latest article.
Last P.S. Not always all the people have to agree with what you say. Quoting you say this: “Opinion-less people suck.” which is a very wisely put quote if you ask me, gives everybody the right to shout out loud his/her opinion, you should not deny that right.
Yet again, you’re good, no you’re real good, but just give modesty a little more space around here. ;)
September 6th | #
Arian: I’m not really sure what you expected :) You came in here blasting me based on the idea that I didn’t give Google any credit, when in fact the entire first paragraph was praising them.
Arguing against Firefox is hard, because it used the same rendering & drawing engines that were built into Gecko, which had been used in Mozilla for years, and spawned from the Netscape codebase that dates back to nearly the beginning of the internet. Firefox has consistently put out stable releases & pushed their betas into very private, hard-to-find pages. And released products. Google’s betas often become final (Search, Adsense & Adwords are the only two non-beta products I can think of).
Arguing against IE is hard, since they do a very good job of holding very private betas while they work out the kinks as well. As does Opera. Flock can be compared to a skin for Firefox (same exact rendering engine).
This is the first viable browser I’ve seen pushed out as a final product (labels of beta don’t mean anything to me) that had serious rendering errors. Google calls them drawing errors, but either way, PNGs don’t work, text with text-shadow become unreadable half the time, and border-radiuses look like mutilated corpses.
September 10th | #
Interesting article. I installed Chrome on my Vista partition to give it a shot, having read about the “text-shittify” as Bryan at Avalonstar so aptly put it. I feel the same way as you; the browser has some excellent ideas, but in my opinion, those are weighed-down by the errors.
I was very surprised to see such horrible drawing errors in what is most likely a full-release of Chrome. After all, if you’re going to make a browser, why let something so big slip by, especially when you have the chance to develop a browser from scratch? Why not just delay the release for a month or two longer to avoid these issues altogether?
In the end, maybe Google will actually release a non-beta upgrade since it isn’t even available on Mac OS X yet. But even so, I keep thinking to myself… do I really need another browser?
September 11th | #
[...] Kyle Neath [...]
September 23rd | #
Browsers are just browsers. The revolution came when there was no browser, and then there was. That was a revolution, that was new. This is just another browser. Of course they are going to shift to support the times, but they will only ever do one thing and thats sit in your screen like a big rectangle showing you other peoples documents from servers etc etc. This is just like a food company bringing out a cheese in a tube product thats NEW!!! woopie, no its not, its cheese in a tube. What would be new is cheese you can download. Downloadable food. Wake me up when something exciting happens.
September 25th | #
We get paid to make websites, because other people don’t have the time to understand and use the toolset. However, there are people busy out there, every day, doing their best to /make/ it take less time to build sites. There are things I got paid for 8 years ago and that took me weeks to accomplish that anyone with even a passing familiarity with the internet can do in a day or two. And with complete standards compliance, assuming they use the right tools, and for free. However, their site might break when the next generation of browser comes out… and when it does, we’ll be waiting. This is your job. Be grateful that it continues to challenge you to understand and innovate.
September 25th | #
Don: I’m sorry, but fixing browser bugs is not challenging or innovating. It’s annoying. I like challenges, but I dislike chores. This increases my chores and takes away from the time I have left to innovate. Instead of creating a unique experience, I’m spending time checking every page in 15 new browsers.