Hacker News Reader

Comment by billybob | Hacker News Reader

The biggest advantage Chrome has over the others (for now) is invisible auto-updating. That alone makes it more compliant and more secure at any given moment.

As a web developer, I want everyone in the world to have a modern browser, always. When HTML6 comes out, I want to be able to use it. So my goal is not just to get everyone to upgrade to FF4 or IE9, but to put everyone on a path of continuous upgrades forever. Chrome is the easy way to do that right now. So I will champion it.

Hopefully Firefox will get on board with this soon.

View on HN

Invisible updating is a reason to convince someone else to use Chrome. The reason I use Chrome is the fact it runs in a protected sandbox. If Firefox did this I would seriously consider switching back.

They are working towards that, but it's a fair amount of work for a codebase that's more than a decade old.

(Their codename for this is Electrolysis, or e10s; mobile Firefox already has it, IIRC.)

IE9 does this as well.

IE9 isn't cross platform so it's a non-starter.

Yes, but IE has a history of being the slowest, most insecure, least standards-compliant browser, so if I'm trying to get people onto a "good browser treadmill," I'm going to steer clear of it.

If IE becomes the dominant Awesome, Fast, Safe Browser for 5 years running, I'll reconsider.

For the life of me, I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't follow the same path, and offer a group policy for stone-age enterprise customers to turn it off.

Stone-age enterprise customers pay their bills.

Thus the group policy for them.

The solution to having updated browsers should not be forcing updates down users' throats.

I will not use any browser that installs software on my machine without my consent.

http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-upda...

If I have to read an entire page about their updater and then change system configuration files I don't consider this "allowing" me to turn off updates.

Asking for permission and having updated browsers are mutually exclusive ideas. I'll gladly take the latter at the sacrifice of the former.

Firefox has proven that your claim is false, it is possible to have an updated browser and still ask for permission.

As for the concessions you're willing to make, it's your choice after all. Some people are scarily comfortable in giving up control over their machine for convenience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com