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Comment by palata | Hacker News Reader

> Only having to develop something once that serves all users is great, though.

Cross-platform usually sucks in some way. If the app is not worse, the development is: "write once, debug everywhere".

Web is solving that by forcing everybody to use the same (Google-controlled) renderer, so that there is no need for cross-platform anymore: just use the Google thing. I don't want that.

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Debug everywhere or google controlled, those things seem diametrically opposed. Aside from the murky area of cookies, chrome isn't straying much from web standards.

There's really not much reason to not use a browser, the compatibility issues are pretty much a thing of the past on any browser, unless you're doing something esoteric. Installing a special app should be unusual.

> Debug everywhere or google controlled, those things seem diametrically opposed.

That's what I said.

> the compatibility issues are pretty much a thing of the past on any browser

Because there is only one meaningful browser left: Chromium. It is not a solution to cross-platform, it is just pushing for a monopoly. Just like a few years ago you could have been advocating for supporting exclusively Internet Explorer: that solves the compatibility issues too.

Now PWAs are not trying to kill other browsers (it's done already), but other platforms. That's just the next step.

Internet Explorer did not follow web standards, Chrome does, pretty religiously. That's a huge difference. And Safari and Edge are gaining ground, Safari is not based on Chrome anymore and there are a number of open source browsers based on Chrome.

> Internet Explorer did not follow web standards

Well it was following the "IE standards". The difference is only rhetoric to avoid antitrust. Google dominates the standards. Edge is Chromium, Mozilla is maintained in survival mode by Google.

> Chrome does, pretty religiously

I wouldn't call it "religious" when Chrome follows stuff Google wants and Mozilla/Apple don't want.

> there are a number of open source browsers based on Chrome

Based on Chromium, you mean? That's still dominated by Google.

"IE standards" makes no sense. Yes the big companies dominate web standards, but there are still multiple viable niche browsers that work by conforming to that spec, and an extensive spec validation framework anyone can use (web-platform-tests). It's unreasonable to say someone could come up with an IE compatible browser since there's no promise or reality of a stable design.

But you're just putting yourself out on an increasingly brittle limb to defend native apps, which imo work against user interests.

> but there are still multiple viable niche browsers that work by conforming to that spec

Again, Chromium-based browsers don't count if their contribution to the codebase is marginal.

Then Google implements stuff that Apple and Mozilla disagree with, and devs still rely on it (e.g. web bluetooth). Not even mentioning that Mozilla is a joke kept alive by Google for antitrust reasons.

Firefox is still there. There is more than Chromium based browsers. Safari uses its own engine. Gnome, KDE have their own browsers with their own engines, there are text browsers, experimental browsers, etc. There could be a completely new browser next week that works with 99.9999% of web pages, thanks to web standards.

But even a Chromium based browser setting is better than some random app that could have been a web page.

> There could be a completely new browser next week that works with 99.9999% of web pages, thanks to web standards.

Don't you think you are slightly underestimating the complexity of a browser that works with 99.9999% of webpages?

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