Basically policies like firefox or google tracking everyone, using your data and squeezing in ads is, because they need to PAY for people to implement the browser and keep things going
This is a cost resulting from how we organize the web. The never ending stream of upgrades and new features requires browsers to be maintained and v3come more complex all the time
if the web instead was minimal and DONE and upgrade came through user land improvements, basically code you import in your website...
...it would allow browser engines to become more simple, less to no maintanance... and many woupd be able to implement it easily, so no costs and no opportunity forr companies like mozilla or google or anyone to lock in users and monetize in the ways they do.
essentially saying the way we standardize the web is broken on a fundemantal level, which incentivizes for ever growing complexity and thus costs and causes all the downsides we love to complain about all day long
browser development meta
@serapath So here's a fun and perhaps non-obvious one: we can actually already do this ourselves.
One of the more interesting insights I've gathered from interacting with a lot of non-computer people, is that "using multiple browsers" is a surprisingly widespread practice.
Some people do it to keep accounts separate, some people do it because different things work a little better in different browsers, and so on. The reason doesn't really matter, the point is that having multiple browsers for different 'apps' is tolerable to a lot of people.
Which means that it'd be entirely possible to simply... not implement the whole spec. To establish a restricted set of "things a browser actually needs to function for real-world applications", and only implement those, and call it done. And if a specific app needs more, users can use another browser for it.
Especially if you can find a unique 'selling point', like being faster than established browsers, or some kind of special integration, this is a viable way to gain a foothold in the 'browser marketshare'!
The main insight here is that "what people need from a browser" and "what specs demand from a browser" are not the same thing and that allows us to redefine the playing field without having to convince any standards body, as long as we make sure that we get the "what people need" part right.
browser development meta
@serapath Oh yeah, this definitely would need to be an organized and deliberate thing, for basically the reasons you describe - simply building a browser and arbitrarily picking-and-choosing features wouldn't work.
browser development meta
@joepie91 hmm.. yes kind of.
The thing is, if we had a wel chosen subset of browser features which would allow for 99% of all use cases and that got branded and the spec frozen, then people could design for it and an ecosystem that supported it could grow and normal browsers would be able to show the results too, because its a subset of the web.
without that, everyone makes their own subset and half of links/pages you open are broken because they use unsupported stuff