Comment on Chrome is worth around $50 billion, DuckDuckGo CEO guesstimates
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 1 day agoIMAP is an incredibly simple protocol compared to the sum of all the protocols that are needed to implement a web browser.
A web browser also has to be way more performant.
Both an IMAP client and a web browser have to be reliable and secure. However achieving so in a system as complex as a web browser is incredibly expensive.
Web browsers are almost as complex as operating systems.
Complexity, performance, reliability and security on that level are expensive. You would be delusional to think a web browser should be worth as much as an IMAP client.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is a problem with web browsers and that set of protocols, not with my comparison.
You still ultimately run networked sandboxed applications in a web browser and view hypertext, it’s an unholy hybrid between two things that should be separated.
And it was so 20 years ago.
For the former Java applets and Flash were used a lot, as everyone remembers. The idea of a plugin was good. The reality was kinda not so much because of security and Flash being proprietary, but still better than today. For the latter no, you don’t need something radically more complex than an IMAP client.
I think Sun and Netscape etc made a mistake with JavaScript. Should have made plugins the main way to script pages.
pathief@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You think running Java applets and flash was better than what we have today? Now that is delusional!
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not exactly what I said. I think these two were bad, but the idea of plugins was good.
Especially the uncertainty of whether a user has a plugin for the specific kind of content.
One could use different plugins, say, that plugin to show flash videos in mplayer under Unices.
It’s worse when everyone uses Chrome or something with modern CSS, HTML5 etc support.
The modularization was good. The idea that executable content can be different depending on plugins and is separated from the browser. I think we need that back.
And in some sense it not being very safe was good too. Everyone knew you can’t trust your PC when it’s connected to the Interwebs, evil haxxors will pwn you, bad viruses will gangsettle it, everything confidential you had there will turn up for all to see. And one’s safety is not the real level of protection, but how it relates to perceived level of protection. That was better back then, people had realistic expectations. Now you still can be owned, even if that’s much harder, but people don’t understand in which situations the risk is more, in which less, and often have false feeling of safety.
One thing that was definitely better is - those plugins being disabled by default, and there being a gray square on the page with an “allow content” or something button. And the Web being usable in Lynx.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The modularization was a security nightmare. These plugins needed elevated privileges, a d they all needed to handle security themselves, and as I hope you are aware, Flash was atrocious with security.
Having a single “plugin” system means you only need to keep that one system secure. That’s hard enough as it is, but it’s at least tractible. And modern browsers have done a pretty good job securing the javascript sandbox.
I don’t think that’s true. I think there just weren’t as many attacks because there weren’t as many internet users. Yet I also remember getting viruses all the time (at least once/year) because of some vulnerability or another, and that’s with being careful.
You should take off those rose colored glasses.
I appreciate that people not knowing as much about security is problematic, but that’s because the average person is far more secure than they were even 10 years ago. Getting a virus is pretty rare these days, Microsoft has really stepped up their game with Wndows and browsers have as well. I haven’t worried about getting a virus for many years now, and that’s thanks to the proactive security work in sandboxing and whatnot that limits exploits.
A lot of the scams and whatnot these days either attack outdated systems (esp. insecure routers running default creds) or merely use social engineering because you can’t simply use an off-the-shelf flash exploit or something to get privilege escalation to install your malware. Attacks certainly exist, but they’re far less common than they were 10-20 years ago as people started being online constantly.
Yes, I am annoyed at JavaScript being enabled constantly and not having fine-grained control over specific permissions (mostly just location, mic, camera, and storage).
Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. But I still very much prefer the modern “everything uses JavaScript” to the old insecure Flash and Java applets.