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Posting an idea, browser engine edition.
Yesterday I posted about the idea to have only one browser engine (https://bits.justmarkup.com/1671529425166/), which I also synched to Mastodon.
What followed were various replies, although mostly valuable, they immediately triggered my 'I'm stupid, all is stupid mood'. I tried to defend the idea for a while until I gave up, ignored the replies, and logged out of Mastodon. Sometimes I am not in the mood to argue on the internet, I need to learn to avoid posting controversial ideas in this mood, to avoid ruining my day – Lesson learned.
Coming back to the idea. Most replies assumed I want Blink (Chromium) to be the only browser engine, although I never said that. I don't want that, I want fair competition amongst browsers, I want to avoid a browser monopoly. I want a browser engine everybody can use, a browser engine financed by commercial browser companies. Browsers should compete on user experience, developer experience, not about how fast the browser is or what web platform features it supports.
Maybe it's a very stupid idea, but without stupid ideas, a lot of things would have never changed.
Man on the moon was also considered a stupid idea once: In 1957, Lee De Forest, the man who pioneered radio and invented the vacuum tube, said, A man-made moon voyage will never occur regardless of all future scientific advances.
There was one very valuable feedback, which made me sad and a bit angry. Chrome and Edge regularly ship serious accessibility bugs, making websites unusable for screen reader users. I learned that many screen reader users therefore have multiple browsers installed, because they learned that after every update it can happen that a browser introduces an accessibility bug, and to still be able to use the web, they need a fallback browser. This is unacceptable, browsers need to prioritize this issue and ensure this won't happen in the future.
Take care!
Also posted on: Mastodon