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  #1  
Old February 19th, 2021, 03:29 AM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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About Browsers --- What's the Percentage?

I am not placing this in the tech section for browsers because this is more an opinion piece and sort of wondering who might also be thinking there is more to all this browser upgrading than just security.

My question is what percentage of the upgrading is for security as compared to simply making money?

I am thinking that the need to help companies make money in one way or another is a lot more the point than security.

Now here is one reason I am thinking that way:

If IE11 were so lacking in security then I don't think Google would be allowing us to access our email accounts using IE11. They would simply order us to use an upgraded browser.

But even after March 15th we are going to be able to use IE11 to log into an account, it is just that we will only load the Basic HTML platform.

So the security of IE11 must not be so horrid that Google is that worried, right?

Now I may be missing something or may be completely wrong, but I have this sort of memory of always being instructed that using a new and modern and upgraded browser is mostly for security. It seems security is always the reason I am given. But I have been slowly getting the feeling that actually it is more money related than security, but that the tech giants don't want to admit that.

Faster loading of all sorts of adverts, for example. Faster loading and more loading of links to this and that so as to have people go to some site that maybe they didn't even know about and that caught their eye while on the main site they were looking for but they see that interesting 'something' and -poof- they are off on another thing altogether. And that increased traffic to that other place means money for somebody.

Anybody else wondered about this?
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  #2  
Old February 19th, 2021, 04:16 PM
SpywareDr SpywareDr is offline
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<shrug> Gotta eat. No money = no food ...

Tip: No one is stopping from creating your own web browser.
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  #3  
Old February 20th, 2021, 02:12 AM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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Why would it be in my interest to think about creating my own web browser?

But I suppose that was suggested because I need to upgrade my writing skills, in view of the possibility that you gathered from what I wrote that I have something against folks' need to earn income.

On the other hand, you seem reluctant to answer the question in that post you felt needed your response.

But that is very likely my fault, as noted, and I should apologize that my communications skills are so awful and I will add to that which is in my first post by clarifying my primary point as being how about we be told the truth? Why does it seem the management of certain companies feel that the earning of income needs to be hidden behind the idea that a particular upgrade is primarily for reasons of security, if that is bogus?

Is it bogus?

Create a web browser, eh?
Sorry, but I pay people to do things like that. I've got much bigger plans.
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  #4  
Old February 20th, 2021, 03:18 AM
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Ned Seagoon Ned Seagoon is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by It'sMe View Post
Why would it be in my interest to think about creating my own web browser?
It can be done, I wrote a simple one while at university some years ago, it's all about socket programming. If you don't know what that is, better start there. Then there are lots of other bits also, so you'll need to be a wiz programmer.

By way of example the Chrome browser contains 6.7 million lines of code.

But depending on what you want your browser to do, you may be able to get away with a lot less, but then it probably will not be as flexible or as secure.

Last edited by Ned Seagoon; February 20th, 2021 at 03:25 AM.
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  #5  
Old February 20th, 2021, 05:19 PM
SpywareDr SpywareDr is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by It'sMe View Post
Why would it be in my interest to think about creating my own web browser?
Redirect your time and energy toward something useful?

Quote:
Originally Posted by It'sMe View Post
... how about we be told the truth? Why does it seem the management of certain companies feel that the earning of income needs to be hidden behind the idea that a particular upgrade is primarily for reasons of security, if that is bogus?

Is it bogus?
1) And how would we, here in these forums, be able to confirm your suspicions? If you really want the truth, you would have to hash it out in a court of law.

2) Did you pay for your browsers? No? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

3) Slander|defamation is the legal term for the act of harming someone's reputation by telling others something that is untrue and damaging. Slander can be the basis for a lawsuit and is considered a civil wrong (i.e., a tort).
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  #6  
Old February 21st, 2021, 12:03 PM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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Apologies for troubling you, but if you could quote the slander you are referring to it would aid me in understanding that turn you took off the main road and onto that new path. Thank you.
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  #7  
Old February 21st, 2021, 04:16 PM
SpywareDr SpywareDr is offline
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<shaking-head>

I'm out.
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  #8  
Old February 22nd, 2021, 01:51 PM
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Ned Seagoon Ned Seagoon is offline
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Originally Posted by SpywareDr View Post
Redirect your time and energy toward something useful?
Now that is unkind. I wonder if Wilbur and Orville were ever told that?

I know I was, early in my career, when I expressed a desire to complete a university degree in electrical engineering. I was told, by someone who should know, that I'd be wasting my time. I believed them and gave up attempting such an ambition.

It was only many years later as a mature adult, redundant from my old position I decided to again try. I succeeded, obtaining both a BSc and a Masters in IT.

I walked straight into a well paid job, but age precluded me from leaving that job, on retirement, (due to reduced remaining working years) with a small fortune, as would have happened if I'd not had my dream knocked out of me at a younger age.

It's Me, you go for it, remember everything that's been invented, designed or built for the first time has never been done before.
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  #9  
Old February 22nd, 2021, 10:39 PM
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Jintan Jintan is offline
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I agree with It'sMe <shaking-head> , I want to read about the slander and the torts. Tortes? Chore to make but those layers can be yummy.
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  #10  
Old February 23rd, 2021, 12:07 AM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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Actually, Jintan, I had one eye on the "human rights" part of a link I saw in one of the links in SpywareDr's signature and figured there was an aspect to all this that I was missing (I figured somebody into human rights at a professional or near-professional level might be better tuned into that slander stuff than I) and the raising of slander did seem like a significant veer off the main path of the key question in the opening post; as well as subsequent questions after the OP and so I was honestly interested in what somebody that has some focus on human rights may have seen that I missed, but maybe I should have not been so curt with that line of questioning. Actually I was in a bit of a hurry when I asked that question.

Ned Seagoon, during an exchange of ideas about IE6 in another thread with The Dude I was reminded of an article I read some years ago about comparisons between some of Microsoft's browsers and I had trouble finding it in my files --- well, I didn't find it --- and so trying to remember the year and author made it difficult in a search engine, but Saturday I finally found it.

Canadian Louis Lazaris's piece in 2009 about differences and degree of upgrade between IE6 and IE7 and IE8 and mostly related to CSS and we all know that CSS is very important in the area of web advertising.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/200...rer-6-7-and-8/

And I did have in a file on this unit --- so easy to find, and still sort of fresh in my memory --- the piece I saw in the Australian government's DTA article from back in February 2020:
Browser changes improving security and privacy

So that highlights three areas of browser upgrades or rebuilds or whatever it should be labeled as; CSS improvements compared to security and privacy --- which of those three is taking up most of the programmer's time?

And it should be noted that I am also placing 'security' and 'privacy' in separate categories, which some may disagree with. I view privacy issues as being significantly related to commercial interests. So that is two, so far, on the commercial side of the ledger and one on the security side. And you see that even the Australian government has placed security and privacy into one article, as if they are twins. They aren't twins. Your privacy has everything to do with tracking you that companies want to do for their own commercial gain. It is completely different than a hacker stealing your passwords, which is one aspect of the security side of the ledger.

And very recently there has even been Google's sandbox thingy that I think some regulators in the UK are stating gives Google some sort of edge over others in that commercial field of browser stuff. Now that sort of thing is why I refused from the beginning to use Google's browser; because of the auto updating thing. They can do just about anything to your browser they want and don't really have to tell you why they did it. And Microsoft went into that auto updating style, too. Us not having any control over that will eventually be overturned by the courts and/or legislation, but it will be a number of years before that happens.

Last edited by It'sMe; February 23rd, 2021 at 12:11 AM.
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  #11  
Old March 2nd, 2021, 03:33 PM
Total Noob Total Noob is offline
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It is a little off the point, but maybe not. I got a tip on a browser called Brave. It seems to deflect a lot of advertising (especially on youtube) without indicating to websites that you are in privacy mode that allows them to shut you out of content until you drop your ad blocker (in particular, newspaper sites) and it still blocks ads. It doesn't have everything, ie, Page Info (Ctl-I) so you can get behind a web page, but other than that, very acceptable and it allows for instant purge of cookies, history and so on that leave breadcrumbs to the next user or government observer.

All in all, Brave is part of the mix.
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  #12  
Old March 3rd, 2021, 02:21 AM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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I ran into that browser product, Brave, a bit back when I was doing my most recent research. But I don't let the adverts on sites bother me so much, when I do extend my reach into sites where they like to put up the adverts.

Well, that might just be it. Most of my time is spent doing research and that is a lot of .edu sites and they don't do much of that advert stuff. I do go to that YouTube place sometimes, but I don't let their adverts bother me so much. As somebody else wrote around here some place, folks need to make some money.

But a few times I have noticed that YouTube allows adverts to pop up within a couple of minutes of a video starting and then maybe another few minutes and another advert or two together, and that seems a tad excessive. You'd think they'd be a bit more clever with what they allow, but I don't suppose I care enough to go bugging anyone about it.

Anyway, on browsers, I think two key points are do we have control over updates/upgrades and how much of the unit's memory is eaten up by a browser. Or I think some folks refer to how much CPU resources are used by a given browser.

One area I am seriously weak in is those little Star Trek machines and browser work associated with one of those little handheld machines. I know diddly squat about those little things. They are way too small for me and my old eyes.
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  #13  
Old March 4th, 2021, 06:40 PM
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zipulrich zipulrich is offline
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  #14  
Old March 11th, 2021, 01:11 AM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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With regard to that speed aspect, zipulrich, I've had in my files for a bit some interesting information put out by Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, out of the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It is from 2004, so research since then may - - - well, it is the only one I have in my files and that is probably not so good. There may be more recent ideas established by more recent research, but it could be a start.

Link to pdf. A study on tolerable waiting time: how long are Web users willing to wait?

And for this post and those that aren't interested in looking at the pdf itself, here is a tad bit from the second half of page three:

Quote:
2. Literature on waiting time
According to Nielsen (1999: 67), download speeds are the ‘single-most important design criterion on the Web’. Web users are constantly begging for faster page downloads (Nielsen 2000). Although long download time of Web pages has been a consistent problem encountered by Web users (Lightner et al. 1996, Pitkow and Kehoe 1996, Selvidge 1999, 2003), it is still controversial as to what constitutes an acceptable waiting time for a typical Web page download (Bailey 2001). Nielsen (1997) advocates the 10-second limit, while Zona Research (1999) recommends the 8-second rule. Selvidge’s (1999) study shows that there is no difference in users’ frustration levels between 1-second and 20- second delay, but a difference (with 1-second delay) was observed at 30-second delay. Other researchers propose the 2-second rule (Shneiderman 1984) and the 12-second rule (Hoxmeier and DiCesare 2000). The conflicting evidence in the literature was also highlighted and examined by Galletta, Henry, McCoy and Polak (2002), who observed decreases in performance and behavioural intentions at 4 seconds.
You'll find the tables and figures starting on page 24 after the list of references. And they run through page 37.

> > > OKAY:

That one up there is a bit back in years and so I decided to see what Google's search tool produced using the 'within one year' parameter and this one out of Stony Brook University focusing on mobile devices seems appropriate to add to this post.

Link to pdf. Need for Mobile Speed: A Historical Analysis of Mobile Web Performance

And this page from the folks at Texas A&M is interesting: https://hprc.tamu.edu/faster/

Let me quote a couple of lines:

Quote:
In order to devise a single node, workflows on FASTER will actively integrate disaggregated GPUs and NVMe, allowing them to surpass conventional hardware limits. By supporting a technology that can effectively allot resources to support workflows, the platform removes significant congestion in research computing.
But I sense a commercial flavor to that page of information, notwithstanding it being a university.

Yep, this clearly shows a commercial aspect to this: https://hprc.tamu.edu/

Still, it may contain useful information, if anyone is interested into digging into this speed aspect of the browser. Or other related tech areas.

Last edited by It'sMe; March 11th, 2021 at 01:14 AM.
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  #15  
Old March 11th, 2021, 01:22 AM
It'sMe It'sMe is offline
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Of course, for folks that are into that gaming stuff, even one-second is too long, right? You folks want super-super speeds, yes?

You can pay for some sort of browsers that are very, very fast, can't you?

Some reason, I have it in my head that I once saw something about paying for a browser. Could be I'm wrong on that.
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