DO NOT COMPLY.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

DO NOT COMPLY.

#Google is moving forward with its removal of #XSLT support instead of fixing their library and/or adopting a library that supports a more modern version of the XSLT standard.

The dishonest and incomplete reporting on their developer page omits any explanation on why they have not pursued the corect course of action, and is instead dumping on users and developers the task of compensating for the Chrome team choices:

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/deprecating-xslt

DO NOT COMPLY.

#webDev #openWeb

[oblomov@sociale.network]

This is a trillion-dollar company abusing their power to control the open web, and one it's catastrophic how even among the purported supporters of an open web there are people stanning for this choice because of their personal dislike of the piece of tech being forcefully obsoleted on false and flimsy premises.

A reminder that I recently wrote up a historical review on Google's efforts in this direction

https://wok.oblomov.eu/tecnologia/google-killing-open-web/

[oblomov@sociale.network]

Do not install the polyfill. Do not change your XML files to load it. Instead, flood their issue tracker with requests to bring back in-browser XSLT‌ support. Report failed support for XSLT as a broken in browsers, because this is not a website issue.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

Note that the #Chrome team could trivially ship the polyfill itself and nobody would have even _cared_ about the change in the way #XSLT support was implemented in browser. This would have completely solved the “security” issue due to #Google leeching on a #FLOSS libraries without giving back. The fact that they haven't shows that the security issues in the libraries are just an excuse.

Any comment on this, @drott ?

[oblomov@sociale.network]

There's an older parallel here for when #Mozilla helped #Google in their path to kill #RSS (note that this #XSLT is *also* about that) by removing the Live Bookmark feature. At the time, the excuse was that the implementation was incompatible with some important code changes that were happening at the same time, but the fact that support could be trivially brought in via extension showed that the issue there wasn't technical, but a matter of intent.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

#Chrome's deprecation of #XSLT is just the next step in the decade-long efforts by #Google to kill an open, independent web (reminder that I've collected some of that history here <https://wok.oblomov.eu/tecnologia/google-killing-open-web/>). The #WebKit developers at #Apple or the prone #Mozilla developers agreeing on this choice detracts nothing from the argument.

#openWeb #indieWeb

[oblomov@sociale.network]

#Apple is no better than #Google at stewarding the #openWeb. #Mozilla has abundantly shown in the last years that they are just controlled opposition, and the amount of their allegedly restricted resources they waste on invasive features nobody wants shows that they can't be trusted in any way to defend the users' interest. Currently, their only redeeming quality is that they haven't removed support for uBlock Origin and other #adblockers from their browsers —a meager point.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

I haven't head from any @servo developers about their stance about XML support. I would like to know what they think about it. Currently their engine has no support for XSLT, and I would like to know if they intend to keep it that way, or they plan to introduce support for it.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

I think it's time for another browser war, this time not as corporation vs corporation, but users vs corporate control. Who are our champions? Not @Vivaldi or any other Blink or WebKit browser, for sure, unless they take it upon themselves to fork off the engines to preserve these features. The Firefox forks, perhaps? That landscape is currently a constellation of fragmented projects: is there anything documenting the difference between @palemoon @librewolf or @Waterfox and how many others?

[oblomov@sociale.network]

I appreciate that part of the #indieWeb is “running away” from the corporate controlled web in #GeminiSpace, and there are some very interesting idea being developed around there. There's something to be said about not wanting to share your environment with the poison that a large part of the web has become, but at the same time, there's also something to be said about throwing away the baby with the bathwater. The problem with the web isn't technical, it's social. The tech itself is fine.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

(I don't dislike gemtext. And I love the idea of a web built on lightweight markup. I would love it if user agents had native support for plain formats like markdown or asciidoc. I even like the #GeminiProtocol. And I see no reason why you shouldn't ship text/gemini over HTTP or HTML over Gemini.)

[oblomov@sociale.network]

This, by the way, is part of the same rant. There is absolutely nothing preventing, say, #Firefox from adding support for the #GeminiProtocol and for the gemtext format. It would have been a better time investment for their engineers than the time they wasted adding integration with #LLM chatbots that people now have to waste their time disabling (or removing from the code).

[oblomov@sociale.network]

I'm going to have to write up part 2 of my «Google is killing the open web» article, ain't I?

[nodami@hcommons.social]

@oblomov
Yes

[vanni@mibl.vannilla.org]

@oblomov
> is there anything documenting the differences between palemoon librewolf or waterfox
Yes, there is. Librewolf and Waterfox are to Firefox what Vivaldi is to Chrome: the same browser with a different appearance and some built-in tools or settings.

@palemoon is completely independent, the dev team is re-implementing features in a privacy-preserving way instead of relying on existing "big tech" engines and it's effectively the only platform (UXP, powering other programs like Basilisk or Epyrus) that will survive if Mozilla were to disappear.
There's more to say but space is a bit limited here ^^;

These info are not centralized so one would need to look around to get the whole picture, but it's there all laid out.

Finally, a disclaimer to avoid misunderstandings: I develop and maintain extensions for Pale Moon, in addition to being an active user in the forum.

[kendricklmao8@hachyderm.io]

@oblomov servo when?

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@kendricklmao8

https://servo.org/

Used to be an experimental rendering engine developed at Mozilla before they fired the whole team.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@vanni @palemoon thanks for chiming in. My understanding was the PaleMoon forked much earlier, so their Goanna engine still started off from Gecko?

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@nodami *sigh*

[vanni@mibl.vannilla.org]

@oblomov
Yes, it's a "hard fork" of Firefox.
Most of it is still Mozilla code from the days of Firefox 3 (Pale Moon started in 2009), but over the years and especially after Electrolysis (Firefox's multi-process architecture) things diverged so much they are completely different products.

Unfortunately people see "Firefox 3" and scream "old and insecure!!!" like it's a religious mantra, but the platform is developed to this day and you can use it as your primary browser just fine, like I do. In some cases it's even more secure than the rest: when there are issues with certificates or TLS you are warned instead of connecting at all costs, certain abusable javascript API are not implemented or intentionally crippled, etc.