The Chrome Distortion: How Chrome Negatively Alters Our Expectations

Chris Thoburn:

Chrome has taught us to idealize features for so long that we’ve become blind to its many glaring faults (…)

I’ve learned the hard way that Chrome is the new IE. I’ve learned that you have to architect an application well from the beginning for it to work well on all platforms. I’ve learned you can ship large ambitious JS apps to mobile, but it takes dedication and experience, and every trick you know to do it well for Android. I’ve learned that Apple loves the web, probably more than Google, and has invested heavily in ensuring we have a high quality platform upon which to build apps. But most of all, I’ve learned that we’re wasting a ton of effort right now trying to fix Chrome from the outside. We’re dancing around the issue; pretending that universal rendering, service workers, app-shell architecture, and keeping more of our applications on servers (where they don’t belong) is more than just a workaround for how bad Chrome is. Yes, these ideas have uses, merits, and probably are the future; however, our need and love of them right now is because our performance expectations have been badly distorted by the situation Chrome has left us in.