A lot of CSS2 features don't even work correctly in IE6 and IE7: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(Cascading_Style_Sheets)

A lot of the really useful selectors, for instance, aren't available in IE6. Not to mention min-width/max-width, and white-space:pre. And using left and right in the same rule makes IE6/IE7 ignore right. In IE6/IE7, there's plenty that goes unimplemented, like :active and :before and outline and display:table; and border-style:dotted; and vertical-align:middle; and background-position:fixed;.

These aren't obscure features no one uses, these are all features I've wanted to use while designing my webpages that are supported by every other browser that IE6 and IE7 don't support.

We should really be looking to fix those, first.

Well, let me tell you a story.

Way back in 2006 or so, I went on a trip to China. This was back when the Great Firewall blocked Wikipedia, and a few weeks in, I was suffering from Wikipedia-withdrawal. So I called one of my friends, who was a coder for an online MUD, and got him to set up a web proxy on the MUD's website.

I even made an edit on that proxy: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Business_Professionals_of_America&diff=prev&oldid=68970071 - that's how I discovered their server had mod_rewrite on, and the proxy software didn't have a workaround for that. Had to get my friend to fix the quote escaping.

Anyway, three days later, the site was blocked. Nothing else happened. I mentioned it to my mom, and she said that's usually how it goes. The government passively adds blocks and deletes messages you make that it disapproves of, but it doesn't actively seek you out and tell you to stop, or otherwise punish you.

I suspect that's how it'll go if you set up a proxy. It gets blocked quickly, nothing else happens.

I was referring to the Google blog post, which is linked from the Slashdot summary and thus counts as "TFA".

It says "Currently, we do not support 100% of the advanced PDF features found in Adobe Reader, such as certain types of embedded media" and "We would also like to work with the Adobe Reader team to bring the full PDF feature set to Chrome using the same next generation browser plug-in API", which I took to mean that:

1. it clearly isn't being written by Adobe, and
2. even if Google didn't write it, they are maintaining and improving it, so they "wrote it" in the same sense that Apple "wrote" WebKit.

As for the "libpdf.so", part, I assume you're looking at the part of the code that says

#if defined(OS_WIN)
            cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("pdf.dll"));
#elif defined(OS_MACOSX)
            cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("PDF.plugin"));
#else // Linux and Chrome OS
            cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("libpdf.so"));
#endif

Which means that they're using a file called libpdf.so on Linux. As another one of your replies points out, this is doubtful to be the 9-year-old unmaintained incomplete C library you link to, and judging from the Windows and Mac filenames, this is nearly definitely a library written (or at least maintained) by Google.

It reduces your productivity because there's more to read. Instead of being able to look to the leftmost side of the address bar to see the domain, you have to look to the leftmost side, then scan right until you find the domain. It's really minor, but it's there.

I also like to resize browser windows sometimes. Especially since Chrome makes it easy to drag tabs into new windows, I often drag a tab out, and then resize it into a narrow sidebar I can refer to while doing something else. In cases like that, I'd much rather see "google..." than "http://g..."

The inconsistency of still showing "https://" is actually helpful. It's a lot easier to see the difference between nothing and "https://" than between "http://" and "https://". Since http is most common, it makes sense that a departure from that protocol should be easily visible.

And there's also the "Why not?" I haven't really heard any reasons why http should be kept.

I've read it for you. The code doesn't come from Adobe, Google wrote it themselves. It also uses Google's new sandboxed plugin API, so it would be less of a security concern even if it did.

(I'm surprised you got two replies who also didn't RTFA.)

Erm... why not? Please, enlighten us. Personally, I find it great. If I'm at the Google.com homepage, I should see "google.com" in the address bar; everything else is just unnecessary and distracting. I don't really need "http://" there to remember that it's a web site; the fact that I'm using a web browser is kind of enough.

What if you're recording a movie, and a naked person walks past the spot you're recording, and you accidentally record it, so you apologize and offer to delete what you've recorded, and then five governments intervene?

"Finishes loading a page quicker" isn't necessarily true. Most of the sites I frequent either don't have ads, or let me turn off ads, and even the ones that don't, ads load asynchronously, so Chrome is usually still faster than Firefox+ABP.

It's been a while since I've used either AdBlock (again, the sites I frequent are usually reasonable about them), but the last time I checked, ABP for Chrome is better at reformatting the page than ABP for Firefox, so that doesn't apply either.

Bandwidth is the only real objection, and if you're regularly hitting your ISP's bandwidth limits, your ISP is either worse than the US's (which is fairly rare) or blocking ads isn't going to help. If you care about bandwidth anyway, well, see below.

Okay. How about Privoxy?

From HHGG

Your software clearly doesn't "work just fine" if you're asking a support question.

Okay, developers have many reasons for wanting users on the latest version (e.g. userbase fragmentation, which especially sucks if what you're making is multiplayer), but the biggest one is that it's hella frustrating to get bug reports about old versions. I've heard users ask "Why isn't this bug fixed yet?" about bugs that were fixed ages ago. You want to use an old version, that's fine, but if you want support, you should be using the newest version.

Especially with open-source software. We're not getting paid to support old versions, so we're going to keep on working on the latest and greatest. Even if it's not a bug report, it's just a question about how to do something - we're not going to remember how we implemented the feature two versions and three years ago. We just know how it's done now, which is probably a better way, anyway.

And in open-source software, upgrading is generally a good thing. Sure, in proprietary software, they often just release new versions to draw money out of customers even though nothing's actually improved, but in open-source, if we release a new version, it's generally because it's actually better. If you disagree, go ahead and use the old version, maybe even fork it if it's that popular, but, again, you're not going to get any support from us guys working on the newest version.

Okay, see, normally, I don't really care how much you screw up your own computer. You generally don't notice when you have security problems, since it's in malware's best interest not to be noticed - if it gets noticed, it gets removed. Instead, it sits there, silently being a part of a botnet, and, at that point, you're not just screwing up your own computer, and you better be taking responsibility for all the DDoSing and spamming your computer is doing because you're too lazy to apply a #^%$ing security update.

Frames have their uses. Most browsers generally have better accessibility for frames than for scrollable divs. Most clearly: Open a frames-based page and press Page Down. The primary frame will page down. Open a scrollable-divs-based page and press Page Down. Nothing will happen. Panning (scrolling using the middle mouse button) is also rather hit-or-miss with scrollable divs.

Frames are also a way to hack back/forward button functionality into an Ajax app, and to handle other browser features like file uploads, or remembering usernames/passwords that weren't designed with Ajax in mind.

(An astute observer may mention that asynchronous file uploads without iframes are possible with HTML5, but considering that Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE haven't implemented HTML5 file upload yet, frames are still necessary. HTML5 file upload is also ridiculously complex; iframe uploads are far simpler.)

Someone above also mentioned that frames allows Google Image Search to get around hotlinking restrictions.

Personally, I think the best solution that would allow all the use-cases I mentioned (most of which are hacks to get around flaws in browsers' Ajax implementations) would be to allow only pages that have been specifically declared to be frame-able to be put in frames.

I certainly don't see the US on the list of worst governments for enforcing copyright law.

You answer that question in the next verb clause of your sentence. Maybe the fact that more pirated media is made in China has to do with the fact that everything is made in China? The majority of copyright infringement happens on Windows, too; clearly that means it's Microsoft's fault.

Yeah, and what exactly are Americans downloading from The Pirate Bay or LimeWire? Linux ISOs? Maybe the US should be on that list, too. Oh, and all the Americans dealing drugs? Clearly the US is doing nothing to stop them.

Fun fact: People break laws. It's hardly something to blame either government for (and whether or not the laws are just is a whole different question entirely).

Actually, that's not true. I can make lists of friends, and have a list of friends whom I trust not to share my information, make nearly anything - posts, photos, profile information - visible only to people in that list.

Here's a screenshot of Facebook's privacy page, allowing me to control who sees anything in there: http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/5305/screenshot20100509at229.png

You can get that same menu to appear for each individual thing you post - so one of your photos or status messages can be visible to everyone ("Hey, guys, come buy my stuff!") while another is only visible to a friend ("Oh, fuck, I just realized my stuff is infected with a horrible disease!")

All the people complaining about privacy seem to be complaining solely about default settings, and they should just realize that when most people sign up for a site like Facebook, they want other people to see what they write. If they aren't the settings you want, just click on the settings menu and change them!

Take, for instance, TFA.

If I send one message only visible to a group, I don't want all my future messages to all be only visible to that group, unless I remember to change it back. If he wants to change the default, there's an option here: http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6425/screenshot20100509at245.png

Actually, there are privacy settings here: http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6425/screenshot20100509at245.png

This is a ridiculous claim. I just made a status message saying 'Warzone 2100 is an awesome game' and it didn't appear on the Warzone 2100 page. I think he's referring to the "@" feature, where if I had typed "@Warzone 2100" it would've asked me if I wanted to tag the page (and if I ignored the prompt and kept typing, it would not have done so), but to call a secret code that you have to explicitly agree to 'all the right words' is ridiculously misleading.

Yes, you can: http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7281/screenshot20100509at254.png

Here's how: http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/2963/screenshot20100509at257.png

Here's how: http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/6889/screenshot20100509at258.png

Here's how: http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/5049/screenshot20100509at259.png

All these options are available from within the Privacy Settings page. If you actually cared about privacy, just go and change them!

(In case the reference is unclear; Writely is what became Google Docs Writer.)