5 ms·

Rubbish. Most of the stuff you’re listing is handled by OS and frameworks themselves, you don’t need hundreds of SE to handle RTL or a11y. I work in one of thos

Rubbish. Most of the stuff you’re listing is handled by OS and frameworks themselves, you don’t need hundreds of SE to handle RTL or a11y. I work in one of those companies, most people just regurgitate existing shit into another form of shit and collect salary (not complaining, as I’m one of them, but let’s be honest).

lynx97 6d ago
This is plain wrong. For a browser, a11y doesn't just get handled by the OS automatically. In general, claiming a11y is easy or will be done by someone else is bordering on evil.
- whstl 6d ago
  [dead]
NavekG 6d ago
The original Edge had to switch over to Chromium because it was hard to build a compliant accessible browser from scratch and this is Microsoft we are talking about.
- necovek 6d ago
  > ...this is Microsoft we are talking about. Exactly! More seriously, it not just about building a compliant web browser engine, it is about tracking the dominant browser engine which introduces their own "standards" along the way too. Microsoft could have easily continued to invest in maintaining their browser engine, but it would have to be comparable to what Google is doing, and yet they'd always be perceived as "behind" due to non-dominant position they have. I'd say strategically they do not want to invest in tech that's not winning (in marketshare), so when they are not dominant, they'll instead adopt and extend (not just web browsers, look at WSL too).
- PunchyHamster 6d ago
  The didn't had to, MS Browser team was incompetent from the beginning of internet
  - nunobrito 6d ago
    Oh the memories. Took them forever to introduce something as simple as tabs that virtually all other competitors had since years. File explorer was the same, only recently it got tabs.
- stephenr 6d ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 > one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up
- klrefg 4d ago
  > build a compliant accessible browser from scratch Which is not something even Google ever succeeded. They had a significant head start due to Webkit being open source.
sgammon 6d ago
We live in a time now where libraries are free and plentiful and pretty good. It is easy to forget that this was not the case for the vast majority of time that computers have existed. Chrome’s original design definitely predates our current rich ecosystem. Plus, V8 and Chrome’s performance profile are demanding enough that there would be a pretty high bar for those dependencies anyway.
- bcjdjsndon 5d ago
  > We live in a time now where libraries are free and plentiful and pretty good. Specifically what are you talking about here? Chrome is c++ I thought?
  - sgammon 4d ago
    Chrome was invented in 2008. Abseil[1] didn't exist publicly until 2017, derived partly from Chromium. HarfBuzz wasn't ported to C++ until 2010. I don't know the entire constellation of libs Chrome would use if it was designed in C++ today, but I bet a lot of them didn't exist before Chrome or were even created partly as a downstream byproduct of Chromium. In other ecosystems: if Chrome were designed in Rust in 2008, there would be no crates.io to pull from. There would be no NPM, since Node followed V8/Chrome's invention in 2009. Maven Central had ~50K packages in 2009[2], which was a lot back then. In 2026, Maven Central hosts over 3 million. [1]: https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp [2]: https://mvnrepository.com/repos/central https://mvnrepository.com/repos/central
miki123211 5d ago
A browser isn't drawing its content using OS frameworks, so A11Y is a major undertaking. Much more so because A11Y for web content specifically is a bit of a different beast than native widgets, and the amount of stuff you have on the web these days means that you have to pay a lot more attention to performance.
wiseowise 5d ago
Okay, since it might’ve been confusing from my comment: I meant mobile apps, not Chrome or browser. Mobile frameworks abstract all of this.

lynx97 6d ago

This is plain wrong. For a browser, a11y doesn't just get handled by the OS automatically. In general, claiming a11y is easy or will be done by someone else is bordering on evil.

whstl 6d ago
[dead]

NavekG 6d ago

The original Edge had to switch over to Chromium because it was hard to build a compliant accessible browser from scratch and this is Microsoft we are talking about.

necovek 6d ago
> ...this is Microsoft we are talking about. Exactly! More seriously, it not just about building a compliant web browser engine, it is about tracking the dominant browser engine which introduces their own "standards" along the way too. Microsoft could have easily continued to invest in maintaining their browser engine, but it would have to be comparable to what Google is doing, and yet they'd always be perceived as "behind" due to non-dominant position they have. I'd say strategically they do not want to invest in tech that's not winning (in marketshare), so when they are not dominant, they'll instead adopt and extend (not just web browsers, look at WSL too).
PunchyHamster 6d ago
The didn't had to, MS Browser team was incompetent from the beginning of internet
- nunobrito 6d ago
  Oh the memories. Took them forever to introduce something as simple as tabs that virtually all other competitors had since years. File explorer was the same, only recently it got tabs.
stephenr 6d ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 > one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up
klrefg 4d ago
> build a compliant accessible browser from scratch Which is not something even Google ever succeeded. They had a significant head start due to Webkit being open source.

sgammon 6d ago

We live in a time now where libraries are free and plentiful and pretty good. It is easy to forget that this was not the case for the vast majority of time that computers have existed. Chrome’s original design definitely predates our current rich ecosystem. Plus, V8 and Chrome’s performance profile are demanding enough that there would be a pretty high bar for those dependencies anyway.

bcjdjsndon 5d ago
> We live in a time now where libraries are free and plentiful and pretty good. Specifically what are you talking about here? Chrome is c++ I thought?
- sgammon 4d ago
  Chrome was invented in 2008. Abseil[1] didn't exist publicly until 2017, derived partly from Chromium. HarfBuzz wasn't ported to C++ until 2010. I don't know the entire constellation of libs Chrome would use if it was designed in C++ today, but I bet a lot of them didn't exist before Chrome or were even created partly as a downstream byproduct of Chromium. In other ecosystems: if Chrome were designed in Rust in 2008, there would be no crates.io to pull from. There would be no NPM, since Node followed V8/Chrome's invention in 2009. Maven Central had ~50K packages in 2009[2], which was a lot back then. In 2026, Maven Central hosts over 3 million. [1]: https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp [2]: https://mvnrepository.com/repos/central https://mvnrepository.com/repos/central

miki123211 5d ago

A browser isn't drawing its content using OS frameworks, so A11Y is a major undertaking. Much more so because A11Y for web content specifically is a bit of a different beast than native widgets, and the amount of stuff you have on the web these days means that you have to pay a lot more attention to performance.

wiseowise 5d ago

Okay, since it might’ve been confusing from my comment: I meant mobile apps, not Chrome or browser. Mobile frameworks abstract all of this.