Google: developers, developers, browsers !
Is it possible that a single company be responsible for both the best browser out there along with the worst one?
As it turns out, yes it is possible, and yes it does exist: Google.
Since the first release of Chrome, it has become my browser of choice: Fast, fast, stable, fast, versatile, and the easiest to debug. I did not think about it for a minute. Plus, as a developer, it is one of the most advanced browsers and allow many cool things. All in all, kuddos for your browser there, good work.
Then came Android, with a default browser also based on WebKit. I - among many - thought that it was a "mobilized" version of Chrome. But no, they did another browser altogether. Fine.
Now, it isn't as fine as we hoped at the time. It seemed obvious - knowing Google - that their browser would kick ass. But no, it doesn't kick ass: it sucks. In fact, among friends we call it "The IE6 of WebKit". "The IE6" refers to the disabled child in the family. There is a surprisingly homogeneity in the WebKit browsers if you exclude Android's default browser. And once every 5 times, you do something that works on iOS, Chrome, Safari... and Android stumbles on it.
Now, it's been several loooong years for web developers, and still there are so many areas that lag behind all other mobile browsers... that I'm starting to lose hope. Really. Despair crawls into me day after day, week after week, month after month.
So Google, pleeeeeeease, just give it the attention it needs, or replace it with Chrome, but pleeeeeeeease, do it fast. Seeing as 1/3 of the traffic from Android comes from version 2.3, we know one thing for sure: even when Google gets its act together on that front, it'll be quite a while for web developers to be able to forget this pain.
Please. Act quickly.
