The <Usermedia> HTML Element

phantomathkg 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Chrome basically is abusing its market position, 69.65% globally, and becomes the new IE. Implementing its own HTML/JS standard.

The sad truth is, some companies will look at Statcounter[0] and say because Firefox does not reach 5% global population and decided not supporting it, actively or passively.

[0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/

▲

zdragnar 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is literally how the standards are meant to work, at least on the JS side. The tc39 process requires at least two live implementations to exist before a spec can move to finished.

In this case, there's also people from Mozilla onboard, so there's no guarantee that it'll remain chrome only or that chrome will keep it if the spec doesn't go anywhere.

In fact, much of the web as we know it evolved this way. We have IE to thank for AJAX, after all.

▲

shimman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Standards are democratic controls for democratic institutions, not "organizations" that are entirely captured by corporate interests. Absolutely despise how private entities have ruined software engineering by pursuing things that favor themselves rather than people in general.

	▲	oaiey an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That is not how standards work. Some for sure, but the majority are established by groups of companies / a guild establishing rules. The law pressures them often into it (e.g. the EU did not say USB-C port, they said: one standard, you industry figure it out). There are surely exceptions (maybe the IEEE; which are professionals union).

▲

sheept 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another reason why this is problematic is that their proposed standards follow Google's priorities for its own products, particularly Google Meet.[0][1]

[0]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/element-captu...

[1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/document-pict...

▲

austin-cheney 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Another example is QUIC. What is the benefit of QUIC? On one hand Google boasts it greatly increases page load speed, which is contextually arguable. On the other hand, Google’s design priorities were to introduce UDP to the browser because UDP supports multicast, which lowers CPU utilization in data centers.

▲

wahern 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They claimed and showed QUIC slightly-to-moderately reduced latency, particularly for mobile. This benefits Google by loading pages with third-party content, i.e. ads, faster.

But QUIC significantly increases CPU utilization on servers, at least the widely used userland stacks do. Unless/until Google deploys QUIC in the kernel (or puts the whole network stack in userland, a la DPDK), this won't change.

The multicast claim is kinda bizarre. I can see how QUIC could help eliminate UDP client barriers, but those barriers pale in comparison to multicast. Multicast routing just doesn't exist on the Internet; it's only supported within some independent, typically small networks. Most ISPs don't support it. Wherever you could manage to distribute content with multicast, you'd necessarily also be resolving the collateral routing problems which QUIC support resolves, whereas even ubiquitous QUIC doesn't materially improve the multicast situation.

▲

chrisweekly 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IIRC, QUIC was also the precursor to HTTP/3. I don't like Google's motivations for wanting a faster web, but many of the things they've encouraged and/or provided have made things faster and more efficient. I'm not a google apologist, there's so much wrong and so much harm done... just saying it's maybe worth separating the tech from the motives.

▲

doodlesdev 3 hours ago | parent [-]

HTTP/3 uses QUIC as the transport layer, which in turn relies on UDP. QUIC replaces TCP while allowing a reduction of handshake exchanges in HTTP/3 first requests. Finally, even though UDP supports multicast, I believe QUIC doesn't. GP saying Google has developed it to use multicast thus is nonsense. Furthermore, QUIC takes much more CPU than TCP right now, due to running in userland.

In my opinion, QUIC and HTTP/3 are technical marvels, but are perhaps way too complicated and don't really serve the interest of most internet users.

There will be a point in the development of web browsers and associated technologies where we should just stop a bit to get things stable instead of churning protocol version after protocol version after new API. Will it ever stop?

Eventually, it all becomes so complicated no company can manage it all. Honestly, we might already be past this point, with Chromium at almost 40mi LOC, more than the Linux kernel itself, including all its drivers. When will the madness stop? Do we really need such complicated software to see Instagram posts, comment on a few Hacker News threads and mess around with Google Sheets?

The biggest reason I worry so much about this is that in the web, adding new features, APIs and protocols is easy. Removing and deprecating is basically impossible.

	▲	pie_flavor an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's not very complicated to import the QUIC library, or to import the HTTP library with HTTP/3 supported. For the library authors, QUIC isn't more complicated to implement than TCP. Doomsaying about the complexity of Google Sheets is completely unrelated to whether QUIC is good tech and superior to TCP, which it is; the only remaining complaint is that it's too new to have been part of the kernel yet, and if that makes technology somehow illegitimate then I guess we're just stuck with the mistakes of the 90s forever, why ever invent anything new at all.

▲

gorgoiler 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting to see that on Desktop, Firefox (5.8%) just overtook Safari (5.0%) for third place. It doesn’t feel statistically significant but it’s a bit of data at least.

(I’m a big Firefox fan and idealist.)

▲

gfody an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This has been happening for a while now, basically anywhere there’s room for a potential compatibility issue there will be one. As if any time some observable behavior is an implementation choice the Chrome team policy is “not what Firefox does”. The result is that if you develop on Chrome and don’t test on Firefox your stuff is very likely broken on Firefox.

▲

akersten 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Uughh why do we need this whole new html element and not simply make the getUserMedia API allowed to be called more than once if the initiator is a user click?

▲

zamadatix 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not all that happy with second chance options in the first place... but a dedicated element with browser-level protections on making sure it's clear clicking that particular element is going to second chance the permission prompt is at least much less likely to get abused.

	▲	akersten 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> protections on making sure it's clear clicking that particular element is going to second chance the permission prompt is at least much less likely to get abused. I guess I really don't understand the abuse they're trying to guard against. The protections are like "the button isn't transparent and there's a 3:1 contrast ratio, because click jacking." Alright, so I will just make the button say 'click to view content' or 'click for free bitcoins' or really anything at all and people will happily press it. And when they do they'll get the same permission dialog they would have if I had been allowed to make the button invisible anyway. I understand the use case for the second chancing. I think it's really crazy to make it require this special HTML (!?) element that you can only have up to 3 of on your page at a time (because we all know as soon as you hit 4 of these buttons it means you're up to no good). If it were me I would have allowed second chancing via JS API, only if initiated by user action (we have that pattern already for events), and with exponential back off between retries. If they were really dead set on this whole concept of secure enclave essential oils elements, they had a decent idea with the `<permission>` element that they mentioned in the article - but then we decided to throw that out, but don't worry, specific `<camera>` and `<microphone>` elements are coming soon. I'm probably getting too old for this...

▲

usr1106 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is this Chrome only or something the other browsers are working on, too? A quick web search does not seem to produce any relevant hits.

	▲	sheept 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		At the very least, Firefox's position on the similar <geolocation> element is positive.[0] I would assume their position for other permissions elements would be the same. [0]: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1288
	▲	asqueella 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Seems Chrome-only for now. But the spec (Working draft) has an editor from Mozilla as well, so maybe someday... https://w3c.github.io/mediacapture-extensions/#the-usermedia...
	▲	qingcharles 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Apple and Firefox are running tests on the previous parts of this that recently came out (geolocation), so they will be doing the same with this one.

▲

felooboolooomba 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anything new I have to block so my ass can't be fingerprinted?

	▲	oaiey an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		So that your ass get fingerprinted you would need to use the Usermedia control and then hold the camera behind your back ... Okay, I let myself out.
	▲	gruez 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm not sure how the element itself increases fingerprinting surface more than the status quo. Not to mention manually blocking it makes you even fingerprintable

▲

rho138 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This won’t get abused. /s

▲

saagarjha 6 hours ago | parent [-]

How do you see it being abused?

▲

unfocso 6 hours ago | parent [-]

"Press here to view the content", there's already plenty in the wild that grant access to notifications with deceptive buttons.

▲

sheept 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The similar <geolocation> element has clickjacking prevention enforced by the browser[0], and even if the website finds a way around it, it still shows the normal permission prompt.[1]

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLGeoloca...

[1]: https://mdn.github.io/dom-examples/geolocation-element/basic... (requires Chromium)

	▲	ameliaquining 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To be sure, evil websites will still be able to put misleading content around the element, and hope that the least savvy users will be fooled or will click the button out of confusion. But they can already do that with the existing JavaScript-triggered permission prompt.
	▲	akersten 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's kind of insane to me that effort was put into all these fuzzy make-your-site-randomly-not-work heuristics and at the end of the day it still pops open the permission dialog anyway. It's like the worst of both worlds

▲

cwmoore 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“targeted and functional controls for accessing camera and microphone streams”