> No, it can't. It's an HTML attribute which enables some mobile browser UI around the standard <input type=file> behaviour.
I wasn't talking about this particular ability. I was talking about the risk of browsers being effectively operating systems in their own right. That puts me in an untenable position -- I have to determine the safety of every web site, which is a thing that is effectively impossible to do.
> with complete user control.
Not even close. I have to install and use several addons in order to muster a somewhat reasonable amount of control. And even then, the control I have is far from "complete".
> it's far better from a security perspective because trusting a browser's sandbox is a lot easier to evaluate than having to individually review every native application you install.
It's certainly easier to "trust the sandbox", except that the sandbox allows far too much nefarious activity in order to be able to trust it.
Modern web browsers are inherently problematic because of the combination of presenting powerful abilities to websites, and that it's impossible to know if a website is using those abilities responsibly (and most -- especially large commercial websites -- aren't, as near as I can tell).
> Not even close. I have to install and use several addons in order to muster a somewhat reasonable amount of control. And even then, the control I have is far from "complete".
You have per-site authorization for each different feature, and those can be one-time, ongoing, one prompt per day, etc. Now, yes, I'm sure you can come up with some policy like “I want to only allow camera access when I'm holding down the left meta key” but it's important to remember that the alternative is people downloading and running native code. Do you really think that's going to be _better_ than a modern browser?
> Modern web browsers are inherently problematic because of the combination of presenting powerful abilities to websites, and that it's impossible to know if a website is using those abilities responsibly (and most -- especially large commercial websites -- aren't, as near as I can tell).
The browsers fully disclose when something is being used. You can't tell what they do with the data but that would be the case in any alternative model and I trust the browser UI a lot more than a prompt which that company implemented in their own app.
I wasn't talking about this particular ability. I was talking about the risk of browsers being effectively operating systems in their own right. That puts me in an untenable position -- I have to determine the safety of every web site, which is a thing that is effectively impossible to do.
> with complete user control.
Not even close. I have to install and use several addons in order to muster a somewhat reasonable amount of control. And even then, the control I have is far from "complete".
> it's far better from a security perspective because trusting a browser's sandbox is a lot easier to evaluate than having to individually review every native application you install.
It's certainly easier to "trust the sandbox", except that the sandbox allows far too much nefarious activity in order to be able to trust it.
Modern web browsers are inherently problematic because of the combination of presenting powerful abilities to websites, and that it's impossible to know if a website is using those abilities responsibly (and most -- especially large commercial websites -- aren't, as near as I can tell).