14 DAY TRIAL // Google has just introduced a new photo editing feature for Google+. The new editor is based on Snapseed technology and is actually quite powerful. There's just one problem, it only works in Chrome. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and everyone else is left out.
It is understandable though, Google has a very good reason for this. The Snapseed features are built with Native Client, which enables web pages to run native binary code in the browser, mostly for performance reasons.
Google simply took the Snapseed app code and ported it to Chrome's Native Client. Since the technology is only supported by Chrome, it's obvious that the features would only work in Chrome. In fact, Mozilla and others have expressed no desire to adopt Native Client.
But the problem is that Google not only introduced the new editor to Chrome users, but it also removed the old editor entirely, not just for Chrome but for everyone else. So, now, Firefox users clicking on the Edit button will get a download link for Chrome and that's it.
Firefox users do get some basic editing tools, such as crop or rotation, but nothing else, despite the fact that the old editor worked perfectly well in Firefox.
"If you're not using the Chrome browser, you can still crop and rotate your photos in Google+ -- in fact we're making these basic editing options easier to find up front, right next to the 'Edit' button," Google explained.
It's understandable that Google wants to support only one codebase, but it shouldn't be using proprietary technology on the web for that. Or, if it truly believed that there was no other way to bring Snapseed features to the web than with Native Client, it should still have supported an older standard web editor as well.