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Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

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Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#191

Post by franga2000 »

coldtea wrote: post #168
franga2000 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is my whole point though: the WebExtensions API is a standard, so it's not like you can't test your extension without owning a Mac. If your extension works on both Firefox and Chrome, it really should work on Safari too. If it doesn't, that's Apple's fault for violating the standard, not yours for not testing on their broken platform. If you want to specifically test it you can, but if you don't see a reason to,…

> If your extension works on both Firefox and Chrome, it really should work on Safari too. If it doesn't, that's Apple's fault for violating the standard, not yours for not testing on their broken platform. Chrome is notorious for building this that are not standards and forcing them into standards bodies later. That's part of "but it works on Chrome" web issue. So not working on Safari doensn't necessarily mean it's…

Which is why I mentioned both Chrome and Firefox, as while both implement some non-standard features, those tend to differ, so the intersection of their feature sets is pretty much the standard itself.

I was actually referring to "your extensions following the standard", but since you can't exactly test against the standard directly, I used testing against both browsers as a good approximation.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#192

Post by vetinari »

kristofferR wrote: post #120
coldtea wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are top-tier professional staples. Mac users can't chose another Photoshop, because there's no other at that level (Affinity and co are great, but nowhere as comprehensive). But even so, Photoshop, Premier and co, has ties to native functionality, gets the native look and feel for things like file dialogs and such, is quick to move to Apple Silicon / M1 natively (and even has a native iPad version, complete wit…

True, but at the same time the Adobe apps certainly doesn't feel as "native" as they could have. Affinity feels much better for example.

Affinity is also cross-platform.

A better example would be Pixelmator.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#193

Post by vetinari »

hnlmorg wrote: post #148
coldtea wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here on HN there's at least one horror story a month about issues someone had with Apple With 2 million programmers, a marketplace of 100billion, and millions of apps, "one horror story a month" (i.e. "somebody was annoyed on the internet and posted about it") sounds like a huge success story. And many of these are non-stories, or stories of the kind "Me, one of 1.5000.000 programmers on iOS/macOS stores, had an ap…

+ There's plenty of commercial software available for Linux + Desktop environments aren't the issue, they're just graphical shells. It's the rendering toolkits like Qt or GTK which matter more. And even then, you basically just pick one and move on. + Yeah the multiple package managers situation can be annoying for non-free software. But then that's still better than a monopoly like on iOS. I've seen you've posted mu…

You are right, multiple desktop environments are not an issue -- unless you are toolkit author; the different corner cases in different Wayland compositors can be issue, but only for toolkit authors. We are talking about such a layer in the stack, where Apple or Microsoft won't even let you play. Anyone, who uses the multiple DEs as an excuse is firmly put into doesn't know what he is talking about box.

Multiple package managers are not an issue either. In this day and age, you should be using Flatpak. That would also allow you to target very specific ABIs in a cross-distribution way, thus removing the fragmentation excuse.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#194

Post by asddubs »

coldtea wrote: post #179
asddubs wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even just test things in safari. Guess I have to spend at least 200$ on an ipod touch if i want to test in some sort of version of safari, significantly more if i want to test on a non iDevice (with an actual console etc) Obviously for a business this is a neglegible cost but for someone just making a hobby app, it's ridiculous. microsoft at least offers VMs with edge and ie on it

> Obviously for a business this is a neglegible cost but for someone just making a hobby app, it's ridiculous. Sorry, why do you want to make a hobby app for a platform you don't own?

Because you want it to be cross-platform? Just because it's a hobby project doesn't mean you don't give a shit about the user experience. I mean it's not like you have to recreate it from the ground up to make your webapp work in safari, it'll mostly be small tweaks.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#195

Post by tempodox »

coldtea wrote: post #179
asddubs wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even just test things in safari. Guess I have to spend at least 200$ on an ipod touch if i want to test in some sort of version of safari, significantly more if i want to test on a non iDevice (with an actual console etc) Obviously for a business this is a neglegible cost but for someone just making a hobby app, it's ridiculous. microsoft at least offers VMs with edge and ie on it

> Obviously for a business this is a neglegible cost but for someone just making a hobby app, it's ridiculous. Sorry, why do you want to make a hobby app for a platform you don't own?

For scratching one's own itch? A hobby app can still be a useful tool, even if nobody else is using it.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#196

Post by Glench »

nubela wrote: post #101
freediver wrote: post #27

We are working on a new native macOS browser based on Webkit with native web extension API support built in. We have uBlock origin and many others extensions working already. By doing this we get best of both worlds - performance and energy use of Webkit and extensions from chrome/firefox. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/7V8sfyX We are open for beta testers. Please email me if interested with short background and area of…

The problem with browsers is that it is hard to monetize unless you go down some shady rabbithole. So exactly how are you going to make money and make your first million dollars?

It's actually not that hard to monetize browser extensions, and I think this is changing as the quality of extensions gets better — people are more willing to pay for software that solves their problems, regardless of the format. Here's an extension that makes $38k / month! https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/187-jordan-oconnor-of-c...

And here's one that made at least $100k: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/css-scan/100-000-in-rev...

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#197

Post by whywhywhywhy »

coldtea wrote: post #74
chmod775 wrote: post #71

As someone who has (re-)implemented and shipped quite a few native applications across ecosystems (Apple, Android, Windows, Linux) all I can say about this is: Xcode development, the Apple Developer Program, and the whole experience of trying to ship your application on the Apple ecosystem is the fucking plague . I will do it if I'm paid for it - I generally charge twice my hourly rate for anything Apple - but I cert…

> Xcode development, the Apple Developer Program, and the whole experience of trying to ship your application on the Apple ecosystem is the fucking plague. That's because you're a developer that works in different platforms ("Apple, Android, Windows, Linux"). So you probably spend most of the time working in some other platform, and doing macOS work for you is just an annoyance, having to context switch to another pr…

>instead on relying to 1000s of half-ported apps, with shared functionality on Windows and Mac, and horrible cross-platformy UIs

Most people I know day to day who insist on Macs spend all their days using Chrome, VSCode and Slack with little else.

The days of the Mac UI apps built by passionate Mac developers being the Mac advantage are over. People like myself who still use native Mac software like TextMate, Safari, Transmit for the Mac UI are absolutely a small and shrinking minority.

I think while Apple has been looking the other way to iOS the past 10 years this moat of MacOS better 3rd party app experience through native ui frameworks has been completely eroded and now most MacOS users are just doing their work via Chrome wrappers.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#198

Post by whywhywhywhy »

robenkleene wrote: post #172
panic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three of those developers started writing Mac software (or NeXT software, in Omni's case) in the 80's and 90's, before Xcode or the Apple Developer Program. The wider Mac developer community was hollowed out by the iPhone in the late 2000's-early 2010's and never really recovered. Who is starting a Mac-only software shop in 2021?

I'd argue that the Mac developer community was hollowed out by mandatory Sandboxing in the Mac App Store, introduced in 2011, not by the iPhone (2007). Sketch, arguably the most successful third-party Mac-only app since OS X, was released in 2010, several years after the iPhone, but almost immediately before mandatory sandboxing. I believe the reason sandboxing destroyed the Mac software ecosystem is because it's too…

Sketch is an interesting one, gained so much traction for having a superior interface but after several years in the lead it's getting devoured by a cross platform web app with superior collaboration.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#199

Post by Glench »

arusahni wrote: post #51
burtonator wrote: post #29

So this is is a MAJOR flaw with WebExtension design. Each uses a separate URI scheme. So Chrome uses chrome-extension: Firefox uses firefox-extension: ... etc. which means web extensions for Firefox won't work with Google Firebase because they only support chrome-extension. Why the heck isn't it web-extension: ???

WebExtension was started by Mozilla, and is based on Chrome's extension API. Google has no incentive to support the project.

Although Google is actually moving toward the standard in Manifest v3: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/mv3-o... (mostly with a Promise-based API)

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#200

Post by whywhywhywhy »

thysultan wrote: post #31
freediver wrote: post #27

We are working on a new native macOS browser based on Webkit with native web extension API support built in. We have uBlock origin and many others extensions working already. By doing this we get best of both worlds - performance and energy use of Webkit and extensions from chrome/firefox. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/7V8sfyX We are open for beta testers. Please email me if interested with short background and area of…

Yes! uBlock origin is the biggest thing keeping me from going to Safari, that and the Stylus extension(or something like it).

Been a Safari user for years and still consider Apple doing anything to lose uBlock support one of their worst moves in that space. My browsing honestly feels so less safe without uBlock Origin, almost never had a dodgy popup or banner do something weird that wasn't blocked but once you're in the much weaker Safari only blocker ecosystem it happens constantly.
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