Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

utcc.utoronto.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 329 posts

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#51

Post by fragile_frogs »

DangitBobby wrote: post #39
meibo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not following sensible standards to protect your own App Store monopoly and being a pain in the ass to work with due to rendering differences that all other browsers get right(even Firefox)" is not a good base to build a defense against a monopoly on.

Saying they don't get rendering "right" implies they aren't following standards. Is Firefox not standards compliant?

iOS only allows webkit based browsers, thus every browser on iOS pretty much just a skinned Safari

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#52

Post by olliej »

adrr wrote: post #38
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #5

This is why, despite it being monopolistic, I hope Apple can continue their requirement on using Safari's rendering engine on iOS. It's the sole remaining defense against a far worse monopoly. Neither the Mozilla nor Edge teams have the backbone to resist Google's web platform initiatives.

People choose to install chrome it doesn't come with Windows Machines or Macs yet is a very popular CHOICE of browser. IOS we have no choice and forced to to use Safari.

you mean safari - a minority browser on a minority platform - is a monopoly?

There's a browser that has almost absolute domination of the market, chooses what features become standards simply by shipping them, is aggressively anti-competitive, and yet you're complaining about safari?

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#53

Post by olliej »

CameronNemo wrote: post #41
Nextgrid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "useful"? I've been using Safari exclusively for years now and the lack of push notifications hasn't been a problem. It's actually good because it shields me from all kinds of shitty websites demanding notification permissions while having no good reason to send any.

Why are we optimizing the case of users browsing bad websites? Why not cater to good websites instead? Isn't a notification receiver of the most important uses of a phone?

web pages aren't something users want notifications from.

Mozilla literally studied this and essentially 100% of "let us spam you" requests were denied.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#54

Post by heavyset_go »

userbinator wrote: post #48
heavyset_go wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this specific use case, it's missing the Web Push API[1], which can be used to implement push notifications, and the Web Notification API[2], which can also be used for the same thing. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...

"can be", not "must be"... Remember that we had real time webchat without JavaScript two decades ago , and a lot of other things that would probably turn into some sort of Chrome-only site if invented today.

If you have a solution to giving iOS users the notifications they want via a web app, PWA or not, I'm all ears. We already implement text and email notifications.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#56

Post by DangitBobby »

fragile_frogs wrote: post #51
DangitBobby wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying they don't get rendering "right" implies they aren't following standards. Is Firefox not standards compliant?

iOS only allows webkit based browsers, thus every browser on iOS pretty much just a skinned Safari

> due to rendering differences that all other browsers get right(even Firefox)

Singling Firefox out by saying "even Firefox" makes me think you don't expect Firefox to "get it right." I am wondering why that is.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#57

Post by heavyset_go »

chrisseaton wrote: post #44
heavyset_go wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works, but users don't get the notifications they sign up for and expect without using a native app on iOS.

Right... isn’t that the whole point of progressive web apps? Users get as many features as their browser supports or they permit? That’s the point. If your app doesn’t work like that then it’s not progressive... so you can’t complain it doesn’t support your progressive app because it’s not progressive.

Try explaining to users that the feature they want and expect doesn't work for them because their particular browser doesn't support it, despite it working on every other browser and platform.

The only solution I see is telling users to "use the app", which doesn't exist yet.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#58

Post by phreack »

heavyset_go wrote: post #31
chrisseaton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Safari on iOS missing specifically?

For this specific use case, it's missing the Web Push API[1], which can be used to implement push notifications, and the Web Notification API[2], which can also be used for the same thing. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...

I'm willing to go as far as to say it's The one feature that's singlehandedly holding back PWAs entirely. Most apps that you use every day needs notifications for one reason another, mainly communication apps, and if you could do them with a web app it'd be a game changer. But Apple is holding us all back and has been for years.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#59

Post by hyperrail »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14
julianlam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edge teams What happened with Edge? I've been out of the loop with MS stuff for years, and last I heard you had to select a browser in the EU or something, but was this also made mandatory worldwide? I'd imagine still being bundled with Windows means their usage is not insignificant...

Edge is now a Chromium fork, and is headed by an ex-Googler who cheerfully me-toos every Google web agenda. It's sole purpose is to be a Chrome browser that connects to Microsoft accounts and hence can integrate with Microsoft's enterprise tools. Despite enterprise teams already finding Chrome's six week release cycle tedious, Microsoft immediately followed Chrome to announcing their four week cycle in the last week,…

The Edge team - first engineering alone, now both eng. and product - has been led for 3 years by Rajesh Sundaram, a Microsoft lifer who has never worked for Google. [1]

And Chromium-based Edge has tracking prevention through filter lists, while Chrome does not. [2]

Microsoft is no one's privacy hero these days, I will concede that. But some of these specific claims are just wrong.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeshsu

[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/learn-abo...

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#60

Post by sp332 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #54
userbinator wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"can be", not "must be"... Remember that we had real time webchat without JavaScript two decades ago , and a lot of other things that would probably turn into some sort of Chrome-only site if invented today.

If you have a solution to giving iOS users the notifications they want via a web app, PWA or not, I'm all ears. We already implement text and email notifications.

Polling, long-polling, websockets? I feel like I'm missing some context here.
Post reply on HN