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

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

#61

Post by 3np »

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...

Maybe your app is a rare exception, but apart from chat apps, any use of notifications I’ve seen are undesirable and abused to spam users. Even those that do have a legit use-case still abuse it by pushing non-desirable (from user perspective) messages.

I think apart from Gitter I’ve never wanted a notification, as a user.

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

#62

Post by 3np »

heavyset_go wrote: post #42
chrisseaton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the entire point of progressive web apps that they’re tolerant of different features being available or not? That’s ‘progressive enhancement’. Your app is supposed to work if the functionality isn’t there, or equally if it’s there but denied access. You can have it show updates when the user checks the app if that’s what they want. Complaining a browser doesn’t support a progressive feature is a contradiction i…

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

Apart from chat, what are use-cases where users actually want notifications, as opposed to being coerced or tricked into accepting them?

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

#63

Post by fragile_frogs »

olliej wrote: post #50
fragile_frogs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web Push Notifications, ShardeWorker, BroadcastChannel. Native Add to Homescreen, Good Developer tools to debug things on a non Apple computer, Background Sync, Notification Badging API, App Shortcuts These are only the ones that I remember right now, but I know there is more

web push notifications, notification badging, shared worker, etc are user hostile features. They burn battery life, the former two exist almost solely to spam users (Mozilla did a study and it turns out no one wants notifications from random websites). Safari has had add to home screen for the best part of a decade. Giving web pages the ability to spam users to add it is an anti feature.

> Safari has had add to home screen for the best part of a decade

On Chrome you can trigger a add to home screen prompt from your own UI, making it a two touch experience. On iOS IIRC it only works on Safari and not in Chrome, but I could be wrong.

> no one wants notifications from random websites

I am not talking about random websites, but rather web applications that you interact with on regular basis, if Apple cared about the user experience they could have just moved the notification prompt behind a user interaction.

> shared worker ... They burn battery life

If you are building more demanding websites shared workers are a great way to share state and computing resources across and thus saving battery life. Spawing a Worker per tab is more demanding.

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

#64

Post by JohnBooty »

fragile_frogs wrote: post #33

> Conversely, if Safari refuses to implement some alleged 'feature', it becomes much less useful even if Chrome does implement it. How is Safari not implementing standards seen as a good thing? While I do acknowledge that there might be privacy concerns when it comes to Chrome, I do appreciate that Google is trying to push the Web forward, while Apple is trying to hold the Web back. Safari truly is the worst browser,…

     Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it.
Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, would offer some sort of "Safari for Developers" that runs on Windows/Linux. Even if it's some kind of klunky suboptimally-performant thing. Just make it really obvious in terms of it's branding and theming that it's devs-only.

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

#65

Post by nexuist »

heavyset_go wrote: post #40
userbinator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I see posts like this that complain about other browsers lacking features and essentially encouraging the "Google-isation" of browsers, the more convinced I am of the power of Google's gigantic monopoly-enhancing propaganda-machine. Firefox unfortunately has no choice but to be dragged along by Google.

I'm a mobile and desktop Firefox user, and Firefox has supported the features that are missing from iOS Safari like the Web Notifications API since 2013, and the Web Push API since January 2016.

iOS dev since 2014 here. So many of my app ideas would have been completed 2-5x quicker if mobile Safari supported push notifications. It is unreasonable gatekeeping.

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

#66

Post by nexuist »

olliej wrote: post #53
CameronNemo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because essentially 100% of web pages that request push notification access are garbage tabloids that nobody cares about. No push notifications on mobile Safari means that there is no incentive to build mobile web apps that function similar to their native counterparts. Obviously people are accepting push notifications somewhere or else they wouldn't be such a popular design decision.

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

#67

Post by Shared404 »

sp332 wrote: post #60
heavyset_go wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't the issue getting notifications out through the OS notification system?

Unless I'm misunderstanding something about the problem, I don't do iOS dev or any webdev complicated enough to require OS notifications.

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

#68

Post by heavyset_go »

sp332 wrote: post #60
heavyset_go wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Push API allows for efficient push notifications without polling, I believe, but don't quote me on it. The problem is displaying notifications like you would a message notification on iOS.

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

#69

Post by fragile_frogs »

JohnBooty wrote: post #64
fragile_frogs wrote: post #33

> Conversely, if Safari refuses to implement some alleged 'feature', it becomes much less useful even if Chrome does implement it. How is Safari not implementing standards seen as a good thing? While I do acknowledge that there might be privacy concerns when it comes to Chrome, I do appreciate that Google is trying to push the Web forward, while Apple is trying to hold the Web back. Safari truly is the worst browser,…

Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it. Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, would offer some sort of "Safari for Developers" that runs on Windows/Linux. Even if it's some kind of klunky suboptimally-performant thing. Just make it really obvious in terms of it's branding and theming that it's devs-only.

I wanted to test a web app and was naive enough to buy an old iPhone 6, thinking I could test and debug my app. To my disappointment you can't update Safari through the app store and developer tools are pretty much non existent...

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

#70

Post by kitsunesoba »

3np wrote: post #61
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...

Maybe your app is a rare exception, but apart from chat apps, any use of notifications I’ve seen are undesirable and abused to spam users. Even those that do have a legit use-case still abuse it by pushing non-desirable (from user perspective) messages. I think apart from Gitter I’ve never wanted a notification, as a user.

Similarly, I’ve rarely needed web notifications and on the handful of occasions I have they’re of a nature that’s better tied to a desktop/laptop than a phone or tablet.
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