For developers, Safari is crap and outdated • Hacker News Board

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#31

Post by jrmann100 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #6

> Apple dragged their feet in adding support for PWAs in Safari, and when they finally did, limited the capabilities of a PWA so that native-like app functionality wouldn’t be possible, like notifications or a home screen icon shortcut Websites can get Home Screen shortcuts; this has been a thing since the original iPhone.

The functionality exists, but the title, icon, and optional full-screen view are all you get (along with the tedium of updating proprietary tags).

iOS Add to Home Screen is a neglected bookmarking feature, buried within a context menu few users scroll into. It's effective, but presenting it as a viable alternative to Progressive Web Apps is unrealistic.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#32

Post by halostatue » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #27

kouteiheika wrote: post #10

Speaking from personal experience as a developer (although YMMV) - this is totally true. And I'm not even talking about some newfangled APIs like WebUSB and such (I don't really care about those personally). Safari's handling of regular HTML + CSS is regularly broken compared to other browsers. (At least in my experience.) Open the site in Chromium. Yep it works. Open the site in Firefox. Yep it works. Open the site…

History is just repeating itself. If you capture enough browser market share, there is no incentive improve handling of web content that does not materially help the bottom line. IE gave us wonderful features (XMLHTTPRequest) but as soon as MSFT found they had a monopoly, development stalled and the world got stuck with IE6, which lacked even basic features like PNG image alpha transparency. When/if a court orders Ap…

Apple _does_ put effort into Safari.

It’s just not on the parts that you and other developers want it to be on. It’s definitely on the parts that I (as a user) want it to be on (security, privacy, and battery life in roughly that order).

It is unlikely that a court will be able to force Apple to expose OS APIs that would allow for the insecurity of WebUSB or WebMIDI on iOS, even if they do force other engines. And that’s a good thing.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#33

Post by northerdome » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

This is magnified by the fact that Apple won't allow competing rendering engines on the iPhone. If you could install Chrome or Firefox (the actual browsers, not just re-skinned Safari) they would be forced to keep up.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#34

Post by afavour » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

jolux wrote: post #22

Apple has its own opinions about what web standards it should implement. It’s as simple as that. Google has been extremely successful in convincing developers that browsers that don’t behave like Chrome are behaving wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I wish Safari had more features, fewer bugs, and an evergreen release cycle. It’s clear Apple do not see themselves as competing with Chrome, largely because of iOS, and I do wa…

You’re talking as if the W3C or even Mozilla don’t exist. This isn’t an Apple vs Google thing. This is an Apple vs web standards thing. That’s why Safari is outdated for developers.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#35

Post by tmpz22 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:34 AM UTC

robbedpeter wrote: post #30

jolux wrote: post #22

Apple has its own opinions about what web standards it should implement. It’s as simple as that. Google has been extremely successful in convincing developers that browsers that don’t behave like Chrome are behaving wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I wish Safari had more features, fewer bugs, and an evergreen release cycle. It’s clear Apple do not see themselves as competing with Chrome, largely because of iOS, and I do wa…

Reddit is a pretty low bar. I don't think they care much about the site except to make it objectively worse than the app at every convenient opportunity.

> Reddit is a pretty low bar

Reddit is a multi billion dollar product and one of the most trafficked sites on the internet.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#36

Post by diebeforei485 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:34 AM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #17

saagarjha wrote: post #6

> Apple dragged their feet in adding support for PWAs in Safari, and when they finally did, limited the capabilities of a PWA so that native-like app functionality wouldn’t be possible, like notifications or a home screen icon shortcut Websites can get Home Screen shortcuts; this has been a thing since the original iPhone.

There's still no background sync or access to APIs that aren't purely cosmetic. That's why native implementations of an app always "feel" better.

I hope the lack of background sync stays as a #wontfix, because I view it as a feature.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#37

Post by marticode » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

I remember when I was coding form verification and couldn't rely on the HTML5 form validation because Safari, and only Safari, had no user UI to signal errors. (weirdly enough they had the JavaScript API for it... they just couldn't be bothered to show anything to the user)

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#38

Post by slivanes » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

vorador wrote: post #19

If you look at the features that Apple lags on adding support for, usually it's either because: 1. they can be abused (PWAs) 2. are complex to implement (WebRTC – for the longest time the recommendation in the WebRTC community if you wanted to build a C++ app was to bundle a good chunk of Chrome's libraries) 3. or could be bad for battery (web workers) So yeah, it makes some developers' jobs harder but generally ther…

Actually, pretty sure it's only one reason, money.

If they made Safari on iOS actually good (re: PWA notification support), it would burn into their App store profits.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#39

Post by perryizgr8 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

> Progressive web apps

I don't want PWAs. Apparently Google is their biggest promoter and Chrome has the best PWA support but the apps still stuck. I prefer to leave them open in a Chrome tab than have it pop out and pretend to be a native app. So good on Safari to not support it properly, it does not provide any benefit at all.

> Lagging support for WebRTC and other features

Again, I don't care. Just write a native app if you want to do video/audio calls, or send/receive files. The worst native app for these purposes is better than the best WebRTC implementation.

> Bug and infrequent updates

All software has bugs. When Chrome has one, webdevs are forced to hack up a workaround. When Safari has one, they complain.

Please leave safari alone. It is very good as it is. We don't need any more newfangled web "standards" which are mostly pushed by Google so that they can justify not writing native apps for any of their products. Enough is enough Google, just write apps for the platforms you want to sell on.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#40

Post by samtheprogram » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

Aside: If you have a Mac and complain about your computer overheating or fans spinning up constantly / “while doing light browsing”: start using Safari for anything video/audio encoding/decoding related, like streaming music and video, or just in general, especially for longer battery life.

It helps immensely with no noticeable loss in performance. My fans no longer spin up watching a video on YouTube or DRM protected content from a streaming service, and the computer isn’t hot to the touch either.