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For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

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Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#161

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #18

> Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. This is just false, or at best only half of the story to make a false equivalence. IE was cutting edge until Firefox. The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features. It would “fix” missing tags, that would then be broken on ev…

The analogy is simple: back in the day devs got sick of IE because it was the one thing holding them back. You can make a site, easily, that looked beautiful on all the other major browsers, but because IE was outdated when it came to standards support, you had to basically spent all your time fighting with it.

Safari serves that role today. There are tons of things I'd love to do but can't because they're not supported on iOS Safari.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#162

Post by coldtea »

Nope, Apple's Safari is the last stand (given it's market share, FF is miniscule) from the web standards becoming whatever Google likes...

It's not Safari which is outdated, it's standards that move too fast and come ad-hoc to Google's tastes.

And it's not even about the web anymore, it's all kinds of crap to make the browser a slower, duplicate of native functionality, app platform.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#163

Post by alwillis »

kccqzy wrote: post #156
alwillis wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time IE 6 was released, it was the best browser available. The problem was Microsoft acted is they had “won” and stopped updating it for years, where it calcified and became the hot mess we all knew and disliked.

IE 6 for Windows was never the best browser. At that time Microsoft's own IE 5 for Mac was way better. It was written by a different team (including almost celebrity programmers like Tantek Çelik). It had way better support for CSS. It even supported PNG alpha transparency.

At that time Microsoft's own IE 5 for Mac

Yes, it was better but it didn’t really count, as Apple just emerged from its near-death experience and Steve Jobs cut the deal with MSFT to make IE 5 the default browser for the Mac.

Apple’s marketshare was tiny back then and many people in the industry didn’t think Apple would be relevant much longer.

Ironically, after the 5-year deal had expired, Apple shipped Safari 1.0, which was better than the vaunted IE 5 for Mac.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#164

Post by coldtea »

onion2k wrote: post #126
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and those all suck up my RAM. Color me nonplussed that WebKit doesn't follow in Chromium's footsteps.

The criticism was that "no one uses WebRTC", not that WebRTC was inefficient. Clearly millions of people do use it, so you aren't refuting the point in any way. Perhaps if Apple had supported WebRTC earlier their engineers could have influenced the way it works to make it better. That's the main problem with ignoring standards in an org the size of Apple - you don't get to contribute to them. I don't mind that Safari…

>Clearly millions of people do use it, so you aren't refuting the point in any way.

Are forced to use it. And millions more would be forced to use it if Safari handed it on a plate as well...

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#165

Post by coldtea »

oaiey wrote: post #139
mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that developers are simply angry with Apple for not letting them to fiddle with the latest stuff that Google is experimenting with. Chrome is the new IE but with better manners if you consider the non standard Chrome specific stuff that makes websites to work only in Chrome. Developers hated IE for not being standart, you had to write two versions of your CSS, you had to make your code accommodate the Box m…

We are not angry about the lack of toys. We are angry about not having the possibility of using PWA as an app model. PWA are useless without Apple's support. My case was a WebBluetooth based download of data from a web page. Now I have to maintain two apps. Thanks.

>We are not angry about the lack of toys. We are angry about not having the possibility of using PWA as an app model.

I, on the other hand, am angry that PWA is even considered as an app model.

A regression, if I ever saw one...

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#166

Post by paavohtl »

jw14 wrote: post #52
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…

Broken HTML+CSS in Safari? Examples? I started using Safari as my daily driver because I use all apple devices and I like extending my battery life. Before deciding that, I did stints with Firefox and Brave, both of whom had poor sync'ing. I can't remember the last time a site had broken HTML/CSS with Safari. My impression is the desire to have good mobile support keeps Safari support alive. I think I encountered mor…

Here's one I encountered while developing: Safari doesn't handle linear-gradient with transparency like all other browsers: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38391457/linear-gradient...

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#167

Post by Leherenn »

mrtksn wrote: post #152
oaiey wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not angry about the lack of toys. We are angry about not having the possibility of using PWA as an app model. PWA are useless without Apple's support. My case was a WebBluetooth based download of data from a web page. Now I have to maintain two apps. Thanks.

Yes, and from users perspective I don't care. I find in eerie having the browser being an App platform. Chrome and Android are very dominant platforms, if it is something groundbreaking that can be done in that model it would be done in Android and Chrome and Apple will adopt it. Google is not an underdog.

And as another user I care. I don't want to install yet another app to clutter my phone just to access something once that could be a webapp. The browser is an awesome delivery mechanism for stuff I'm going to use once/rarely: no install or uninstall needed.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#168

Post by coldtea »

afavour wrote: post #34
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.

>You’re talking as if the W3C

The W3C doesn't exist, hasn't mattered for 15+ years, haven't you heard? It's not even the HTML WG that matters anymore (which took over from W3C in an ad-hoc way). It's basically Google, and that's that.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#169

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

mrtksn wrote: post #152
oaiey wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not angry about the lack of toys. We are angry about not having the possibility of using PWA as an app model. PWA are useless without Apple's support. My case was a WebBluetooth based download of data from a web page. Now I have to maintain two apps. Thanks.

Yes, and from users perspective I don't care. I find in eerie having the browser being an App platform. Chrome and Android are very dominant platforms, if it is something groundbreaking that can be done in that model it would be done in Android and Chrome and Apple will adopt it. Google is not an underdog.

I have the exact opposite view. I have tons of apps on my phone that really have no business being apps, they should just be websites but with push notifications.

For example, I'm not a huge traveler (obviously not in the past year), but even before the pandemic I'd use AirBnB like once a year maybe. I don't want to download an app for something I use once a year. But before and during my trip push notifications are important because it's basically a messaging app with the owner.

I'm not talking about things like games or something else with complicated UIs, I'm talking about basic CRUD functionality where I occasionally want a push - most of my banking apps fit this as well.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#170

Post by veeti »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #87
rubyn00bie wrote: post #18

> Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. This is just false, or at best only half of the story to make a false equivalence. IE was cutting edge until Firefox. The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features. It would “fix” missing tags, that would then be broken on ev…

Thank you. I have no idea what these people are talking about. They obviously didn't actually do development back then. > Apple took years to finally add WebRTC support to Safari, far enough behind Chrome and Firefox that it practically became a running joke among developers and even industry observers. Really? Because no one I know uses WebRTC and would rather use ffmpeg and sockets to do serious work like that over…

Literally hundreds of millions of people are going to make calls through Teams/Slack/Zoom & WebRTC today alone, grandpa.
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