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For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

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Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#201

Post by G3rn0ti »

alserio wrote: post #181
Normille wrote: post #20

>Why did developers and software engineers hate IE so much? Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. Nonsense. The almost universal contempt for Internet Exploder amongst web developers had nothing to do with lack of support for cutting edgw APIs. It was because Internet Exploder refused to follow basic web st…

I still have to support IE11 and the fact that it doesn't support modern API its one of the reasons I hate it with passion. Something like not supporting css variables is seriously limiting. As second place I'll put the unusable dev tools. Spec compliance is more of a problem for css than js. I concede that with previous IE iteration the problem was much more worse.

At least it has dev tools. IE6 didn’t. So every time JS failed I had to alert myself into the heart of the problem…

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#202

Post by tarsinge »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #161
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 Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today.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 suppor…

Safari is not holding back, Safari is just not implementing Google’s PWA (because it doesn’t really make sense on Apple devices where it would be far inferior to native). You can make a beautiful site in Safari and it will work everywhere (I do professionally). Chrome is the new IE (2001 era, when it was cutting edge and pushing proprietary technology) except ActiveX is PWA.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#203

Post by simondotau »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #153
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…

> I suspect that developers are simply angry with Apple for not letting them to fiddle with the latest stuff that Google is experimenting with. That is absolute bullshit. Browser push notifications have been out for years on other browsers (INCLUDING desktop Safari), and they are the one thing that Apple is dragging their feet on the most because they know it's the most important thing that prevents a dev from just d…

Personally I think Apple holding the line on browser push might be the single greatest thing Apple has done for the web in the past decade.

Meanwhile Google is moving the goalposts of "modern" web development so fast that it's nearly impossible for anyone to keep up. I can't believe the hacker community is so enthusiastic about this—you couldn't get a more canonical example of embrace, extend, extinguish as applied to an open protocol.

It wasn't long ago that we had four or five really strong browser implementations. Microsoft really did try with Edge and then gave up. Now we have just three: Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. And Mozilla isn't looking particularly healthy right now...

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#204

Post by jeroenhd »

tshaddox wrote: post #190
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #153

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. That is absolute bullshit. Browser push notifications have been out for years on other browsers (INCLUDING desktop Safari), and they are the one thing that Apple is dragging their feet on the most because they know it's the most important thing that prevents a dev from just d…

Push notifications are also a terrible feature that I don’t want on any of my browsers including desktop Safari. I don’t want developers to even have the option to show me a prompt to enable them.

I use notifications all the time in Firefox and Chrome. They're very useful for receiving updates about things like replies to comments, new videos from a certain video service and actual notifications from a few web apps.

Terrible websites are no reason not to implement a feature on one platform but not another, just a reason to disable them by default. You can already do that in every decent browser, it'll ddeny access prompts without even bothering you. There's no reason to take the option away from everyone because a few people don't like it, that's what settings are for.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#205

Post by jeroenhd »

mrtksn wrote: post #189
Leherenn wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't seen a single website that doesn't require installation. The website installation process is much more painful than apps because first you need to install it to see it.

What website requires installation? The ones I use all work perfectly fine just from the web UI with the option to install them?

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#207

Post by JimDabell »

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.

> My case was a WebBluetooth based download of data from a web page.

Web Bluetooth is not a web standard. It’s a Google API that only Blink supports. Firefox doesn’t support it either and doesn’t plan to:

> This API provides access to the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) of Bluetooth, which is not the lowest level of access that the specifications allow, but its generic nature makes it impossible to clearly evaluate. Like WebUSB there is significant uncertainty regarding how well prepared devices are to receive requests from arbitrary sites. The generic nature of the API means that this risk is difficult to manage. The Web Bluetooth CG has opted to only rely on user consent, which we believe is not sufficient protection. This proposal also uses a blocklist, which will require constant and active maintenance so that vulnerable devices aren't exploited. This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices.

— https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluetooth

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#208

Post by mongol »

bmn__ wrote: post #200
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…

> IE was cutting edge until Firefox. I was there. I call bullshit. Competitors like Opera and IE for Mac (a completely different codebase and product) could do alpha-transparent images in the background, CSS sibling selectors, display:table-* and dozens more. For a few fortunate Web developers who were strong willed enough to heed the call from Alistapart to standards compliant code, we were able to circumvent the la…

Exactly. In order to call something cutting edge, it should be sharp. IE was frustratingly dull.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#209

Post by simondotau »

teruakohatu wrote: post #66
halostatue wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> Apple _does_ put effort into Safari. I did not say they did not. What I said was... > that does not materially help the bottom line. Security, privacy, and battery life sell phones. Better PWA and WebRTC would cost them money because those modern Web technologies compete with the App Store.

> Security, privacy, and battery life sell phones.

Because that's what people want.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#210

Post by DonHopkins »

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…

Is it fair to say that Safari is Apple Maps Bad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E&ab_channel=Dames...

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