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For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

blog.perrysun.com

341–350 of 623 posts

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#341
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…

It wouldn't be nearly as bad if it were possible to debug Safari issues on other platforms. Instead, you either have to own a Mac, or use something like Browser Stack. At least Chrome is cross-platform.

I don't think you can debug issues on iOS for that matter. Perhaps it changed, but at least a while ago this wasn't possible. And people say you can do work on iOS...

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

> 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.

The service formerly known as RSS/Atom.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#343

> Further contributing to the frustration is the fact that unlike Chrome or Firefox, Safari updates are not automatic on regular basis. They’re only shipped together with the infrequent updates to the entire OS. I wouldn’t say twice a year is infrequent.

The bigger issue for me is how coupled the OS and Safari updates are. Apple is great at keeping their phone updated, but once it stops, everything stops. My iPhone 6 is on iOS 12, which means Safari 12 and no way to get the latest updates.

Android support is dreadful, but at least you can run the latest Chrome on Android 4.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#344
post #96

> 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…

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 think developers are angry most about it is buggy. And, no. It isn't only lack about the cutting edge tech. It don't even handle css2 correctly in many places. You can ran into bug in every damn common css or js property that even IE handles correctly. It is a true IE successor. Can you imagine making a input field on a whole screen container work properly on safari requires how many efforts? You will need several workaround to make it work properly. Even ie don't really require that…

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#345
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a stretch. If anything, Apple is too conservative. The UIKit was the only UI framework from 2007-2019. Then SwiftUI came and they both work very well together. As other frameworks come for stuff like graphics or device features, they don't really replace each other but stack up. On desktop, it's a similar situation. How is the situation with the web technologies? What was the hip tech in 2007? AJAX? JQuery? Wh…

You can still use jQuery or plain vanilla HTML+CSS+JavaScript, and you still have access to any web technology out there. Websites written in 1999 will continue to render perfectly. Nobody will deprecate WebGL for example. Nobody forces you to learn a new framework, although the documentation for most of those is actually good unlike Apple’s. Meanwhile for example you can’t use the latest iOS 15 API (SharePlay) witho…

It's more like every decede but fair enough. If you really want, you can simply use C.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#346
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Not having to install another shitty spying marketing-loaded app.

Okay so, what we are missing on iOS? Do you have examples?

Off the top of my head, offsceeen canvas and being able to query for many processors the client device has to use for web workers

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#347
For readers, this blog post is crap and clickbaity sentationalism.

As the article itself admits in the end, Safari is a great browser. It just falls short in a few key areas that really upsets the author.

I’ve been a web developer for neigh on two decades. Safari has easily been the browser that gave me the _least_ headaches. Apple might not be the fastest to implement the newest standards, it’s pretty good at implementing them properly.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#348
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…

So learning a new language and OS (ObjC/Swift and iOS) is easier than learning a new web API when you're a web developer? And it's cool because everyone simply has their own _standards_? That's... a take I guess.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#349
post #139
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.

I understand your desire to build a web app with Bluetooth access, but there’s just too many scummy adtech/malware assholes out there that would use WebBluetooth as another way to do their nasty deeds. It cannot be done in a safe fashion, so better to not do it at all.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#350
post #34
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.

If we’re talking about mobile browsers, Mozilla functionally doesn’t exist. That space is just Safari vs. Chrome(ium).

And Apple are not obliged to have 100% feature parity with Chrome.

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