31–40 of 57 posts
Great news! What is the next big piece of software that needs to be retired to make the Internet a better place?
I guess in the spirit of the open web, Chrome might be a good candidate for retirement. There is even a growing consensus that "Chrome is the new IE".
Goodbye to a plague on the web coding world. We only wish you could’ve died sooner.
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Safari?[0] It's especially a problem when Apple don't allow other browser engines on its devices, although governments are looking into that.[1] [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/safari_risks_becoming... [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/10/uk-antitrust-agen...
I dunno, then there would only be 2 actively maintained browser engines, Chrome and Firefox. Webkit is doing pretty good on https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022 so I'm not sure why Safari should be retired.
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But they would also have Edge installed in Windows Server 2022. It's a very small population that has a trivial workaround: use the _default_ default browser that came with the server operating system.
Except that new browser won’t support Active-X or Java applets. Yes those still exist. Yes they are needed. Yes I have to support them. Pity me.
That's mostly just used for specialized websites/webapps I think (often internal)? You can still launch IE for that, and use Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or any other browser for regular browsing. It's not substantially different from using Electron for desktop apps when you think about it.
Many years ago I worked for a company that used an internal ActiveX-based application (which worked fairly well for us) and this is pretty much what everyone was doing.
The biggest hurdle is probably corporate policies and such that prevent installing any alternative to IE yourself and IT dept. doesn't want to provide you with one either, but at this point I think that's just $BigCorp's problem and I don't care any more. For the record: I take web compat fairly serious and made things compatible with IE11 up to last year, but there's a limit.
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Safari?[0] It's especially a problem when Apple don't allow other browser engines on its devices, although governments are looking into that.[1] [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/safari_risks_becoming... [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/10/uk-antitrust-agen...
My only wish is that Apple make it easy to run Safari, both latest version and older version, on non-Apple device. I have had a design that broke only on Safari, and I would be at my wit end on how to fix it if I didn't have a Mac on hand. Even Microsoft still provide VM with IE8 [0] for testing purpose. 0: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
I use BrowserStack for it; for just one issue a trail account is enough, if you use it for an open source project you can request free access, and for a business it's relatively cheap.
I've got a pro account for a few of my open source projects; I don't often use it, but have on occasion (for things like you describe, and I don't have a Mac on hand).
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Except that new browser won’t support Active-X or Java applets. Yes those still exist. Yes they are needed. Yes I have to support them. Pity me.
> Except that new browser won’t support Active-X or Java applets. That's mostly just used for specialized websites/webapps I think (often internal)? You can still launch IE for that, and use Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or any other browser for regular browsing. It's not substantially different from using Electron for desktop apps when you think about it. Many years ago I worked for a company that used an internal ActiveX-…
The process to replace that feature is not done. So here I am.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safari?[0] It's especially a problem when Apple don't allow other browser engines on its devices, although governments are looking into that.[1] [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/safari_risks_becoming... [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/10/uk-antitrust-agen...
My only wish is that Apple make it easy to run Safari, both latest version and older version, on non-Apple device. I have had a design that broke only on Safari, and I would be at my wit end on how to fix it if I didn't have a Mac on hand. Even Microsoft still provide VM with IE8 [0] for testing purpose. 0: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
Some time in the last couple of years, it needed an OS update that took a couple of resident Apple experts to get through.
Great news! What is the next big piece of software that needs to be retired to make the Internet a better place?
Great news! What is the next big piece of software that needs to be retired to make the Internet a better place?
Safari?[0] It's especially a problem when Apple don't allow other browser engines on its devices, although governments are looking into that.[1] [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/safari_risks_becoming... [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/10/uk-antitrust-agen...
Edit: oh, I should add:
The main data from your first source is out-of-date... Here's the dashboard today: https://wpt.fyi/compat2021?feature=summary&stable
Your second source is more of an argument to keep Safari around. If the Chrome/Safari duopoly on mobile is a problem, getting rid of Safari makes it worse.