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Recent improvements to Safari

magiclasso.co

21–30 of 147 posts

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#21
post #2

The addition of push notifications is long awaited, and necessary to take PWA to the next level. It is the single biggest hurdle for me in developing PWAs for iOS. Bring it on!

I guess, but I will keep blocking them whether they are mobile apps or web apps. Few apps have any business sending notifications.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#22
One very overdue improvement to iOS Safari I noticed: the humble HTML select element.

Since the first iPhone, iOS Safari displayed a clunky wheel selector for HTML selects, requiring more taps than necessary to view and select an option from the list. Finally at some point last year they ditched the wheel, replacing it with a simple list (similar to Android), requiring less interaction to select an item. Only took them 15 years to fix this UI inefficiency.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do proper adblocking (e.g. uBlock Origin) on Safari. That's why I don't really use it except when on battery and out travelling - and even then I'll often avoid using Safari since ads are so awful. Yes, I've tried the Safari adblockers, they suck. As far as I can tell they do marginally more at best than a DNS block. Once you can't use uBlock Origin with Chrome due to the proposed Manifest V3, Firefox will…

I've read that uBlock Origin remains difficult to circumvent by anti-adblock techniques employed on sites today, and the sites where ads are blocked by Safari's content blockers simply haven't made the effort yet. I don't have any experience in this area, and would love someone who does to chime in.

Isn't the anti-adblock technique being used today to simply make the content of the site shill for the advertisers? How would that be blockable?

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#24
post #8

I don't really know about all the details of those metrics but I know one thing: Safari is smooth. Actually it was just perfect in the previous years too for me anyway. It just works and works super-efficient. That's why I use it. The only reason I have Chrome installed is to test my websites with Chrome and use MetaMask. TBH I never understood why people use Chrome on a Mac unless there is a specific extension or si…

I have to use Chrome on a Mac because Safari refuses to support multiple profiles. I'm a fan of compartmentalization, so my side-business saved passwords are different than my personal saved passwords. Apple would prefer that I create two separate accounts on my Mac (and the annoyance of syncing dotfiles between the two), but Chrome just lets me switch between users seamlessly. It seems like such an easy feature to a…

I’m using Brave for the same reason - compartmentalisation via profiles (“People”). Keep LinkedIn and other data vacuums quarantined, thank you very much.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#25

Derided by whom? From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. Performance, smoothness, battery life, mobile integration, password management, the list goes on. I had to support and still know by heart the bugs and idiosyncrasies of IE 5, 6, 7, 8 etc. I have no sympathy for people who say Safari is the new IE.

>Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot.

I couldn't disagree more. Ignoring the lack of uBlock Origin and multi-account containers (which are table stakes for a browser), Safari's interface is unwieldy and lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs. I can't believe that a $2t company is so careless with their apps.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#26
post #2

The addition of push notifications is long awaited, and necessary to take PWA to the next level. It is the single biggest hurdle for me in developing PWAs for iOS. Bring it on!

I guess, but I will keep blocking them whether they are mobile apps or web apps. Few apps have any business sending notifications.

Agreed! I don’t know why anyone would want that. And even Apple is getting bad with their own notifications. I just got one from Apple Music yesterday about the Super Bowl. WTF? I had to turn off Notifications for that now, too.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#27

I love how Safari fills in OTP codes from SMS messages automatically. I know you’re not supposed to use them but so many services still do.

Yes, this is why I use Safari for a handful of financial websites that use 2FA. I still use Firefox with Sidebery for all other browsing because Safari has an inferior interface and poor overall usability.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#28

I don't really know about all the details of those metrics but I know one thing: Safari is smooth. Actually it was just perfect in the previous years too for me anyway. It just works and works super-efficient. That's why I use it. The only reason I have Chrome installed is to test my websites with Chrome and use MetaMask. TBH I never understood why people use Chrome on a Mac unless there is a specific extension or si…

You can't do proper adblocking (e.g. uBlock Origin) on Safari. That's why I don't really use it except when on battery and out travelling - and even then I'll often avoid using Safari since ads are so awful. Yes, I've tried the Safari adblockers, they suck. As far as I can tell they do marginally more at best than a DNS block. Once you can't use uBlock Origin with Chrome due to the proposed Manifest V3, Firefox will…

As the author of the linked article, there's over 250,000 users of our Safari-exclusive ad blocker[1] with few complaints.

It is able to block all ads, trackers and annoyances that users encounter. Including all YouTube ads.

Don't disagree that there are some limitations with more contemporary ad blocking approaches but they do the job for most users needs. These approaches will likely continue to evolve and include necessary capabilities to do more in the future.

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do proper adblocking (e.g. uBlock Origin) on Safari. That's why I don't really use it except when on battery and out travelling - and even then I'll often avoid using Safari since ads are so awful. Yes, I've tried the Safari adblockers, they suck. As far as I can tell they do marginally more at best than a DNS block. Once you can't use uBlock Origin with Chrome due to the proposed Manifest V3, Firefox will…

As the author of the linked article, there's over 250,000 users of our Safari-exclusive ad blocker[1] with few complaints. It is able to block all ads, trackers and annoyances that users encounter. Including all YouTube ads. Don't disagree that there are some limitations with more contemporary ad blocking approaches but they do the job for most users needs. These approaches will likely continue to evolve and include…

nice self-promotion. But anyways, what's the story on Safari's support for manifest v2 going forward?

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#30

Derided by whom? From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. Performance, smoothness, battery life, mobile integration, password management, the list goes on. I had to support and still know by heart the bugs and idiosyncrasies of IE 5, 6, 7, 8 etc. I have no sympathy for people who say Safari is the new IE.

Safari on iOS is plainly wrong for users, it's stopping the progress.
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