101–110 of 145 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On iOS you don't make a browser. Period. You get to make a skin for Safari. That's all.
False. You can build any UI you want, as well as any feature you like. The restriction is that you must use WebKit as the rendering engine for content that contains JavaScript.
Right. So, a browser. You just proved my point. Apple allows exactly one browser on iOS. Theirs.
And it's all written in Swift! This is probably the largest application written in Swift so far, and definitely the largest one on GitHub that I've seen. If you're looking to make the transition from Obj-C to Swift (or from any language to Swift) this is probably a solid example to learn from.
According to the GitHub language stats it's only 17% Swift. Nearly 70% C and 6% Objective-C.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You put the rendering engine and features in opposite corners, which is false. Blink and Gecko have features that WebKit does not. Like WebRTC.
Finest HN nitpicking. Chrome on Android is missing some features from Chrome desktop (extensions, Flash, NaCl), is it not Chrome anymore?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On iOS you don't make a browser. Period. You get to make a skin for Safari. That's all.
False. You can build any UI you want, as well as any feature you like. The restriction is that you must use WebKit as the rendering engine for content that contains JavaScript.
And this matters, because the main features that browsers compete on is speed and new features (in HTML5 and Javascript). This is what made people switch to Chrome, making it gain a whooping 40% (or is it 50%) in market share. This is also what made Firefox gain market share from IExplorer.
And if your browser is slower than the default one, then you cannot compete with that default. If your browser cannot be a platform (for add-ons or apps, like what Firefox is doing on Android), then you cannot compete with the default. Chrome on iOS is only a shadow of what it is on the desktop.
And Firefox on Android is the only one that allows me to use useful add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, HTTPS Everywhere and LastPass. Do you know how awesome that is? And this doesn't work on iOS (i.e. having add-ons) because of Apple's restrictions.
And yes, I'm even rooting for Gekko (instead of WebKit), because it is Firefox that brought us Asm.js [1], I even bought the Humble Mozilla Bundle [2] and they made everybody optimize for it, including Microsoft. And now they are working on SIMD.js as well [3].
I received an iPhone 6 as a gift 3 weeks ago and I sold it - yes it's nice, but it doesn't run Firefox and apparently Apple kicked VLC out of the app store as well. And personally I couldn't picture myself living with such restrictions so I sold it - now I'm waiting for my Nexus 6 to arrive :-)
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/10/14/play-awesome-indie-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On iOS you don't make a browser. Period. You get to make a skin for Safari. That's all.
False. You can build any UI you want, as well as any feature you like. The restriction is that you must use WebKit as the rendering engine for content that contains JavaScript.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was one made about four years ago. Hardly anybody used it because hardly anybody jailbreaks their phones.
AFAIK, they never did. They did a launcher application that was sync-compatible to access all you bookmarks, etc.
Officially, there was Firefox Home, which was just a bookmarking thing and not a full browser.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can Apple get away with that? I am genuine interested! Sounds pretty much like the same thing Microsoft did with Internet Explore back in the day, except they didn't force you to use their rendering engine, but shipped the OS with their browser as default?
Because their platform, their rules? IDK, I think it's perfectly acceptable to limit what you can do on someone's platform, since after all allowing anything on your platform will cause a lot of crap to appear - like a lot of stuff on the Android platform before it changed to the Play Store and Google started being a bit more strict about using their platform. Restricting what developers can and cannot do on a platfo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are only partially correct in your analysis. Yes, controlling the platform can lead to a better user experience. But how does banning browser engines lead to better app quality? It doesn't. If you look at the history of app store restrictions, you'll find that any app that provides an open platform or programming environment has been banned. That is because it takes the control out of apple's hands. It's a power…
It may be a power grab, but it also provides protection from malware that customers value.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
False. You can build any UI you want, as well as any feature you like. The restriction is that you must use WebKit as the rendering engine for content that contains JavaScript.
It's not only WebKit, but also the Javascript engine and to make matters worse, on iOS last time I checked the web view that you could use in apps wasn't using the same Javascript engine that Safari was using, which means that an alternative browser is slower than Safari by default. From what I've been hearing, lately developers can use the same engine as Safari inside those web views, but the functionality is still…