Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Safari is the new IE

nolanlawson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 368 posts

Re: Safari is the new IE

#31

Post by jegutman »

spaar wrote: post #15
sigzero wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I should delete my Google Chrome app then? Granted it doesn't take the default for things but I can still use it.

The iOS version of Chrome doesn't use Chrome's rendering and JavaScript engines though, per the App Store rules it has to use WebKit [0]. So, any other browser app on iOS would have the same problems as mobile Safari. [0] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/06/28/chrome-ios (linked by the article btw)

Yea, I just really like that I can access all of my open tabs with it. It also context switches better with iOS outlook if you click on links you can quickly go back to outlook.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#32

Post by Cshelton »

sz4kerto wrote: post #29
sergimansilla wrote: post #4

Agreed. However, it still has the best perceived performance. Just open a page with a heavy layout and scroll up and down, or type an address or search term in the location bar and "feel" how fast it loads. Apple really put some effort in making it "feel" extremely fast.

Maybe on OSX, yes. On Windows on my PC, basically every browser beats Safari on my retina MBP if it comes to speed.

Apple has stopped supporting Safari on Windows. SO yes, you are using Safari 5.0, from over 2 and a half years ago...of course every other browser will beat it.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#33

Post by wodenokoto »

gwbas1c wrote: post #11

The article misses the point. The browser is a document viewer, not an application delivery platform. Back in 2005 we all thought that web-based applications were going to take the world by storm, but now that we have slick application stores on all major platforms, this isn’t the case. If you need functionality like you describe, ship a native application via an app store. It’s a much better experience than web deve…

I don't fully agree. Apps like gmail and google maps are often preferred to their native alternatives on desktop.

I have pretty much ditched native office suites in favor of google drive as well on my desktop system.

And things like Facebook hasn't even considered native desktop implementations.

So it is safe to say that the web is a great app delivery platform (at least on the desktop) and as such, I think it is completely reasonable to improve upon it and extend this benefit to mobile.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#34

Post by exelius »

Disagree with this assessment. IE was so bad because Microsoft tried to go off and create its own standards that were incompatible with Mozilla / Firefox / etc. (I'm thinking of IE6 specifically). And this was big, core functionality like page layout and CSS; not some data structures that can be implemented in other ways (albeit with a performance hit). This was doubly bad because "enterprise" companies (SAP, SAS, Oracle, etc) built their original web interfaces against IE6; and those systems are so costly to upgrade that many companies still run IE6-compatible browsers. Chrome even has an option that can be pushed out via GPO to render certain pages using an IE6-compatible renderer. Safari is nowhere near that bad; I have yet to run across a page that works in Chrome that doesn't work in Safari.

Safari, by comparison, is just behind the curve on some developer-centric features. But Safari also has some things going in its favor: in my experience, it's the fastest browser on OS X by a pretty wide margin. Chrome is so bloated and full of garbage at this point that when I have it open, I usually have at least one tab sitting at 100% CPU (and this is with FlashBlock enabled). Safari also manages to feel faster while using significantly less power -- I suspect Apple has done some optimizations through Grand Central on this front.

Safari on mobile is a bit of a different story; yes it has problems, but I don't know that supporting a larger feature set is the answer.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#35

Post by Cshelton »

tzakrajs wrote: post #25

Firefox renders pages terribly and is the real dud here. edit: not speed, but aesthetic quality and parity with Chrome/Safari

Do you have a very outdated version of FF? Firefox is actually starting to beat Chrome on many benchmarks once again.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#37

Post by Touche »

benjamindc wrote: post #16

Safari isn't "lagging behind other browsers", it's just implementing different things. In fact, Safari is still the best browser when it comes to everything UI-related (animations, visual effects, …). You might disagree with Apple's priorities, but it doesn't mean other browsers are "better" per se, they're just different. Safari's release cycle, however, is stupid per se.

> Safari isn't "lagging behind other browsers", it's just implementing different things. In fact, Safari is still the best browser when it comes to everything UI-related (animations, visual effects, …).

So then let's name these things, specifically, if you really believe that. I'm not aware of any new specs related to animations in the last couple of years. Can you name them?

Re: Safari is the new IE

#38

Post by NietTim »

Nolan, I'm not familiar with what you do or have done, but have you ever tried to make a website back in the day? Ever tried to support IE6? 7? 8? IE literally broke the web. CSS rules which worked in every browser ever wouldn't work in IE. Entire webpages weren't formatting correctly, having to spend hours, days, on workarounds. Comparing Safari to IE is just wrong. Safari doesn't break the web, it 'just' lacks support for some new javascript functions, not break standards/rules that had been there for tens of years.

But I'm sure this title gets you more clicks.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#39

Post by LoSboccacc »

exelius wrote: post #34

Disagree with this assessment. IE was so bad because Microsoft tried to go off and create its own standards that were incompatible with Mozilla / Firefox / etc. (I'm thinking of IE6 specifically). And this was big, core functionality like page layout and CSS; not some data structures that can be implemented in other ways (albeit with a performance hit). This was doubly bad because "enterprise" companies (SAP, SAS, Or…

> Safari on mobile is a bit of a different story; yes it has problems

that's a understatement., working on ios safari has been a travesty: it steals a good 20% of view area and 25% of clickable area, it makes a mess with pages trying to be responsive by misreporting the viewport area, it has loads of bugs with resizing and orientation change events and just dies if one script in any page becomes unresponsive

Re: Safari is the new IE

#40

Post by verbin217 »

realityking wrote: post #22
bickfordb wrote: post #17

The definition of a web browser is enormous now. Even though Apple has massive resources, is it really fair to rant against them for not implementing every possible specification, five years old or not? If web assembly is supposedly as fast as C, why can't we have web browsers with a smaller built-in feature set and implement new specifications as libraries?

While web assembly may give us performance, it doesn't give us access to new platform API. Web assembly can in no way replace Service Worker, IndexedDB or Web Manifests. It also won't help with Web Components unless you're aming for a Web where we just draw on a big canvas.

I want a web where we just draw on a big canvas. That's a pretty simple API for implementers to get right. Then we could move the scene graph (DOM) and it's rendering engine entirely into the application language where it could be more readily hot-fixed. It'd be like PDFJS but for your whole fucking web browser.
Post reply on HN