Safari is the new IE • Hacker News Board

Re: Safari is the new IE

#51

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

> Now, after one year, Apple has fixed a whopping two bugs in IndexedDB (out of several), and they’ve publicly stated that they don’t find much value in working on it, because they don’t see “a huge use.” Well duh, nobody’s going to use IndexedDB if the browser support is completely broken. (Microsoft, I’m looking at you too.)

Well, the reason for this is clear: offline web apps are supported in iOS but without a reliable way to store larger amounts of data, web apps get pretty much useless and so people have to go through the Crapp Store.

But, I have to defend Apple, IndexedDB is a ridiculous steaming pile of junk when compared to WebSQL. Writing a single-line SQL statement with multiple WHERE clauses and a couple ORDER BY, takes metric tons of boilerplate crap in addition to callback hell because the IndexedDB crap is async.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#52

Post by jackgavigan » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

I recently ditched Chrome as my default desktop browser in favour of Safari because of its lower power consumption. Apple may well have made a conscious choice to eschew staying up to date with cutting-edge web technologies in favour of a better overall user experience for the majority of users.

If so, it was a wise choice.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#53

Post by dmd » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

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…

> significantly less power

This is the big issue for most people, I think. I would love to use Chrome, but when I do, (a) thighs burn to a crisp if my machine is on my lap directly and (b) the battery depletes, literally, 1.5x as fast.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#54

Post by VieElm » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

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…

Nothing you've said here really addresses the problem discussed and really you're looking at this from the perspective of the consumer and not the developer.

> Safari is nowhere near that bad [as IE was in the past]

Doesn't address the problems developers are having.

> I have yet to run across a page that works in Chrome that doesn't work in Safari.

Try any webpage that uses WebRTC, and there's a growing number of these. But really it's because people are doing what they did with IE6 which is here is code that works everywhere, and here is some code to make it work on Safari so the user is none the wiser. The problem is still there.

> Safary, by comparison ...

This has nothing to do with the post. Great you like Safari, but the problem still exists. Where's the WebRTC support? The Audio API? Right.

As to the original article, I prefer a 4th step not mentioned, just ignore Safari. Apple has a huge iOS userbase, sure, but as the HTML5 disparity between Safari and other browsers increase it's becoming increasingly not worth considering and really do iOS users even expect the HTML5 features that don't work in Safari? They'd probably prefer a native app for that.

Desktop users can use Chrome or Firefox when a site doesn't work in desktop Safari, and if that makes them mad, good. Maybe Apple will fix their shit then.

Edit:

Regarding downvotes: I know engineers are ignoring Safari. I ignore Safari, and other people I know ignore Safari. A convenient sample sure, but as this article points out developers aren't happy. Downvotes or no. Deal with it.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#55

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

superiortoyou wrote: post #7

If Safari became a little too good, people might stop buying or developing apps.

I'm not sure you can pin this all on Apple.

Back when the first iPhone was released Jobs was all "We have a great way for you to develop apps! ... HTML5!"

All the developers were disappointed and wanted a native API. So here we are.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#56

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

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.

    However, [Safari] 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.

The performance gap is particularly noticeable on older Macs. Safari feels about the same as other browsers on my recent Mac... but there's a big gap in responsiveness between Safari and the other browsers on my wife's 2009-ish Core 2 Duo. [Edit: I mean that Safari is much more responsive than Chrome or FF]

This doesn't excuse Apple dragging their feet on web standards, of course.

It's just puzzling. Clearly Apple puts a lot of work into Safari. It's not the bastard child that IE was at Microsoft... recall how the IE team was disbanded after IE6 at one point.

And yet, frustratingly, Apple doesn't support modern web standards despite allocating a healthy slice of developer resources to Safari.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#57

Post by rplnt » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

NietTim wrote: post #38

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 supp…

In the same vain, Chrome does break web by introducing various custom features that can't be found in other browsers. See all those Google demos from past several years: "You need Chrome to view this" sounds very much like those "IE5+" warnings.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#58

Post by supster » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #46

superiortoyou wrote: post #7

If Safari became a little too good, people might stop buying or developing apps.

Which has been stated again and again, but was never an issue with Apple. First because what they make from the App Store is spare change for them. Second because they did have the best browser for a while, and did very much to advance the state of the art (from WebSQL, to Canvas, CSS 3D and other stuff, all originating there, along with the original fast-JITed JS engine who started the JS-race to what we have know).…

The App Store may not be a money maker, but it definitely is a competitive advantage when selling iPhones over the competition esp. Android phones.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#59

Post by atacrawl » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

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.

In fact, Safari is still the best browser when it comes to everything UI-related (animations, visual effects, …).

I'm a Safari user who develops first and foremost in Safari, and I completely disagree with this. Chrome runs rings around Safari in UI animation performance, it's almost embarrassing.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#60

Post by exelius » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #39

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

Right, but the problems Safari has on mobile aren't going to be fixed by implementing IndexedDB; and honestly the WebSQL vs IndexedDB argument is irrelevant to most people: 95% of web developers will just use a framework that abstracts the differences. And I wouldn't claim that mobile Chrome is a whole lot better on this front, even (or especially) on Android. The limitations of mobile CPUs combined with higher user expectations on responsiveness mean you have to pull the plug on a runaway process a lot faster than on a PC, and neither Apple nor Google is immune to this.