What rules that had been there for tens of years were broken by IE6? IE6 was the best browser available when it was released, and the web standards ecosystem was nothing like it is today. I think the analogy is very clear. If you want to code like it's 2000, supporting IE6 is easy, because IE6 is a very good 2000 browser. If you want to code like it's 2010, supporting Safari is easy, because Safari is a very good 201…
You can install other browsers on iOS.
No, you can't. You can install wrappers around Safari, but you can't install any app that uses the rendering engine of Chrome, Firefox, IE, or any other browser better than Safari.
I did, and I should have read it more carefully. That being said, I think there is a balance that Apple tries to maintain here. If there experience on older systems is terrible, they run the risk of people switching to a different operating system and platform. If the experience isn't significantly better on newer hardware, however, customers won't be motivated to upgrade.
I would definitely not attribute it to any purposeful attempt at by a company to make things worse for older systems... human beings developing software on new hardware is already enough to make performance issues happen. In reality, if the lead developers of some software find the experience to be good enough on their machines, that's going to lead to it becoming worse on old hardware, no matter what the company (as…
I don't necessarily attribute it to malice either. Their interest in making money and being successful will motivate where they spend their development dollars in maintaining older software and keeping current customers happy on their older systems versus developing new features and software that will increase sales.
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…
The web started with form tags in HTML. Is always been an application platform.
What rules that had been there for tens of years were broken by IE6? IE6 was the best browser available when it was released, and the web standards ecosystem was nothing like it is today. I think the analogy is very clear. If you want to code like it's 2000, supporting IE6 is easy, because IE6 is a very good 2000 browser. If you want to code like it's 2010, supporting Safari is easy, because Safari is a very good 201…
"Another difference is that MS never blocked you from installing a better browser, but Apple does that on iOS. That policy is becoming increasingly ridiculous..." Why has that not resulted in anti competitive behavior lawsuits? MS got in to a fair bit of trouble for similar things. They didn't stop you installing an alternative.
Apple does not have a monopoly. MS did. If Apple owned 99% of the smartphone market, they wouldn't be able to get away with this behavior.
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…
Given that the author self identifies on his blog as a twenty-something I'm wondering if he's old enough to have ever really had to lift IE v. 4-7.
IE was a vast pile of shit for about a decade. It was pile of shit so high that Microsoft took out ads saying in so many words that its latest version "doesnt suck, honest". I tore my hair out for years over IE bugs. Fucking kids these days. Mobile Safari might not be as magical as you would desire but it is not even in the same league as the virtual genocide/superfund/WMD that IE was.
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 th…
Rather then just downvote you, let me say that I (20+ years webdev) and my colleagues use our audience to determine what browsers we support, not our personal preferences. My job is to provide visitors to my clients websites with the best possible experience, not judge them on their technical choices.On the site I support, hundreds of thousands visits a year are from Safari users. Based on your comment ("deal with it"), you pretty clearly are not the kind of web developer I would ever hire. Or your engineer friends.
Safari is worse than IE, however. You could install an alternative. Even if they weren't, I fully agree with progressive enhancement. It is always going to provide the right incentives for everyone. Only the features most used (by end-users) will become browser vendors' utmost priority.
You can of course install an alternative to desktop Safari, just not to Mobile Safari.
That's amazing. Thanks for reminding me how much contempt they have for choice.
Not quite my area of expertise, but I believe that browsers on Android also tend to use the core Android browser components though they can dress them up slightly differently.
> ...I believe that browsers on Android also tend to use...
The word 'also' doesn't belong here. Browsers on iOS don't tend to use core iOS components (WebView) : they are forced to. Your statement really isn't a counter point.
What rules that had been there for tens of years were broken by IE6? IE6 was the best browser available when it was released, and the web standards ecosystem was nothing like it is today. I think the analogy is very clear. If you want to code like it's 2000, supporting IE6 is easy, because IE6 is a very good 2000 browser. If you want to code like it's 2010, supporting Safari is easy, because Safari is a very good 201…
You can install other browsers on iOS.
They still use the safari renderer/js engine under the hood.
No, you can't. You can install wrappers around Safari, but you can't install any app that uses the rendering engine of Chrome, Firefox, IE, or any other browser better than Safari.
Chrome for ios is a wrapper for safari? Are you sure? Safari and chrome definitely render certain pages differently when both running on the same iOS device.