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Safari is the new IE

nolanlawson.com

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Re: Safari is the new IE

#231

Post by hirsin »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #121
mhomde wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but before that IE fixed the web! :) Remember CSS on Netscape? IE4 was actually a beacon back in its day. Everything is cyclical: Lean - Average - Bloated - Lean - Average - Bloated

Are we currently in the bloated stage? - Chrome sucks up RAM like Photoshop. - Firefox Dev Edition is broken or slow every other build - IE is "ok"but their dev tools are incredibly sluggish and useless.

We've got one or two last perf fixes for the Edge dev tools going in before RTM, but the current perf in Edge (Tech Preview) is about what to expect. Have you tried the latest builds? Always happy to take a message about what to fix or add (this username @microsoft.com)

Re: Safari is the new IE

#232

Post by fixermark »

From the article: "Although performance has been improving significantly with JSCore and the new WKWebView..."

Hypothesis: new features tend to be a distraction from optimization work. If Safari is focused on optimization work, maybe the team is making the conscious decision to get what's implemented right before expanding the scope.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#233

Post by jonny_eh »

kedean wrote: post #227
jsprogrammer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually reasonably easy to install a different operating system on an i device?

It doesn't need to be. MS in the late 90's dominated, and you could not do work with someone using MS products unless you also used MS products. One person having an iOS device and another having an Android device does not cause any issues between the two, they are fully able to communicate by the nature of cell phones. I would bet that the lawsuits against MS would not go through if they were brought up today (and,…

You can't facetime or iMessage with an iPerson if you don't have an iDevice.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#234

Post by dykesa »

m1sta_ wrote: post #200
streptomycin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm also sure. At least for mobile devices. I can't speak to desktop Chrome. That's why it does the same weird rendering Safari does which has become more noticeable since the split from webkit.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#235

Post by lotharbot »

disusered wrote: post #220
criley2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome on Android works great and experiences literally zero of the issues mentioned for Safari. Chrome for Android is an app, not a system component, and does not require Android point releases to be updated. It is frequently updated on a regular schedule by Google and pushed out to devices. Using sources like www.caniuse.com, I frequently find that Safari/iOS does not support a feature that is supported on Android…

https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html?ut... What about the other 50% of Android users that don't have Chrome or Chrome WebView? I've been working mobile for a few years now and would love to drop anything before KitKat, but that's not something feasible given market share. In practice, pre 4.4 embedded WebViews have worse support for standards than Mobile Safari. Chrome for Android was in part a s…

> "pre 4.4 embedded WebViews have worse support for standards than Mobile Safari"

My old Windows XP box also has worse support for standards than Mobile Safari.

OK, so XP also doesn't have market share. But it's hard to blame older versions of Android for not supporting standards that didn't exist when they were implemented, just because people continue to buy low-end devices running those old versions.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#236

Post by ripter »

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?

That was the idea behind ActiveX. Instead of continuing development on the browser, people could just write an ActiveX component. Or A Java Applet.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#237

Post by taf2 »

anonymousguy wrote: post #166
streptomycin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps the biggest thing is that IE6 had a broken CSS box model.

Or that Safari has no support for WebRTC.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#238

Post by spullara »

If Firefox and Chrome would render websites as nicely as Safari and integrate with the keychain I would switch (on Mac). As it stands though, neither of the alternatives are as pleasant and as well integrated with the rest of the operating system. Unlike with IE, they could be.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#239

Post by coldtea »

netfire wrote: post #104
coldtea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Curious where you are basing your revenue numbers from. Per Apple's reported statistics for 2014[1], developers pulled in $10 billion dollars in revenue from the app store. That means that Apple's revenue from the app store should also be in the low billions (based on the 70/30 cut they take from app store sales and purchases). All without manufacturing logistics and hardware production costs. Obviously the computing…

>That means that Apple's revenue from the app store should also be in the low billions (based on the 70/30 cut they take from app store sales and purchases).

That makes it around $3 billion, before taxes and infrastructure expenses, payment deals, etc.

$3 billion is spare change for Apple. They have 200 times than in cash.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#240

Post by JohnBooty »

netfire wrote: post #152
ninkendo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he interpreted your post as being the opposite of what you meant it to say. You said the performance gap is more noticeable but you probably mean in favor of safari, although it could be interpreted either way.

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 should have read it more carefully
No, I was unclear. :)

    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'm certain the main engineering goal they have for Safari is energy efficiency.

Battery life is one of the two or three major selling points of all their devices, and improved (or at least equivalent) battery life is something they deliver with every iteration of OSX.

I believe Safari's performance/responsiveness is largely a happy accidental byproduct of this focus on energy efficiency.

Again, I'm not defending anything they do. I'm a OSX user and Firefox is my browser of choice, if that tells you anything!

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