Safari is the new IE • Hacker News Board

Re: Safari is the new IE

#251

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #112

jug wrote: post #30

It isn't as bad as what led to IE's state that took several years of active development by Microsoft to even begin correcting. The gap between IE 6 and IE 7 was terrible, and IE 6 wasn't even that much more than IE 5, standards-wise. Here's an overview of what's new in Safari (WebKit) as it ships with OS X El Capitan: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/releaseno...

What people often forget is that there was a time when IE6 was actually better than the alternatives (on Windows anyway). Around the time it was released Navigator was the main competitor and that was getting progressively less stable and failed to keep up with the way the web was evolving. And by "evolving" I don't just mean new techniques/standards/whatever - simply the way the size of things was growing as people…

[deleted]

Re: Safari is the new IE

#252

Post by Tloewald » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #177

etchalon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't hurt battery life. It just takes engineering hours away from working on battery life.

But that argument can justify any deficiency in Safari, so it's unconvincing. Eventually you're just saying, "Apple don't care about all these new web things." Which is the point of TFA.

How so? Let's suppose Safari has some horrible bug in it that exposes users to malware or whatever. (And it has had from time to time and Apple has been rightly pilloried for some of these cases.) Tell me how saying that Apple would rather improve user experience than add developer-friendly features justifies this.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#253

Post by Angostura » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #170

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…

"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.

I presume because it's not true. I currently reading this page in Chrome on iOS

Re: Safari is the new IE

#254

Post by Angostura » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #191

vlunkr wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

WebKit and Safari aren't synonyms

Re: Safari is the new IE

#255

Post by mbell » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

ben010783 wrote: post #175

mbell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, Safari is still the best browser when it comes to everything UI-related (animations, visual effects, …). I use Safari for all my general browsing for one reason: It uses 1/2 to 1/5 the power that chrome does.

I doubt it will ever be as good as Safari, but Google is working on this: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/12/chrome-os-x-performance-...

Unfortunately the biggest problem by far is video playback and for whatever reason they seem to refuse to fix the problem.

Here is a simple test I just ran:

Using https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify for blocking VP9

2015 rMBP 13", 3.1Ghz i7, 16GB (defaults to software rasterization in chrome)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK9Im1eP3DI (1080p60 video)

Power is CPU Package Total (core + GPU).

Chrome VP9: 26W

Chrome VP9 + Force GPU Acceleration: 28W

Chrome h264: 19W

Chrome h264 + Force GPU Acceleration: 13W

Safari: 4W

Additional comments:

This is all in window at the default 'theater mode' size of youtube. I can't full screen either of the VP9 options without completely maxing out the CPU, dropping frames and during my laptop into a frying pan. Its really hot even in window with chrome VP9 using ~175% CPU.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#256

Post by smitherfield » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #84

rplnt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have to support IE11 for corporate software, websites, etc. I'll used it as my main browser for a day or so to test things out and its just incredible how its become a 2nd class citizen and how you pretty much need Chrome or Safari nowadays to get by. I'm partial to Firefox and it works well enough, but designers only have so much time and they'll hit big targets first - Chrome/Sarafi and leave IE be with FF suppor…

Nothing personal, but people complaining about how "I have to support IE11" starts the world's smallest violin playing for me - I have to support IE8!

Re: Safari is the new IE

#257

Post by Amezarak » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:38 PM UTC

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,…

I can't tell you how many times I've had to help people who switched away from their iPhone and then saw eternal, intermittent issues with not receiving text messages because their friends iPhones were convinced they should be sending iMessages and not SMS. The situation gets even worse with group messages.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#258

Post by soperj » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:38 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #253

collyw wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I presume because it's not true. I currently reading this page in Chrome on iOS

Sorry, that's not chrome, that's a gui that looks like Chrome.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#259

Post by VieElm » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

shadowmint wrote: post #215

VieElm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then the developers will simply follow the users. That didn't happen with IE6. I think the web as platform is bigger than Apple as big as it may be. It's amazing to me that you're OK with a single company holding back the entire platform because of a single device. People use the web with machines that don't even have batteries. Really to a developer who cares about the open web and standards, just throwing the who…

> That didn't happen with IE6 Yes it did...but anyway, the detail is irrelevant; it's the point you're refusing to acknowledge: A developer, building a product, is obsessed with growth metrics, OR, a slave to the pedantic demands of a client they're working for. Either way, those demands require that a site be available to as many people as justifiably possible. The questions you have to ask are: 1) Is the the $ valu…

> Can you ignore safari and pretend it doesn't exist, and lose those customers? No. No you can't.

Actually we can, and where I work we do. Never has anyone complained about it. SO everything is just fine. So I don't need to "Suck it up".

Re: Safari is the new IE

#260

Post by exelius » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

butterfi wrote: post #196

VieElm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, the choice of which browsers to support is a business requirement informed by marketing, not a technical decision. Business requirements should inform the selection of technology, not the other way around. When you let technical requirements drive your business requirements, you end up with a product that is a poor fit to user's needs. It's hard enough to get users for a new product without engineering imposing arbitrary technical limitations.