Safari is the new IE • Hacker News Board

Re: Safari is the new IE

#351

Post by addicted44 » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 1:20 AM UTC

swsieber wrote: post #159

ninkendo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your target browser is IE8 and you write a bunch of html4 that looks great in IE8, I would expect it to not work anywhere else. Not only is IE8 a snowflake but html4 is particularly hard to get a good layout working. Lots of nontrivial layouts in pure html4 (and css 1/2) require tons of browser specific hacks.

You missed his point. He mentioned IE8+ and Opera as working targets to highlight the fact Safari was being lame. He said every browser - that would include complaint ones like firefox and chrome. He also specifically said he avoided browser specific hacks.

Opera went out of its way to ensure non-standard stuff targeted towards specific IE versions also worked in Opera. The downsides of being a browser no one cares about.

Something working in opera doesn't mean it is standards compliant.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#352

Post by addicted44 » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 1:31 AM UTC

I would have hoped that as web devs we would have learned our lessons from the IE6 fiasco. The only browser web devs should be supporting and evangelizing is Firefox. Admittedly Firefox isn't always the best browser, but it has always been good enough, and if the people spending time, money and effort improving WebKit or Blink spent that effort on Gecko and Firefox instead, it would be a better than it is now.

Personally, Firefox has become my only browser on every platform but iOS and it isn't even for ideological reasons but simply when combined with extensions it is the best browser around. Once it (finally!) incorporates isolated processes for tabs, it's gonna be head and shoulders above its competition IMO.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#353

Post by nolanl » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 1:43 AM UTC

michaelwww wrote: post #344

jccalhoun wrote: post #70

"There was one company not in attendance, though, and they served as the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wanted to discuss. I heard them referred to cagily as “a company in California” or “a certain fruit company.” Their glowing logo illuminated nearly every laptop in the room, and yet it seemed like nobody dared speak their name. " Why wouldn't people just say "Apple?" Is this hyperbole or is there some…

Happy thousand day anniversary on HN! (I accidentally clicked your name.) The author is exaggerating, like he did with the title. IE was until recently a big drag on web dev, but Safari is not. Speaking about Apple in hushed tones seems like a joke by the author, because it seems to me that some devs who use Apple products really over-rate Apple's importance. I don't use Apple products and don't feel I am missing any…

Nope, people literally did say things like "a certain company in California." But yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, because the name "Apple" did come up occasionally.

The problem is that when everybody wants to discuss the hot new browser features, mentioning Apple is just a big downer. We all know we're going to have to polyfill at best, or just not support Safari at worst. Nobody wants to be reminded of that sad fact when you're trying to get excited about the potential of the web platform.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#354

Post by cycomachead » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 1:52 AM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #76

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.

Google are definitely breaking the web in lots of ways. They even have an audio limitation in Chrome on Android where they have added an explicit exception just for google.com: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c... That said, there are some cases where things are Chrome-only simply because other vendors are far behind. (eg. speech recognition & synthesis)

Speech Recognition and Synthesis are in Safari -- though I don't know to the extent that it's as complete as Chrome. Safari definitely lagged behind though...

Re: Safari is the new IE

#355

Post by nolanl » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 1:59 AM UTC

binarymax wrote: post #65

Hey Nolan, It was good to "meet" you at edgeconf (really we were just throwing the mic back and forth, and I couldnt make it to the afterparty). I really enjoyed your panel intro and insight. I agree with your assessment that IndexedDB is laughably bad in Safari, but maybe they haven't bothered because its really not such a great solution in general? I'm going to reassert that I think we could do much better - since…

I still have a soft spot for WebSQL over IndexedDB - way easier to work with, incredibly powerful, brought the speed and reliability of SQLite. However, WebSQL only ever managed to have one implementation (Chrome and Safari shared WebKit at the time), and the other vendors besides Opera didn't want to touch it. So it's long since time to accept that it's dead.

What bothered me most about the IndexedDB fiasco with iOS8 is that Apple not only held out for so many years, but then they deployed a broken implementation. Anybody who had written an app using an IndexedDB shim either had a crashed site at best or lost user data at worst. YDN-DB author Kyaw Tun had the best quote: "I don't understand how they can release this."

Whether you like an API or not, a browser vendor should at least release it in good faith if they're going to release it.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#356

Post by krschultz » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 2:46 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #272

krschultz wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's attacking the guy's experience and insinuating that the OP is being sensational to get upvotes.

Ha whoops, on mobile it looked like you were responding to the OP article instead of a top-level commenter. Mea culpa. It's just something of a pet peeve that there are people who call 'ad hominem' at every insult.

Reasonable. HN is the least mobile responsive website I continue to use.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#357

Post by thm76 » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 4:25 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #332

mikeash wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's define it as apps that actually use a different browser engine , and aren't merely a reskin of the exact same engine used in Safari. In short, something that is actually capable of supporting new features that Safari doesn't. This is not possible on iOS without a jailbreak, because Apple simply doesn't allow alternative browser engines to be used.

Why not? Apple also doesn't allow Flash, so the question is, why? Does Apple make money from Safari? Is there a technical reason that might preclude another browser engine?

My understanding was that they don't want to allow executing downloaded code that hasn't gone through the App Store review (such as JavaScript in web pages). I think they allow Lua for scripting in games, though.

So, basically, a 3rd party JavaScript engine is not allowed. I guess you could write your own browser engine that doesn't support JavaScript.

I guess Flash was not allowed for performance and security reasons (lots of vulnerabilities, right?)

Re: Safari is the new IE

#358

Post by shadowmint » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

VieElm wrote: post #259

shadowmint wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Maybe you can, because either you work for yourself, or you work for some who doesn't care... but you're mistaken if you think you fall in the majority in that.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#359

Post by alwillis » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 8:07 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #332

mikeash wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's define it as apps that actually use a different browser engine , and aren't merely a reskin of the exact same engine used in Safari. In short, something that is actually capable of supporting new features that Safari doesn't. This is not possible on iOS without a jailbreak, because Apple simply doesn't allow alternative browser engines to be used.

Why not? Apple also doesn't allow Flash, so the question is, why? Does Apple make money from Safari? Is there a technical reason that might preclude another browser engine?

Steve Jobs wrote an essay why Apple didn't allow Flash on iOS in 2010:

Thoughts on Flash https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Re: Safari is the new IE

#360

Post by adamlett » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 11:31 AM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #350

adamlett wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it lacks very basic functionality, isn't the effect the same as breaking the web? No. If what worked before continues to work, it means it's not broken. Also: What "very basic functionality" doesn't the latest versions of Safari support?

Well, I mentioned the two that I am most keenly aware of. I only know what I've come across, so I'm assuming there's lots more. To my knowledge, file downloads worked in all browsers prior to mobile Safari being initially released. So Apple did release a browser that broke some quite basic web functionality.

I don't know how I missed that part of of your post. Sorry about that. Still. I find it quite a stretch to argue that not supporting file downloads "breaks" the web. Users don't perceive websites to be broken just because they can't download files. It would be akin to claiming that a device with no camera breaks the web by not supporting the camera API. Or that the Lynx browser breaks the web by not supporting CSS and JavaScript.

Regarding Apple's insistence on not supporting Ogg (Vorbis|Theora) (I assume that's what you're alluding to), those codecs were briefly recommended by the HTML5 standard, but were later dropped.[1] Again, I think its a stretch to say that Apple broke anything, simply because they resisted a proposed standard. I know a lot of developers were disappointed, but that's how committees work: You don't always get it your way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_Ogg_formats_in_HTML5