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Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

timkadlec.com

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Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#11

Post by kevincennis »

antimagic wrote: post #5

"Apple has shown no interest" Um, that's an assertion, without which the rest of the piece makes no sense. I would have expected a little evidence to back the assertion up, or are we all supposed to get our pitchforks out on Tim's say-so? That being said, let's assume that Tim is actually right, and that Apple are being capricious and trying to hold back the Web, because they can. Apple are within their rights to dec…

> Um, that's an assertion, without which the rest of the piece makes no sense. I would have expected a little evidence to back the assertion up...

How, exactly, would you expect the OP to present evidence of Apple not showing interest? What would that "evidence" look like?

I can't provide evidence that my golden retriever doesn't have an advanced understanding of quantum mechanics, but I don't think that would get him a job at CERN.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#12

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

Honestly, not yet.

Apple might one day be fairly accused of holding up web standards, but so far they're still at least 80/20 implementing new proposals. It might be unpopular but it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward.

For example when IE decided not to do WebGL due to security concerns and then successfully got the standard altered as a direct result [0]. That was what browsers are meant to do. That's what Apple does in some cases too, however their primary focus appears to be battery not security.

[0] (end of article) http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/why-m...

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#13

Post by streptomycin »

mootothemax wrote: post #3
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

Are they really? Other browser vendors also refuse to implement things sometimes. IE has taken its sweet time on certain technologies, entirely deliberately. Google have tried to force standards with their marketshare. Pointer Events is an odd case. It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports. Apple won't implement it, Google won't, Mozilla's implementation is unfinished. Touch Events is also weird: onl…

Are they really? ... It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports. Exactly, you've hit the nail on the head. It seems a bit strange to single out Apple when there are plenty of other vendors also not implementing it. That said , I know very little about the history of mobile browser development; have Apple historically dragged their feet on mobile Safari?

have Apple historically dragged their feet on mobile Safari?

Yes. Here's another example: http://www.raymondcamden.com/2014/09/25/IndexedDB-on-iOS-8-B...

Every other browser supports IndexedDB for years, then Apple finally releases support for it and it's completely broken in multiple unfathomably bizarre ways. Still hasn't been fixed.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#14

Post by CSMastermind »

mootothemax wrote: post #3
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

Are they really? Other browser vendors also refuse to implement things sometimes. IE has taken its sweet time on certain technologies, entirely deliberately. Google have tried to force standards with their marketshare. Pointer Events is an odd case. It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports. Apple won't implement it, Google won't, Mozilla's implementation is unfinished. Touch Events is also weird: onl…

Are they really? ... It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports. Exactly, you've hit the nail on the head. It seems a bit strange to single out Apple when there are plenty of other vendors also not implementing it. That said , I know very little about the history of mobile browser development; have Apple historically dragged their feet on mobile Safari?

Apple is singled out because they're the driver behind all of this. Touch Events was born from Apple's initial work to touch-enable Safari on the iPhone. W3C moved to standardize it but Apple declined to be involved in the effort. Then they blocked the WC3 from releasing it as a standard using their patents, which they were unwilling to offer a royalty free grant for users of the spec.

Pointer Events was first proposed by Microsoft as an alternative solution. It was also a more general specification; while Touch Events was designed for touch and touch alone, Pointer Events allowed developers to use similar code to handle touch, stylus/pen, and mouse inputs. Pointer Events also addressed certain problems with Touch Events, such as a 300 millisecond delay before responding to taps in order to disambiguate between single and double taps.

Then the patent issue was resolved — W3C determined that Apple's patents didn't cover Touch Events anyway so they could release a Touch Events spec. All this time work on Pointer Events continued in parallel, backed not just by Microsoft, but also by Mozilla, jQuery, and Google.

Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer both implement Pointer Events. In 2012 Microsoft contributed code to WebKit, the rendering engine then used by both Chrome and Safari. While Apple never enabled the code, Google offered its support, and this continued even after Google forked WebKit to produce its Blink engine. It looked as if three of the four major browsers were on track to support the specification.

Then Google pulled support in August. Their stated rationale was that because Apple was unlikely to ever support Pointer Events and Apple is the dominate force in the mobile web; Touch Events would always be required. It's a decision that hasn't gone over well with web developers, just look at the comments on the Chromium bug tracker.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#16

Post by taf2 »

I can't help but wish this was about WebRTC instead of pointer events. I can see so many applications using WebRTC but not so many using pointer events... Still I loath Safari, for locking so many features out of the mobile web.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#20

Post by ddlatham »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #9

The answer is a gritty, in-your-face "no". We have a recurring situation where all vendors (save for Apple) show interest in standard, but because Apple does not express that same interest, the standard gets waylaid. That is literally not true – Google, by some metrics the biggest vendor, has also shown no interest in PE. Frankly, I don't see that much of a problem with Webkit and its' adherence to standards. Broadly…

Did you see Google's comment quoted in the article?

No argument that PE is more elegant. If we had a path to universal input that all supported, we would be great with that, but not all browsers will support PE. If we had Apple on board with PE, we’d still be on board too.

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