Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Recent improvements to Safari

magiclasso.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 147 posts

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#111

Post by wintermutestwin »

dontlaugh wrote: post #85
wintermutestwin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. I couldn't disagree more. Ignoring the lack of uBlock Origin and multi-account containers (which are table stakes for a browser), Safari's interface is unwieldy and lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs. I can't believe that a $2t company is so careless with their apps.

All of those things are quite niche. I use Wipr, block third party cookies and use private mode when needed, use bookmarks and tab groups. Not liking the UI is very subjective, personally I think they all suck somewhat.

>All of those things are quite niche.

The reasons vertical tabs are niche:

1. horizontal is the default in every browser 2. The most popular browser doesn't have any way to have functional vertical tabs 3. It is a huge pain to set up vertical tabs in Firefox 4. Safari's implementation of vertical tabs is a sad joke.

Vertical tabs are clearly superior and there is no doubt that horizontal tabs will eventually be a relic of the dysfunctional past.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#112

Post by jsnell »

dontlaugh wrote: post #84
habitue wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know why anyone would want that. A calendar app, a messaging app, etc. All sort of apps have reasonable use cases for notifications, and now you can write those apps as persistent web apps on iOS. The user should still have control over notifications of course, and if you're downloading, let's say, a shopping app, no reason to allow notifications, it'll just be ads or whatever. Overall, flexibility is good.

Is it really worth it, when there are so many good native apps instead? Personally I don’t really see the point.

One point is to not allow Apple to act as the gatekeeper to what applications can be implemented and used on iOS. A second is to not force implementors of a fundamentally cross-platform application where I care about the service rather than the technology stack to waste huge amounts of resources on reimplementing the app multiple times. A third is having the economic gains of the app go to the people who actually did the work, not to the middleman who has been resting on their laurels for 15 years, collecting their 30%.

Native apps are good for Apple, web apps are bad for them. They've been using their full control of one of the world's most important computing platforms to cripple the web platform. If web apps really were that unappeling to users and developers, they wouldn't need to worry. Just stop the obstructions, and the market would decide in the favor of native apps. That they've been fighting this tooth and nail tells you that they have no confidence.

And let's be clear, Apple never even needed to do the work themselves. They just needed to stop blocking competing browsers. Again, if notifications are so bad, surely the users would have staid in Apple's no-notification garden rather than ship to a browser with that feature. But again, they have no confidence in their users actually choosing Safari.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#113

Post by jsnell »

tambourine_man wrote: post #15

Derided by whom? From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. Performance, smoothness, battery life, mobile integration, password management, the list goes on. I had to support and still know by heart the bugs and idiosyncrasies of IE 5, 6, 7, 8 etc. I have no sympathy for people who say Safari is the new IE.

If Safari were the best browser for end users, why has Apple been blocking competing browsers for such a long time? Surely the users would stay on the Safari given it is both the default and the "best browser", and nothing would change. They could have avoided so much regulatory scrutiny.

Or maybe, just maybe, Safari actually hasn't been the best. It's been a vehicle to kill the web as a competing open platform. It's only now that regulators have finally woken up that Apple actually needs to compete, and suddenly discovered all these decade-old features that they need to actually implement to even reach parity, let alone being the "the best".

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#114

Post by freediver »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #7
can16358p wrote: post #4

I don't really know about all the details of those metrics but I know one thing: Safari is smooth. Actually it was just perfect in the previous years too for me anyway. It just works and works super-efficient. That's why I use it. The only reason I have Chrome installed is to test my websites with Chrome and use MetaMask. TBH I never understood why people use Chrome on a Mac unless there is a specific extension or si…

You can't do proper adblocking (e.g. uBlock Origin) on Safari. That's why I don't really use it except when on battery and out travelling - and even then I'll often avoid using Safari since ads are so awful. Yes, I've tried the Safari adblockers, they suck. As far as I can tell they do marginally more at best than a DNS block. Once you can't use uBlock Origin with Chrome due to the proposed Manifest V3, Firefox will…

This was one of the main reasons we built the Orion browser [1].

Lightweight and faster than Safari in benchmarks, same WebKit engine and able to run Chrome and Firefox extensions out of the box, including uBlock Origin. Still in beta and you can try it for free. It is zero telemetry and completely user supported through Orion+ subscription. Has a very active feedback forum at OrionFeedback.org.

[1] https://browser.kagi.com

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#115

Post by culi »

theresistor wrote: post #47
culi wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that websites will now send you notifications. It's that PWAs will now have the option to ask to send you notifications in the same way any other app on your iPhone does. It means people can start developing apps for the web that will basically work on any platform that can run a browser. A huge step forward for the web platform that has so far been stunted by Apple's unwillingness to support these web stand…

I think the post you're replying to reflects a very different view of the utility notifications, which I share. I almost never approve a notification request. From anything, be it an app or a website. Off the top of my head the only notification sources that I have enabled are messaging apps, and even there I only have them turned on for the couple that I use for my most important communications. I consider it a nuis…

I'm with you and almost never grant permissions for anything. I even have notification badges turned off for everything they'll let me turn it off for (everything but the Settings app).

Apple's implementation will likely have a toggle in the settings to decide whether or not you can be prompted for this permission. In fact, you can already do this with Firefox (and I assume Chrome).

The people like you and me who don't allow any notifications anyways will likely just turn off the prompt entirely. But for developers, this helps bring the web platform one step closer to equal treatment as native platforms and can dramatically open up the ecosystem Apple currently so tightly controls

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#116

Post by culi »

scarface74 wrote: post #109
culi wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that websites will now send you notifications. It's that PWAs will now have the option to ask to send you notifications in the same way any other app on your iPhone does. It means people can start developing apps for the web that will basically work on any platform that can run a browser. A huge step forward for the web platform that has so far been stunted by Apple's unwillingness to support these web stand…

And yet almost every site that asks for notifications do if exclusively to spam you.

You can simply block the ability of websites to even prompt you... That's what I do on Firefox

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#117

Post by culi »

BuckyBeaver wrote: post #99

That's nice to hear. Safari is my main (only, really) desktop browser. But let's consider this: "A leaked proposed EU act may force Apple to allow alternate browser rendering engines on iOS... Some experts believe that this would increase competition in the market" Whoever believes that is not an expert, and hasn't thought it through. Apple's insistence on WebKit is the only thing keeping Chrome from taking over the…

I definitely share the concern over Chrome's dominance, especially given the Manifest v3 crap, but it seems hard to believe they'll manage to take over the iOS ecosystem. Or even the mac ecosystem at that. As shown in this very thread, mac users really value the fact that Apple owns their whole stack and is able to do things like automatically fill in OTP codes from text messages (something that would be a huge invasion of privacy if any other company did it lol). Safari is tightly integrated with Apple's OSes and takes full advantage of that to offer things that would be impossible for other browsers to offer

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#118

Post by mateuszbuda »

What is the best setup for Safari on mac to block ads, block YouTube ads, block trackers, block cookies popups and automatically deny cookies? I like Orion but it is simply broken on many websites, especially some forms or buttons do not work sometimes, and it is not compatible with keychain and doesn't suggest passwords. Because of this, my browser workflow is Orion for everyday browsing, for some websites I know I have to use Safari, for some I have to use Chrome, if a website doesn't work with Safari I first try Firefox and then Chrome. It seems to me like there's a room for improvement here :/

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#119

Post by BuckyBeaver »

BuckyBeaver wrote: post #99

That's nice to hear. Safari is my main (only, really) desktop browser. But let's consider this: "A leaked proposed EU act may force Apple to allow alternate browser rendering engines on iOS... Some experts believe that this would increase competition in the market" Whoever believes that is not an expert, and hasn't thought it through. Apple's insistence on WebKit is the only thing keeping Chrome from taking over the…

Note how some Google apologists down-modded this simple observation.

Pathetic.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#120

Post by olliej »

padjo wrote: post #67
olliej wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So bizarre that there are devs think we want webpages with the ability to spam them. Literally the last thing I want from a random website is notification spams and pop up, but woooooo soon I guess I’ll have to get used to pop ups asking me to receive ads from websites all over again.

If you’re building a web based messaging app notifications are pretty crucial. Safari not having proper webpush was a major pain in these cases.

If you're offering a web based messaging app, I am assuming that no matter how "secure" you may claim it is, your site is filled with spyware that connects to every other website in my browser. To me that's a big negative, and so I'm not going to trust it. As a byproduct I am uninterested in allowing a "secure message" website the ability to spam me when I'm not on that site.

If I decide I like/need your service I would expect an app to be available, because again, I don't want the constant threat of my messages being tied to the identity the various spyware companies have built from my browsing. I also don't want to have to switch to my browser and then find the message tab or wait for a giant multi-meg web app to download again. If Safari limits access to the spam API to just home screened pages then I wouldn't mind the addition of notification spam: creating a home screen app is a reasonable indication the user does value a site highly, and more importantly limits the ability of random sites to spam me with notification requests.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that you can make mediocre cross platform webapps more easily than actual good apps, it's just that as a user I don't care. The argument "this is easier for me" falls flat because plenty of other people have been able to make apps, and those apps are typically better, but they actually get basic platform behavior correct. Failing that you can make an electron or similar app, and have all the crappy cross-platform BS, but hey at least you get to ask to spam me and you can't sell me out with spyware linked to my normal browser instance.

Post reply on HN