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Recent improvements to Safari

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Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#121

Post by BuckyBeaver »

culi wrote: post #117
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 invas…

I hope you're right. But remember that readers of this site are not representative of the computer-using public in general. If Mac (and eventually iOS) users have enough sites, friends, or support people from mostly-computer-illiterate service providers telling them to use Chrome, I suspect they might.

Most people don't even understand iCloud, let alone notice the few Safari integrations that aren't form- or password-completion that all browsers can do.

Not sure about credit-card completion though. Do other browsers offer that? I really appreciate that one in Safari.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#122

Post by voltaireodactyl »

nier wrote: post #59
LeoPanthera wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding AdGuard for Safari. It's free, open source, has customizable blocklists, and seems to work as well as uBlock ever did.

Thirding AdGuard for Safari.

Fourthing — it’s as good an adblocker as any extension I ever used on chrome.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#123

Post by olliej »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #68
olliej wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happily good calendaring apps have a standard protocol to communicate with calendar apps that don’t load a ton of Facebook and Google stalkerware every time you load them, and let their users just use their prefer calendar app. Messaging services can also make an app, because I sure as shit don’t want my entire browser to become more annoying just because someone can’t be assed making an app. Hopefully safari will ga…

My favorite calendar app is a PWA that uses those standard protocols to integrate with services, plus some other features that I want. And soon, it will have notifications, too. > Overall, flexibility is good.

Ah, see I prefer not to have my personal data proliferated to a bunch of additional companies that want to monetize my data, and I like my use of such apps to not include spyware linking that to all the trackers on the web.

It would seem we're unlikely to agree on the value proposition of notifications from random websites. My assumption is that I'll see a bunch of BS "get notifications" spam from a variety of sites, none of which have any reason to justify the spam. Just as happened with the first version of "let's give websites the ability to spam users. Surely that won't be abused" notification system.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#124

Post by olliej »

Tepix wrote: post #94
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.

Let's say you write an email client as a web app. Or a twitter client. Or perhaps an encrypted voice telephony webapp. Of course it is important for them to deliver notifications for those who want to receive them. This isn't about regular web pages that want to annoy you.

> This isn't about regular web pages that want to annoy you.

I can't wait to see what the proportion of "hey let us spam you" requests from sites is to sites that have any reasonable justification. I'm guessing it won't be good. Just as happened with the first API that gave sites notifications.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#125

Post by frankthedog »

tinus_hn wrote: post #100
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more because Safari has access to that data. Other applications do not, as they are second-class citizens on Mac OS.

No, it’s documented API. It’s either because it doesn’t actually work as documented, or because the other applications’ developers are lazy. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/password_...

Your link is for app development, not web.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#126

Post by jrnichols »

tazu wrote: post #8
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…

I have to use Chrome on a Mac because Safari refuses to support multiple profiles. I'm a fan of compartmentalization, so my side-business saved passwords are different than my personal saved passwords. Apple would prefer that I create two separate accounts on my Mac (and the annoyance of syncing dotfiles between the two), but Chrome just lets me switch between users seamlessly. It seems like such an easy feature to a…

Multiple profiles is the reason I have a chrome based browser on my machine at all.

I'll admit it. it's Microsoft Edge. big reason is compatibility with some other Microsoft stuff I use at work.

otherwise safari is the daily driver.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#127

Post by tambourine_man »

thiht wrote: post #92
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.

> From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser Maybe if you’ve never used another browser. Safari is good enough and offers the best battery life. This is all that’s good about it. The dev tools suck, especially the network tools. The extensions suck. The weird distinction between bookmarks, favorites and reading list makes no sense so I always lose the pages I wanted to keep. On desktop the animations…

>The dev tools suck, especially the network tools.

Dev tools are terrible, that's why I said “end user point of view”.

>The extensions suck.

Again, the amount of of people that even know what that is tiny.

>The weird distinction between bookmarks, favorites and reading list makes no sense so I always lose the pages I wanted to keep.

I love them. They are completely distinct things in my mind and the fact that the browser reflects it is just another thing to love about Safari.

>swiping to go to the previous page

I never do that. Command-Left arrow.

>Dark Reader…

I hate dark mode for everything other than my terminal.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#128

Post by tambourine_man »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #25
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.

>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.

>lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs

I can assure you that doesn't even register as something most end users would consider useful, if they manage to parse it at all.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#129

Post by summerlight »

scarface74 wrote: post #108
summerlight wrote: post #81

This is what antitrust regulation can do at its finest; when we had a draft for DMA, it was clear to everyone that Apple cannot block third party browser engine forever. MS has surrendered to Blink and Mozilla is getting irrelevant. So if Apple insists to drive everyone to the App Store ecosystem instead of the Web then Blink will take over the entire browser engine market sooner or later. Which is really bad for cus…

So if Apple “is driving everyone to the App Store instead of the web” and Android browsers are so much better, then why do companies waste time making Android apps instead of telling Android users to just use the web? How many companies are making iOS apps and not Android apps and telling Android users to just use the web?

Oh, what a typical example of whataboutism. We've been talking about iOS and you're bringing not just Android but Android browsers to attack a strawman? Chrome has been a much better development platform than Safari before 2022 but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better than the primary platform API? And why did you think companies will build a web app instead of Android apps when they cannot practically reuse it on iOS? Isn't the whole point of PWA cross-platform? Have you heard about the Apple/Google duopoly structure and how it's working? And about its implications on web development?

You looks like assuming that I am defending Android/Google against iOS/Apple. Sorry, I'm a long time iPhone user (about 15 years by now), who believed Steve's HTML5 vision and now just be sick about Safari being nearly unusable as a serious development platform. I am tired of installing 100s of apps just because those companies just wanted to send some weird push notification. Apple is the one to blame and now they're forced to fix that thanks to DMA. You don't have to have that angry of this fact.

Re: Recent improvements to Safari

#130

Post by tambourine_man »

jsnell wrote: post #113
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…

Many of those features are not in the interest of the end user. It’s Google’s idea that the web should be converted into a cross platform product it controls. And Firefox follows along in the hopes of remaining relevant.

The idea that simply by visiting a web page can fill many gigabytes of the user’s drive and keep using CPU resources even after a tab is closed is antithetical to what the web is supposed to be.

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