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Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

alastair.is

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Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#121

Post by leptons »

reaperducer wrote: post #105
senkora wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this seems reasonable to me. The better thing to get annoyed at Apple for is being slow to implement web standards. I guess you could make the argument that they are choosing to work on stuff like this instead, but I think that’s a weak argument.

The better thing to get annoyed at Apple for is being slow to implement web standards. Now that Safari supports the HTML5 date picker (since iOS 14.1 - five years ago), this is more of a meme than fact-based reasoning. Unless you believe Google including something in Chrome automatically makes it a "standard." I have a list (unfortunately on a device I can't access now) of web standards that are supported on Safari a…

>>The better thing to get annoyed at Apple for is being slow to implement web standards.

>Now that Safari supports the HTML5 date picker (since iOS 14.1 - five years ago), this is more of a meme than fact-based reasoning

Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use the Safari browser engine, which they intentionally hobble by not implementing APIs that other browser engines have had forever so that Apple can force developers to create native apps for iOS which Apple then can extract 30% (or whatever they decide it is today) revenue from, where they can't do that from a web application. This is one of many reasons Apple is being sued by the DOJ for antitrust violations, and one reason they got sued by the EU and lost.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#122

Post by leptons »

alwillis wrote: post #108
lysace wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: It can probably be argued that Apple is a acting like a monopolist in one or a few areas though? The current web monopolist (Google) was coincidentally founded 2 months after the US antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft was decided (july - september 1998). Similarly meh results with US vs Google two weeks ago.

> It can probably be argued that Apple is a acting like a monopolist in one or a few areas though? I don't think that's a credible argument. Apple, at best, has about 55% smartphone marketshare in the United States--and significantly less in most other countries. Remember, having a monopoly isn't itself illegal; it's using the monopoly to disadvantage competitors, especially in emerging markets, which was what the Mi…

Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use the Safari browser engine, which they intentionally hobble by not implementing APIs that other browser engines have had forever so that Apple can force developers to create native apps for iOS which Apple then can extract 30% (or whatever they decide it is today) revenue from, where they can't do that from a web application. This is one of many reasons Apple is being sued by the DOJ for antitrust violations, and one reason they got sued by the EU and lost.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#123

Post by leptons »

rs186 wrote: post #55
brookst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait so are all non-standard CSS attributes "anticompetitive"? This seems like wild hyperbole. Is Google's "-webkit-tap-highlight-color" also anticompetitive? Should we ban the current practice of shipping proprietary CSS attributes while sometimes also proposing them for standardization? It's just really hard for me to read that as a legit complaint.

I can install chrome on Windows, Linux and Mac, so I give them a pass. Not to mention that was ancient history.

But you can't install the Chrome browser engine on iOS, because Apple forces Google to use the Safari web browser engine, as well as any other web browser for iOS that isn't Safari - they all are forced to use Safari under the hood.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#124

Post by robertoandred »

izacus wrote: post #110
snackbroken wrote: post #3

Providing an OS feature only to first-party programs is a plainly anticompetitive practice. Using your privileged position in one market (cell phones/cell phone operating systems) to gain an advantage in another market (smart phone applications) that you withhold from your competitors is a textbook case.

Based on other Chrome threads here, we do need to make sure that Apple maintains their exclusive monopoly on browser on iOS to prevent these things from happening. Right? Right?! :P

This isn't available in the Safari browser.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#125

Post by nomel »

chmod775 wrote: post #22

For those who don't know what the fuck "Liquid Glass effect" is: it's a sort of frosted glass look that apple uses for their UI. It's being sold as the best thing since sliced bread. Googling it felt like I entered a parallel universe.

Small demo: https://youtube.com/shorts/-2KaGU8G_vE

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#126

Post by robertoandred »

ivape wrote: post #24
snackbroken wrote: post #3

Providing an OS feature only to first-party programs is a plainly anticompetitive practice. Using your privileged position in one market (cell phones/cell phone operating systems) to gain an advantage in another market (smart phone applications) that you withhold from your competitors is a textbook case.

Shouldn’t this be easily available in Electron/Tauri and React Native apps?

React Native / Expo apps can get liquid glass via the actual underlying native ui elements.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#127

Post by nomel »

rckt wrote: post #76

> Whoever it was at Apple that decided to make this a CSS property is a genius because it makes it incredibly easy to provide different rules based on Liquid Glass support What is genius here? Create something, that nobody asked for, create an in-house CSS property to use across approved apps. Genius? I would simply call this a dirty trick. There are a lot of things, that they could have implemented, according to the…

> Create something, that nobody asked for

Their UI team asked for it, to use internally (so far), as part of the latest UI style.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#128

Post by dmix »

elaus wrote: post #53
brookst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait so are all non-standard CSS attributes "anticompetitive"? This seems like wild hyperbole. Is Google's "-webkit-tap-highlight-color" also anticompetitive? Should we ban the current practice of shipping proprietary CSS attributes while sometimes also proposing them for standardization? It's just really hard for me to read that as a legit complaint.

You can use `-webkit-tap-highlight-color` on your website or PWA and distribute it any way you want. It will just not work in non-webkit browsers like Firefox. What apple does and what the article talks about: They have a CSS property that ONLY they can use, you can't put that in your PWA, it won't work (no matter the browser).

They just released this feature internally. We have no idea what their plans are for this. The web doesn't broadly and suddenly adopt features like this anyway. It's very likely Apple is working on something to allow 3rd party devs to start using it via safari.

This is much ado about nothing.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#129

Post by leptons »

chuckadams wrote: post #95
hu3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. First, AR is currently aspirational at best. After decades of failures. Second, overlaying translucid UI over content makes separation of UI from content worse, not better. Windows Aero tried that 2 decades ago and, while it looked cool, they reverted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero

VR is still aspirational, but we already have AR making baby steps into everything. Every time you see a QR code for the menu burned into a restaurant table, you're looking at a sort of AR: the phone sees it differently than you. Then there's games, but that seems to be largely a passing fad, like 3D TV. I know, it barely qualifies as AR... but while I love watching the bleeding edge of tech, I'm glad overall that we…

QR codes do not qualify as Augmented Reality at all. "QR" is a data encoding format. It does not augment reality in any way.

The only tangential use of QR codes in AR is when a QR code is sometimes used as an anchor point, but the QR code isn't AR, it's merely an anchor point, and there are many other types of anchor points used for AR that are not QR codes.

If you're pointing a phone at a QR code and see some 3D thing pop out of it, that also isn't QR being AR, that's QR encoding data and the phone doing whatever it wants with that data. It could just as easily be a logo causing the AR device to do the same thing, or really any other kind of marker the AR program recognizes. QR codes are just convenient as they encode various kinds of data, so the program that scans it can react to what data is encoded in the QR code.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#130

Post by zamadatix »

ivape wrote: post #38
jakelazaroff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron doesn't use WebKit, so definitely not. Not sure about Tauri desktop, but how would you use it for Tauri mobile and React Native?

Woah, TIL. Chromium apparently forked WebKit in 2013. wtf? So, if you wanted webviews that could leverage this you’d basically need a native swift app with webviews to get access.

Even if you could get it you wouldn't be able to publish it on the App Store due to the permission it requires.
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