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Introducing Safari Technology Preview

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Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#131

Post by wyqydsyq »

shadowfiend wrote: post #117
chris_wot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their time to fix bugs and regressions in iOS is 3 months! Edit: Again, I write a very unpopular opinion. Yet there are hundreds of regressions that have bit developers. Some of those bugs require workarounds that would be otherwise unnecessary on any normal environment with rapid updates - like Chrome or Firefox. That increases developer effort, and there have been cases that Apple have entirely missed their update…

Downvoter here: I downvoted early on because you're making an argument that seems to me both not particularly good and off-topic to the post you replied to. OP posited: “Apple's been taking a number of steps over the last few months to show that they take Safari/WebKit development seriously. This is another positive step in the right direction.” You basically responded, “They're still not as good as I want them to be…

The problem isn't necessarily Apple's laziness with updating Safari, I think it's more the fact that they insist on using their own JavaScript engine. They could very easily just use Blink and V8 which would significantly cut down the maintenance work in keeping Safari up to date as well as leveraging the work already done rather than trying to reinvent the wheel to nobody's benefit.

For example most ES2015 features have been available in Chrome, Edge and Firefox for over 6 months now, but Safari still doesn't support any of it (other than this tech preview) because it's development time is shared with the rest of Apple's ecosystem.

Unless Apple dedicates more resources to Safari in order to keep pace with the rest of the browsers, they'll be playing catch-up ad infinitum.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#132

Post by bartvk »

ino wrote: post #126
kingnight wrote: post #110

I find Safari to be the nicest browser to use in general, but Chrome seems to have a leg up on performance in key areas like new tab creation especially when opening a link in a new tab. It's weird lapse for Safari to lag in certain situations. I hope they continue to iteratively improve the performance of the general UI and improve the general behavior of the developer tools in addition to adding these new techs.

If you change the new tab to a blank page in the preferences, it opens instantly. I just wish one thing: that it would remember the zoom level on a per website basis. It's incredible that it's still impossible to do so. Don't the devs use Safari? Or maybe they all have perfect vision and the most expensive displays.

In my case, it lags (up to two-three seconds) even if I set new tabs to about:blank. Haven't been able to find a workaround, and it occurs infrequently.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#133

Post by karmelapple »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #84
Longhanks wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit runs on Windows. It's not Apple's task to package it nicely for you. Chrome was using WebKit a long time, Blink is a WebKit fork. Both run on Windows.

> WebKit runs on Windows. WebKit != Safari or Chrome or anything else. Safari has quirks that you cannot experience without using Safari itself, which you still cannot run without a Mac. When you've wasted hours trying to track down one of these issues and realise it's a Safari quirk you'll understand my annoyance. > It's not Apple's task to package it nicely for you. I'm not sure where you get this idea from given t…

It would be nice if they did release even a developer-focused version of Safari for Windows to help with testing for devs that prefer Windows.

However, this same problem exists outside of just web browsers. I help create native Android apps in Java. I wish every hardware manufacturer created a nice emulator for me to test the specific kinks out on their device. If Google enforced this policy, even better.

But that's not happening.

I guess the question is: should we expect / demand it to happen?

To make software that runs well on an Android device, my best bet is to have that device in my hand, just like having a Mac in hand (or one into which you can remote) is the situation today. It's not great, but it's not isolated to Apple and Safari.

Thankfully both mobile devices and browsers have services online where we can get screenshots of an app or website running on a real device or driver, without us laying out cash to buy them all.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#134

Post by crabasa »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #6

Apple's been taking a number of steps over the last few months to show that they take Safari/WebKit development seriously. This is another positive step in the right direction. While I never agreed with the nonsensical "Safari is the New IE" meme that was going around, I did fear that Apple's tendency to develop things in a vacuum would continue to harm WebKit relative to Blink, Gecko, etc. But all signs are pointing…

Safari IS the new IE. Proof? IE executed a "developer preview" strategy leading up to IE9 6 years ago. I should know, I was a PM on that team.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/10/ie9-pr...

This entire episode is just a rinse and repeat of what MSFT did years ago in response to negative developer sentiment.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#135

Post by kalleboo »

dccoolgai wrote: post #113
mgreg wrote: post #7

Anyone know if they plan on introducing support for Service Workers ("Progressive Web Apps" in Google parlance) soon?

This is what sticks in my craw about Safari: it feels like they are intentionally dragging their feet on this because it would bring the Open Web to parity with Native Mobile and their App Store. At least IE never had a built-in conflict of interest in upgrading.

Meanwhile they're pretty good at keeping up with simpler ways of blurring the lines between web sites and native apps, with APIs like AirPlay, Picture-in-Picture when you leave the browser, Force Touch...

I've always felt the WebKit/Safari team is just understaffed. IIRC there was graph posted here a while back showing the number of contributors on the major open source browser platforms and Google has a frightening amount of developers working on Chrome.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#136

Post by lstamour »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #131
shadowfiend wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoter here: I downvoted early on because you're making an argument that seems to me both not particularly good and off-topic to the post you replied to. OP posited: “Apple's been taking a number of steps over the last few months to show that they take Safari/WebKit development seriously. This is another positive step in the right direction.” You basically responded, “They're still not as good as I want them to be…

The problem isn't necessarily Apple's laziness with updating Safari, I think it's more the fact that they insist on using their own JavaScript engine. They could very easily just use Blink and V8 which would significantly cut down the maintenance work in keeping Safari up to date as well as leveraging the work already done rather than trying to reinvent the wheel to nobody's benefit. For example most ES2015 features…

Except the reason Blink forked from WebKit was all the Apple-specific code they could drop. Apple really focuses on hardware integration and getting maximum battery life out of their engine. I can't say the same about Chrome yet.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#137

Post by coldtea »

crabasa wrote: post #134
jaredcwhite wrote: post #6

Apple's been taking a number of steps over the last few months to show that they take Safari/WebKit development seriously. This is another positive step in the right direction. While I never agreed with the nonsensical "Safari is the New IE" meme that was going around, I did fear that Apple's tendency to develop things in a vacuum would continue to harm WebKit relative to Blink, Gecko, etc. But all signs are pointing…

Safari IS the new IE. Proof? IE executed a "developer preview" strategy leading up to IE9 6 years ago. I should know, I was a PM on that team. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/10/ie9-pr... This entire episode is just a rinse and repeat of what MSFT did years ago in response to negative developer sentiment.

>IE executed a "developer preview" strategy leading up to IE9 6 years ago. I should know, I was a PM on that team.

That (Safari adopting "developer previews" now) doesn't mean much regarding whether Safari is the new IE. When people say that phrase they don't mean their both trying (or having tried) developer previews. They mean whether Safari is as backwards and holding the web back as IE6 was for ages.

Which is not. IE9 was years behind Safari at the time you talk about (6 years ago) --and really first version of IE that started to really compete at all for the modern web--, while Safari was, and still is (the preview) at the top of the heap regarding ES6 compliance, etc.

And while much smaller in userbase, Safari grew along with the modern web, introducing major new features that IE hasn't done since 2000 or so (Canvas, CSS animations, etc), being the basis for Chrome, and getting the JIT treatment right along the 2 other modern browsers (Chrome, FF).

As for the mobile space, Safari has been lagging in some features (compared to desktop browsers), but was always ahead of the pack in lots of areas, to the point one cannot say mobile Chrome is that better. In fact, maybe the opposite:

https://blog.runspired.com/2016/03/25/the-chrome-distortion-...

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#138

Post by coldtea »

chris_wot wrote: post #17
jaredcwhite wrote: post #6

Apple's been taking a number of steps over the last few months to show that they take Safari/WebKit development seriously. This is another positive step in the right direction. While I never agreed with the nonsensical "Safari is the New IE" meme that was going around, I did fear that Apple's tendency to develop things in a vacuum would continue to harm WebKit relative to Blink, Gecko, etc. But all signs are pointing…

Their time to fix bugs and regressions in iOS is 3 months! Edit: Again, I write a very unpopular opinion. Yet there are hundreds of regressions that have bit developers. Some of those bugs require workarounds that would be otherwise unnecessary on any normal environment with rapid updates - like Chrome or Firefox. That increases developer effort, and there have been cases that Apple have entirely missed their update…

>Their time to fix bugs and regressions in iOS is 3 months!

So? There are open bugs, including VERY annoying/visible ones, for Chrome that languish for half a decade on its bug page, despite tons of votes...

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#139

Post by coldtea »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #131
shadowfiend wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoter here: I downvoted early on because you're making an argument that seems to me both not particularly good and off-topic to the post you replied to. OP posited: “Apple's been taking a number of steps over the last few months to show that they take Safari/WebKit development seriously. This is another positive step in the right direction.” You basically responded, “They're still not as good as I want them to be…

The problem isn't necessarily Apple's laziness with updating Safari, I think it's more the fact that they insist on using their own JavaScript engine. They could very easily just use Blink and V8 which would significantly cut down the maintenance work in keeping Safari up to date as well as leveraging the work already done rather than trying to reinvent the wheel to nobody's benefit. For example most ES2015 features…

Only Safari (betas) have better ES6 support than Chrome ones according to a latest article on Ars.

And Safari saves like 20% to 30% of your battery life over Chrome...

http://bgr.com/2015/08/05/google-chrome-vs-safari-battery-li...

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/10/8381447/chrome-macbook-bat...

And both are due to Apple's own JIT engine...

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#140

Post by gsnedders »

coldtea wrote: post #139
wyqydsyq wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't necessarily Apple's laziness with updating Safari, I think it's more the fact that they insist on using their own JavaScript engine. They could very easily just use Blink and V8 which would significantly cut down the maintenance work in keeping Safari up to date as well as leveraging the work already done rather than trying to reinvent the wheel to nobody's benefit. For example most ES2015 features…

Only Safari (betas) have better ES6 support than Chrome ones according to a latest article on Ars. And Safari saves like 20% to 30% of your battery life over Chrome... http://bgr.com/2015/08/05/google-chrome-vs-safari-battery-li... http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/10/8381447/chrome-macbook-bat... And both are due to Apple's own JIT engine...

> And Safari saves like 20% to 30% of your battery life over Chrome... > And both are due to Apple's own JIT engine...

I feel like that claim needs a source. I'd be amazed if the JS engine had anywhere near such a substantial effect on battery life.

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