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Introducing Safari Technology Preview

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Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#141

Post by alwillis »

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…

WebKit supports 98% of ES2015, more than any other major browser engine, so keeping pace isn’t a problem for Apple: https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

Now with Safari Technical Preview, if you want access to all of it in a more accessible package than the WebKit Nightlies, you can have it.

BTW, Apple has been doing what appears to be a amazingly good work on JavaScript Core lately, extending their performance lead: https://webkit.org/blog/5852/introducing-the-b3-jit-compiler....

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#142

Post by crabasa »

coldtea wrote: post #137
crabasa wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

> They mean whether Safari is as backwards and holding the web back as IE6 was for ages.

Safari is holding back the mobile web the exact same way IE held back the desktop web for the exact same reason: native apps.

> while Safari was... at the top of the heap

Lol? I know very few (none?) web developers who uses Safari as their primary target browser. ES6 support or not.

> cherry picked pro-Safari blog post

https://joreteg.com/blog/why-i-switched-to-android

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#143

Post by tangue »

yuhong wrote: post #59
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.

I was wondering what is the current status of WebKit for Windows since the Blink fork for some time now.

I've never had the courage to build Webkit on Windows but Midori (which is webkit based) works quite well on Win 8

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#144

Post by dang »

chris_wot wrote: post #129
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…

I don't care how much I've been downvoted, especially by someone who contributes their own comments so infrequently to HN, but it's funny how you only now decided to make a comment. I personally feel that Apple are still not as good as not only I want them to be, but pretty much anyone who uses or develops for iOS. But yes, you categorize my comments and opinions well - Apple are indeed not very responsive, and yes A…

Please don't go on about getting downvoted in HN comments. The guidelines explicitly ask everyone not to do that, because it's tedious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#145

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #137
crabasa wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#146

Post by ricardobeat »

ceejayoz wrote: post #38
chris_wot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://bencollier.net/2016/03/unable-to-open-links-in-safar... http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/technology/iphone-safari-bug... http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/its-not-just-you-clicking-o... http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/new-... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/27/apple_safari_bug/ http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&obj... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ga…

OK, so users with a particular app had Safari issues, the app got patched, and Apple's planning on fixing their end of the bug per http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/its-not-just-you-clicking-o... . "Booking.com associates its app with all sorts of domains — too many domains to be precise. With 2.4MB worth of domain-name-to-deep-link entries, Safari and other apps crash when iOS checks links against its Universal Link…

There is no workaround, patching the site association file only prevents the issue for new users. Everyone else still has a non-functional browser for a week - I'd say that warrants an urgent patch.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#147

Post by masklinn »

tapsboy wrote: post #121

Happy to see Webkit at 98% ES6 completion. Hopefully, all of these updates are flowing into Safari http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/#webkit

ESnext is lagging behind though (12% to >30% for Firefox and Chrome)

On the other hand, i18n API support: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/esintl/ not done yet, but at >90% it's way better than Safari's 50% and most of the failures seem to be accepting values it should throw errors for in i18n API.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#148

Post by aorth »

Where is Safari in terms of security? Speed, battery usage, and standards support are one thing, but as far as I know, neither Firefox nor Safari have the robust level of sandboxing and other Chrome security features.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#149

Post by vardump »

sandis wrote: post #93
matthewmacleod wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did release Safari for Windows. Nobody used it, and I guess they figured the cost of upkeep wasn't worth it.

While it was pretty bad, I remember Safari for Windows rendering text much nicer than any Windows browser (or app) at the time - particularly, the font smoothing. I recall using Win Safari to take "marketing" screenshots of an web app.

What? While font shapes might have been more true to the original, Safari on Windows had very blurry font rendering, nowhere near as sharp as native.

It was very painful to read.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#150

Post by blackkettle »

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…

IMHO, until they decide to provide proper HTML5 support - particularly access to the getUserMedia and general WebRTC APIs - or at least allow 3rd party vendors like Google and Mozilla to do so by themselves, this is not a believable sentiment.
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