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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

#141

Post by mcphage »

cube2222 wrote: post #112

Honestly, why don't they just add it to Safari as a css property? I'm confident we'll have a ton of websites trying to replicate the Liquid Glass aesthetic, and will do so in a way that will eat half your laptops CPU. As the article notes, with this in CSS, it's extremely easy to have different CSS depending on whether this is available or not. At the same time, it's not like other browsers don't do "non-standard" th…

> Honestly, why don't they just add it to Safari as a css property?

It's possible that they will in the future, but are still deciding on the API or implementation.

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

#142

Post by seanhunter »

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.

Not sure it is "plainly anticompetitive" in the legal sense. In the US, the laws on anti-competitive practices are the Sherman Act and the Clayton act. To be anticompetitive, the courts use the "per se" rule and the "rule of reason". "per se" rule covers things which are specifically listed in the laws as being anticompetitive (eg price fixing).

This isn't in the list of per se anticompetitive practises so it would need to be covered by the "rule of reason". That would require someone to demonstrate actual harm to competition that flowed directly from the illegal nature of the practise and was not compensated by some offsetting procompetitive benefit and there is no less restrictive alternative.

I don't see how a CSS property would meet the standard of actual harm to competition, especially since noone is stopping you from making your own liquid glass css if you want to (as far as I can see).

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

#143

Post by hk1337 »

Maybe they don't want anyone using it...yet?

I'm sure they know with the latest OS release that a lot of people are going to want to start using this immediately, perhaps they want to work out the public use of it internally first?

There's definitely some unfounded accusations going on in this thread about this too. Maybe they're right? Maybe they're wrong?

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

#144

Post by monocularvision »

dcarmo wrote: post #14
iruoy wrote: post #2

> It stands to reason that Apple wouldn't have developed this feature if they weren't using it. Where? We have no idea. But they must be using it somewhere . The fact that none of us have noticed exactly where suggests that we're interacting with webviews in our daily use of iOS without ever even realising it. This is what stood out to me. I've never really suspected webviews and can't think of a place now.

The App Store app seems to be using web views extensively.

It is not. Apple made a big deal about the changeover a few years back.

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

#145

Post by monocularvision »

bigyabai wrote: post #75
brookst wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love or hate liquid glass, the paradigm shift from "UI chrome is a wrapper around app content" to "UI is overlayed on top of app content" seems like the future. It's well aligned with AR and better separates UI layout from content for different screen sizes. I'm neutral on this first implementation (some good, some bad). But I think the approach will be picked up by essentially everyone. Good news for you, there's no…

> seems like the future Please, please cite sources for this. Without context you are really just drawing conjecture here. Apple certainly seems invested in the idea of an AR future. But users do not - ARkit integrations are few-and-far between, Pokemon Go is a dead fad and Vision Pro failed harder than almost any other contemporary Apple product. It seems less like Apple is skating to the puck, and more like they're…

“seems” indicates conjecture

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

#146

Post by monocularvision »

JimDabell wrote: post #73
bstsb wrote: post #8

> you have to toggle a setting in WKPreferences called useSystemAppearance... and it's private. So if you use it, say goodbye to App Store approval. is this true? i know very little of iOS development but i swear i remember watching a decompilation of an app that used various internal APIs to provide animated home screen widgets

That would not get through the App Store review process.

Depends on how you implement it.

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

#147

Post by IshKebab »

skrebbel wrote: post #9

I like "Alastair's Grand Theory of In-App Webviews": the main reason webviews in apps have such a bad reputation is because you don't notice the webviews that are integrated seamlessly

I'll concede if you can name one webview that is integrated seamlessly. Maybe the average person wouldn't realise but I think we'd have seen lots of articles about it here. It would be a standard rebuttal to every webview debate, "but Foo is implemented as a webview so it can be done".

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

#148

Post by rs186 »

leptons wrote: post #123
rs186 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Looks like logic is lost here. My point is that the fact that Google used nonstandard feature so many years ago does not end up forcing users to choose a specific platform, which is the complaint there. And every browser has always done something special for itself. Whether "real" Chrome is available on iOS and how Apple comes into the question is completely irrelevant.

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

#149

Post by brookst »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #117
reaperducer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use this CSS liquid glass effect in your app, Apple will reject it from the App Store. Citation needed. The blog article speculates this, but there is no proof.

If you are ignorant to Apple rules and practices, please don't be obnoxious about it. Apple has developer guidelines for the App Store, and they say you cannot use private APIs! They do not publish any "proof" to cite beyond what they write there. And they interpret and enforce the rules at their own whim. The private API is here: https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/613c42873c56e2b2073f91... it's on WKWebView and r…

Are you really asserting that a CSS selector is a private API? This is either a really wild misunderstanding about the difference between CSS and API, or somehow I totally misread your post. But I did re-read a few times and that seems to be the claim?

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

#150

Post by olivia-banks »

galad87 wrote: post #36
quartz722a8c wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fairly certain Apple Music makes pretty heavy use of webviews.

Actually it does not. It used to, but then was rewritten. The Accessibility Inspector app can be used to see what's the class of the UI elements, if you want to check.

I think it still might. I use it all the time on my laptop, and periodically if I do something funky with the network, the entire view panel says that there was an internal server error in that classic no-CSS Times New Roman font. Do you have a source for this?
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