Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing Safari Technology Preview

webkit.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–176 of 176 posts

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#171

Post by crabasa »

coldtea wrote: post #161
crabasa wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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://jo…

> Safari is holding back the mobile web the exact same way IE held back the desktop web for the exact same reason: native apps. That's a classic tinfoil theory, but with absolutely no substance. First, Apple sells hardware, first and foremost, not apps (it's the inverse with Microsoft). Their app store profits are negligible compared to all else. Second, Apple has consistently made the best mobile web browser for man…

> First, Apple sells hardware

If you think that consumers are purchasing iPhones so that they can rock out on Safari and Mail, you are mistaken. A year ago over the App Store hit 100B cumulative app downloads:

http://www.statista.com/graphic/1/263794/number-of-downloads...

Native apps drive hardware purchase decisions for consumers. That's the lesson of Windows Phone.

> Safari's engine is what Chrome has been based on, and for most of its life it has been one and the same codebase.

You misunderstand how a browser is constructed. Browsers are much more than just a rendering engine like Webkit. Chrome and Safari have different JavaScript engines, support different web standards (no WebRTC for Safari!) and are architected in completely different ways. You might find this a helpful place to start:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/does-w...

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#172

Post by alwillis »

justabystander wrote: post #160
alwillis wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You realize that although WebKit supports 98%, Safari itself as of version 9 supports 53%. As is noted in your own link to the compatibility table. So, yes, keeping pace is a problem for Apple, since the other browsers are significantly ahead and the Safari 9 series was released half a year ago. Even Microsoft Edge has been doing better. You might actually have a leg to stand on when Safari 9.1, released 10 days ago,…

It's also unclear as to whether Safari Tech Preview will contain the majority of ES6 code in Webkit or if it will be "curated" into a significantly less compliant and useful state.

Apple has been clear from the moment they released Safari Technology Preview: Get a preview of the latest advances in Safari web technologies, including HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Safari Technology Preview includes the most recent version of WebKit, the rendering engine that powers Safari.

This is from https://developer.apple.com/safari/technology-preview/

Short answer: Safari Technology Preview also scores 98% on the ES6 test.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#173

Post by justabystander »

alwillis wrote: post #172
justabystander wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that although WebKit supports 98%, Safari itself as of version 9 supports 53%. As is noted in your own link to the compatibility table. So, yes, keeping pace is a problem for Apple, since the other browsers are significantly ahead and the Safari 9 series was released half a year ago. Even Microsoft Edge has been doing better. You might actually have a leg to stand on when Safari 9.1, released 10 days ago,…

It's also unclear as to whether Safari Tech Preview will contain the majority of ES6 code in Webkit or if it will be "curated" into a significantly less compliant and useful state. Apple has been clear from the moment they released Safari Technology Preview: Get a preview of the latest advances in Safari web technologies, including HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Safari Technology Preview includes the most recent version…

The most recent version of WebKit does not automatically mean that it's a scheduled build directly based off of their development branch. I agree that's the most reasonable way to do it, and it's what it implies. And it's easy to assume that's what they're doing. But they could just as easily be putting this in an intermediate tech preview branch and pulling individual commits.

The phrase "most recent version" could mean pulling from a dev branch, using the last successful build, pulling from a release branch, pulling from a testing branch, assigning arbitrary numbers and tags to commits and pulling from there, or even working from a staging repo where they cherrypick commits. These are all separate sources that could hve their own version series, and "most recent version" is a very relative statement. Anyone who's seen the divide between development and sales knows that phrase has enough wiggle room to fit a Challenger disaster inside, and marketing is Apple's specialty.

I really hope they start to pull the changes from WebKit. Safari sorely needs it. But Apple's not the kind of company you just take at their word unless it's independently verified. I get it if you want to believe. That's sweet. But I'd rather wait for the tests.

Even then, monthly builds are still not a public release schedule for Safari. It was six months with only minor fixes between 9.0 and 9.1. We're far more interested in a public stable release with usable ES6 support than builds with unstable features that won't be usable on sites this year. If preview builds were what would solve the problem, then the WebKit Nightlies would have been enough.

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#174

Post by chris_wot »

dang wrote: post #170
chris_wot wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, and what about those who tell me that I'm off topic when I'm not? Or those who don't look at my wider point and accuse me of bad faith comments? My only comment was that my score was going up and down like a yo-yo, and only because I was being accused of making off-topic comments. That's pretty tedious, no? Surely that's against HN guidelines?

There certainly are other tedious things besides that tedious thing, but still, please don't do it, even if provoked. Being a good HN commenter in the long run means learning to eat provocation, which admittedly sucks, but is true community service.

Fair point :-)

Re: Introducing Safari Technology Preview

#175

Post by nailer »

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…

It is backwards. HTML5 clipboard isn't implemented. Webcrypto is buggy. Those are just from the top of my head because my app uses them.
Post reply on HN