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New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

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Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#251

Post by avazhi »

marricks wrote: post #160
avazhi wrote: post #143

Is Apple going to do anything about Safari (on my 2021 16" M1 Pro) hitting 200 points in BrowserBench, while Chrome hits 299? Sure, Safari battery life is great, but the browser is slow, buggy (refreshes the page when I back a page half the time; can't speed up videos without audio distortion; typing into the search bar is laggy and I on a daily basis arrow down to select a previously used URL, hit enter, and then fi…

I have none of those problems on my M1 MacBook Air using Safari. I know no clue what extensions you're using or voxel based games you're running in browser but safari opens, closes, resizes, and runs websites in a far nicer way and cleaner way. I've never seen a search box stutter. Chrome basically owns the web outside of Mac though, so perhaps you're using some services that favor it. Or the search bar that sitters…

1Password, Wipr, Dark Reader, StopTheMadness. That's about it.

As for the affected websites, Lexis Advance, Westlaw, WSJ, NYT, the Economist, Ars Technica, Wired, Hacker News all display this behaviour. It's a Safari problem.

For whatever it's worth to others, in the past few hours I managed to download Orion and while I've got a very small sample size thus far, it's been basically perfect experience thus far. Really gotta wonder how the 2 trillion dollar company's browser team is getting outgunned by the 2 man team or whatever that Orion has.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#252

Post by whywhywhywhy »

dmitriid wrote: post #202
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No WebUSB either (Or ever I guess), I know some HN people might not be a fan of it but personally I think it has huge potential to cut down on engineering waste. No need to build custom apps for every platform to just interface with a hardware device and also because it's a shared spec makes hardware devices hackable and alternative clients easy to create so devices can live on if their creators companies go under.

WebUSB (and bluetooth and HID and Serial) are not standards. They are Chrome-only non-standards. Neither Safari nor Firefox are going to implement them.

Firefox is implementing WebMidi so I don't think this idea people are passing around that these are "not real standards" so won't be implemented holds much water.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#253

Post by ezfe »

avazhi wrote: post #147
ezfe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, on my M1 MacBook Air Safari hits 275, whereas Edge is 246 Safari: https://i.imgur.com/LcPD5eE.png Edge: https://i.imgur.com/eWhgSuU.png

what extensions do you have?

On Safari, just Wipr. On Edge, I've got Netflix Party. I don't think 1Password is enabled in either of them.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#254

Post by ezfe »

kalleboo wrote: post #175
ZYinMD wrote: post #163

When will they support webp on macOS 10? I guess never?

I wish they'd add an option to disable webp, it's really annoying to save a photo and get it in a format that's supported almost nowhere.

macOS includes a built in image reformatter on right-click that makes it very easy to get a JPEG/PNG out of any image your computer can open

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#255

Post by agust »

dmitriid wrote: post #250
agust wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, simple websites mostly work in Safari. But we're in 2022, and indeed a lot of companies develop web apps, and not simple websites like 20 years ago. The web itself is an app platform. The only browser preventing it to happen on mobile is Safari. Have a look at the desktop. There, web apps have replaced most native apps long ago.

> The web itself is an app platform. It's not. And frankly will never be. > The only browser preventing it to happen on mobile is Safari. It's not preventing anything > look at the desktop. There, web apps have replaced most native apps long ago. What a strange fantasy world you live in.

Very convincing, thank you for this well argued response.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#256

Post by Jcowell »

fleddr wrote: post #242

Credit where credit is due: this is a rarely good release. Cynical me has observed this annual pattern where Apple just before their developer conference suddenly becomes "genuinely" interested in the web community and actively listens to feedback. Then, things get back to normal, which means they don't implement anything, all feedback goes to /dev/null, documentation is lacking and bugs are never solved. It's hard t…

> Cynical me has observed this annual pattern where Apple just before their developer conference suddenly becomes "genuinely" interested in the web community and actively listens to feedback. Then, things get back to normal, which means they don't implement anything, all feedback goes to /dev/null, documentation is lacking and bugs are never solved.

This doesn’t make sense to me. Features takes time to discuss, roadmap, argue , implement, test, and ship. These things aren’t something you just ramp up just before their developer conference. I would be furious if I were a WebKit developer and told I don’t implement anything or take feedback all year up until a Yearly conference. Especially when Safari updated 7 times last year alone.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#257

Post by agust »

skavi wrote: post #151
adam_arthur wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legit the only reason I don't use iPhone is due to being forced to use Safari (or Safari rendering engine wrapped)

Safari on iPhone is by far the fastest mobile browsing experience you can get. Are there extensions or web features you need that Safari doesn’t have?

Not sure about the fastest, but definitely the most buggy web experience you can get, unfortunately.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#258

Post by dmitriid »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #252
dmitriid wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebUSB (and bluetooth and HID and Serial) are not standards. They are Chrome-only non-standards. Neither Safari nor Firefox are going to implement them.

Firefox is implementing WebMidi so I don't think this idea people are passing around that these are "not real standards" so won't be implemented holds much water.

I was responding to WebUSB, and tacked a few other hardware APIs there. Both Firefox and Safari view them as harmful in their current form. They are not really on a standards track for now, they are "Draft Community Reports" or somesuch.

For something to become a standard that something needs two independent implementations. Before that it's just some browser's prototyping stage, no matter how many times Chrome will tell you otherwise.

According to chromestatus, WebMIDI now has positive position from Mozilla and negative position from Safari: https://chromestatus.com/feature/4923613069180928

Just three years ago Firefox's position was also largely negative due to unresolved security issues: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 It's possible those issues are now resolved, that's why it's making its way into Firefox. This means that Safari's stance may also change.

Same goes for other hardware APIs: from the point of view of both Safari and Firefox those specs have security and privacy holes the size of Jupiter. Not to mention that the quality of some of these so-called specs is very low. If/When these issues are resolved, we may see them implemented in these browsers, too.

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#259

Post by strix_varius »

culi wrote: post #49
nikodunk wrote: post #17

Now all major browsers support the element without polyfill. Yay! https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/di...

And just like that, Safari has surpassed Chrome in interop 2022 https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022

Web application developers will rightly question the claim that Safari has surpassed Chrome in anything in 2022. With "Safari Technology Preview" and the test suite that this site has chosen to group into "Experimental," you'll see FF: 74, Safari: 73, Chrome: 72.

With "stable" and actually-consumed versions of browsers (a more important goal for "interop"), you'll see:

- FF: 74

- Chrome: 66

- Safari: 50

Re: New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

#260

Post by strix_varius »

skavi wrote: post #151
adam_arthur wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legit the only reason I don't use iPhone is due to being forced to use Safari (or Safari rendering engine wrapped)

Safari on iPhone is by far the fastest mobile browsing experience you can get. Are there extensions or web features you need that Safari doesn’t have?

It's hard to take this comment in good faith given the state of Safari and Apple's monopolistic policies around Webkit on iOS, but:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...

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