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Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

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Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#281

Post by heavyset_go »

ArchOversight wrote: post #107
nwienert wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I accidentally disable this or something? I’ve never seen it. Everyone acts like 1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar 2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive 3. If the way they did design it was still too annoying, they wouldn’t make it less so, or make it easy to turn off Why do so many on HN argue from “if it existed it would…

> 1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar It is a popup right now... it is in your face and requires immediate action. An example: https://imgur.com/a/GfqUuAZ Using: https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html > 2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive It is obtrusive in that it is a full-window popover and you can't go to any other…

Safari does not use the Web Push or Notification API, Apple has a bespoke Safari Push Notifications[1] API on macOS, so this poor implementation is completely on Apple.

On Firefox, it just puts a little message window icon in your address bar if you didn't trigger the Notifications API permission via a control on the website. When you do trigger the permissions through user interaction, and unobstructive widget shows up[2] that can be promptly hidden without ever actually interacting with it, unlike in your Safari example.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...

[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/push-notifications-fire...

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#282

Post by melq »

ralusek wrote: post #276
melq wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the person said "I don't want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone", and then you responded by explaining how one can prevent such notifications via configuration. That is true, but not really relevant to what he said. He didn't say "I wish there was a way to configure my browser to not send notifications to my phone". You then followed up with a snarky line telling them the thing th…

If I said "I don't want bears to be able to maul me in my sleep," and someone said "here's an option you can check which prevents that from ever happening," please explain to me how that failed to solve my problem.

OP didn't say "I want to prevent chrome from sending notifications". If he did, then sure, having an option toggle would solve his problem. But that's not what he said.

He said he doesn't want chrome to be able to push notifications to his phone. Having an option to disable that feature means it is has to be possible in the first place.

Maybe I am being overly pedantic, but to me the distinction matters.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#283

Post by tristan957 »

pjmlp wrote: post #278
GekkePrutser wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a contest really. I'm happy using Firefox knowing it's got a small marketshare. The same way I vote for a small political party knowing they'll never win any election. With Firefox I don't see any issues related to the marketshare. All add-ons I want are available and all websites work just fine except one or two that just block it outright just out of spite (Apple Business Manager - business.apple…

Sure, but what do you think it will happen the day Google no longer supports its development? As far as I know Mozilla doesn't have that many sources to keep it running, and the latest round of layouffs was kind of a signal of what is yet to come.

Your speculation doesn't hold water. They have been increasing their hiring recently, and their layoffs were largely in areas where community members could power development and in experimental areas. MDN still exists and has good info. Note anyone can contribute straight on GitHub. Servo got picked up by the Linux Foundation after much of Servo already got integrated into Firefox. The Rust Foundation recently started and multiple big names have picked up large Rust contributors. So Mozilla made a smart move laying off those people. People on HN don't want to admit it.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#284

Post by heavyset_go »

Google234 wrote: post #124
heavyset_go wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone. You might not, but our users requested desktop and mobile notifications. The notifications let sick patients know when their prescriptions are ready, facilitate care-provider check ups, etc.

Have those users download some simple app if this is so important to them. Or let them enter their phone number to get more reliable text notifications. Just because you have a good use doesn’t outweigh the all the bad abuse.

This is, unfortunately, the route we're going, and was addressed in the OP:

> Despite the web app working perfectly on Android and across Windows, Linux and macOS without native integration, we now must dedicate time and resources to develop an additional iOS app just so iOS users, which over half of Americans are, aren't left out.

> This is an expensive endeavor time-wise and money-wise, during a pandemic where time is of the essence and resources are stretched thin. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

The end result is that, right now, some sick patients are punished for their wrong choice of phone or tablet because the native app doesn't exist yet, while others don't have a problem.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#285

Post by tristan957 »

foepys wrote: post #155
adrr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People choose to install chrome it doesn't come with Windows Machines or Macs yet is a very popular CHOICE of browser. IOS we have no choice and forced to to use Safari.

People chose to install Chrome because Google displayed prominent ads on their search engine and optimized their web apps to Chrome. Basically nagging people until they installed it.

Nags you about installing it on any Google site essentially. Not just Google.com

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#286

Post by pjmlp »

tristan957 wrote: post #283
pjmlp wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what do you think it will happen the day Google no longer supports its development? As far as I know Mozilla doesn't have that many sources to keep it running, and the latest round of layouffs was kind of a signal of what is yet to come.

Your speculation doesn't hold water. They have been increasing their hiring recently, and their layoffs were largely in areas where community members could power development and in experimental areas. MDN still exists and has good info. Note anyone can contribute straight on GitHub. Servo got picked up by the Linux Foundation after much of Servo already got integrated into Firefox. The Rust Foundation recently starte…

We are talking about browsers with serious market share here, Rust and Servo are irrelevant to the future of the Web.

Let Google close the money stream and lets see what happens.

I hope to be wrong.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#287

Post by tristan957 »

Pxtl wrote: post #24

What about Edge? I found Firefox unusable on my phone - prone to crashing and a bit slow. Meanwhile, Edge for Android includes some of the privacy and Adblocking features of FF but still uses the Chromium renderer so it doesn't sacrifice performance. I'm very happy with it. On desktop I'm all FF, of course.

Full version of Firefox on Android hasn't crashed on me in months. I know what you are referring to. I would recommend giving it a try again. New version is also very fast.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#288

Post by heavyset_go »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #268
heavyset_go wrote: post #17

> (Conversely, if Safari refuses to implement some alleged 'feature', it becomes much less useful even if Chrome does implement it.) The fact that Apple refuses to implement basic features in mobile Safari that Firefox and Chrome have had for years now, and the fact that they refuse to allow other browser engines on iOS is the reason why we can't have nice things like progressive web apps. I recently worked on a heal…

Yeah it's strange because PWAs were Apple's original plan for iOS apps :)They didn't yet exist under the PWA name but this was definitely what they were aiming at. But Safari will never be a serious option for me. I want the same browser on all my systems and I use a lot more than Mac and iOS. So Firefox it is.

I still remember the early days of iOS and webOS via Palm and HP, and now LG. We had HTML/CSS/JS powered mobile apps available on the Palm Pre in 2009, and it was pretty great.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#289

Post by mrtksn »

danShumway wrote: post #269
mrtksn wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the that’s the obvious solution at first but if you think about it, this will make every site ever to greet you with “add to home screen” popup. Just like aggressively trying to make you install their app from the appstore. The number will increase since there won’t be a barrier of entry. Then there would be people who are trying to make you "install" their PWA at any cost, then sell their install base…

Right now, if you go to any website on mobile, you get a big popup telling you to install a native app. What would be different? Getting asked to enable a browser feature is not more annoying than getting asked to exit the app and install a brand new native app with worse sandboxing and privacy. It's at most the same level of annoying.

There's some barrier of entry(buy an account and create documents describing your app) to have a mobile app, with PWA it will be removed and you will have every single website trying to make you "install" their web app, just like every single website is trying to take your e-mail address or make you create an account.

The app experience is almost always better because you always have more screen real estate, higher performance, better persistence and the developer has more opportunities to monetise you which eases the need to shove all the adds technologically possible into your face before you leave and never come back.

Visiting a new website in 2021 has the following installation process:

0) click a link

1) download the website. Websites are bloated these days, things jump around until you download and execute a few MB of JS, CSS, HTML and so on.

2) accept/deny tracking(usually designed to trick you into accepting)

3) accept/deny subscribing to newsletters(usually the skip button is obscured)

4) try to figure out what is this all about, trying to distinguish site element from ads

5) if you still want to continue you probably will need to create an account for anything that's beyond an article. Many times, you will need to create an account even for an article

6) after all that jazz you can actually try out the app/website or consume the article

7) if you like what you see, you need to bookmark/add to home screen

An app experiance is something like this:

0) click a link

1) see screenshots and explanation of what this app is all about, accompanied with reviews and ratings

3) if you like what you se, tap install, make a fingerprint scan or a face scan to download and open the app

4) try out the app. if you like it, it will be on your homescreen to use again. if you don't like it, you can delete it from the same place.

For both cases, any use hardware or system API you will get about the same popup asking you to give access to location/microphone/camera/bluetooth. For the mobile app the experience of managing it will be easier since it will have standardised settings in the device settings and you know the permissions are revoked when you delete the app.

For web apps you don't have an uninstall process. You need to dive into browser settings to remove history, cookies etc.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#290

Post by GekkePrutser »

pjmlp wrote: post #278
GekkePrutser wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a contest really. I'm happy using Firefox knowing it's got a small marketshare. The same way I vote for a small political party knowing they'll never win any election. With Firefox I don't see any issues related to the marketshare. All add-ons I want are available and all websites work just fine except one or two that just block it outright just out of spite (Apple Business Manager - business.apple…

Sure, but what do you think it will happen the day Google no longer supports its development? As far as I know Mozilla doesn't have that many sources to keep it running, and the latest round of layouffs was kind of a signal of what is yet to come.

Well then we'll see what happens... For now it's great. Nothing is forever, even Internet explorer came to an end after its (totally undeserved) monopoly.

I would pay a lot though to keep it going. Like 100 a year or so (for me that's a lot :) )

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