For developers, Safari is crap and outdated • Hacker News Board

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#281

Post by rikroots » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

jw14 wrote: post #52

kouteiheika wrote: post #10

Speaking from personal experience as a developer (although YMMV) - this is totally true. And I'm not even talking about some newfangled APIs like WebUSB and such (I don't really care about those personally). Safari's handling of regular HTML + CSS is regularly broken compared to other browsers. (At least in my experience.) Open the site in Chromium. Yep it works. Open the site in Firefox. Yep it works. Open the site…

Broken HTML+CSS in Safari? Examples? I started using Safari as my daily driver because I use all apple devices and I like extending my battery life. Before deciding that, I did stints with Firefox and Brave, both of whom had poor sync'ing. I can't remember the last time a site had broken HTML/CSS with Safari. My impression is the desire to have good mobile support keeps Safari support alive. I think I encountered mor…

When 3d rotating absolutely positioned elements that lie over each other, Chrome/Firefox/IE will display elements in their entirety on top of each other. Safari gets them to intersect with each other in weird-yet-mysterious ways that I've never been able to fathom[1].

If Safari recognises and/or honours the backfaceVisibility CSS property, then I've yet to implement it correctly on a web page[2].

Safari doesn't allow SVG filters to be applied to elements[3]. Applying SVG filters to other elements is (I think) fine.

Talking about Safari and the element, Safari will show an italicised text (ctx.font = "italic 12px Arial, sans-serif") to be stamped onto the canvas, but emboldened text (ctx.font = "bold 12px Arial, sans-serif") displays as normal, non-bold text. If you want bold text to show in a canvas element on Safari, you need to use a specifically emboldened font.[4]

... the list could go on (and on) ...

Examples

[1] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/dom-002.html

[2] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/dom-008.html

[3] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/filters-501.html

[4] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/canvas-016.html

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#282

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:51 AM UTC

rubyn00bie wrote: post #18

> Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. This is just false, or at best only half of the story to make a false equivalence. IE was cutting edge until Firefox. The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features. It would “fix” missing tags, that would then be broken on ev…

[deleted]

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#283

Post by pixiemagic » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:55 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #190

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that developers are simply angry with Apple for not letting them to fiddle with the latest stuff that Google is experimenting with. That is absolute bullshit. Browser push notifications have been out for years on other browsers (INCLUDING desktop Safari), and they are the one thing that Apple is dragging their feet on the most because they know it's the most important thing that prevents a dev from just d…

Push notifications are also a terrible feature that I don’t want on any of my browsers including desktop Safari. I don’t want developers to even have the option to show me a prompt to enable them.

I like having them for certain sites, but in Firefox at least, you can block sites from even requesting them if you really never want to use them.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#284

Post by some1else » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

rubyn00bie wrote: post #18

> Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. This is just false, or at best only half of the story to make a false equivalence. IE was cutting edge until Firefox. The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features. It would “fix” missing tags, that would then be broken on ev…

I disagree. The article author is likely referring to the period when IE version 6 was the major browser on the market (from 2001 to 2009), a time many of us fondly remember as the web development ice age. It absolutely did lack features present in other browsers, such as SVG support, transparent PNG support, the full scope of CSS 2.1, countless standard JavaScript APIs (remember jQuery), etc. Rendering bugs added insult to injury, but the lack of features was real. Microsoft didn't release IE7 until 2006.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#285

Post by peterkelly » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:00 AM UTC

> Progressive web apps are really cool, because they can give you the following capabilities that you would normally expect with a native app:

> - Run full-screen (no visible browser UI)

> - OS-level notifications and alerts

> - Ability to use the app when the device is offline

> - Local data storage and retrieval

> - Install an app icon on your smartphone’s home screen

> - Access to hardware functions such as the camera, microphone, USB port, etc.

None of this functionality belongs in a web browser.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#286

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #87

rubyn00bie wrote: post #18

> Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. This is just false, or at best only half of the story to make a false equivalence. IE was cutting edge until Firefox. The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features. It would “fix” missing tags, that would then be broken on ev…

Thank you. I have no idea what these people are talking about. They obviously didn't actually do development back then. > Apple took years to finally add WebRTC support to Safari, far enough behind Chrome and Firefox that it practically became a running joke among developers and even industry observers. Really? Because no one I know uses WebRTC and would rather use ffmpeg and sockets to do serious work like that over…

> Apple took years to finally add WebRTC support to Safari, far enough behind Chrome and Firefox

"Far behind Chrome" should never be used in a sentence. Ever. Chrome releases up to 40 new "standard" features once every two months, many of them are just internal Chrome APIs with a "standards spec" in the form of a draft.

Specifically for WebRTC. It was shipped in Chrome 23, in May 2012.

Guess what? Here's the timeline:

- In 2010 Google buys a company called Global IP solutions with some proprietary tech

- In May 2011 it opensources this tech

- In October 2011 publishes the draft spec

- Just 7 months later ships it enabled by default in Chrome

Do you know when the final stable spec arrived? In May 2018, full seven years later after Chrome enabled it by default.

That's why Safari had it implemented since September 2017, because the spec was finally in a proper shape.

No idea why Firefox rushed headlong into it though.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#287

Post by collaborative » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #285

> Progressive web apps are really cool, because they can give you the following capabilities that you would normally expect with a native app: > - Run full-screen (no visible browser UI) > - OS-level notifications and alerts > - Ability to use the app when the device is offline > - Local data storage and retrieval > - Install an app icon on your smartphone’s home screen > - Access to hardware functions such as the ca…

Says who? You are free to not use PWAs. Just let people choose for themselves

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#288

Post by simondotau » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #232

simondotau wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. Microsoft seriously tried with Edge, but the pace of change set by Chrome was too much for them. The only group even close to keeping pace with Google is Mozilla—and their market share numbers are starting to look concerning. Given the current trajectory, we can't place long term hopes in Mozilla. If neither Microsoft nor Apple can keep up, and the Hacker News crowd thinks that's okay, we might as well…

Apple chooses not to keep up. They obviously would have the resources and technical competence to do it if they wanted to. But cui bono? Apple benefits directly from crippling the web since it protects their App Store monopoly, they happen to have the perfect means of crippling the web by ensuring there will be no browser competition on iOS, and it is the area where theyre shipping their worst software. It is hard to…

> Apple chooses not to keep up.

Is that an opinion or do you have insider knowledge?

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#289

Post by jlnthws » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

yourenotsmart wrote: post #248

The problem isn't Safari as much, which pioneered HTML5, and is the most power-efficient browser on any platform I've seen. The problem is web devs. Web developers have increasingly the attitude of "I don't want to learn how to make apps, I want to use HTML/CSS/JS for all apps I make", and this plays directly into Google's interests, which benefits from everything being web, because it has its tentacles all over the…

This is the best answer. Web devs blindly following edgy Chrome trends which are nothing more than a way to slow down Apple's revenue (which is fair game).

App Store revenue was over $70B last year, with a 20% increase every year. Let me put it into words for you: seventy billion dollars. This is more than the total revenue of Intel, HP, Walt Disney, Unilever, FedEx or Pfizer, from the App Store alone. Most of that revenue comes from iOS apps. There is no way Apple would implement every new web standards mandated by its main competitor just to lose some of that revenue. Web devs should stop whining and come back to earth.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#290

Post by collaborative » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

diebeforei485 wrote: post #65

slivanes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, pretty sure it's only one reason, money. If they made Safari on iOS actually good (re: PWA notification support), it would burn into their App store profits.

What sort of apps are in the intersection of being performant enough to be written in JavaScript and also generate lots of in-app purchase revenue (which is typically recurring revenue)? Certainly not most games, which are the biggest money-spinners, and also not pro camera apps or video editing apps. Video streaming apps (eg. Netflix / YouTube Premium) come to mind, but they don't rely too much on in app purchase I…

Web apps can now be written in WASM, which is just as performant as any "native" app. I for one am porting my native app to the web using this technology and find it is some times even faster than native java/objective c (ironic)