For developers, Safari is crap and outdated • Hacker News Board

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#291

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

coupdejarnac wrote: post #280

mrtksn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All websites(with the exception of HN maybe?). Installation doesn't strictly mean putting the website on your home-screen. Whenever you encounter a new website you are required to go through installation process, you can't simply click a link and consume the content anymore. For most websites you need to read and accept the tracking terms and if you are not happy with the default options you need to do custom install…

"Installing a website" is something I might expect my 70-something year old mother to say. Oh brother.

Me and your mother might have many things in common but I doubt that the reasons of calling it "Website installation" is one of them.

I would say that if you were familiar with the web technologies you would have seen the parallels.

When you type an address of a website or click on a link your browser would download the website data from a server, which is very similar to what happens when you tap "Install".

Once your website data is downloaded, the browser would execute the instructions in that data. Usually further resources would be downloaded and, UI drawn and functions executed. This is again very similar to any apps that you run once downloaded.

Installation of an app implies making it ready to use. You can download an executable that runs right away or you can have an executable that prepares the environment for use. This is again exactly the same with visiting a website, it might be ready to use right away or in might need a set-up of the environment.

In 2021, most websites need a setup process before use, you need to set up the ways you are about to be tracked and what information is to be shared with their partners. You need to decide if you like to sign up for newsletter, if you like to follow their social media accounts and more often than not you will be required to create an account. You will be prompted to set-up notifications too, if the browser support it.

Often the native App installation is less tedious and less painful than the website installation process because the app can afford to assume that the device is a personal one and the stored data wont be erased accidentally, therefore the account creation process can be both transparent and persistent.

With native apps, you get the chance to see the app before installation(App Store pages with description, screenshots and reviews), with websites you first need to finish the installation and then you get the chance to see the website.

Anyway, I hope you see how a website could be installed and in fact is the standart modus operandi in 2021.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#292

Post by deergomoo » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #220

coldtea wrote: post #162

Nope, Apple's Safari is the last stand (given it's market share, FF is miniscule) from the web standards becoming whatever Google likes... It's not Safari which is outdated, it's standards that move too fast and come ad-hoc to Google's tastes. And it's not even about the web anymore, it's all kinds of crap to make the browser a slower, duplicate of native functionality, app platform.

Apple is just as likely to test new features in the wild, or introduce new features without going through the standards process. prefers-color-scheme sure came out of nowhere. And I'm sure you remember their original proposal with WebGPU. Meanwhile Apple are strangling PWAs to hold onto their app store monopoly, and extremely slow to implement features that other vendors adopted long ago. jQueryUI had its life artifi…

> jQueryUI had its life artificially extended by years simply because Apple refused to add a date picker input type

The weirdest thing about this is that MobileSafari has supported for years. Desktop Safari only got support in May.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#293

Post by throwawayswede » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:19 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…

Mobile Safari still has a bug in web audio when connecting an analyser node with a mediaelement (where freq array is blank all the time) that's been reported afaik since 2015 if not earlier.

Mobile safari might not be the IE of the modern day, but the lack of support for core standards and focus on random shitty features (like hiding full urls in address bar) is akin to how M$ managed IE.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#294

Post by the_gipsy » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #153

mrtksn wrote: post #96

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. Chrome is the new IE but with better manners if you consider the non standard Chrome specific stuff that makes websites to work only in Chrome. Developers hated IE for not being standart, you had to write two versions of your CSS, you had to make your code accommodate the Box m…

> 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…

This is it.

This is the single most user-hostile restriction I’ve seen on iOS.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#295

Post by the_gipsy » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:21 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.

That notifications are annoying is a myth.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#296

Post by throwawayswede » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:21 AM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #217

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't that be == !== === if we're talking about our analogies with JavaScript? Though maybe I just proved your point about missing the forest for the trees :-P

Brendan Eich doesn't understand equality.

What does that mean?

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#297

Post by collaborative » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

I don't need permission from Apple to publish a website, and only a judge can order it to be shut down, not them

We need devices where the owner decides what is allowed and what isn't, not a tech giant making $64 billion per year in App Store monopoly revenue

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#298

Post by the_gipsy » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

simondotau wrote: post #203

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…

Personally I think Apple holding the line on browser push might be the single greatest thing Apple has done for the web in the past decade. Meanwhile Google is moving the goalposts of "modern" web development so fast that it's nearly impossible for anyone to keep up. I can't believe the hacker community is so enthusiastic about this—you couldn't get a more canonical example of embrace, extend, extinguish as applied t…

Android web browsers have had push notifications for ten years now. This is not shifting the goalpost. It just happens to be the one feature that would make millions of native apps redundant.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#299

Post by deergomoo » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #59

The general hatred of stability speaks volumes about the attitude of web developers (or perhaps the strength of Google's propaganda) --- what in $deity's name is wrong with software not changing ? Look at something like a C64, which has remained basically unchanged for a few decades and the original is long out of production; and yet people are still writing new software for it. Bugs and limitations become features t…

I agree with your general sentiment, and I despair at the slow tide of inefficient, ill-behaved applications built with web technologies swallowing up every category of software.

However, I think the main complaint here is that Safari is missing support for some pretty low-hanging fruit. Take notifications for example: there's a whole wealth of web-based systems where the user might want to receive notifications, but where building and distributing native applications is completely infeasible. Do we need the ability for websites to send notifications? Of course not. Does it suck that out of every modern browser (including desktop Safari), only mobile Safari doesn't support it? I think so, personally.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#300

Post by ace2358 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #153

mrtksn wrote: post #96

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. Chrome is the new IE but with better manners if you consider the non standard Chrome specific stuff that makes websites to work only in Chrome. Developers hated IE for not being standart, you had to write two versions of your CSS, you had to make your code accommodate the Box m…

> 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…

The thought of websites sending me notifications is reason enough for me to want either an app so that I can easily control it’s notifications, or to just not use the service at all.