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For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

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Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#561

Post by admax88q »

dmitriid wrote: post #553
admax88q wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if the hole exists at all, malicious actors will find a way to abuse it. But if non malicious developers have to jump through too many hoops to provide useful functionality to users they will just give up and users lose out.

> Because if the hole exists at all, malicious actors will find a way to abuse it. Yes, they will. So the question remains: why expand the hole?

Because it makes no difference if the hole is small or large. To an attacker its the same size.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#562

Post by spideymans »

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…

Thank you for saying this. I wouldn't have said it myself, but as someone who has been both a native and web developer, you are spot on.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#563

Post by SquareWheel »

marcellus23 wrote: post #556
SquareWheel wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Apple are strangling PWAs Strangling is a funny word to use. They never implemented PWA features in the first place. They're under no obligation to do so, either. You can argue whether PWAs are good or not, but I don't think such an argument can be made objectively. I.E., there's a prevailing view in this thread that web browsers are evolving in one direction, and Safari is slower than everyone else at getting ther…

It seems more than a decision not to implement. Apple have every incentive to prop up their own ecosystem where they make a cut on every purchase. They specifically wrote a data retention policy for localStorage which was to the direct detriment of PWAs.

Mozilla isn't pursing SSBs at this time, but the core APIs of PWAs are still being supported. Their position stems more from a lack of manpower than any strategic decision.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#564

Post by admax88q »

csydas wrote: post #529
admax88q wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I find very few sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox. But as a web developer I'm still irked by some of the more "fun" APIs that firefox refuses to support such as USB/PWAs/NFC etc. Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your enti…

>Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision. Sorry, but to be clear, my lack of update is just that -- lack of ambition to do so. I don't really have a compelling reason to update MacOS or Safari. >Who can say w…

I don't disagree with most of what you're saying, but I think we're coming at it from different perspectives. I am looking at it from the perspective of software which does not yet exist but will be built in the future. In that case, missing Safari features _are_ a detriment to users, because it prevents developers from building this new software.

From the perspective of users of existing software that seems to break with no reason I agree. It's stupid how heavyweight imgur has become when it used to just be a fast simple website that worked everywhere.

Maybe you're content with the functionality your system has now and need no more, but I am still on the quest for new things I can do digitally, and easier way to do things I already can.

Take Figma for example, I'm not even a designer but even I enjoy having access to a collaborative drawing app that is trivial to share with other collaborators. If browsers had not agreed to implement Canvas and all rolled it out, Figma would likely not exist. Perhaps they could have created a packaged native application for all major operating systems, but in reality that's a ton more work, and a huge impediment for users to convince collaborators to buy/install some native app so they can work on a drawing together.

What other software are we missing out on because the barrier for interacting with USB/NFC/Bluetooth/Notifications/Background-Sync is too high.

In a world with native apps only, only the big players can afford to target all platforms, and only the big enough use cases can justify the expense.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#565

Post by robotnikman »

falcolas wrote: post #444
howinteresting wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's irrelevant, Mozilla's decision-making is quite independent of Google's. Firefox on Android is an excellent browser. Firefox on iOS could be the same if Apple let go of its chokehold.

Firefox on iOS is an excellent browser. I use it as my daily driver, and it works perfectly well.

It is still built on top of Safari, so it lacks features such as extensions.

One of the few things which holds me back of switching to an iPhone is a true version of Firefox

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#566

Post by jw14 »

Dah00n wrote: post #369
jw14 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you are missing the point. The reason you don't see broken sites is because developers take extra time making sites work in Safari. They shouldn't have to. >My impression is the desire to have good mobile support keeps Safari support alive. I would very much argue the opposite. A good browser in iOS is directly against what Apple want (people in the app store, not in browsers). Safari is at best the absolute…

That's exactly what I meant. You were forced to do extra work to support mobile Safari or else exclude Apple customers. That decision is made over and over again by teams everywhere and Desktop Safari reaps that benefits.

The technologies I want never actually "win". I always have to choose the one that I either hate the least or has some other compelling benefit. The latter is the reason why I'm using Safari.

I'd rather Safari come around (or be abandoned), but pressuring Apple this way is not very effective. How long did they hang on to those stupid butterfly keyboards?

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#567

Post by SauciestGNU »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #237
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…

Anyone remember mobile safari's CSS 100vh 'feature'? https://medium.com/rbi-tech/safaris-100vh-problem-3412e6f137...

Yeah, I hadn't needed to target safari as a supported platform until I was building a public facing website (as opposed to intranet tooling), and this was an amazingly frustrating feature to work around. Solidified my hatred for safari, that's for sure.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#568

Post by ksec »

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…

It seems strange ( and fascinating ) everyone have different memories of IE days.

My problem with IE was mostly with its ( lack of ) development.

>IE was cutting edge until Firefox

It was cutting edge for IE 5, and IE6 only fixes some of IE 5.5 issues. Remember this was the early days and there were thousands of low hanging fruit. It wasn't even standard complaint problem, ( as much as I would like to write one piece of DHTML code that work across all browser ) like many here have stated M$ decided to do it differently and I actually would not have a problem with that if their version was actually better ( Some features were indeed better ). But they stopped. IE 5.5 was already a relatively small changes from IE 5 which was the really big release. And IE 5 if I remember correctly was before 2000.

I would not have been so pissed about IE if M$ at least release some update. It wasn't until security issues got so serious did they decide to move their ass to do something. So from my point of view, Safari in this case, despite their slow release cycle, is still trillions times better than IE. I would normally have stood up for Safari on PWA and Safari as IE issues, but the pain of App Store lead me to change stance. And to add insult to injury they even claim PWA as an alternative to Native Apps in the trial.

Apple used to have a very coherent strategy and message, even to the way how things are being discussed in court. Now it is a pile of mess.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#569

Post by bouke »

kkruglov wrote: post #216

I really like current safari UI but as a user I have to use other browsers because safari has issues with both popular sites or services and internal work sites at times. Public example: Context menu - copy message link to clipboard - on discord doesn’t work in safari. I created a bug for their bugzilla, turned out that bug is fixed some time ago. BUT NOONE CAN TELL ME WHEN ILL SEE IT FIXED on my device. If I open 15…

Those websites you mention are written by the same people coming here to complain about Safari does not support $some_new_chrome_feature and that they’ve stopped caring for Safari (web interoperability).

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#570

Post by marcellus23 »

SquareWheel wrote: post #563
marcellus23 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple are strangling PWAs Strangling is a funny word to use. They never implemented PWA features in the first place. They're under no obligation to do so, either. You can argue whether PWAs are good or not, but I don't think such an argument can be made objectively. I.E., there's a prevailing view in this thread that web browsers are evolving in one direction, and Safari is slower than everyone else at getting ther…

It seems more than a decision not to implement. Apple have every incentive to prop up their own ecosystem where they make a cut on every purchase. They specifically wrote a data retention policy for localStorage which was to the direct detriment of PWAs. Mozilla isn't pursing SSBs at this time, but the core APIs of PWAs are still being supported. Their position stems more from a lack of manpower than any strategic de…

> Their position stems more from a lack of manpower than any strategic decision.

That doesn't seem to be what Mozilla thinks, which is that it was never reliable and no one used it:

> “The SSB feature has only ever been available through a hidden [preference] and has multiple known bugs,” Mozilla’s Dave Townsend explains in a Bugzilla issue tracker. “Additionally, user research found little to no perceived user benefit to the feature and so there is no intent to continue development on it at this time. As the feature is costing us time in terms of bug triage and keeping it around is sending the wrong signal that this is a supported feature, we are going to remove the feature from Firefox.”

https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/mozilla-firefox/...

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