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Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

alastair.is

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Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#71

Post by JimDabell »

JakaJancar wrote: post #7
iruoy wrote: post #2

> It stands to reason that Apple wouldn't have developed this feature if they weren't using it. Where? We have no idea. But they must be using it somewhere . The fact that none of us have noticed exactly where suggests that we're interacting with webviews in our daily use of iOS without ever even realising it. This is what stood out to me. I've never really suspected webviews and can't think of a place now.

I often suspect things in Settings, esp. account/iCloud section to be webviews, just based on how they load (icons appearing a short moment after the page opens for example).

Yes, those parts of the Settings app are built with web views that embed React Web:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648424

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#72

Post by blahyawnblah »

lysace wrote: post #18
integralid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to be outraged at apple, but I really can't. Read WinAPI documentation and try to count all "reserved" parameters for example. OS developers build features just for internal use all the time. Granted, this is just UI tweak so I'm not convinced it has to be private, but they probably just don't want to have to maintain that forever.

Private/secret APIs in DOS/Windows were a prominent part of the US and EU antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft in the 90s/00s.

Microsoft doesn't punish you for using those though.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#73

Post by JimDabell »

bstsb wrote: post #8

> you have to toggle a setting in WKPreferences called useSystemAppearance... and it's private. So if you use it, say goodbye to App Store approval. is this true? i know very little of iOS development but i swear i remember watching a decompilation of an app that used various internal APIs to provide animated home screen widgets

That would not get through the App Store review process.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#74

Post by tgv »

snackbroken wrote: post #3

Providing an OS feature only to first-party programs is a plainly anticompetitive practice. Using your privileged position in one market (cell phones/cell phone operating systems) to gain an advantage in another market (smart phone applications) that you withhold from your competitors is a textbook case.

With whom is Apple competing on their own web pages and apps? And how much advantage does some shiny reflection (which, btw, could also be attained by writing the effect yourself) offer them over that competition? It must be something big and obvious, otherwise there's no way it's illegal, but I can't think of it.

If you mean "anti-competitive" without referring to monopolies, then, well, every company does that.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#75

Post by bigyabai »

brookst wrote: post #42
seydor wrote: post #6

Let's pray this liquid jelly doesnt become a trend

Love or hate liquid glass, the paradigm shift from "UI chrome is a wrapper around app content" to "UI is overlayed on top of app content" seems like the future. It's well aligned with AR and better separates UI layout from content for different screen sizes. I'm neutral on this first implementation (some good, some bad). But I think the approach will be picked up by essentially everyone. Good news for you, there's no…

> seems like the future

Please, please cite sources for this. Without context you are really just drawing conjecture here.

Apple certainly seems invested in the idea of an AR future. But users do not - ARkit integrations are few-and-far between, Pokemon Go is a dead fad and Vision Pro failed harder than almost any other contemporary Apple product. It seems less like Apple is skating to the puck, and more like they're begging someone to pass to them. But the rest of the industry seems content ignoring the AR industry to invest away from Apple into stocks like Nvidia. Simultaneously, Apple threw away their stake in consortiums like Khronos, signalling a lack of desire to engage in new software standards.

With how many roadblocks Apple is facing here, I have no idea how you'd conclude that forcing AR on their users is a preferred paradigm.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#76

Post by rckt »

> Whoever it was at Apple that decided to make this a CSS property is a genius because it makes it incredibly easy to provide different rules based on Liquid Glass support

What is genius here? Create something, that nobody asked for, create an in-house CSS property to use across approved apps. Genius? I would simply call this a dirty trick.

There are a lot of things, that they could have implemented, according to the CSS spec. But they decided to spend workforce on this shit. Yeah, they are a business and free to do whatever they want with their money. But I don’t like their choices.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#77

Post by jeroenhd »

thewebguyd wrote: post #21
seydor wrote: post #6

Let's pray this liquid jelly doesnt become a trend

Younger generation is obsessed with nostalgia for Aero/Glass and that whole era's aesthetic. It will definitely become a trend, if not for that then because Apple did it and the industry has lost all innovation outside of "copy whatever Apple does."

As a fan of aero, I hope Google copies the Apple theme with their own aero theme.

There are some places where I hope Apple improves things like legibility and contrast, but I'll take anything over the bland, flat designs of the Window 8 era.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#78

Post by StillBored »

skrebbel wrote: post #9

I like "Alastair's Grand Theory of In-App Webviews": the main reason webviews in apps have such a bad reputation is because you don't notice the webviews that are integrated seamlessly

Which is probably exactly why this was added. The cheap way to usually tell if someone is using a 3rd party UI toolkit, is to start tweaking the system theming and see if the application follows some scaling/color changes correctly.

In this case some subset of apple provided apps weren't following the theme and they fixed it by adding a private css property.

Vs some other OS vendor that likely removed most of the theme controls so they didn't have to keep fixing a huge pile of 1/2 baked abandoned toolkits scattered across their product portfolio.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#79

Post by bigyabai »

ezfe wrote: post #69
kuschku wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use this CSS liquid glass effect in your app, Apple will reject it from the App Store. If Apple uses this CSS liquid glass effect in their apps, it'll pass App Store review just fine. Do you see the issue now?

iOS has many private APIs, this one is no different. The fact it's implemented in WebKit is a red herring.

So when Google creates self-serving APIs in a web browser engine, it's anti-consumer and is killing the free web.

But when Apple creates self-serving APIs in a web browser engine, it's just another private entitlement, a red herring and their right as the proprietor of Safari.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Re: Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content

#80

Post by isodev »

tgv wrote: post #74
snackbroken wrote: post #3

Providing an OS feature only to first-party programs is a plainly anticompetitive practice. Using your privileged position in one market (cell phones/cell phone operating systems) to gain an advantage in another market (smart phone applications) that you withhold from your competitors is a textbook case.

With whom is Apple competing on their own web pages and apps? And how much advantage does some shiny reflection (which, btw, could also be attained by writing the effect yourself) offer them over that competition? It must be something big and obvious, otherwise there's no way it's illegal, but I can't think of it. If you mean "anti-competitive" without referring to monopolies, then, well, every company does that.

> With whom is Apple competing on their own web pages and apps?

With every other app using a web view.

> without referring to monopolies

Of course it’s about monopolies. Safari is still “privileged” to be forced default browser. Making an alternative, Apple ensured to be very hard and expensive. So gating any kind of first party feature is a big no.

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