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For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

blog.perrysun.com

91–100 of 623 posts

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#91
post #19

If you look at the features that Apple lags on adding support for, usually it's either because: 1. they can be abused (PWAs) 2. are complex to implement (WebRTC – for the longest time the recommendation in the WebRTC community if you wanted to build a C++ app was to bundle a good chunk of Chrome's libraries) 3. or could be bad for battery (web workers) So yeah, it makes some developers' jobs harder but generally ther…

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.

Safari is still the best mobile web browser in terms of performance and usability, and I'm using Firefox on Android, it's great, but Safari is the fastest.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#92
post #5

People complain about Google Chrome eating the web, but it really does seem like everyone else either dislikes the web (Apple), is ambivalent (Microsoft), or plain doesn't seem to care much (Mozilla).

So true. I have this uneasy reliance on Chrome for supporting PWA's properly since Mozilla lost interest. It's a life/routine manager for people with horrible memories. Chrome stands alone in supporting web push notifications :S

How did Mozilla lose interest? Firefox for Android supports PWAs. Firefox supports push notifications on both Android and desktop.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the lack of background sync stays as a #wontfix, because I view it as a feature.

That shouldn't prevent it from being an opt-in toggle for the people (like me) who rely on it.

Similar to how javascript is a toggle, or how accepting third/first party cookies are toggles?

Because the web is mostly useless if any of those are turned off now - even easy cases like static forms commonly break with javascript off rather than degrading to just server-side validation.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#94

> Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today.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…

Cool down Mr. Cook. We will buy your overpriced sweatshop artifacts.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#95

People complain about Google Chrome eating the web, but it really does seem like everyone else either dislikes the web (Apple), is ambivalent (Microsoft), or plain doesn't seem to care much (Mozilla).

Chrome eating the Web is something Mozilla cares very much about.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#96

> 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 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 model differences(is the border included in the width of your DIV?) and bugs just to make the UI properly display a standart compliant HTML and CSS. You had to deal with JScript, Microsoft's JavaScript that is mostly the same but not exactly.

Due to the marketshare, Microsoft was able to push its own non-standart technology and pushed people to use IE if they don't want to be left out. This is very similar to what Google is doing with Chrome, sabotaging FF through popular Google properties like YouTube[0] and leaving out features if you are not using Chrome.

Apple may not be perfect but Google is not the "good guy" here.

[0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#97

> 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…

Lots of sites use WebRTC for video and audio calls. Google Meet, Discord, Slack for example. On desktop it's far more secure to use those in-browser than via desktop apps.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#98
post #57

Speaking about Safari bugs I got concerned with lately: you cannot use Content-Security-Policy if you use web sockets with Safari: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201591 I don’t understand why this doesn’t get more attention. It is just infuriating if you can’t use a security feature, just because some browser doesn’t follow the specs correctly. Oh well, time repeats itself just like with IE. And just for a m…

you cannot use connect-src self. You can use CSP just fine if you are more explicit.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#99

> 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…

> The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features.

This depends entirely on what decade you focus on. There was a significant period of time where even the "cutting edge" version of IE was the furthest behind on implementing new standards. When you combine that with the way IE handled updates and versions, older versions of IE created huge problems for developers.

So there is an era of IE that is very similar to Safari today.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#100

People complain about Google Chrome eating the web, but it really does seem like everyone else either dislikes the web (Apple), is ambivalent (Microsoft), or plain doesn't seem to care much (Mozilla).

Follow the money. Apple makes its money from iOS & the apps ecosystem. Microsoft from business licenses. Mozilla – well they try their best but don't make much money at all. The only company to successfully monetize the open web is Google. Facebook as well to an extent but they found their success in mobile more than web, so gave up caring too much.
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