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by DaiPlusPlus 2199 days ago
It's somewhat ironic (moronic?) that Apple was the first to add support for `<input type="date" />` in Mobile Safari for the iPhone almost a decade ago - so it's a complete mystery why macOS Safari doesn't have this feature.

Here's the official WebKit Bugzilla ticket for `<input type="date" />`: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119175

Here's Apple's Radar entry: rdar://problem/14567780 (I don't have access to Radar - can someone who does please let us know what the latest update is?)

Right now we use a quick-and-dirty date polyfill for macOS Safari - though more recently our GA stats show that 90% of our macOS users are using Chrome anyway which supports date inputs natively so for our lesser-used pages and areas I might forget to add the polyfill and we won't hear any complaints.
1 comments
DaiPlusPlus 2199 days ago
Thinking about it more - I noticed the WebKit Bugzilla ticket mentions a problem with integrating Qt's date-picker for other Webkit platforms - and I noticed that Apple's date-picker in Cocoa is a bit... old-fashioned, I wonder if Apple's just dragging their feet until they modernize their date-picker in macOS?

It's kinda mean to do that though - if that is the case then they're deliberately holding back the web, increasing web-development time, and worsening accessibility (so many inaccessible JavaScript date-picker components!) just so that they can avoid "looking bad".

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esperent 2199 days ago
> It's kinda mean to do that though - if that is the case then they're deliberately holding back the web

Kind of like the way they refuse to support open formats like WebGL2, glTF, webP, various compressed GPU texture formats and probably lots more I'm not aware of.

Apple devs always answer "we're working on it" when pressed on these issues. But after several years of seeing the same half-hearted answers these assurances start to ring hollow.

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saagarjha 2197 days ago
Fun fact: the bulk of the Cocoa datepicker is one attributed string. Yes, all the layout and styling.
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DaiPlusPlus 2194 days ago
I'm not familiar with Cocoa - can you elaborate on this? What is an attributed-string and how does a single string define the entire appearance and interaction of a complex UI component?
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