[alwillis]

but Safari is still consistently slower to make new features available than other major browsers.

Safari was the first browser to ship the most anticipated web feature of the last 3-4 years by web developers: the parent selector :has() [1] back in March.

When you check the Interop 2022 dashboard [2], Safari Technology Preview is ahead of both Firefox nightly and Chrome dev for the shipping the latest web features. Safari Technology Preview is passing 97% of the interop tests.

In case nobody noticed, the WebKit team kicked ass by shipping a ton of new features this year:

* dialog element

* lazy loading

* inert

* :has() pseudo-class

* new viewport units

* Cascade Layers

* focus visible

* accent color

* appearance

* font palettes for color fonts

* BroadcastChannel

* Web Locks API

* File System Access API

* enhancements to WebAssembly

* support for Display-P3 in canvas

* additions to COOP and COEP

* container queries

* subgrid

* web push

* shared workers

* CSS Offset Path

* AVIF

* Passkeys

Plus it’s faster and has better battery life on macOS than either Chrome or Firefox. What’s not to like?

[1]: https://webkit.org/blog/12445/new-webkit-features-in-safari-...

[2]: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022

[Shish2k]

> Safari Technology Preview is ahead

My userbase isn’t using Safari Technology Preview, they’re using Safari

> the most anticipated web feature

I’m curious how you measured this - I have yet to be interested in :has(), but I am very interested in AV1 and PWA features...

[Vt71fcAqt7]

Another point here: you can't update safari without updating ios itself. That means people who don't update or have old devices won't get new fetures. Also, safari STILL doesn't support a lot of new wasm extensions. So not really the picture GP is painting.

[alwillis]

Another point here: you can't update safari without updating ios itself.

True. But each release of iOS gets to around 90% of the installed base by the time the next version of iOS gets rolled out; it’s non-issue for the vast majority of iOS users.

iOS 15 was updated 12 times [1] between September 2021 and July 2022; iOS users either got bug fixes or new features (usually both) in Safari each time, including users of the iPhone 6s, which shipped September 2015, more than 7 years ago.

Also, safari STILL doesn't support a lot of new wasm extensions.

According to caniuse [2], Safari’s WASM support seems to be just as current as Chrome and Firefox.

[1]:

    Version Build          Release Date
    15.0    19A341, 19A346 September 20, 2021
    15.0.1  19A348         October 1, 2021
    15.0.2  19A404         October 11, 2021
    15.1    19B74          October 25, 2021
    15.1.1  19B81          November 17, 2021
    15.2    19C56, 19C57   December 13, 2021
    15.2.1  19C63          January 12, 2022
    15.3    19D50          January 26, 2022
    15.3.1  19D52          February 10, 2022
    15.4    19E241         March 14, 2022
    15.4.1  19E258         March 31, 2022
    15.5    19F77          May 16, 2022
    15.6    19G71          July 20, 2022

[2]: https://caniuse.com/?search=wasm

[Vt71fcAqt7]

>Safari’s WASM support seems to be just as current as Chrome and Firefox.

I don't think that tracks individual extensions. For example bulkMemory, simd, saturatedFloatToInt, and signExtensions are not implemented iirc.

SIMD bug: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222382