[tucnak]

I'd never suggested Firefox is akin to IE. Safari is, however, as it's tied to macOS. You cannot use it on Linux, and nobody really uses it on Windows. You cannot use it on Android. It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too. In that sense it's totally IE-like. Cross-platform is a must for a modern browser platform.

[VPenkov]

Safari is a bit behind, but not hopelessly so.

You can check the Interop 2024 initiative to get a better understanding on where everyone is with standards: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024?stable

[dorianmonnier]

> Cross-platform is a must for a modern browser platform.

I don’t understand why. I’m very happy with Safari, it works great. Yes, it’s not the fastest to implement web standards. But it just works very well in Apple ecosystem, and for common usage, it’s way more important and useful than to be the best to support web standards, users don’t care about this.

(And to be clear, the situation is really different than the IE6 era, WebKit respects standards, doesn’t invent its own standard and it doesn’t have a monopoly on web browser market)

[lapcat]

> I'd never suggested Firefox is akin to IE. Safari is, however, as it's tied to macOS.

This analogy is strange, because Internet Explorer was cross-platform and indeed was the default web browser on Mac OS X until Safari was created.

[simondotau]

Huh? The problem with IE6 wasn't its lack of cross-platform support.

Microsoft used a stifling dominance in desktop operating systems to achieve a stifling dominance in browsers. This browser dominance meant that a single entity (Microsoft) dictated the quality and rate of progress of the web as a platform (bad and slow) while developers treated IE6's broken implementations and Windows-exclusive features as de-facto standards.

Today, Google's dominance is being used to achieve a stifling dominance in browsers. This browser dominance means that a single entity (Google) dictates the quality and rate of progress of the web as a platform (whatever suits Google, as fast as possible) while developers are treating Chrome's firehose of features as de-facto standards.

The most IE6-like problem with today's ecosystem is people reflexively defining the web as being a single browser (then IE6, now Chrome). Complaining that Safari is bad because it isn't Chrome is proof that Chrome is the new IE6.

Not only is Safari not like IE6, it's actually the anti-IE6. It's the only thing left to remind web developers that the web is supposed to be based on standards. Safari for iOS is the last significant remnant of browser diversity in a market otherwise stiflingly dominated by Chrome.

[troupo]

> It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too.

Chrome-only APIs are not "modern web standards".

[achierius]

There is a Linux build!

[notpushkin]

Safari is macOS-only afaik, but there totally are WebKit-based browsers, like Epiphany (now known as GNOME Web – kinda meh name I’d say)

[handsclean]

> It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too.

Let’s put this narrative to rest, please. Web standards that Safari skips are usually PWA stuff that Google unilaterally declared a “standard”. On actual web features, Safari is behind only about as often as Chrome is, and both (and Firefox) are so far from bad it’s ridiculous to complain about. WEBP was the exception that was just very late, but in hindsight it wasn’t so good after all, which Apple might have known, and anyway at present JPEG XL is shipped by Safari, held back by Chrome.

What I do think is real, though, is developers living their lives in Chrome then only testing in Safari, which makes wherever Safari lags bite them in the ass, and wherever Chrome lags not even noticed.