Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by perfectviking 311 days ago
What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.

4 comments

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

https://ios404.com/

Safari is missing many performance and device-related features that would allow you to create a compelling web application and bypass the App store.

I tried once, you run into the most unexpected roadblocks and come to the conclusion "I have to release this as an App." Well... guess why.

About a quarter of that list is stuff I don't want a browser futzing with... volume control, autofocus, background sync (assuming this has huge battery implications), WebUSB, WebNotifications, and a few others.

That said, about half the list appears to be stuff I don't care about one way or the other. At least not without spending way more time researching those CSS elements than I care to invest.

And I'd be totally fine with an "Allow Alternate Browser Features: Y/N" setting or similar, as long as it defaulted to the current behavior (locked down Safari only).

> About a quarter of that list is stuff I don't want a browser futzing with... volume control, autofocus, background sync (assuming this has huge battery implications), WebUSB, WebNotifications, and a few others.

Yeah, looks like a nice checklist of things to turn off to me…

About half that list is marketing for why I use Safari instead of something else on my laptop.
Half those are genuine missing features; the other half are the things I'm glad Apple doesn't implement because websites would use them (or I'd be spammed with permissions dialogs).
Several of the 'missing' features listed on that site are contentious e.g. WebUSB
> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

Safari is often the hold-out on implementing features[1] that would be useful to users - presumably because it would make web apps viable on iOS, and compete with App store apps where Apple takes a 30% cut

> Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is bad.

Competition on a level playing-field is not bad, even if you dislike the superior product (as determined by the free hand of the market.)

1. If memory serves: various APIs useful for PWAs were delayed or kneecapped on Safari

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

It doesn't support Ublock Origin.

Safari is often regarded as the "new Internet Explorer" by front-end developers because of how much is unsupported or has to be worked-around...