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Comment by fredsir | Hacker News Reader

I partially agree.

I know that Safari does not support everything say Chrome does, but if you do not need those features, what does it matter? An example: I use Safari without having flash installed. I rarely need flash. If I do need it, I would rather open Chrome and close it when I am done with the flash thing and go back to Safari. Why? Why not use Chrome all the time since it supports (almost) everything Safari does and more? Well, because in my opinion, for what I use a browser for 99% of the time, Safari works better. I think it looks, performs, functions and feels better overall. So I would rather use Safari and switch to Chrome when I need something Safari does not do, or Chrome does better, even though on the paper spec, Chrome is the better browser.

It is the same reason I use an iPhone even though Android "has the same and more features".

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Remember when IE was the gloomy figure in the corner of the room that every developer knew was there, but there was nothing they could do about it?

People didn't catch on that IE was bad until almost a decade later, by then it had finally gotten not bad. These days I don't even have to think about it because my websites work better in it, more often than not, when I open them in it for the first time.

Safari is the one I have to worry about now. It isn't just features, it's page rendering. Not having WebRTC is something all on its own.

But web technology is extremely complex.

If you fall off spec, and then find yourself needing to support those off spec 'features' it holds everyone back for a long time. How long will it be before Safari users find out how frustrating they can be to web developers?

I think the perspective is skewed, because who are websites for? Not the developers, that's for sure. It's for the users, and if the users think that Safari is better, than there might be a reason for this madness, and the other browsers should adjust their goals.

I'm a developer myself, and did webdevelopment professionally for 7 years until I switched paths 3 years ago. I know all about supporting multiple browsers and what not. But the thing is, Chrome just doesn't feel and look elegant and smooth like Safari does. The same with Firefox. That's why I use Safari 99% of the time.

There's a balance between functionality and design, and chrome seems more skewed towards functionality, and Safari towards design. When this is so, and Safari does all I need better than chrome 99% of the time, I naturally choose safari.

...and yes, Safari should be more standard compliant, I'm not disagreeing with you on those points.

> chrome seems more skewed towards functionality, and Safari towards design.

Not supporting standards has nothing to do with design. It's either a deliberate sabotage of interoperaibility for the purpose of lock-in and anti-competitive crookedness (not unlikely for Apple), or simply total neglect. Either way, it results in technology being held back because Safari has enough of a market share to do it. That's why calling it "new IE" (in a derogatory way) is quite appropriate.

> Chrome just doesn't feel and look elegant and smooth

I bet this feeling comes from the "smooth scrolling". Development Chrome currently has it, I really cannot imagine why didn't they do it earlier it's so trivial to do for major benefits.

That's one thing yes. Another is the aesthetics of Safari that feels like it belongs inside of OS X, which I use, where Chrome just looks like it's own kind of deal. There's also the thing about battery life, which again, is a design decision Apple has made (lightness over ultimate performance), and I like that too. I don't do heavy webgl or css3 stuff every minute every day, so I don't need my browser to go "all in" when it comes to performance that I don't feel anyway that in turn reflects badly on my battery. And truth be told, the only place I use my computer plugged in is at work. The rest of it time it runs on battery power, so that's a big deal too.

Flash is a poor example because Flash really should be gone for good already. The problem is not "features" but Apple holding back technology progress. That's simply bad. There were some recent articles calling Safari "the new IE" because of this.

Check my comment above to Kequc.

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