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Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

It's obvious you are not a web developer using HTML5/CSS3/ES6. iOS has became the new Internet Explorer hands down, and now it's the first platform I test on to check for compatibility issues (as it's the one that normally gives those issues).

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Nope. (Front end) web developer by trade. What I say I say from experience - I've never had a client ask for a feature that Safari doesn't support. However, clients do ask for things like a carousel, which Chrome doesn't support natively.

iOS is a significantly easier support target compared to Android due to how much of a stable target it is. Android is a bit of a 'which Android?' when it comes to browser support.

I could be swayed that iOS is easier to target than some other browsers but Chrome? You can definitely build a slider natively...

Maybe the confusion is that Chrome =/= Android Browser

> You can definitely build a slider natively...

Nope http://caniuse.com/#search=snap

"Build natively" means to create it yourself in vanilla JavaScript, like this http://meandmax.github.io/lory/. What's the use of a native element that only one browser has when you need cross browser support anyway?

"Natively" as in 2 lines of CSS rather than yet another JS dependency. The cool thinks about CSS Snap Points is that they fall back rather gracefully on brothers that don't support them to just standard overflow scrolling.

Well that's not what native means. Beyond that, the issue isn't that Safari is not implementing HTML5 features fast enough, it's that they are choosing to not implement specific ones in order to protect their platform. You just don't see that from other browser vendors (today)

Isn't that the point of this article? I don't think it's fair to criticize Apple for lagging HTML5 support in iOS, then say "what's the use of this element?" when it cuts the other way.

The criticism isn't that they are lagging HTML5 support in iOS(although it would be valid- that's no reason to sue), it's that they are specifically avoiding parts of the implementation to protect their platform. Things like full screen support, notifications, etc

You don't need snap to build a slider natively. Also interestingly snap is NOT supported when Safari is rendering stuff in a different app, only when you're actually in the Safari App.

As the note says, WKWebView is an embeddable web view for apps. This is what iOS Chrome uses FWIW.

Doh, that is precisely the whole problem being discussed here.

WKWebView is a mess just like UIWebView.

Are you kidding me? "Which Android" doesn't even make sense in terms of the browser, it's not tied to OS releases and is therefore the same on every phone (except freaking Samsung... Their browser is even worse than Safari). Maybe WordPress sites that need a "carousel" work better on iOS, but I can't tell you how many times I've had to go back and fix something because it won't work on iOS right. I can tell you, however, that that number is now higher than it is for ie10. So yes, it IS the new internet explorer.

thanks for writing that, now it's obvious you've never touched any frontend code

Amen.

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