Safari 10.1
developer.apple.com
developer.apple.com
> The future of extensions development takes place in Xcode
and
> To develop without a certificate, you must tell Safari each time it is launched
These points can be trivial for someone who is or has no issue becoming a part of the Apple Developer Program. However, the red tape seems contradictory and almost hostile compared to developing extensions for Chrome and Firefox where all you need is your favorite text editor.
However, the tension between developer and user friendliness as noted elsewhere in this discussion applies here as well. Presumably a part of the fees that Apple collects from developers covers the cost of auditing extensions for security, and identifying developers which provides a disincentive for user-hostile activity.
Meanwhile, Chrome extensions have been a vector for adware and malware–often because bad actors will buy popular but unmaintained extensions and users will get an updated version that is user-hostile in some way. One could argue that Apple should fund the auditing process out of other revenue, and that it is short-sighted of them to try to make the developer ecosystem self-funding on the backs of deveopers of free extensions, but either way, I've felt a lot safer recommending Safari to my less technical friends and family than Chrome for this reason alone.
I find Chrome trashes my battery, and for some reason will never quit reliably and requires force-quitting. I've also never figured out how to start Chrome with an empty blank screen, which I feel should be simple enough...
However, I do still use Chrome sometimes because some websites simply work better with it and it has integrated Flash support (which means I don't need to install Flash globally in my system).
I use Chrome only for a) google docs b) flash/pdf c) news sites that block me due to content-blocking.
I keep the privacy settings much tighter on Safari, even though I frequently delete all 'web data' (cache, cookies, etc.) on both browsers.
Also, I can't browse without Vimium.
And still does: http://caniuse.com
I would love to switch to safari full time though. The battery gains are pretty nice.
I would also remind everyone that Google chose to fork Webkit to create Blink. They could have contributed their IndexDB engine to webkit at any time but chose not to. They could have contributed to the process isolation refactor but chose to do their own thing instead. They could have collaborated on JSCore instead of creating V8. That isn't wrong or right but it is the truth and it does mean duplicated effort.
Some of the features supported by Chrome are interesting to web-only developers I'm sure, but I don't want the browser on my mobile phone running service workers eating my battery in the background. With great power comes great responsibility and the JS-advertising-infested web has a really poor record on handling responsibility.
If you give a web developer media playback, they force auto-playing media on you.
If you give a web developer responsive layouts, they steal your ability to zoom.
If you give a web developer cookies, they inject tracking bugs to invade your privacy.
If you give a web developer service workers they will absolutely drain your battery.
(Yes not everyone but it will be widespread enough that browsers will be forced to invent countermeasures.)
Safari has always been ahead of Chrome for design & user experience. I'm not sure what the benefits of Chrome are?
Some features in particular service workers Apple has deliberately chosen to take a firm position on because they value battery life and security.
Wasn't this because the amount of work required to co-operate with the WebKit project made it not worth it for Google?
Note: Chrome exists for many OSs - Safari is only found on Apple ones.
Honestly feel like I'm back in the IE era at times as I go over to devs and point out something isn't working only to be told "try it in Chrome".
Only difference between the IE era and the Chrome era is the self satisfied grin that they're on the cutting edge when something only works in Chrome.
Also it's extension ecosystem isn't that great. Stuff like ublock isn't in the official safari extensions page, so you have to go discover it yourself. I can't find a good right click to image search extension either.
My main gripe with Safari is that its release schedule is basically tied to OS releases. Ever since Chrome, I've come to love continuous releases. It's extremely satisfying to know that your browser will receive those important security updates quickly.
With Safari I have to deal with the App store nonsense (I still can't believe how bad that application is), waiting for stuff because Apple wants major releases to happen with their busted OS releases (your OS is free now! Please do rolling releases).
And I'm not a fan of Apple's positioning for web apps compared to Google or Mozilla. I like fancy new features!
The OS integration is, of course, better. Looks nice to use. And I think Chrome halves my battery life at this point. I should give it a shot again.
This release also has a ton of compatibility and standards compliance fixes.
(Although, it has had some pretty major bugs. There was about a month where commenting on Github was broken, and currently JIRA doesn't even render.)
Thanks!
EDIT: Also just found this Firefox bug report for the same thing: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1328218 Discussion there seems like it's really more of a JIRA bug than an FF bug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Apple has shipped plenty of Safari security updates outside of the OS update cycle. Feature releases of Safari are tied to the OS update cycle, not security updates.
Also, IMO Safari until recently was very buggy and lagging extremely behind other browsers in features. Not sure if Apple ever got their act together on that.
My main complaint is that tabs are slower to open, switch, and close, all things I do very frequently and while impatient. I'm going to guess that these are largely fixed costs and aren't noticeable on a newer system (mine is from 2011).
The lack of favicons is a big productivity hit when I have many tabs open and need to find specific tabs. But, I haven't yet given "Show all tabs" a good-faith shot, maybe it is a viable alternative.
A smaller productivity hit is that quick search for websites doesn't lock in or provide visual cues, so you need to pause after typing your query to make sure it didn't switch to searching Google.
Performance seems to be generally better than Chrome, but occasionally much worse. I'm not sure if I prefer Safari's better average-case performance or Chrome's better worst-case performance.
I think I would prefer Safari if just the tab performance matched Chrome's.
I beg your pardon — which key?
I've remapped my caps to escape since I never use capslock.
Regardless I feel like I'm trying to re-learn to type.
I'm moving to a Dell XPS 15 tho. Done with Apple if this is the direction they are going.
A dubious analogy that works if you squint really hard.
Microsoft took 5 years to go from IE6 to IE7, and 7 was really bad. IE completely stagnated, while being the default browser on a billion PC's. Then they were very slow to adopt HTML 5 features. Developers were supporting IE6 over 10 years after it was released. I doubt if many people are supporting 5 year old versions of Safari, let alone 10 year old versions.
I feel like many people have forgotten how bad this really was, or simply weren't developing back then ...
So far they're third going by the caniuse score, which is based on the features developers can use. Previously it last place.
I don't think it was the developer backlash that forced Apple to start releasing TP previews of Safari and progressing features. I was likely more of a gap between major versions (Safari 9.x vs 10.x)
You can't use any truly different browser than Safari on iOS, so until that's possible, I'm hating on it as much on iOS as I hated on IE on Windows.
Even if it's lagging behind less than IE did, I still strongly dislike being at Apple's mercy rather than the users'.
Also, haven't most of these features already been available in the tech preview? https://developer.apple.com/safari/technology-preview/
The anticipated release date is in the March/April time frame.
It doesn't seem very extreme to expose accuser preference.
It's not like they invented something to try and describe to blind users what a WebGL view is drawing.
There's VoiceOver support for the blind, zooming for visually impaired, etc. all implemented already.
Without that you cannot name or provide an extension for files that are triggered for download.
Even IE 11 has a way to do this (non-standard, of course, but it does have a way to do it :-). Edge supports the standard way.
As I noted in a different post, though, support for the download attribute has already landed in Webkit Nightly for macOS, and is apparently being worked on for iOS.
http://stackoverflow.com/q/23261301/938236
> If an attribute is not listed here, it is not supported by Safari and WebKit: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ap...
The opportunity they have at the moment is the super long gap between releases, which is even more apparent on iOS. I wish Safari could switch to a more Chrome-like model of shipping smaller updates more frequently, perhaps in an evergreen model. I guess there's only so many new emoji's Apple can use to encourage people to upgrade...
Every WebView in a macOS or iOS app is backed by WebKit—it's not just a browser; it's an extremely important system software component on over a billion devices.
I think Safari Tech Preview and WebKit Nightlies are a good tradeoff—I'd rather that than frequent instability on my Mac or iPhone just for the appearance of being an evergreen browser.
You can see what's being developed and what's being considered for WebKit just like you can for Chrome and Firefox: https://webkit.org/status/
Safari Tech Preview was a huge surprise and an awesome leap for community engagement and awareness of upcoming works. But the realities are that "the industry" is moving ahead faster than Safari's (at best) twice-a-year release cycle. I can 1005 appreciate vendors taking time to let 'specs' 'settle', but Safari's comparatively infrequent cycle puts them at a weird pace.
I use an old MacBook laptop running MacOS 10.7.5 with Safari 6.1.6, an ancient version of Safari by today's standards--about four years old--when I'm out and about. Otherwise, I'm using macOS Sierra with Safari 10.x on two different iMacs.
On the MacBook I use Facebook, Slack and many other websites without a problem. I get a warning banner on Gmail that says my version of Safari is no longer supported; other than a few cosmetic issues, I can send and receive email just fine.
The point: web developers have long figured out how to deal with multiple browsers across different platforms with different capabilities. Many differences and bugs have polyfills; it's not a show stopper.
Look, there are major features and minor ones; Safari has been at the leading edge with support for CSS Grids, wide-gamut color support, variable fonts, 100% of ES6, CSS Snap Points in addition to rendering speed and power efficiency.
There certainly have been calls to reduce the pace of new specs and releases so we developers can catch their breath and so that Apple, Google and Mozilla can release quality implementations--there's nothing wrong with that.
It's a developer resource to consult while coding on your laptop.
Let's face it, it is ridiculous to have to pay 100$ a year to be able to improve Apple's product in exchange for nothing.
Making plugins for a browser doesn't have in any way the same opportunities to make money from it as making apps for iOS or for MacOS.
Still Apple, in all their usual stubbornness refuse to let people to publish and sign their extensions for Safari without paying them their 100$ anual fee.
Safari had a hard time attracting ports of other browsers' extensions even when you could distribute them for free and they were fully HTML-based. (Probably because there was no Windows version.) Now, not only do you have to pay, the old extension system has been deprecated in favor of a new system where you have to bundle your extension within a native app and implement a native-code-based interface. It's probably not a bad interface in isolation (haven't tried it myself), and makes it easier for existing native app developers to add extensions, but I expect it makes code reuse between extensions for Safari and other browsers quite difficult.
In comparison, both Firefox and Edge are going in the exact opposite direction and moving to an extension API directly based on, and largely compatible with, Chrome extensions. So pretty soon you'll be able to use popular extensions with any browser you prefer... except Safari.
But hey, at least now Safari will be able to take advantage of the popularity of building apps for the Mac App Store. Oh wait...
It's more about politics and priorities.
Wow, inputs in bootstrap modal will finally work on iOS!
But well, fanboys will be fanboys.
Ok, it's acceptable.
Be civil [...] Avoid gratuitous negativity.In any case you are forgetting that although you can install extensions made outside Apple Dev. program, you can't update them because they aren't signed. You have to keep checking the extension page (like uBlock Origin), see when there is a new version, download the new version, and re-install it... all manually.
Or just write a script, which isn't that hard, outside of applescript. And the ability to install extensions outside of the dev program seems to invalidate that one cannot install extensions unless in the dev program. That they're not auto updated is a rather trivial thing to work around.
Its basically 10 lines, and the applescript is new to me. Keeping extensions up to date shouldn't be that hard. And now I've got a script for keeping that one extension up to date.
I still can't use it because of the super-annoing "feature" that greys out tab favicons making impossible to immediately see what site is loaded in that tab if you have a lot of tabs open, and of course not showing the full address on iOS (I'm bother by the fact they think it's a good idea, but at least on macOS there's a setting to remove it).
Apple is really falling behind both Microsoft and expecially Google in terms of their own software. It's just not usable anymore. Everything is hidden just to make it look pretty. So annoying.
They should focus on their iOS version, because on the desktop the contribution they make is minimal, on iOS no one will install a custom browser instead of keeping the ad-free default one.
Not getting it right with 5-6 open seems hard even if you try.
But that's just me I guess. To each is their own.
It's so obvious that icons are easier than text—and this is why you see icons everywhere–that I have a hard time understanding how anyone would favor this solution. However, of course I have no interest in convincing you to switch browser, it's definitely a matter of preference.
Then it would be totally down to personal preference: when I reach maximal tabs, do I want to keep going into the nightmare pit of tabageddon or am I happy with a new clean window?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...