Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 22 With Bug Fixes and Feature Improvements

[MacRumors]

Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced in March of 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.

Safari Technology Preview release 22 includes bug fixes and updates for JavaScript, CSS, Form Validation, Web Inspector, Web API, Media, Rendering, and more.

The Safari Technology Preview update is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store to anyone who has downloaded the browser. Full release notes for the update are available on the Safari Technology Preview website.

Apple's aim with Safari Technology Preview is to gather feedback from developers and users on its browser development process. Safari Technology Preview can run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser and while designed for developers, it does not require a developer account to download.

Article Link: Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 22 With Bug Fixes and Feature Improvements

 

[Vashetti]

Still 419 out of 555 on html5test

Seems to have fixed an annoying page reload bug I was getting on reddit in the last build though.

 

[0029937]

Does anyone use this as their main browser? I know most prefer Chrome but for me Safari does everything I need. Have always been curious about it and honestly surprised no one talks about it more, guess it's nothing special.

 

[Avieshek]

Whenever I open a new Tab, the address opens in the current tab instead and the new tab is homescreen.
[doublepost=1485368862][/doublepost]

Does anyone use this as their main browser? I know most prefer Chrome but for me Safari does everything I need. Have always been curious about it and honestly surprised no one talks about it more, guess it's nothing special.

Most prefer Chrome? (Edit: Mac ofcourse)

 

[mark-vdw]

Any news on WebRTC?

 

[69Mustang]

Whenever I open a new Tab, the address opens in the current tab instead and the new tab is homescreen.
[doublepost=1485368862][/doublepost]

Most prefer Chrome?

Could be a reference to browser market share. If so, it's accurate.

 

[RMo]

Does anyone use this as their main browser? I know most prefer Chrome but for me Safari does everything I need. Have always been curious about it and honestly surprised no one talks about it more, guess it's nothing special.

Safari Technology Preview? No, I hope no one uses that as their main browser. Safari, maybe. Personally, I think Safari is fine, but I prefer Firefox (whose marketshare appears to have fallen in the last few years) from both a philosophical standpoint and for the fact that I have bookmarks synced across different computers (and OSes) with it. God knows I don't use it for the snappy performance. I assume I'm in the minority on the Mac for this preference.

Most prefer Chrome?

If you believe most browser statistics, yes--about half of all Web traffic comes from Chrome, though probably a bit less on the Mac (haven't looked it it broken down by OS myself).

 

[0029937]

Most prefer Chrome?

Chrome is still king
It’s getting closer every month, but it still seems like Chrome is the best browser overall. It’s still a top-performing browser, and its extension eco-system is the best. There’s a reason why it’s the most popular browser ever made, and while specific users might prefer something different, most people can safely default to Chrome.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/comput...e-vs-firefox-vs-safari-vs-edge/#ixzz4WnjxfJO4

 

[zigmund555]

Chrome is bloated CPU and battery hogging garbage.

I use tech preview as my main browser, have since it came out and it's fine.

 

[Elwe]

Safari Technology Preview? No, I hope no one uses that as their main browser. Safari, maybe. Personally, I think Safari is fine, but I prefer Firefox (whose marketshare appears to have fallen in the last few years) from both a philosophical standpoint and for the fact that I have bookmarks synced across different computers (and OSes) with it. God knows I don't use it for the snappy performance. I assume I'm in the minority on the Mac for this preference.



If you believe most browser statistics, yes--about half of all Web traffic comes from Chrome, though probably a bit less on the Mac (haven't looked it it broken down by OS myself).

I do use it as my main browser, and I have done so for many months.

I have a reasonably modern and well-equipped 15" MacBook Pro. Quad-core processor, 16gb of ram, and a speedy SSD drive. All that and I still had (and still have at times) resource problems with Chrome over time. I do keep a lot of tabs open, and by over time I mean from a few days to a few weeks. Inevitably, I have to hard kill/restart chrome. I have similar problems on a modern Ubuntu-based workstation. That said, "in a vacuum", I think I prefer the "look and UI" functionality of Chrome amongst all the modern browsers. It is just that Safari has and continues to run the best over time* on my MacBook Pro (Sierra and the previous two main OS versions). Because I use a lot of tabs, I was unwilling to use the mainline Safari 9.x, and so turned to using the Technology Previews. I added a few extensions, and have a fairly stable experience. With the release of Safari 10.x, I supposed I could have moved to the mainline release. But I have not seen the need yet, and I actually like the more frequent release patterns for browsers that Firefox and Chrome and now Edge and Safari (Technology Previews) have embarked on. Some bugs do seem to get fixed faster.

* By best over time I mean lowest cpu and memory utilization over time, with fewer crashes.

I should say that I have not recently given Firefox a lot of use on my MacBook Pro. It used to be my main browser everywhere, but I was finding a few years ago that Chrome outperformed it quite handily. So I switched to Chrome pretty much everywhere except iOS, and just lived with having to restart every so often (which is admittedly easier with the right extensions installed). But the use of Safari Technology Preview has eliminated even the need for that on my MacBook Pro . . . at least until new revisions are released every month or so.

More people should try it as their main browser. I think they would like it, mostly, and appreciate its performance on its native system; though again I do still like the "look and UI" in Chrome a bit more still.

 

[KALLT]

Chrome is still king
It’s getting closer every month, but it still seems like Chrome is the best browser overall. It’s still a top-performing browser, and its extension eco-system is the best. There’s a reason why it’s the most popular browser ever made, and while specific users might prefer something different, most people can safely default to Chrome.

Chrome is just the most popular browser, on Windows that is. It says nothing about its qualities. Internet Explorer was king for so long, it is difficult to say that the switch happens for that reason, especially with Google advertising Chrome so heavily through Google Search.

 

[CarlJ]

Chrome is still king

In related news, McDonalds makes the best food in the world.

 

[dyn]

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/comput...e-vs-firefox-vs-safari-vs-edge/#ixzz4WnjxfJO4

But read this first as it lays out why you need to take these kind of stats with a grain of salt: Usage share of web browsers. As you can see in the stats, the marketshare of Chrome is going up or down depending on which source you use. Not to mention that these are stats about all webbrowsers including mobile devices where most people simply use the default browser of the OS.

If you take a look at the stats from Netmarkshare you can see how stable the stats really are. It doesn't really change and thus the "it's getting closer every month" is highly debatable.

Btw, the article you link to is a bit superficial in certain areas. Nothing is mentioned about the tight Google services integration of Chrome as well as the total lack of privacy. Other browsers do a better job. The same applies to the extensions where they do note that Firefox has a better model for power user extensions but they never explain why this is. All this is a shame if you see how well written the first part (about the user interface) is.

 

[vatter69]

Anyone got a tip how i can change the name in the Menu to something shorter? Safari Technology Preview kills half the others icons i have stored up there.

 

[2457282]

I need to test this later, but i use safari for everything except when logging into the office from home. Safari does not work with our Citrix server correctly. Chrome works fine. If they fix whatever the problem is, I would stick with Safari.

 

[CarlJ]

Anyone got a tip how i can change the name in the Menu to something shorter? Safari Technology Preview kills half the others icons i have stored up there.

A solution, though not exactly the way you're expecting, is Bartender, which allows control over what menubar icons show up and when they show up, hiding the rest neatly in a tray. I use that along with iStat Menus to keep an eye on what the system is doing, while keeping the menu bar size workable.

 

[dyn]

I can second that. Making a selection of what needs to be in the menubar and what doesn't have to live there is the first thing to do, second would be using Bartender to hide the ones that you don't need immediate access to.

 

[vatter69]

Yes, dont want Bartender though.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Still 419 out of 555 on html5test

Seems to have fixed an annoying page reload bug I was getting on reddit in the last build though.

This is a terrible score IMO. I need something over 500. I don't know why Apple is so slow to release these features. They need more engineers to help them with their crap browser.
[doublepost=1485385489][/doublepost]

Chrome is bloated CPU and battery hogging garbage.

I use tech preview as my main browser, have since it came out and it's fine.

The only reason I'm even still using it is because of the Redux, React tools. Maybe I should try and build these tools for Safari as a Safari extension. That would make a great weekend project.

 

[atikalz]

But chrome has favicons in the tabs. As every other browser. Why is safari missing a basic like this?

Chrome is bloated CPU and battery hogging garbage.

I use tech preview as my main browser, have since it came out and it's fine.

 

[6836838]

Still no webRTC. Yawn.

 

[zigmund555]

Still no webRTC. Yawn.

Who actually uses it? I had to do some research, looks like a cool technology but I don't see why they would bother supporting it. It's "in development" in WebKit and only really supported in Chrome. I imagine it comes back to the whole h264 vs vp8/9 issues while google and apple fight it out.

 

[Sill]

Chrome is still king
It’s getting closer every month, but it still seems like Chrome is the best browser overall. It’s still a top-performing browser, and its extension eco-system is the best. There’s a reason why it’s the most popular browser ever made, and while specific users might prefer something different, most people can safely default to Chrome.

Safely, hardly. Google's desire to get into everyone's business is just short of terrifying. Google has really suckered people with their free services, and in my opinion, those people deserve what they get because they traded their privacy (and probably eventually their liberty) by doing so.

As far as top-performer, not so much. In every case where I've had customers unable to log in to my company's e-commerce system or execute commands it occurred with people who used Chrome. When I got them to switch to Firefox or Safari the problem went away.
[doublepost=1485400264][/doublepost]I just checked the version of STP on my local machine, and its at Preview 16, where the current one is Preview 22. I can't get any more updates unless I download Sierra, which I've decided to stay away from. Does anyone here know of a standalone downloader so I can try the latest preview?

 

[Vashetti]

I just checked the version of STP on my local machine, and its at Preview 16, where the current one is Preview 22. I can't get any more updates unless I download Sierra, which I've decided to stay away from. Does anyone here know of a standalone downloader so I can try the latest preview?

El Capitan is no longer supported for STP. You need Sierra.

 

[Sill]

El Capitan is no longer supported for STP. You need Sierra.

I don't need it, unless its a requirement to install STP, in which case I guess I really don't need STP. As I mentioned above, I've decided I'll be staying away from Sierra. It looks like El Capitan is the end of the road for me on the Mac.