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Apr 12, 2001
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Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced more than two years ago 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 54 includes bug fixes and feature improvements for Clipboard API, Beacon API, Web API, WebRTC, and Web Inspector.

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 54 With Bug Fixes and Feature Improvements
 

Kognito

macrumors regular
Jul 27, 2011
145
258
Happy to see it still runs on Sierra. Ended up upgrading last year in part because Apple cut support for El Cap pretty quickly with Safari TP.
 

socialwill

macrumors regular
Jul 14, 2014
236
419
Small but good improvements.
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I get that this is some kind of scorecard, but quoting it without any reference is meaningless. Is this hands down the best score for any browser out there? Is it average, or the worst?...

Chrome 64 = 528, MS Edge 17 = 492, Safari 11.1 (current released) = 471

html5test.com
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482 out of 555.

I have no idea how relevant this number is in real world, but it would be good to see them try and be above 500 for the next OS release.
 

isomorphic

macrumors 6502
Apr 19, 2010
301
505
Firefox 60b13 is getting 482, although I may not have any test features enabled that would improve the score. html5test.com themselves list Firefox 57 at 486.

I have no idea how relevant this number is in real world, but it would be good to see them try and be above 500 for the next OS release.

I completely agree with the first part of your sentence but not necessarily the last part. The features that html5test tests are getting increasingly esoteric. Some are a whole lot more important to web development than others. html5test does score features according to their web development importance (and difficulty of adding to a browser), but 1 is still the minimum feature score, and the weighting is somewhat arbitrary.

For example, html5test gives 3 points for WebVR, and 3 points for Web Authentication / FIDO 2, neither of which Safari has. If you make games, WebVR is probably a lot more important to you; if you have some high-security app needing physical authentication tokens, FIDO2 may be more important.
 

daveak

macrumors 6502
Jun 28, 2009
306
346
Durham, UK
really, why don't they just fix the thing to get a perfect score or is this another case where they don't agree with the standard and refuse to follow it? smh

Scores are based on what Google want to put in Chrome. Safari therefore loses a lot of points for not supporting Ogg Theora / Opus, WebM VP8 / WebM VP9. The only real user of any of these is YouTube for VP9.

Basically not all points are equal. The missing input types are a problem. Not supporting WebM with Vorbis support isn't.
 

mrzz

Suspended
Mar 25, 2017
290
507
safari might be ok for home users, but is practically non-existent in pro area. can't imagine e.g. a solution for telco officially supported on safari. probably mainly a US thing. use whatewer u like, but safari will always be a minor browser. i've tried it couple of times but never really liked it. better alternatives exit - practically the same as with apple maps
 

isomorphic

macrumors 6502
Apr 19, 2010
301
505
Scores are based on what Google want to put in Chrome. Safari therefore loses a lot of points for not supporting Ogg Theora / Opus, WebM VP8 / WebM VP9. The only real user of any of these is YouTube for VP9.

Basically not all points are equal. The missing input types are a problem. Not supporting WebM with Vorbis support isn't.

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. But in this particular case, I don't think html5test.com actually awards any points to Ogg Vorbis / Opus / WebM. They are on the list but they're listed as "Optional" when you click on them (with no points assigned).
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safari might be ok for home users, but is practically non-existent in pro area. can't imagine e.g. a solution for telco officially supported on safari. probably mainly a US thing. use whatewer u like, but safari will always be a minor browser. i've tried it couple of times but never really liked it. better alternatives exit - practically the same as with apple maps

set date = 2001 ; s/safari/firefox/g

I think you're probably implicitly referring to Google Chrome as being the browser for the "pro area," as it is the marketshare leader. I give you that Google is pushing for web standards, but I don't know that I agree that Chrome is "better" in all senses of the word. I regard Google Chrome as unmitigated spyware: It installs a persistent background app that can in turn download, install, and run code whenever it wants. When you launch Chrome, it makes connections to a wide collection of Google domains even if you have all Google services unchecked or try to set it for maximum privacy. If you block one of these connections it tries another domain. Google may argue that this behavior is necessary to traverse locked-down networks, detect man-in-the-middle, but I just see it as malware-like behavior.

I'd actually use Chrome if it made zero (0) connections to any Google property, ever, unless I explicitly hit a button that read "Check for Updates." And then I wouldn't press that button; I'd periodically download new versions of Chrome from Google itself. Because I don't trust Google not to leak some GUID back to the Googleplex during a simple update call.

Google holds the market lead for now. IE did back in 200X, then lost it because it was complacent with web standards. Google may lose it because of privacy.
 
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Phil in ocala

Suspended
Jul 14, 2016
728
328
Happy to see it still runs on Sierra. Ended up upgrading last year in part because Apple cut support for El Cap pretty quickly with Safari TP.
??????
Nice thing about Safari....it is so slow to launch...you can go make a cup of coffee while it boots up.
 

nvmls

Suspended
Mar 31, 2011
1,941
5,221
Google holds the market lead for now. IE did back in 200X, then lost it because it was complacent with web standards. Google may lose it because of privacy.

I partially agree on the whole Google data collection and to encourage privacy don't get me wrong, but as other stated, Safari's performance is subpar, UI wise is still the cleanest but thats not enough for professionals/devs (where this version is targeted to). There are also some minor details which affect navigation flow on some sites like scrolling.

You see those vague release notes and you'd think the browser is completely polished but ironically is still crashing like day 1, it's unusable at a professional level sadly. Also dev tools while decent at UI, they offer practically nothing new and they usually come broken somewhere, extensions are sad, they could add full page screenshot functionality, built-in adblock, rework the whole js events display on elements, responsive mode like half the times won't even pickup the mobile layouts you have to shrink and stretch the device's viewport dimensions and many times It won't even adjust either. People complain about Google's memory leaks, go to youtube with just 1 open tab in Safari and watch your fans spin like crazy, in previous versions happened with linkedin, now seems better but still not entirely fixed. I'm sure we can blame the sites with their content but it's curious every other browser is able to pull them smoothly.

So yea, if it works for you at a professional level then that's great but boy it's hard to push forward with audience who can't see past "it's snappier" and "I use it casually and works great".

PS: They fixed pinned tab icons on full screen finally, took them 5 versions but thanks Apple.

Screen Shot 2018-03-21 at 7.52.42 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-04-19 at 10.10.51 AM.png
 
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Kognito

macrumors regular
Jul 27, 2011
145
258
??????
Nice thing about Safari....it is so slow to launch...you can go make a cup of coffee while it boots up.

What are you confused about? Safari TP dropped support for El Cap pretty quickly last year.

As for slow start up, I have to disagree. Use it as my daily driver and it's pretty performant.
 

groovyd

Suspended
Jun 24, 2013
1,227
621
Atlanta
Scores are based on what Google want to put in Chrome. Safari therefore loses a lot of points for not supporting Ogg Theora / Opus, WebM VP8 / WebM VP9. The only real user of any of these is YouTube for VP9.

Basically not all points are equal. The missing input types are a problem. Not supporting WebM with Vorbis support isn't.

Are those proprietary or something? Must be some open source libraries to handle them... why not just support them?
 

groovyd

Suspended
Jun 24, 2013
1,227
621
Atlanta
Is anyone else unable to change their homepage away from Apple's homepage in Tech Preview?

I would love to make it the default web browser but this new issue is the only thing preventing that. I 'need' my homepage to be google news, that is until Apple ports their news app or provides a news homepage of their own.
 
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groovyd

Suspended
Jun 24, 2013
1,227
621
Atlanta
Discovered a problem using the 'Web Animations' experimental option in both Tech Preview and regular Safari. When enabled it seems you cannot drag or select a new profile picture on facebook for some reason. Anyone else notice this or other obvious issues?
 
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