Safari Team Asks for Feedback Amid Accusations That 'Safari Is the Worst, It's the New IE'

[ian87w]

I think I'm starting it get the 2 perspective about Safari here.
From consumer perspective, the new IE is Chrome, as it's everywhere, pre-installed on the largest mobile platform (Android), and websites are tailored for it.
From developers perspective, Safari can feel to be the IE, as Safari is slower than the other browsers in supporting new web standards, just like IE6 holding up the web hostage in a good chunk of 2000s as it doesn't support many newer web standards at that time.

But still, if the devs responded by targeting only Chrome for compatibility, they're not helping either. They're just supporting the other IE.

 

[xWvaADmkJU4n]

Im a light user and enjoy Safari but slowly things have been frustrating me. The fact I couldn’t look at a bank statement because Safari doesn’t have a PDF viewer was frustrating making me use Chrome. While watching Twitch, Safari eats up so many resources I get memory errors so I need to use Chrome for that as well. Some of the websites I need for work don’t display at all on Safari so Chrome it is again…what’s the point when none of the things I do work in Safari? I really don’t like Chrome but I have to use what works.

Start by separating Safari updates from OS ones on all platforms.

I don’t understand this. I use safari to read pdf files multiple times a day.

 

[TiggrToo]

I have no real issues with Safari and use it on my iOS devices all the time.

However, that all said, I'd love to see them open up to allowing other browsers to use their own rendering engine.

May never happen, but a girl can dream, right?

 

[Beautyspin]

Recently I switched to M1 MacBook pro, my first apple product and used Safari for about a month. I was impressed initially. However, I tried to access my bank page but could not. Immediately switched back to chrome. People talk about Chrome being a resource hog. I have 25 to 30 tabs open sometimes but still never had a problem.

 

[appleArticulate]

Agree a lot here, and there would be a certain satisfaction to it all.

Chrome's rendering engine was originally WebKit. In 2013 they forked WebKit's WebCore engine and Blink was born, and that is what is used today. If Apple then went to the Blink core at the heart of Chrome/Chromium, that could make life a lot better on web devs. I mean, at that point, you really only have one major browser renderer.

In fact, I'll be willing to wager that someone in Apple has just such a project running... wrapping Safari around Blink - just in case.

The thing is...they could keep their entire UI, all of their privacy features, iCloud features, etc. etc. It's just rendering engine that would switch, and would then be identical to 99.9% of all browsing. Chrome, Edge, and Safari having the same rendering engine would be perfect for developers and consequently, fantastic for users.

 

[ian87w]

Im a light user and enjoy Safari but slowly things have been frustrating me. The fact I couldn’t look at a bank statement because Safari doesn’t have a PDF viewer was frustrating making me use Chrome. While watching Twitch, Safari eats up so many resources I get memory errors so I need to use Chrome for that as well. Some of the websites I need for work don’t display at all on Safari so Chrome it is again…what’s the point when none of the things I do work in Safari? I really don’t like Chrome but I have to use what works.

Start by separating Safari updates from OS ones on all platforms.

MacOS uses Preview to view PDF by default since what, the first version of OS X? iOS has built in support in Safari for PDF viewing as well. So far from my experience, only Windows users would have problems about PDF viewing.

 

[longofest]

The thing is...they could keep their entire UI, all of their privacy features, iCloud features, etc. etc. It's just rendering engine that would switch, and would then be identical to 99.9% of all browsing. Chrome, Edge, and Safari having the same rendering engine would be perfect for developers and consequently, fantastic for users.

Yup. There are times when "Think Different" may not make a lot of sense. This may be one of those times.

 

[zapmymac]

UBlock Origin +1

 

[bocian]

I am the webmaster for a small college. Sixteen years ago when I first started working with web development, we'd build features that would work in Firefox, and most of the time it would just work in Safari (and Chrome when it came along). Then we'd make a few tweaks for Opera. Finally, we'd face the hard part: figuring out how to hack our way to a usable interface in each version of IE. IE support was a nightmare.

Now, we build for Chrome, and it usually "just works" for the other Blink-based browsers and with a couple tweaks for Firefox. Then we get to Safari and we have to hack our way to usability. In other words, Safari is the new IE. Don't get me wrong, it's less of a soul-sucking slog than IE support was, but it still sucks.

Often though, the problems with Safari aren't bugs. They're choices. A bug report won't fix something Apple has already decided to oppose, break or not care about. They choose to implement flexbox in a way that didn't play well with other browsers. They choose to oppose innovations coming out of the Chromium and Mozilla camps as a matter of principle. How many years did it take for them to add partial support for WebP? And why? So Google wouldn't win? Why did we have to wait two years after Firefox and Chrome for lazy loading support? Apple's stubbornness about implementing innovations coming from the other developers doesn't hurt Google. It hurts consumers and developers.

And we talk about Safari as if it's all one thing, but in reality, Apple doesn't even support the same features on the desktop as they've added to iOS, meaning that it's really two browsers to test in.

As a user, Safari is fine. Not my favorite, but not bad. As a web designer and webmaster, Safari is trash I wish I didn't have to think about it. I'm saying that as a Mac user. Now imagine how those negative feelings are amplified for my colleagues who do Web development or design in Linux or Windows and have to borrow someone's Mac and iPhone for cross-browser troubleshooting. Not supporting other platforms means Safari will always be the afterthought, never the target environment.

 

[iLG]

I love the new safari in iOS. The tab bar at the bottom is much more flexible. Swipe it left to make a new tab. Much prefer the compact mode in macOS as well.
If there’s so many bugs can they at least name a few of them? I literally can’t think of any bugs I have encountered.

 

[ian87w]

I love the new safari in iOS. The tab bar at the bottom is much more flexible. Swipe it left to make a new tab. Much prefer the compact mode in macOS as well.
If there’s so many bugs can they at least name a few of them? I literally can’t think of any bugs I have encountered.

I like the new Safari UI on iOS 15. With ever taller aspect ratios of phone screens, it makes more sense to put things like address bars and controls at the bottom. I'm not sure why people dislike that, unless everybody has Shaq O'Neal's hands.

 

[Stella]

Because developers suffer. The newest safari is maybe not the problem (except of recent security leaks of version 15), but apple binds the browser tight to the OS version. We could forget the IE/ NETSCAPE past, BUT now we have the old versions of safari! No es6, gliched flexbox. We have to force customers to update the browser.... We are in 2022, do we need this?

For testing older versions of Safari, or any other browser, have you tried BrowserStack? Not as convenient as the real thing for development of course. We use Browserstack for our automated testing too.

 

[Stella]

Yes, that makes Chrome the new IE. And, until I see an example of a large number of websites that load fine in Safari but fails in chrome, that’s the reality of the matter. Fortunately for me, the sites I need to visit are adhering to web standards, not chrome standards.

Please provide an example of a website that is 'Chrome' only?

 

[Janschi]

Please provide an example of a website that is 'Chrome' only?

RichUp.io won’t work on safari properly.

 

[BootLoxes]

I use Wipr on macOS and iOS, it works very well in my experience.

I said I would try it and I am glad I did. Adblocking as now just as good as firefox. Now outside the occasional website like the zbrush forums and reddit not working properly safari can now be used more as a main browser.

Thank you

 

[ponzicoinbro]

I think I'm starting it get the 2 perspective about Safari here.
From consumer perspective, the new IE is Chrome, as it's everywhere, pre-installed on the largest mobile platform (Android), and websites are tailored for it.
From developers perspective, Safari can feel to be the IE, as Safari is slower than the other browsers in supporting new web standards

Not every new thing that comes to the web is worth supporting.

Chrome lets every new thing and every new digital STD infect it even stuff that causes users to lose all their money and data.

Sometimes it is better to sit back and let everyone else **** up.

 

[ian87w]

Not every new thing that comes to the web is worth supporting.

Chrome lets every new thing and every new digital STD infect it even stuff that causes users to lose all their money and data.

Sometimes it is better to sit back and let everyone else **** up.

Chrome is one thing, but if the features have been established as proper web standards, and others like Firefox are also supporting it, I think Safari should. Remember that Safari actually used to be at the forefront of this, as even Chrome was partly based from webkit. Apple was quite aggressive, even making Safari for Windows.

 

[kc9hzn]

Im a light user and enjoy Safari but slowly things have been frustrating me. The fact I couldn’t look at a bank statement because Safari doesn’t have a PDF viewer was frustrating making me use Chrome. While watching Twitch, Safari eats up so many resources I get memory errors so I need to use Chrome for that as well. Some of the websites I need for work don’t display at all on Safari so Chrome it is again…what’s the point when none of the things I do work in Safari? I really don’t like Chrome but I have to use what works.

Start by separating Safari updates from OS ones on all platforms.

That PDF viewer bit seems a little fishy to me. Safari on iOS definitely natively displays PDFs, and I’m pretty sure Safari on macOS does, as well. As a matter of fact, PDF is the native display language of both iOS and macOS, everything you see on screen is a real time PDF. Maybe your bank does something non-standard with their PDFs or how they deliver them?

 

[gank41]

Often though, the problems with Safari aren't bugs. They're choices. A bug report won't fix something Apple has already decided to oppose, break or not care about.

Exactly! Like how the Safari Team changed the SideBar behavior after roughly 6-8 years:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1443631604736348162

And then see one of the replies:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1443744367336902657

So the long & short of it is that Apple is forcing itself to comply with it's own arbitrary rules for the sake of following them, regardless of what breaks. It only makes sense then that other things with Safari will change for the worse over time...

 

[kc9hzn]

I think I'm starting it get the 2 perspective about Safari here.
From consumer perspective, the new IE is Chrome, as it's everywhere, pre-installed on the largest mobile platform (Android), and websites are tailored for it.
From developers perspective, Safari can feel to be the IE, as Safari is slower than the other browsers in supporting new web standards, just like IE6 holding up the web hostage in a good chunk of 2000s as it doesn't support many newer web standards at that time.

But still, if the devs responded by targeting only Chrome for compatibility, they're not helping either. They're just supporting the other IE.

Honestly, as someone with web dev experience, I’m really unsure of the value of some of these new APIs/standards, anyway, like web drag and drop. I also kinda feel like Google is kinda using Chrome to railroad highly self serving APIs as standards (ie ones that mostly make sense for Chrome OS and not a proper smartphone or desktop OS).

Also, I actually dislike this whole living standard business going on with HTML5. Look at Can I Use and just scroll through the list on the homepage. It feels rather bloated, but some of that stuff is ubiquitous these days (like video tags), some of the stuff is deprecated already (like SPDY), some of it seems niche (asm.js) or self serving, and some of it seems like an awful idea just waiting to happen (lookbehind support in JavaScript regexes*). HTML5 could at least use a 5.1 spec, well, actually, it should probably move to a SemVer model, SemVer is explicitly intended to communicate information about breaking and compatible API changes. The W3C or the HTML5 working group should create milestone minor numbers, at the very least, containing groups of specs browsers are expected to support (like, these sets of features are called HTML5.1, doing so is also helpful for deprecating features, eg: as of HTML5.3, SPDY is actively deprecated and developers should migrate it to such-and-such-technology). Chrome style versioning numbers don’t help me as a developer (I’m looking at you, JavaScript, with your new major version number every year business). Unless I use a reference like CanIUse or really know Chrome update notes, such version numbers don’t adequately communicate to be what technologies/features are in the latest version or what things I can do now that I couldn’t before. Imagine if Python were version numbered like Chrome, how could I tell if the latest version were a serious compatibility breaking update, like the Python 2 to 3 transition?

* Lookbehind has utility, sure, but I don’t want it in web browser regexes, mostly on performance grounds. Increases the odds of catastrophic backtracking, and I don’t necessarily trust most developers to write performant rexeges. (I don’t even fully trust myself to do so, and I feel like I’ve got a pretty strong understanding of regular expressions!)

 

[jonblatho]

Imagine if Python were version numbered like Chrome, how could I tell if the latest version were a serious compatibility breaking update, like the Python 2 to 3 transition?

I wouldn’t exactly hold up Python as a shining beacon of semver adherence.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Now, we build for Chrome, and it usually "just works" for the other Blink-based browsers.

You’re building pages that only work in chrome JUST like long ago, folks built pages that ONLY worked in IE. Pages that are NOT built SPECIFICALLY for chrome work fine in non-chrome browsers.

Right now, there are websites that ONLY work properly in chrome, just like back then there were websites that ONLY worked properly in IE. To my knowledge, there are no sites that work well with webkit that DON’T work in a chrome renderer.

Safari isn’t the new IE, chrome is. However, those that develop websites want folks to think otherwise. So that, when they code a site SPECIFICALLY for chrome and it doesn’t work for their non-chrome browsers, they can say “oh, Safari is the new IE”.

 

[Rivvvers]

I’ve been using macs for over 20 years and this is hands down the best safari that’s ever existed, I simple don’t understand what the fuss is about, I think some people are just so reluctant to change that they hold everybody back. I really hope apple aren’t listening to these people.

 

[TheSapient]

You’re building pages that only work in chrome JUST like long ago, folks built pages that ONLY worked in IE. Pages that are NOT built SPECIFICALLY for chrome work fine in non-chrome browsers.

Right now, there are websites that ONLY work properly in chrome, just like back then there were websites that ONLY worked properly in IE. To my knowledge, there are no sites that work well with webkit that DON’T work in a chrome renderer.

Safari isn’t the new IE, chrome is. However, those that develop websites want folks to think otherwise. So that, when they code a site SPECIFICALLY for chrome and it doesn’t work for their non-chrome browsers, they can say “oh, Safari is the new IE”.

I suppose it is true that if devs coded specifically for Safari, all browsers would work pretty well since Safari is slow slow to adopt web standards. But new web standards would always fail to gain a foothold and the tech would barely advance.

My friends and I were using a certain website to hang out and do our hobby stuff during the Covid lockdowns. It did everything we wanted such a site to do, and has a great community around it. But our Safari user couldn't use his preferred browser because it didn't properly support WebGL 2.0. You could enable partially functioning support in Developer Mode, but that didn't consistently work. I see that the standard is now fully supported, but it happened almost 5 years after Chrome and Firefox.

Yes, developers are going to code based on the market leader, because web standards really become standard when the market leader adopts them. But it doesn't make sense to blame them for not maintaining a significantly different version of their code just so Safari devs don't have to keep their product current.

 

[sdwaltz]

I mean, Safari is the only browser on iOS, so...

Chrome? Edge?