I often see this on websites: “This website is best viewed in the following browsers: Chrome Firefox Edge”. Chrome is always listed first, Firefox second. Once in a while Edge. But NEVER Safari. Why? And why does every website cream their pants over Chrome? I don’t trust Chrome. It’s Google, the company that sells all your data. Why is Safari never listed? Why the prejudice against Safari?
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Website best viewed in…not Safari
- Thread starter mwhite
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The internet is built on Chrome and has been for some time and Safari isn’t OS agnostic so no reason to list it. Honestly though, any website that displays that is usually outdated and will probably still work.
As Tim Berners-Lee said back in 1996, "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."
I do keep a copy of Firefox around for the occasional website that needs it, but I find them to be few and far between. My computer is Chrome-free.
I do keep a copy of Firefox around for the occasional website that needs it, but I find them to be few and far between. My computer is Chrome-free.
Safari is pretty big on mobile/tablets, but only on Macs for desktops/laptops. Chrome is available on everything so it's easier to design broadly targeting the popular browser. Most of the time Safari works anyway, maybe they don't have the time to test everything on Safari.
I mostly use Safari, although from my Linux days I’ve learned to trust Firefox. Chrome is only for Google Drive easiness. Edge? Isn’t it incommensurable with Apple?😉🤣😂
"Google Pays Apple $18B to $20B a Year to Be Default iOS Search Engine" https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/11/google-pays-apple-billions-default-search/
I’m not sure what your meaning is here.
Apple is selling you to Google.
From a web developer perspective - Chrome had a golden age before mobile browsing took off. Chrome became the standard to develop for as the baseline and then we worked to add support for other browsers, like FF and Internet Explorer. Safari was such a small segment at the time that we usually didn’t list it. These banners also encouraged people to adopt Chrome which at the time was seen as a good thing because it meant we didn’t have to jump through hoops to support IE as the user base shrank.
Nowadays web devs refer to safari as the new IE (although I don’t see it that way) because of some quirks/differences it has with rendering html/css/javascript. But it’s not nearly as bad as IE ever was. And yeah, chrome took over both on mobile and desktop.
Nowadays web devs refer to safari as the new IE (although I don’t see it that way) because of some quirks/differences it has with rendering html/css/javascript. But it’s not nearly as bad as IE ever was. And yeah, chrome took over both on mobile and desktop.
Yeah, anyone who says Safari is the new IE has never known the joys of having to add 30% of extra time to website projects just to ensure that everything would work in Internet Explorer 6. Even later versions of Internet Explorer weren't really the infamous IE horror show that IE6 embodied.
I vaguely recall IE4 actually being pretty good and I remember being fond of IE7, but that might simply be because it gave me false hope that my IE6 days were behind me. My time fighting the IE6 battle lasted a lot longer than most developers' because some of the sites I worked on were popular in countries with lots of pirated copies of Windows that were frozen to their install dates.
Good times.
I wonder if you have an extension in Chrome blocking you.
It's only with extremely complex sites that I have any functional issues in Safari and even then it's a very small number. My greater issue is that there are some links that won't work at all in Safari. Thing is, I know it's not universal to everyone using Safari. I probably have a setting somewhere that's causing a conflict.
I'm a Web developer and I should be able to troubleshoot this, but I have my hands full with my own sites and just don't have the energy to figure out what's happening when all I have to do is switch to Firefox (which is my 2nd browser anyway) or Chrome in rare cases.
I've always hated Chrome. I've hated it from the first time I laid eyes on it because of the way it gives you microscopic window bars that are impossible to grab. Now everyone does that. Thanks Google.
Chrome is the default browser on some devices. Some websites are, however, blocked due to restrictions, and Safari displays favorite websites by default when it opens.
if you set your security to the max on Mac OS desktop you will encounter some sites that determine you have an ad-blocker on, those clearly don't work but would naming them be a pseudo blacklist - subject to court action, in general once I encounter such a site I never visit it again
No they haven’t. Every Apple user is free to change to the default search engine of their choice. Mine is set to Duck Duck Go.
Yes, maybe so, probably Ublock Origin Lite.
Sometimes I can't open web pages in Safari, but can in Chrome. I have no extension in Safari.
I don't, I usually use Chrome on desktop. Not Safari. But it's the other way around on my iPhone. I swipe on both platforms, so the bars don't annoy me.
It's annoying. CapCut online won't work with Safari. Tells you to download Chrome. The paranoid part of me wonders if that's to enable Chrome to do something that Safari won't let them, something privacy related.
Well, it observes the GNU ethos, to start with. It is an app written by volunteers and that’s good news.
This paranoia about Google comes only from ignorance. Use a firewall if you want to see what a browser does and limit its connections.
“Ungoogled-Chromium macOS builds are now notarized (signed) with an Apple Developer ID”
https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-macos/releases
“Ungoogled-Chromium macOS builds are now notarized (signed) with an Apple Developer ID”
https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-macos/releases
Desktop is what I meant. I was referring to the drag handles.
It's a little better these days since they also allow you a tiny square to drag by on the right too. Thanks Google.
I haven't seen this message anywhere other than Google's own website, but I would not like it if I came across it. More often what happens is a website simply doesn't load properly in Safari, so I have to use Chrome to get it to work (without any message telling me to do so).
Edge is Chrome but easier on your battery, and with Google’s nonsense replaced with Microsoft’s nonsense. If you’re not deep in MS or Google’s ecosystem, there’s nothing to divide the two other than your preference for a particular application icon.
The statement “Apple is selling you to Google” oversimplifies and misrepresents the nature of the Apple-Google relationship. While Apple does accept billions from Google to remain the default search engine on Safari, this is not the same as "selling user data" or compromising privacy.
Apple's business model is fundamentally different from Google's. Apple generates the majority of its revenue from hardware and services—not advertising. That’s why Apple has consistently positioned itself as a privacy-focused company. Even when Google is used as the default search engine, Apple employs privacy protections such as Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari, Mail Privacy Protection, and App Tracking Transparency (ATT)—all of which actively reduce the amount of data third parties (including Google) can collect about users.
The deal with Google is essentially Apple monetizing its large user base without directly compromising user data. Google pays for default placement because of the sheer volume of traffic Apple devices generate—not because Apple is handing over detailed user profiles. Users are also free to change their default search engine to DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Bing, or Ecosia in Safari settings.
Saying “Apple is selling you to Google” implies complicity in surveillance capitalism, which is inaccurate given Apple’s privacy-preserving measures. A more balanced view is that Apple leverages business partnerships while still placing user privacy at the forefront—albeit within a complex ecosystem that includes compromises.