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I was thinking -- why isn't this more common? Then I read the bottom of the readme, and noticed safari was holding back webdev once again. I've been casually

I was thinking -- why isn't this more common? Then I read the bottom of the readme, and noticed safari was holding back webdev once again. I've been casually following this for the last 5 years and it seems almost too convenient that safari is regularly behind on mission critical features.

yAnonymous 11y ago
I mostly ignore Safari by now. I work around its worst limitations so the sites are usable, but that's it. Safari is the new Internet Explorer.
- babuskov 11y ago
  Let's see... Comes preinstalled with OS, has small memory footprint, very fast loading, low CPU usage and shitty support for newer web tech. Yup, all checks out.
progx 11y ago
Seems we have a new IE 6
- michaelwww 11y ago
  I came across an article yesterday that said this too. I don't know, I am not a Safari user, but I doubt Apple will take years to upgrade like IE6. http://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/ http://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/
jacobolus 11y ago
Funny. I find Safari leaps ahead of Firefox, and even further ahead of Chrome, when it comes to browser performance (CPU use, memory footprint, and especially battery life), with snappier scrolling and animations and fewer weird graphical glitches or mouse/keyboard interaction bugs. For my own browsing habits, Firefox is very sluggish, and Chrome is completely unusable: it just can’t handle the load and brings my whole computer to a crawl. The Safari user interface also feels much more platform-native and predictable (though it has unfortunately copied several Chrome UI elements in the last few years, which I think make the basic UI worse than ~5 years ago), and I don’t constantly feel like someone is trying to gather and analyze my keystrokes or sell me out to advertisers. (I don’t have a Windows machine, so I couldn’t tell you what IE is like these days.) Maybe there’s just a focus on different things between vendors: Google has tons of 20%-time engineers pushing new half-baked features in every direction (yes this is a bit of a caricature), while Apple is taking a more measured approach with a focus on performance and reliability.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Is it possible you're having this experience because Safari just is ignoring a whole bunch of stuff (that makes the web-pages slow and cumbersome) because it's too outdated to understand? Battery life it does have an advantage on, AFAIK this is widely understood and both Google and Mozilla are trying to address it (if they can, Apple does have nonpublic/undocumented APIs...). I'm surprised you find it outperforming Firefox wrt memory usage, though.
- huskyr 11y ago
  > (...) while Apple is taking a more measured approach with a focus > on performance and reliability. Good luck then trying to do anything complex with video and audio on iOS Safari. I've seen many weird quirks and bugs, strange limitations (videos always playing fullscreen on iPhone) and even browser crashes. And considering reliability: wouldn't you agree that we would be better of using a native solution for clipboard access than the buggy and insecure Flash fallback that's needed for Safari?
  - awjr 11y ago
    iOS8 release completely blew any confidence I had in Apple. They broke so much in Safari and caused an immense amount of work. IIRC web workers broke after sleeping the screen. That one was a huge problem.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  It's just business: Apple makes no money from browsing, Google does. It is in Apple's interest that people don't browse at all, and spend their time inside apps, where Apple has a much bigger chance of getting revenue sharing. They are deprecating the browser, on purpose. [Edit: this doesn't mean Apple is bad, they are just a rational company; it would be weird if they weren't doing it]
- Oletros 11y ago
  > For my own browsing habits, Firefox is very sluggish, and Chrome is completely unusable: it just can’t handle the load and brings my whole computer to a crawl. Any example of those pages that brings the computer to a crawl?
lexicalscope 11y ago
I actually was thinking that the graceful degrade was how it was implemented initially and was about to write it off until I got to that part. Interesting. At this point I still don't buy that Apple is doing this to hold things back. Do you have other examples of when they've been behind on features with no clear explanation of why? It's okay if not - you said you were only casually following - but curious. They wouldn't have very much to gain in my mind - none of their core business relies on locking in/out web development. They have an app market, and I guess you could argue they're trying to drive that, but they have implemented a lot of other features, and early extensions in many cases, that doesn't really align with them trying to hold web back.
- circlingthesun 11y ago
  Well, for one, local storage in private mode has been completely borked for at least for a couple of years now.
moretti 11y ago
So Safari is holding back webdev because it doesn't support an experimental technology? Fun thing: the author of the Selection API draft works for Apple :-) http://www.w3.org/TR/selection-api http://www.w3.org/TR/selection-api
- davidcollantes 11y ago
  It is working on Safari for me.
- realityking 11y ago
  The Selection API works in Safari, what doesn't work is the clipboard API.
atirip 11y ago
Why isn't this more common?!? Are you trolling? Every script copying random stuff (read marketing messages) into my clipboard, well sign me up, thats what i have sooo wanted for sooo many years. Luckily Safari is my browser of choice.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- joshstrange 11y ago
  IIRC the clipboard copy only happens if you first click so it must be user-initiated. Now I'm sure using flash there are other sneaky ways to do it. For example some sights when you select text and copy it will attach the URL of the page your are on at the end of the text which drives me crazy. If I want the URL I'll copy it, until then stay out of my way.
code_sterling 11y ago
Hardly. Different priorities. Safari on Mac is miles ahead on battery life and footprint. When I'm on a laptop, that matters way way more than any experimental feature. It's literally hours better. I have to ask though, what mission critical ratified features do you need that Safari lacks?
pdkl95 11y ago
More common? It shouldn't exist at all. The potential use cases for manipulating the selection are at best a minor feature and sometimes a serious usability bug. Stop trying to give webpages control - any control at all - over the browser UI. The page gets to control just that (the page) and the framework around that page (the browser). Any violation of this a potential security problem. Any time the demarcation between "remote page" and "browser UI" is blurred, problems such as "phishing" attacks become easier. If you want fancier UI than is possible from a web page, write a native app.
- eponeponepon 11y ago
  Any time the demarcation between "remote page" and "browser UI" is blurred, problems such as "phishing" attacks become easier. Hugely important; largely ignored. Unfortunately, people whose training and experience exists only inside a browser either don't or can't see beyond those confines and the result is reimplementing perfectly adequate external functionality.
  - henvic 11y ago
    This is indeed a nice argument. Sometimes I am doing something on the CLI and go back to the terminal and paste a text I copied from somewhere. If the text is multiline my terminal will consume the lines without requiring an extra 'enter / return' key press. Another possibility is copying something to web mail client without noticing there's something suspicious about it (JS isn't the concern here anymore nowadays, but loading stuff like images is a privacy concern). However, this issue MUST be fixed at browser level. And when used without destroying user expectations / UX, this plugin is useful. Malicious attacks are going to happen anyways if the browser permit such action to happen, so don't blame the plugin or the plugin writer. The browsers are broken. Ask the major browser developers to either never allow it to happen (like Safari does) or ask them to ask for permission (like for webcams) or add a confirmation modal.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      re: browser support (which is where this problem should be fixed) A trivial compromise that would be even easier to use than the current javascript/selection stuff would be a "copy to clipboard" variant of the <button> tag. Something like this should satisfy the use-cases where this clipboard nonsense is occasionally useful: <form> <input name="copy_souce" type="text" value="xyzzy" /> <button type="clipboard" value="copy_source" name="Copy To Clipboard" /> </form> This wouldn't require any Javascript, and leaves the clipboard entirely under the control of the user where it belongs. This could even be extended to allow copying of the various types of input tags, and if you wanted to get fancy, the button could reference an #id and copy that element's textContent (or innerHTML).
cpeterso 11y ago
ZeroClipboard is adding support for the HTML5 clipboard API , while retaining Flash fallback for older browsers: https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard/issues/171 https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard/issues/171
fokinsean 11y ago
Yup, Safari's lack of getUserMedia() is the sole reason we have to continue using flash at my job.

yAnonymous 11y ago

I mostly ignore Safari by now. I work around its worst limitations so the sites are usable, but that's it. Safari is the new Internet Explorer.

babuskov 11y ago
Let's see... Comes preinstalled with OS, has small memory footprint, very fast loading, low CPU usage and shitty support for newer web tech. Yup, all checks out.

progx 11y ago

Seems we have a new IE 6

michaelwww 11y ago
I came across an article yesterday that said this too. I don't know, I am not a Safari user, but I doubt Apple will take years to upgrade like IE6. http://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/ http://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/

jacobolus 11y ago

Funny. I find Safari leaps ahead of Firefox, and even further ahead of Chrome, when it comes to browser performance (CPU use, memory footprint, and especially battery life), with snappier scrolling and animations and fewer weird graphical glitches or mouse/keyboard interaction bugs. For my own browsing habits, Firefox is very sluggish, and Chrome is completely unusable: it just can’t handle the load and brings my whole computer to a crawl. The Safari user interface also feels much more platform-native and predictable (though it has unfortunately copied several Chrome UI elements in the last few years, which I think make the basic UI worse than ~5 years ago), and I don’t constantly feel like someone is trying to gather and analyze my keystrokes or sell me out to advertisers. (I don’t have a Windows machine, so I couldn’t tell you what IE is like these days.) Maybe there’s just a focus on different things between vendors: Google has tons of 20%-time engineers pushing new half-baked features in every direction (yes this is a bit of a caricature), while Apple is taking a more measured approach with a focus on performance and reliability.

rockdoe 11y ago
Is it possible you're having this experience because Safari just is ignoring a whole bunch of stuff (that makes the web-pages slow and cumbersome) because it's too outdated to understand? Battery life it does have an advantage on, AFAIK this is widely understood and both Google and Mozilla are trying to address it (if they can, Apple does have nonpublic/undocumented APIs...). I'm surprised you find it outperforming Firefox wrt memory usage, though.
huskyr 11y ago
> (...) while Apple is taking a more measured approach with a focus > on performance and reliability. Good luck then trying to do anything complex with video and audio on iOS Safari. I've seen many weird quirks and bugs, strange limitations (videos always playing fullscreen on iPhone) and even browser crashes. And considering reliability: wouldn't you agree that we would be better of using a native solution for clipboard access than the buggy and insecure Flash fallback that's needed for Safari?
- awjr 11y ago
  iOS8 release completely blew any confidence I had in Apple. They broke so much in Safari and caused an immense amount of work. IIRC web workers broke after sleeping the screen. That one was a huge problem.
ucaetano 11y ago
It's just business: Apple makes no money from browsing, Google does. It is in Apple's interest that people don't browse at all, and spend their time inside apps, where Apple has a much bigger chance of getting revenue sharing. They are deprecating the browser, on purpose. [Edit: this doesn't mean Apple is bad, they are just a rational company; it would be weird if they weren't doing it]
Oletros 11y ago
> For my own browsing habits, Firefox is very sluggish, and Chrome is completely unusable: it just can’t handle the load and brings my whole computer to a crawl. Any example of those pages that brings the computer to a crawl?

lexicalscope 11y ago

I actually was thinking that the graceful degrade was how it was implemented initially and was about to write it off until I got to that part. Interesting. At this point I still don't buy that Apple is doing this to hold things back. Do you have other examples of when they've been behind on features with no clear explanation of why? It's okay if not - you said you were only casually following - but curious. They wouldn't have very much to gain in my mind - none of their core business relies on locking in/out web development. They have an app market, and I guess you could argue they're trying to drive that, but they have implemented a lot of other features, and early extensions in many cases, that doesn't really align with them trying to hold web back.

circlingthesun 11y ago
Well, for one, local storage in private mode has been completely borked for at least for a couple of years now.

moretti 11y ago

So Safari is holding back webdev because it doesn't support an experimental technology? Fun thing: the author of the Selection API draft works for Apple :-) http://www.w3.org/TR/selection-api http://www.w3.org/TR/selection-api

davidcollantes 11y ago
It is working on Safari for me.
realityking 11y ago
The Selection API works in Safari, what doesn't work is the clipboard API.

atirip 11y ago

Why isn't this more common?!? Are you trolling? Every script copying random stuff (read marketing messages) into my clipboard, well sign me up, thats what i have sooo wanted for sooo many years. Luckily Safari is my browser of choice.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
joshstrange 11y ago
IIRC the clipboard copy only happens if you first click so it must be user-initiated. Now I'm sure using flash there are other sneaky ways to do it. For example some sights when you select text and copy it will attach the URL of the page your are on at the end of the text which drives me crazy. If I want the URL I'll copy it, until then stay out of my way.

code_sterling 11y ago

Hardly. Different priorities. Safari on Mac is miles ahead on battery life and footprint. When I'm on a laptop, that matters way way more than any experimental feature. It's literally hours better. I have to ask though, what mission critical ratified features do you need that Safari lacks?

pdkl95 11y ago

More common? It shouldn't exist at all. The potential use cases for manipulating the selection are at best a minor feature and sometimes a serious usability bug. Stop trying to give webpages control - any control at all - over the browser UI. The page gets to control just that (the page) and the framework around that page (the browser). Any violation of this a potential security problem. Any time the demarcation between "remote page" and "browser UI" is blurred, problems such as "phishing" attacks become easier. If you want fancier UI than is possible from a web page, write a native app.

eponeponepon 11y ago
Any time the demarcation between "remote page" and "browser UI" is blurred, problems such as "phishing" attacks become easier. Hugely important; largely ignored. Unfortunately, people whose training and experience exists only inside a browser either don't or can't see beyond those confines and the result is reimplementing perfectly adequate external functionality.
- henvic 11y ago
  This is indeed a nice argument. Sometimes I am doing something on the CLI and go back to the terminal and paste a text I copied from somewhere. If the text is multiline my terminal will consume the lines without requiring an extra 'enter / return' key press. Another possibility is copying something to web mail client without noticing there's something suspicious about it (JS isn't the concern here anymore nowadays, but loading stuff like images is a privacy concern). However, this issue MUST be fixed at browser level. And when used without destroying user expectations / UX, this plugin is useful. Malicious attacks are going to happen anyways if the browser permit such action to happen, so don't blame the plugin or the plugin writer. The browsers are broken. Ask the major browser developers to either never allow it to happen (like Safari does) or ask them to ask for permission (like for webcams) or add a confirmation modal.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    re: browser support (which is where this problem should be fixed) A trivial compromise that would be even easier to use than the current javascript/selection stuff would be a "copy to clipboard" variant of the <button> tag. Something like this should satisfy the use-cases where this clipboard nonsense is occasionally useful: <form> <input name="copy_souce" type="text" value="xyzzy" /> <button type="clipboard" value="copy_source" name="Copy To Clipboard" /> </form> This wouldn't require any Javascript, and leaves the clipboard entirely under the control of the user where it belongs. This could even be extended to allow copying of the various types of input tags, and if you wanted to get fancy, the button could reference an #id and copy that element's textContent (or innerHTML).

cpeterso 11y ago

ZeroClipboard is adding support for the HTML5 clipboard API , while retaining Flash fallback for older browsers: https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard/issues/171 https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard/issues/171

fokinsean 11y ago

Yup, Safari's lack of getUserMedia() is the sole reason we have to continue using flash at my job.