4 ms·

Safari is the new Internet Explorer. That was my experience trying to grapple with its weird, non-standards-compliant implementation of HTML5 required fields.

JoBrad 11y ago
With the caveat that it's basically only on iOS and OS X.
- kevincox 11y ago
  Exactly, Microsoft provides IE VMs that I can use to ensure my sites work on IE. For Safari? I guess I'll just have to pray.
mstade 11y ago
I disagree – Chrome is the new IE. Why? It's simple: your analogy focuses on being non-standard, but actually misses the most important bit which is control of the market. Chrome is just as much non-standard as Safari, but you wouldn't know because it controls the market. Since ostensibly everyone uses Chrome, it gets to effectively dictate the standards while everyone else plays catch up – Chrome is the de facto standard to which others are held. I'm not saying Chrome is a bad piece of software – it may or may not be but that's beside the point. What I'm saying is that when you and many others complain about browsers not being standards compliant, I'm willing to bet you mean de facto standards compliant – i.e. whatever Chrome dictates. Just like IE used to. IE came up with all sorts of features that became de facto standards and in many cases these days an actual standard – @font-face anyone? Microsoft strong armed everyone else into submission until Google decided enough was enough. But it's not like Google did it out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because their business depended on people having the ability to consume the web. They need the web to be great, because otherwise they couldn't have sold so many ads on: the web. So their products need features, and it just so happens that a lot of us got to benefit as well. Compatibility however, isn't really important. At least not while they control the market. What they say, goes. It'd be very difficult to create a site these days that won't work on Chrome, but it's not uncommon that you find disclaimers around the web say "optimized for Chrome" or worse: sites just not working at all on anything but Chrome. Now they have done, and continue to do a lot to advance the state of the art. But so did IE back in the day. At least until the competition died out. I for one am glad Safari is weird – I only wish there were more weirdos.

JoBrad 11y ago

With the caveat that it's basically only on iOS and OS X.

kevincox 11y ago
Exactly, Microsoft provides IE VMs that I can use to ensure my sites work on IE. For Safari? I guess I'll just have to pray.

mstade 11y ago

I disagree – Chrome is the new IE. Why? It's simple: your analogy focuses on being non-standard, but actually misses the most important bit which is control of the market. Chrome is just as much non-standard as Safari, but you wouldn't know because it controls the market. Since ostensibly everyone uses Chrome, it gets to effectively dictate the standards while everyone else plays catch up – Chrome is the de facto standard to which others are held. I'm not saying Chrome is a bad piece of software – it may or may not be but that's beside the point. What I'm saying is that when you and many others complain about browsers not being standards compliant, I'm willing to bet you mean de facto standards compliant – i.e. whatever Chrome dictates. Just like IE used to. IE came up with all sorts of features that became de facto standards and in many cases these days an actual standard – @font-face anyone? Microsoft strong armed everyone else into submission until Google decided enough was enough. But it's not like Google did it out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because their business depended on people having the ability to consume the web. They need the web to be great, because otherwise they couldn't have sold so many ads on: the web. So their products need features, and it just so happens that a lot of us got to benefit as well. Compatibility however, isn't really important. At least not while they control the market. What they say, goes. It'd be very difficult to create a site these days that won't work on Chrome, but it's not uncommon that you find disclaimers around the web say "optimized for Chrome" or worse: sites just not working at all on anything but Chrome. Now they have done, and continue to do a lot to advance the state of the art. But so did IE back in the day. At least until the competition died out. I for one am glad Safari is weird – I only wish there were more weirdos.