6 ms·

If you are on MacOS, why don't you use Safari? I'm puzzled as to why people seem to dismiss the "built-in" browser. It's the fastest, smoothest, best integrate

by jwr 8y ago

If you are on MacOS, why don't you use Safari? I'm puzzled as to why people seem to dismiss the "built-in" browser. It's the fastest, smoothest, best integrated, and least power-hungry browser on the platform. I regularly use all three major browsers (for testing, I write web applications) and I consistently switch back to Safari for all my non-special browsing.

epicide 8y ago
I keep trying to use Safari as my main browser. I want to use it so bad. I keep switching away from it due to lack of favicons and lack of extensions. I don't personally mind paying for a dev license to release an extension, but it definitely takes a toll on the extensions that get released.
- valleyer 8y ago
  Safari shows favicons in tab titles in macOS v10.14 Mojave.
  - jurip 8y ago
    It's a Safari 12 feature, so works on macOS 10.13 too.
  - geerlingguy 8y ago
    And Safari 12 on High Sierra.
ino 8y ago
One thing I don't like is having a 30% chance to have to wait 2-4 seconds whenever I swipe to go to the previous page or click the back button.
- peheje 8y ago
  This. This a thousand times. I get these random slow downs as well with safari. But only every once in a while. What is happening?
- SeaSeaRider 8y ago
  Ah so it’s not just me!
wyclif 8y ago
This past weekend I tried Safari again when I saw it updated to version 12. I was surprised to see that Apple deactivated my uBlock Origin plugin, saying it would slow the browser down. So now Safari is unusable and filled with ads, and there's nothing Apple provides to replace uBlock Origin. This is a total show-stopper for me.
- metafunctor 8y ago
  It’s really just a suggestion to turn off some extensions. Haven’t bothered to figure out what triggers Safari to do that, but you can still run uBlock Origin on Safari 12 and it seems to work fine.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > Haven’t bothered to figure out what triggers Safari to do that Safari has a new extensions model and will be deprecating the legacy one in a year. Hence the push to migrate to newer extensions.
    - sweetp 8y ago
      the new extensions model is ridiculously useless... You need to build your extension in Xcode now, and for anything other than content blocking, the APIs are non existent... for instance, you can't even close tabs! I made an extremely simple extension using the new model around 2months - before I try migrating an older "actually useful" extension. But theres just no way its possible to migrate. Apple doesn't care about browser extensions now, it seems they want everyone to move to the new model, so they can collect revenue on sales on ad blockers. :(
      - tgragnato 8y ago
        > Apple doesn't care about browser extensions now, it seems they want everyone to move to the new model, so they can collect revenue on sales on ad blockers. The web is terrible without a serious adblocker and the available alternatives (paid or not) are unable to take away the same amount of junk. People will simply start using another browser.
wild_preference 8y ago
It has the worst UX. It doesn't show favicons on tabs. It has the worst selection of extensions: https://redditenhancementsuite.com/safari/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/safari/. Everything just seems to be worse than Firefox/Chrome from the developer tools to extension development (you need Xcode). To use Safari, you pretty much need to decide that performance / battery life are more important than anything else which only describes my needs when I need to milk my battery when it hits 10% with no electric outlet in sight.
- metahost 8y ago
  Safari has just added favicon support for pinned tabs.
- tbassetto 8y ago
  Safari 12 can show favicons on tabs now :o) This is how to enable it: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-enable-safari-favicons-on-mac-and-ios-1829148992 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-enable-safari-favicons-on-mac-...
  - wingworks 8y ago
    Sadly not for the favourites bar yet, which is the biggest thing holding me back so far. :( (+ the UI just seems so clunky and old compared to Chrome)
    - speg 8y ago
      As a counterpoint; I think the Safari UI is the lightest and gets out of my way. I am I the only one who actually likes the lack of favicons? Very minimalist and gets out of the way to let me do my surfing. I do use Chrome during development though.
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  It does have some ux benefits too. The "back gesture" works much better than on other browsers. Firefox gives no feedback, and chrome gives very poor feedback. Safari lets you peek at the previous page, and makes it very obvious that you are about to go back, without any performance hit. It also comes with reading mode, which chrome doesn't. Even with an ad blocker, many pages are still layed out in ways that can only be summed up as reader hostile. So for reading and moving between pages, I feel like it beats both ffx and chrome. So I disagree with your "more important than anything else" part, but agree that performance and battery is among its top features, and if you don't care for that, safari does become a hard choice.
mschuetz 8y ago
Safari doesn't support WebGL2 and probably never will because of Apple's stance on OpenGL. Disqualifies it for me and I've had to tell customers that I can't support it, even if they'd pay for it.
- mike22223333 8y ago
  We're moving to WebGPU now, there will be no more WebGL in the future. WebGPU is coming out in late 2019.
- om2 8y ago
  It’s on in Safari Technology Preview: https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webgl-2 https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webgl-2 We have no particular stance against it, though I agree with the other poster that WebGL is more the future.
  - mschuetz 8y ago
    Ah, that's good to hear. WebGL2 has lot's of useful features, glad to see Safari is going to support them, too.
IloveHN84 8y ago
Do you use Internet Explorer on your Windows Box?
the_clarence 8y ago
It lacks tree style tabs.
augustl 8y ago
Because I can't sync history and bookmarks to my Android phone or my Windows gaming PC.
om2 8y ago
And on the topic of this thread, Safari also has the best privacy protections: <https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-0/> https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-prevention....
mrcnkoba 8y ago
For me the biggest reason not to use Safari was that I couldn't paste screen snippets or images from a clipboard (e.g. Web Whatsapp etc). But after your comment I tried and they seem to have implemented it. Maybe even in Safari 12.

by jwr 8y ago

epicide 8y ago

I keep trying to use Safari as my main browser. I want to use it so bad. I keep switching away from it due to lack of favicons and lack of extensions. I don't personally mind paying for a dev license to release an extension, but it definitely takes a toll on the extensions that get released.

valleyer 8y ago
Safari shows favicons in tab titles in macOS v10.14 Mojave.
- jurip 8y ago
  It's a Safari 12 feature, so works on macOS 10.13 too.
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  And Safari 12 on High Sierra.

ino 8y ago

One thing I don't like is having a 30% chance to have to wait 2-4 seconds whenever I swipe to go to the previous page or click the back button.

peheje 8y ago
This. This a thousand times. I get these random slow downs as well with safari. But only every once in a while. What is happening?
SeaSeaRider 8y ago
Ah so it’s not just me!

wyclif 8y ago

This past weekend I tried Safari again when I saw it updated to version 12. I was surprised to see that Apple deactivated my uBlock Origin plugin, saying it would slow the browser down. So now Safari is unusable and filled with ads, and there's nothing Apple provides to replace uBlock Origin. This is a total show-stopper for me.

metafunctor 8y ago
It’s really just a suggestion to turn off some extensions. Haven’t bothered to figure out what triggers Safari to do that, but you can still run uBlock Origin on Safari 12 and it seems to work fine.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > Haven’t bothered to figure out what triggers Safari to do that Safari has a new extensions model and will be deprecating the legacy one in a year. Hence the push to migrate to newer extensions.
  - sweetp 8y ago
    the new extensions model is ridiculously useless... You need to build your extension in Xcode now, and for anything other than content blocking, the APIs are non existent... for instance, you can't even close tabs! I made an extremely simple extension using the new model around 2months - before I try migrating an older "actually useful" extension. But theres just no way its possible to migrate. Apple doesn't care about browser extensions now, it seems they want everyone to move to the new model, so they can collect revenue on sales on ad blockers. :(
    - tgragnato 8y ago
      > Apple doesn't care about browser extensions now, it seems they want everyone to move to the new model, so they can collect revenue on sales on ad blockers. The web is terrible without a serious adblocker and the available alternatives (paid or not) are unable to take away the same amount of junk. People will simply start using another browser.

wild_preference 8y ago

It has the worst UX. It doesn't show favicons on tabs. It has the worst selection of extensions: https://redditenhancementsuite.com/safari/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/safari/. Everything just seems to be worse than Firefox/Chrome from the developer tools to extension development (you need Xcode). To use Safari, you pretty much need to decide that performance / battery life are more important than anything else which only describes my needs when I need to milk my battery when it hits 10% with no electric outlet in sight.

metahost 8y ago
Safari has just added favicon support for pinned tabs.
tbassetto 8y ago
Safari 12 can show favicons on tabs now :o) This is how to enable it: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-enable-safari-favicons-on-mac-and-ios-1829148992 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-enable-safari-favicons-on-mac-...
- wingworks 8y ago
  Sadly not for the favourites bar yet, which is the biggest thing holding me back so far. :( (+ the UI just seems so clunky and old compared to Chrome)
  - speg 8y ago
    As a counterpoint; I think the Safari UI is the lightest and gets out of my way. I am I the only one who actually likes the lack of favicons? Very minimalist and gets out of the way to let me do my surfing. I do use Chrome during development though.
wodenokoto 8y ago
It does have some ux benefits too. The "back gesture" works much better than on other browsers. Firefox gives no feedback, and chrome gives very poor feedback. Safari lets you peek at the previous page, and makes it very obvious that you are about to go back, without any performance hit. It also comes with reading mode, which chrome doesn't. Even with an ad blocker, many pages are still layed out in ways that can only be summed up as reader hostile. So for reading and moving between pages, I feel like it beats both ffx and chrome. So I disagree with your "more important than anything else" part, but agree that performance and battery is among its top features, and if you don't care for that, safari does become a hard choice.

mschuetz 8y ago

Safari doesn't support WebGL2 and probably never will because of Apple's stance on OpenGL. Disqualifies it for me and I've had to tell customers that I can't support it, even if they'd pay for it.

mike22223333 8y ago
We're moving to WebGPU now, there will be no more WebGL in the future. WebGPU is coming out in late 2019.
om2 8y ago
It’s on in Safari Technology Preview: https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webgl-2 https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webgl-2 We have no particular stance against it, though I agree with the other poster that WebGL is more the future.
- mschuetz 8y ago
  Ah, that's good to hear. WebGL2 has lot's of useful features, glad to see Safari is going to support them, too.

IloveHN84 8y ago

Do you use Internet Explorer on your Windows Box?

the_clarence 8y ago

It lacks tree style tabs.

augustl 8y ago

Because I can't sync history and bookmarks to my Android phone or my Windows gaming PC.

om2 8y ago

And on the topic of this thread, Safari also has the best privacy protections: <https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-0/> https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-prevention....

mrcnkoba 8y ago

For me the biggest reason not to use Safari was that I couldn't paste screen snippets or images from a clipboard (e.g. Web Whatsapp etc). But after your comment I tried and they seem to have implemented it. Maybe even in Safari 12.