3 ms·

Weirdest criticism I've heard. Either someone know it's all Safari in a skin (due to Apple's restriction), or someone didn't heard of this limitation.

tzs 5y ago
How much does all iOS browsers being built on top of Safari actually limit what one can do? Obviously the actual page rendering and JavaScript executing would be Safari. But 99% of the time when I hear people advocating for browser X over browser Y it is not because X has better rendering or a better JS engine. It is because of higher level things, like containers (Firefox over Chrome) or better profile handling (Chrome over Firefox) or better spell checking (everything over Firefox). Does having to build on top of Safari on iOS also constrain those higher level things?
- zinekeller 5y ago
  > Does having to build on top of Safari on iOS also constrain those higher level things? Yes! > containers (Firefox over Chrome) No, they can't install add-ons (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios). Even if they could built this into the browser, they can't (see how the profiles are handled). > better profile handling (Chrome over Firefox) No, Chrome does not support this feature on iOS (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DiOS https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GE...). iOS' WebKit limits this to only one permanent profile and one ephemeral profile. You can technically have multiple profiles in the iPad - that is, if you're a school, and that's really more of a OS-wide user account thing. (G did a hack over this by rewriting that profile when switching profiles - but it's not truly a multitask thing, and violates Apple Developer Guidelines). > better spell checking (everything over Firefox) No, and for more sensible reasons. Users do expect consistent spell checking because they use the keyboard to do that. Regardless, if you want to implement spell checking in-browser, that's impossible. If you want to do it outside of Safari, go ahead - it's just not integrated to those Apple things (more of a dedicated Grammarly interface rather than desktop spell checking).

tzs 5y ago

How much does all iOS browsers being built on top of Safari actually limit what one can do? Obviously the actual page rendering and JavaScript executing would be Safari. But 99% of the time when I hear people advocating for browser X over browser Y it is not because X has better rendering or a better JS engine. It is because of higher level things, like containers (Firefox over Chrome) or better profile handling (Chrome over Firefox) or better spell checking (everything over Firefox). Does having to build on top of Safari on iOS also constrain those higher level things?

zinekeller 5y ago
> Does having to build on top of Safari on iOS also constrain those higher level things? Yes! > containers (Firefox over Chrome) No, they can't install add-ons (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios). Even if they could built this into the browser, they can't (see how the profiles are handled). > better profile handling (Chrome over Firefox) No, Chrome does not support this feature on iOS (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DiOS https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GE...). iOS' WebKit limits this to only one permanent profile and one ephemeral profile. You can technically have multiple profiles in the iPad - that is, if you're a school, and that's really more of a OS-wide user account thing. (G did a hack over this by rewriting that profile when switching profiles - but it's not truly a multitask thing, and violates Apple Developer Guidelines). > better spell checking (everything over Firefox) No, and for more sensible reasons. Users do expect consistent spell checking because they use the keyboard to do that. Regardless, if you want to implement spell checking in-browser, that's impossible. If you want to do it outside of Safari, go ahead - it's just not integrated to those Apple things (more of a dedicated Grammarly interface rather than desktop spell checking).