5 ms·

> number of web standards only Safari hasn’t implemented is many times bigger than those of Firefox and Chrome Is that actual web standards, or just what is li

> number of web standards only Safari hasn’t implemented is many times bigger than those of Firefox and Chrome Is that actual web standards, or just what is listed on caniuse.com? The reason I ask is that a lot of "standards" aren't actually standards: Service workers are not yet a standard: "This is a living document. Readers need to be aware that this specification may include unimplemented features, and details that may change. Service Workers 1 is a version that is advancing toward a W3C Recommendation." (https://w3c.github.io/ServiceWorker/ https://w3c.github.io/ServiceWorker/) Web Application Manifest is not yet a standard: "This document was published by the Web Applications Working Group as a Working Draft using the Recommendation track. Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by W3C and its Members." (https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/ https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/) Background sync is not a standard: "This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track." (https://wicg.github.io/background-sync/spec/ https://wicg.github.io/background-sync/spec/) Cookie store is not a standard: "This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track." (https://wicg.github.io/cookie-store/ https://wicg.github.io/cookie-store/) Streams is not a standard, it's just a specification: "This specification provides APIs for creating, composing, and consuming streams of data that map efficiently to low-level I/O primitives." (https://streams.spec.whatwg.org https://streams.spec.whatwg.org) So does Safari suck because it's not supporting actual standards, or does it only suck in comparison to Chrome because Chrome is willing to implement technologies that aren't finalized standards and technologies that aren't even on a standards track?

danaris 5y ago
Or, to take it a step further (and in a slightly different perspective): Does Safari suck because it's not supporting actual standards, or does Chrome suck because it's trying to make sure that the web only works on Chrome, like Microsoft did with IE 20+ years ago?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Does Safari suck because it's not supporting actual standards, or does Chrome suck because it's trying to make sure that the web only works on Chrome This is a weird argument when Firefox supports many of the standards that Safari doesn't, as well.
  - darklion 5y ago
    Or is Firefox willing to compromise on more technologies that aren't yet standardized than WebKit is? Without knowing whether the "standards" being tested are actually standards, it's impossible to know.
    - imachine1980_ 5y ago
      not some of the tools are propose or standard some of then from Mozilla foundations and try to be implemented safari tend to implement standard a lot more slow than the other because this isn't the core business, and let browsers do more things and you don´t need to use the app store.
    - account42 5y ago
      Firefox has been copying Chrome for a long time now. Either Mozilla doesn't believe that they have the market share to succesfully challenge those "standards" (I think its the other way around, they keep loosing market share because anyone who wants Chrome uses Chrome) or they don't want to risk their primary funding source. Either way, something being implemented by Firefox does not mean that WebKit has to implement it too.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Mostly because it is the only way to still be relevant, and as the charts prove it is not doing a great job at it. Typing this from FF by the way.
    - account42 5y ago
      I think blindly copying Chrome in so many ways is actually making Firefox less relevant.
- gmiller123456 5y ago
  More like Safari sucks because Apple wants people to buy native apps from its store. A lot like Microsoft wanting the web to suck so people would buy Windows apps instead. It's not a super secret conspiracy that requires inside knowledge and a network of spies to figure out.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    This is such a lame argument. You want it to be true but have no evidence that it actually is true. A lot of the Chrome team's "standards" have problems with accessibility, workability on mobile, security[0], privacy[1], or just battery life. Some are neat experiments that are or only will be used in the wild by advertisers to track and identify users. Because the Safari/WebKit team doesn't have to chase users for revenue like Mozilla does they can afford to be more conservative with what Google "standards" they support. Being able to offer a tighter privacy posture or efficiency is part of the iOS/macOS sales pitch. [0] https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-tech-privacy-browsers-brave-vivaldi-edge-mozilla-chrome-safari https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-t...
    - Joeri 5y ago
      Safari implements different behavior on desktop vs mobile. They support push notifications on desktop but not mobile, they support large offline storage on desktop but not mobile. What convincing argument exists for this dichotomy except that they want to force people to ship on mobile through the app store?
      - giantrobot 5y ago
        Desktop Safari has a much different power domain than mobile Safari as mobile has alway-on cellular radios (in the nominal iPhone case). iOS has a very power optimized push notification system run through Apple's infrastructure. Notifications for a device are coalesced and sent as a batch to keep the background power of the cellular radio as quiescent as possible as often as possible. It's the same reason there's a background processing API. The notification and background processing APIs also work on iOS where an app can be jetsamed at any time. There's no swap on iOS. Web notifications aren't compatible with iOS' background processing policy and there's not a good way to make them so. Desktop Safari doesn't have a cellular baseband to worry about. Even the wake-briefly-from-sleep-to-check-email feature in macOS is only activated when the Mac is on a wired or previously joined WiFi network. It doesn't randomly blast signals in your backpack on the subway trying to check e-mail and notifications draining the battery. There's also not the same jetsam policy on macOS since it does support swap. Batteries have finite power density and an iPhone has a finite volume for a battery. So there's only so many watt/hours that can fit into an iPhone. Unrestricted background network/processing means much reduced battery life. That's a bad thing for a phone. It's doubly bad for a device that's a device that's also an electronic wallet and navigation aid. Smartphones aren't laptops and neither phones or laptops are desktop systems constantly plugged into mains power. A system that makes sense for a desktop on mains power plugged into Ethernet with 32GB of RAM and essentially unlimited swap does not necessarily make sense on a battery powered device with only radios for connectivity and a fraction of the RAM and no swap. But I get it, Apple Bad and everything they do is a vast conspiracy.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Or Apple makes piles of cash from the app store. So having a native like app experience on web tech hurts their bottom line.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I keep hearing that BS argument. Do we have a "native like app experience on web tech" on Android? Have people given up mobile apps (native or wrapping WPAs) there and use web apps on Chrome on Android? Didn't think so.... Oh, and would you also be happy if your native apps on Desktop were replaced by more Electron?
    - ccouzens 5y ago
      Anecdotal evidence but I use plenty of websites where native apps are available. EG Social Media, Google search, news websites, Youtube. > web apps on Chrome on Android I don't bother installing the web apps, but access them as websites through my mobile web browser (Firefox Android).
    - fomine3 5y ago
      devil's advocate: Safari is too good for performance so they can replace native app experience, meanwhile sadly Chrome isn't.
      - mhoad 5y ago
        Safari haven’t actually beaten Chromium in most performance benchmarks for a while now. https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1485387199738642432?s=21 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1485387199738642432?...
    - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
      I almost exclusively use web apps. I can't remember the last time I installed an actual native app. It's been at least a year.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  Chromium IS the standard. Firefox knows this and implements what Chromium supports. Safari doesn't, so Safari is the new IE. If you don't believe me, search for the phrase "is Safari the new IE" and see what web devs have to say about it.
  - linopolus 5y ago
    Except that IE was never both faster and more battery friendly than the competition.
    - ComradePhil 5y ago
      IE6/7 launch times were much faster than Firefox (this was important before SSDs were common) and general performance was better on IE. I used Firefox for about 15 years mostly because of it's ad-blocking capabilities, even though it was generally a slower browser than IE. IE was "slow" only after Chrome became a thing... which was faster than IE. Firefox wasn't. Having said that, in this context, these things don't matter at all. You can make a barebones browser which only supports HTML and CSS and get several fold improvements in battery life and performance. That is why IE was bad. It did not support newer better functionality that other browsers did.
  - JimDabell 5y ago
    > Chromium IS the standard. Firefox knows this and implements what Chromium supports. This is untrue. There are many cases where Firefox has decided not to implement something Chrome has. Here is a list of specifications that Firefox does not yet implement but has considered: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ Many of the ones listed as “harmful” are implemented by Chrome. > Safari is the new IE. If you don't believe me, search for the phrase "is Safari the new IE" and see what web devs have to say about it. I’v been developing for the web for over 20 years and that’s total nonsense. There’s nothing that makes a developer stand out as inexperienced quicker than saying that Safari is the new IE. It just shows they have no conception at all about how Internet Explorer held the entire frontend development world at a standstill for five years. Safari on its worst day is nothing like Internet Explorer.
- fomine3 5y ago
  ref: https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/ https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    Counter ref: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_the_we.html https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...
conradfr 5y ago
Safari sucks because it's only available on macOS. It's really annoying when doing web development, especially as that's actually the browser that has the most chance to act different from the others.
- irrational 5y ago
  And iOS also. At least on macOS I can use any other browser. On iOS I can only use Safari (either directly or under the hood).
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  You can download Safari for Windows. I don’t know why you would, but you could.
  - recursive 5y ago
    No. You cannot. You would do it to test on Safari. Except you cannot. > Apple no longer offers Safari updates for Windows. Safari 5.1.7 for Windows was the last version made for Windows, and it is now outdated. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204416 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204416 I have a MacBook sitting on my desk that I only ever use to test something in Safari.
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      I misunderstood. I thought someone said Safari on Windows didn’t exist. I wasn’t aware it was discontinued; thanks for that info!
      - conradfr 5y ago
        I could have specified. "recent versions" ;)
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Back when it was available, because the designer on the customer team is the only person with an iPad and somehow the rendering bugs on Safari need to be fixed for his milestone approvals.
smorgusofborg 5y ago
It is pretty funny to defend Apple (or any other browser vendor) using the argument that standards are unfinalized. Running living standards was the coup done by WHATWG, a.k.a. browser vendors. https://whatwg.org/faq https://whatwg.org/faq
- KronisLV 5y ago
  > The WHATWG was founded by individuals of Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software in 2004, after a W3C workshop. Apple, Mozilla and Opera were becoming increasingly concerned about the W3C’s direction with XHTML, lack of interest in HTML, and apparent disregard for the needs of real-world web developers. So, in response, these organisations set out with a mission to address these concerns and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group was born. Darn it, XHTML could have been so good if it got mass adoption! It would simplify parsing content and personally, working with XHTML is sane and easy (albeit in a somewhat dated Java stack with JSF/PrimeFaces, which build upon it). It also gets rid of the inconsistent tags in HTML which can remain open, which i think is a good thing. Then again, i also like XML, maybe to the point of sometimes preferring it over JSON (or at i would if the ecosystem would be there - WSDL was leaps and bounds ahead of OpenAPI/Swagger, but seems like the interest in XML died down), so i don't doubt that many don't feel that way about all of it.
  - rimliu 5y ago
    There is nothing easy about XHTML. Or rather it is only easy if you ignore the essential parts of it.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Only if one insists in writing it using vi.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Let's not go there.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Counterpoint: I don't think it matters much if something is final or not, because what matters more is market adoption. Second, especially with HTML5 and Javascript I believe, they don't do big, formal versions anymore, but evolutionary and incremental design. This prevents a lot of administrative and bureaucratic overhead (see also Java's standardization process and stagnation after 6), at the cost of having fixed targets to work towards.

danaris 5y ago

Or, to take it a step further (and in a slightly different perspective): Does Safari suck because it's not supporting actual standards, or does Chrome suck because it's trying to make sure that the web only works on Chrome, like Microsoft did with IE 20+ years ago?

heavyset_go 5y ago
> Does Safari suck because it's not supporting actual standards, or does Chrome suck because it's trying to make sure that the web only works on Chrome This is a weird argument when Firefox supports many of the standards that Safari doesn't, as well.
- darklion 5y ago
  Or is Firefox willing to compromise on more technologies that aren't yet standardized than WebKit is? Without knowing whether the "standards" being tested are actually standards, it's impossible to know.
  - imachine1980_ 5y ago
    not some of the tools are propose or standard some of then from Mozilla foundations and try to be implemented safari tend to implement standard a lot more slow than the other because this isn't the core business, and let browsers do more things and you don´t need to use the app store.
  - account42 5y ago
    Firefox has been copying Chrome for a long time now. Either Mozilla doesn't believe that they have the market share to succesfully challenge those "standards" (I think its the other way around, they keep loosing market share because anyone who wants Chrome uses Chrome) or they don't want to risk their primary funding source. Either way, something being implemented by Firefox does not mean that WebKit has to implement it too.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Mostly because it is the only way to still be relevant, and as the charts prove it is not doing a great job at it. Typing this from FF by the way.
  - account42 5y ago
    I think blindly copying Chrome in so many ways is actually making Firefox less relevant.
gmiller123456 5y ago
More like Safari sucks because Apple wants people to buy native apps from its store. A lot like Microsoft wanting the web to suck so people would buy Windows apps instead. It's not a super secret conspiracy that requires inside knowledge and a network of spies to figure out.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  This is such a lame argument. You want it to be true but have no evidence that it actually is true. A lot of the Chrome team's "standards" have problems with accessibility, workability on mobile, security[0], privacy[1], or just battery life. Some are neat experiments that are or only will be used in the wild by advertisers to track and identify users. Because the Safari/WebKit team doesn't have to chase users for revenue like Mozilla does they can afford to be more conservative with what Google "standards" they support. Being able to offer a tighter privacy posture or efficiency is part of the iOS/macOS sales pitch. [0] https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-tech-privacy-browsers-brave-vivaldi-edge-mozilla-chrome-safari https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-t...
  - Joeri 5y ago
    Safari implements different behavior on desktop vs mobile. They support push notifications on desktop but not mobile, they support large offline storage on desktop but not mobile. What convincing argument exists for this dichotomy except that they want to force people to ship on mobile through the app store?
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      Desktop Safari has a much different power domain than mobile Safari as mobile has alway-on cellular radios (in the nominal iPhone case). iOS has a very power optimized push notification system run through Apple's infrastructure. Notifications for a device are coalesced and sent as a batch to keep the background power of the cellular radio as quiescent as possible as often as possible. It's the same reason there's a background processing API. The notification and background processing APIs also work on iOS where an app can be jetsamed at any time. There's no swap on iOS. Web notifications aren't compatible with iOS' background processing policy and there's not a good way to make them so. Desktop Safari doesn't have a cellular baseband to worry about. Even the wake-briefly-from-sleep-to-check-email feature in macOS is only activated when the Mac is on a wired or previously joined WiFi network. It doesn't randomly blast signals in your backpack on the subway trying to check e-mail and notifications draining the battery. There's also not the same jetsam policy on macOS since it does support swap. Batteries have finite power density and an iPhone has a finite volume for a battery. So there's only so many watt/hours that can fit into an iPhone. Unrestricted background network/processing means much reduced battery life. That's a bad thing for a phone. It's doubly bad for a device that's a device that's also an electronic wallet and navigation aid. Smartphones aren't laptops and neither phones or laptops are desktop systems constantly plugged into mains power. A system that makes sense for a desktop on mains power plugged into Ethernet with 32GB of RAM and essentially unlimited swap does not necessarily make sense on a battery powered device with only radios for connectivity and a fraction of the RAM and no swap. But I get it, Apple Bad and everything they do is a vast conspiracy.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Or Apple makes piles of cash from the app store. So having a native like app experience on web tech hurts their bottom line.
- coldtea 5y ago
  I keep hearing that BS argument. Do we have a "native like app experience on web tech" on Android? Have people given up mobile apps (native or wrapping WPAs) there and use web apps on Chrome on Android? Didn't think so.... Oh, and would you also be happy if your native apps on Desktop were replaced by more Electron?
  - ccouzens 5y ago
    Anecdotal evidence but I use plenty of websites where native apps are available. EG Social Media, Google search, news websites, Youtube. > web apps on Chrome on Android I don't bother installing the web apps, but access them as websites through my mobile web browser (Firefox Android).
  - fomine3 5y ago
    devil's advocate: Safari is too good for performance so they can replace native app experience, meanwhile sadly Chrome isn't.
    - mhoad 5y ago
      Safari haven’t actually beaten Chromium in most performance benchmarks for a while now. https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1485387199738642432?s=21 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1485387199738642432?...
  - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
    I almost exclusively use web apps. I can't remember the last time I installed an actual native app. It's been at least a year.
ComradePhil 5y ago
Chromium IS the standard. Firefox knows this and implements what Chromium supports. Safari doesn't, so Safari is the new IE. If you don't believe me, search for the phrase "is Safari the new IE" and see what web devs have to say about it.
- linopolus 5y ago
  Except that IE was never both faster and more battery friendly than the competition.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    IE6/7 launch times were much faster than Firefox (this was important before SSDs were common) and general performance was better on IE. I used Firefox for about 15 years mostly because of it's ad-blocking capabilities, even though it was generally a slower browser than IE. IE was "slow" only after Chrome became a thing... which was faster than IE. Firefox wasn't. Having said that, in this context, these things don't matter at all. You can make a barebones browser which only supports HTML and CSS and get several fold improvements in battery life and performance. That is why IE was bad. It did not support newer better functionality that other browsers did.
- JimDabell 5y ago
  > Chromium IS the standard. Firefox knows this and implements what Chromium supports. This is untrue. There are many cases where Firefox has decided not to implement something Chrome has. Here is a list of specifications that Firefox does not yet implement but has considered: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ Many of the ones listed as “harmful” are implemented by Chrome. > Safari is the new IE. If you don't believe me, search for the phrase "is Safari the new IE" and see what web devs have to say about it. I’v been developing for the web for over 20 years and that’s total nonsense. There’s nothing that makes a developer stand out as inexperienced quicker than saying that Safari is the new IE. It just shows they have no conception at all about how Internet Explorer held the entire frontend development world at a standstill for five years. Safari on its worst day is nothing like Internet Explorer.
fomine3 5y ago
ref: https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/ https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Counter ref: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_the_we.html https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...

conradfr 5y ago

Safari sucks because it's only available on macOS. It's really annoying when doing web development, especially as that's actually the browser that has the most chance to act different from the others.

irrational 5y ago
And iOS also. At least on macOS I can use any other browser. On iOS I can only use Safari (either directly or under the hood).
aspenmayer 5y ago
You can download Safari for Windows. I don’t know why you would, but you could.
- recursive 5y ago
  No. You cannot. You would do it to test on Safari. Except you cannot. > Apple no longer offers Safari updates for Windows. Safari 5.1.7 for Windows was the last version made for Windows, and it is now outdated. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204416 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204416 I have a MacBook sitting on my desk that I only ever use to test something in Safari.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    I misunderstood. I thought someone said Safari on Windows didn’t exist. I wasn’t aware it was discontinued; thanks for that info!
    - conradfr 5y ago
      I could have specified. "recent versions" ;)
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Back when it was available, because the designer on the customer team is the only person with an iPad and somehow the rendering bugs on Safari need to be fixed for his milestone approvals.

smorgusofborg 5y ago

It is pretty funny to defend Apple (or any other browser vendor) using the argument that standards are unfinalized. Running living standards was the coup done by WHATWG, a.k.a. browser vendors. https://whatwg.org/faq https://whatwg.org/faq

KronisLV 5y ago
> The WHATWG was founded by individuals of Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software in 2004, after a W3C workshop. Apple, Mozilla and Opera were becoming increasingly concerned about the W3C’s direction with XHTML, lack of interest in HTML, and apparent disregard for the needs of real-world web developers. So, in response, these organisations set out with a mission to address these concerns and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group was born. Darn it, XHTML could have been so good if it got mass adoption! It would simplify parsing content and personally, working with XHTML is sane and easy (albeit in a somewhat dated Java stack with JSF/PrimeFaces, which build upon it). It also gets rid of the inconsistent tags in HTML which can remain open, which i think is a good thing. Then again, i also like XML, maybe to the point of sometimes preferring it over JSON (or at i would if the ecosystem would be there - WSDL was leaps and bounds ahead of OpenAPI/Swagger, but seems like the interest in XML died down), so i don't doubt that many don't feel that way about all of it.
- rimliu 5y ago
  There is nothing easy about XHTML. Or rather it is only easy if you ignore the essential parts of it.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Only if one insists in writing it using vi.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Let's not go there.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Counterpoint: I don't think it matters much if something is final or not, because what matters more is market adoption. Second, especially with HTML5 and Javascript I believe, they don't do big, formal versions anymore, but evolutionary and incremental design. This prevents a lot of administrative and bureaucratic overhead (see also Java's standardization process and stagnation after 6), at the cost of having fixed targets to work towards.