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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 bec

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.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  It's not really weird at all, that's actually what happened with IE. It wasn't that IE was lacking but people used it anyway, IE was doing really cool stuff but in it's own way. AJAX is one example, IE introduced XMLHttpRequest back then and it took 15 years to become a standart. So people built their cool websites around IE features that were not actually standards and once Microsoft screwed up IE people found out that you can't switch to alternative browsers because websites were built to support IE. As the IE experience degraded(has become famous for crashing and taking the OS with it) and there was a room for improvement, Netscape become Mozilla and they introduced actually good browser that later will become Firefox but because most people used UI, web developers had to accommodate IE by writing IE specific code everywhere. That's where the hate for IE comes from, it wasn't fanboys hating IE, it was developers hating IE because they had to write extra code all the time. Firefox may support some Chrome features but how sure you are that Google will keep making a good browser? For many, Chrome is already a degraded experience for what it was and it is actually very nasty in favouring Google properties and tracking that can be a disaster if switching away from Chrome becomes as hard as it was with IE.
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...

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.
mrtksn 5y ago
It's not really weird at all, that's actually what happened with IE. It wasn't that IE was lacking but people used it anyway, IE was doing really cool stuff but in it's own way. AJAX is one example, IE introduced XMLHttpRequest back then and it took 15 years to become a standart. So people built their cool websites around IE features that were not actually standards and once Microsoft screwed up IE people found out that you can't switch to alternative browsers because websites were built to support IE. As the IE experience degraded(has become famous for crashing and taking the OS with it) and there was a room for improvement, Netscape become Mozilla and they introduced actually good browser that later will become Firefox but because most people used UI, web developers had to accommodate IE by writing IE specific code everywhere. That's where the hate for IE comes from, it wasn't fanboys hating IE, it was developers hating IE because they had to write extra code all the time. Firefox may support some Chrome features but how sure you are that Google will keep making a good browser? For many, Chrome is already a degraded experience for what it was and it is actually very nasty in favouring Google properties and tracking that can be a disaster if switching away from Chrome becomes as hard as it was with IE.

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...