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Obligatory "HN post about Safari" note: Still waiting on MSE and fullscreen (for elements) API on iOS, both supported on macOS and ipadOS for years.

dawiddr 4y ago
WKWebView has some new APIs that suggest this might be the lucky year for fullscreen, both on iOS and iPadOS.
- phillipseamore 4y ago
  Interesting, though fullscreen for any element (not just video) has been available on iPadOS for some years now.
phillipseamore 4y ago
Why do so many find it necessary to downvote my comment? MediaSourceExtensions are vital for supporting media in Safari (and already available in iPadOS and MacOS [and under the hood on iOS for VP8/9 support]) and the fullscreen API for arbitrary elements is necessary to support video + slides (or other sideloaded material) and to support captions/subtitles that need features not supported with regular textracks.
- MBCook 4y ago
  I didn’t, but I’ll hazard a guess. “Safari is the new IE” has been the meme for years, despite the fact the situation is totally different. Any time Safari is mentioned or gets a new feature it’s just posts from people complaining Safari doesn’t support WebUSB or whatever their pet feature is. So Safari added the one I see people complaining about more than anything else. The top complaint on HN for literally years. And you just switched your complaining to something else. Most people here are celebrating they got something they’ve wanted forever. Personally I’m just tired of all the bitching. There is no escaping it, it seems. You could have framed your comments much more positively. Perhaps that would have helped. My 2¢ guess.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    It doesn't help that apologists have said Apple isn't dragging their feet but just not implementing features that are bad for users. This article is about one such feature. GP points out that Apple is still dragging their feet on features important to them, features that are only not implemented because they threaten Apple's monetization of streaming services, and apologists drag them instead of Apple. The situation with Safari and IE is very different. What is not different is that they were the most damaging browsers for progress of the web platform in their respective eras.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      What made IE damaging was that it raced out ahead of standards and created APIs that no one else supported but companies started to rely on while it was in the lead and couldn't migrate away to standards that didn't exist. Most people today remember the era of IE stagnation and misunderstand: that wasn't the period of danger, that the was consequences of danger. Safari isn't the new IE, Safari is the new Netscape. Chrome is the new IE in that danger period. All the web developers complaining about Safari and Firefox "being slow", that's the danger signs. That's the warning flags. That's the new IE damaging browser progress by locking people into single-browser "web standards" that aren't standards. I don't know if the web will reap the same consequences this time, if there will be a Chrome stagnation to follow this Chrome danger time. I do know that the warning signs aren't what a lot of people think they are. The warning signs are the complaints about "Safari holding back the web" because they tend to imply that Chrome is the web when it isn't.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        That didn't make IE damaging. XMLHttpRequest pulled the web forward. What made IE damaging was that after it came pre-installed on Windows, it stopped progressing after IE6. It had a garbage collector that made very rich webapps nearly impossible. https://vinaytech.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/garbage-collection-in-ie6/ https://vinaytech.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/garbage-collectio... It had CSS bugs that weren't fixed for years. https://css-tricks.com/ie-css-bugs-thatll-get-you-every-time/ https://css-tricks.com/ie-css-bugs-thatll-get-you-every-time... It didn't implement features that web developers asked for and didn't even join the working group formed to standardize those features. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG It had security issues that made it dangerous for people to use the web. Safari suffers from the last three of those problems, and Apple makes them even worse by preventing other renderers on its platforms. If I had an iOS device, I'd want to run Firefox. I can't. That's on Apple, and pretending otherwise is absurd.
9999 4y ago
It's utterly absurd that iOS on the iPhone still doesn't support Media Source Extensions.

dawiddr 4y ago

WKWebView has some new APIs that suggest this might be the lucky year for fullscreen, both on iOS and iPadOS.

phillipseamore 4y ago
Interesting, though fullscreen for any element (not just video) has been available on iPadOS for some years now.

phillipseamore 4y ago

Why do so many find it necessary to downvote my comment? MediaSourceExtensions are vital for supporting media in Safari (and already available in iPadOS and MacOS [and under the hood on iOS for VP8/9 support]) and the fullscreen API for arbitrary elements is necessary to support video + slides (or other sideloaded material) and to support captions/subtitles that need features not supported with regular textracks.

MBCook 4y ago
I didn’t, but I’ll hazard a guess. “Safari is the new IE” has been the meme for years, despite the fact the situation is totally different. Any time Safari is mentioned or gets a new feature it’s just posts from people complaining Safari doesn’t support WebUSB or whatever their pet feature is. So Safari added the one I see people complaining about more than anything else. The top complaint on HN for literally years. And you just switched your complaining to something else. Most people here are celebrating they got something they’ve wanted forever. Personally I’m just tired of all the bitching. There is no escaping it, it seems. You could have framed your comments much more positively. Perhaps that would have helped. My 2¢ guess.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  It doesn't help that apologists have said Apple isn't dragging their feet but just not implementing features that are bad for users. This article is about one such feature. GP points out that Apple is still dragging their feet on features important to them, features that are only not implemented because they threaten Apple's monetization of streaming services, and apologists drag them instead of Apple. The situation with Safari and IE is very different. What is not different is that they were the most damaging browsers for progress of the web platform in their respective eras.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    What made IE damaging was that it raced out ahead of standards and created APIs that no one else supported but companies started to rely on while it was in the lead and couldn't migrate away to standards that didn't exist. Most people today remember the era of IE stagnation and misunderstand: that wasn't the period of danger, that the was consequences of danger. Safari isn't the new IE, Safari is the new Netscape. Chrome is the new IE in that danger period. All the web developers complaining about Safari and Firefox "being slow", that's the danger signs. That's the warning flags. That's the new IE damaging browser progress by locking people into single-browser "web standards" that aren't standards. I don't know if the web will reap the same consequences this time, if there will be a Chrome stagnation to follow this Chrome danger time. I do know that the warning signs aren't what a lot of people think they are. The warning signs are the complaints about "Safari holding back the web" because they tend to imply that Chrome is the web when it isn't.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      That didn't make IE damaging. XMLHttpRequest pulled the web forward. What made IE damaging was that after it came pre-installed on Windows, it stopped progressing after IE6. It had a garbage collector that made very rich webapps nearly impossible. https://vinaytech.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/garbage-collection-in-ie6/ https://vinaytech.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/garbage-collectio... It had CSS bugs that weren't fixed for years. https://css-tricks.com/ie-css-bugs-thatll-get-you-every-time/ https://css-tricks.com/ie-css-bugs-thatll-get-you-every-time... It didn't implement features that web developers asked for and didn't even join the working group formed to standardize those features. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG It had security issues that made it dangerous for people to use the web. Safari suffers from the last three of those problems, and Apple makes them even worse by preventing other renderers on its platforms. If I had an iOS device, I'd want to run Firefox. I can't. That's on Apple, and pretending otherwise is absurd.

9999 4y ago

It's utterly absurd that iOS on the iPhone still doesn't support Media Source Extensions.