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Edit: I have removed this comment due to post-specific moderation downweighing. Further reading [1]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/iss

Edit: I have removed this comment due to post-specific moderation downweighing. Further reading [1]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues/64 https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues...

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
Does Safari have 90% market share and a proprietary plugin ecosystem now and nobody told me about it?
- Uninen 4y ago
  On iOS devices Safari (WebKit) has 100% market share.
tomxor 4y ago
I was a web developer when IE6 support was still a thing. Safari is the new IE, it may not be as bad yet, but it's right on track, cumulative regressions being the norm.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  I have heard they are improving in recent updates. I'm skeptical, very skeptical, but it's possible that Apple has heard all of this complaining and is trying to pivot to counter it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bioemerl 4y ago
When I hear Internet explorer I don't hear about the monopoly Internet explorer 6, I hear about the Internet explorer 11 that had to be supported for years and constantly just had to be different from everything else in a way that was frustrating and infuriating whenever you were trying to develop a product. Safari does not have the monopoly status, Chrome has that, but safari does have the IE 11 like constant fighting when you have to support it. Also Safari has monopoly status for everyone using an iPhone. The people on iPhone simply can't pick another browser, because Apple won't let them.
- laserdancepony 4y ago
  Yes, we could just all use Chrome and stop competing. That would be far easier for everyone.
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    I mean, relative to having to support safari, yeah, as much as I hate to say it, it's preferable. Firefox is the browser I want to see be the competition.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      > Firefox is the browser I want to see be the competition. Extremely unlikely unfortunately unless the planets align and Google ceases all promotion of Chrome and Mozilla dramatically improves their own promotion game. Firefox would probably need more tangible reasons for people to switch too, because realistically the masses aren't going to care about the privacy or marketshare angles.
      - newaccount74 4y ago
        Google keeps showing alerts in their products (eg. Gmail) telling people to download Chrome. I don't see how Mozilla could "improve their promotion game" to stand up to that.
        bioemerl 4y ago
        Pipe dream, but Firefox could be installed by default on iOS devices and Apple could invest a lot of money into Mozilla as a partnership.
        kitsunesoba 4y ago
        Mozilla can't stand up to that, which is why I mentioned that Google would need to cease all promotion of chrome (including cross-promotions in other Google products). But that alone wouldn't suffice. From what I've seen of Mozilla's efforts to promote Firefox, they don't have any idea of how to appeal to the broader audience, or really any audience beyond the privacy-conscious. That Firefox allows better control of one's data is great but it's not nearly enough to carry most people past the friction point of switching browsers. For that you need things like major advantages in battery life and features that fix common web browsing annoyances.
lycos 4y ago
Oh for sure, having to support IE 5.5/6/7/8 at the same time was a nightmare of conditional comments and css hacks, and testing as you typically could not run multiple versions side by side due to the deep integration into Windows.
- tomxor 4y ago
  Yup, it's not like we have to support Safari 15,14,13 ... wait
  - lycos 4y ago
    See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146633
    - tomxor 4y ago
      Yea, it's not like they substantially diverged from the iframe spec and then abandoned that idea but left it active in a major version that needs support... wait
- lucb1e 4y ago
  That's literally what I'm now doing for Safari, though. There are very, very few things that don't work automatically across Firefox and Chrome/Chromium/Edgium, but quite a lot where Safari wants it differently. Having to type 'apple' (apple-touch-icon) or 'webkit' (-webkit-text-fill-color) literally into your code is a bad thing in my opinion.
  - lycos 4y ago
    I'm just gonna comment on this instead of everyone and I won't reply after this because I've said my part. In my opinion this is not comparable at all, slightly differently or prefixed property/attribute names are really very acceptable to me compared to the hacks we used to implement. Having to hack for multiple IEs while also ensuring those hacks are not applied to other browsers was a special kind of evil to battle, and we are not just talking about "oh IE does not support this so we need to do this another way" but also things like "oh IE like to double the specified padding because why not" - and then at some point they removed conditional comments because they were like "IE is good now." which of course it wasn't. I develop for Safari amongst other browsers daily and have for years, and do not share these frustration everyone else seems to have for it. Do I agree there should be more frequent updates of Safari (also for older MacOS)? Yes. Do I agree iOS should allow other browser engines? Yes. Is supporting older Chromium engines annoying too? Yeah of course, I've run into that as well (don't have any concrete examples right now unfortunately). People like to think that you can expect Chrome to always be the latest version because of the auto updating, but I have experienced multiple issues caused by users with a (very) outdated version. Whether or not you support these depends on your business / target audience, I had to, and it was frustrating. Different browser engines will always be different and implement standards at different rates, and standards are often implemented before they are finalised and some do this with prefixes and others do not. Supporting multiple browsers is part of the job, if you don't like it you should not be doing front-end web development. I for one would hate living in a world that is run by Google (Chromium).
osrec 4y ago
Safari 7-8 years ago was potentially worse than IE in my opinion. Totally broken indexedDB implementation. Random rendering issues, especially if you happen to ever use z-index. Hacks needed to get the most basic events to trigger. Idiotic scrolling behaviour. Choppy animations that didn't adhere to basic CSS standards (even the ones that weren't added by Google). Honestly, it was a mess, and sometimes felt like a deliberate ploy to stop web apps from becoming viable. Things are better now. Just waiting for them to finally add web push notifications.
- realusername 4y ago
  Broken rendering issue with zindex still happens often. Try to put something in absolute on top at width 100% and height 100%, if you scroll down, the snapping goes further than the div...
simonw 4y ago
The claim that "Safari is the new IE" has nothing to do with perceived quality of Safari's implementation of things. It's that Safari is the only browser allowed on iOS. Which means that we are stuck with the subset of the standards that Safari has chosen to implement. So Safari has outsized influence over which standards are actually feasible to build an application around. One example: I've lost count of how long I've been waiting to build web apps that can send (user requested) push notifications.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- least 4y ago
  > So Safari has outsized influence over which standards are actually feasible to build an application around. Which, considering the alternative is Google having complete control over the web, I'm quite thankful for. It doesn't line up with how I'd like things to be in either case but it's much better for there to be some sort of check against Google. Google is far too aggressive about implementing new tech in the browser for very obvious reasons.
rapind 4y ago
> Then everyone else can look like they're behind! I’m not one to defend google, but in the matter of a datepicker… it’s 2023 for crying out loud! A datepicker standard should have been solved and implemented about 20 years ago. Admittedly it’s non-trivial dealing with dates across regions, time zones, DST, etc, but c’mon, it’s been clearly solvable for decades.
- zeroimpl 4y ago
  I didn’t even know <input type="date"> was a thing, I rely on JS datepicker libraries in various places. However there’s usually plenty of configuration that goes along with that, so I’m not surprised it isn’t optimal in all cases.
manigandham 4y ago
Of course it's the new IE. What else would it be? It's all relative, and relatively it's the worst at implementing UX and standards (across mobile and desktop) compared to the rest of the field. Just because it doesn't exactly match up to the same scenario of IE6 doesn't takeaway from the point that you can develop for everything else easily, then must deal with Safari's failures specifically.
thefounder 4y ago
Just try to develop an offline app on safari. Last time I tried it was unusuable. Safari is just bad and on iOS it's the new IE.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
echelon 4y ago
> Edit: I have removed this comment due to post-specific moderation downweighing. > https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues/64 https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues... Can you elaborate on this? How does this happen, and is it a permanent de-buff?
dang 4y ago
That's an abusive use of editing. You've deprived the entire subthread of the context people were replying to. This is unfair to the other commenters in the thread, and is no different from when people rage-edit their comment because they don't like being flagged or downvoted. Please don't do it again. p.s. A comment beginning with "I hate these stupid parrots claiming Safari is the new IE" obviously broke the HN guidelines and therefore did not belong at the top of the thread. The moderation here was correct; your comment and laster destructive edit were out of line.
- culi 4y ago
  thanks for the context. I can see how the comment broke the guidelines, but can also imagine the frustration a user feels knowing they've been secretly screwed by the mod team. Couldn't the comment have simply been flagged instead? Just feels more honest
  - dang 4y ago
    I don't think anyone has been "secretly screwed". HN is a complex system consisting of different factors, including community, software, and moderation, that all have their proper place and do things the other parts can't do.* If there's a way to modify the system to function better, I'm certainly interested, but I don't think mods doing their jobs properly is screwing anybody. On the contrary, the things mods do—including downweighting top subthreads when they break the guidelines or aren't in the intended spirit of the site—are vital to why HN functions as well as it does (not that it functions particularly well; just that it could and would be worse). In fact, that process of downweighting top subthreads is probably the biggest thing we've ever figured out to improve thread quality, at least in recent years. * Btw, if there were a way to have the community and software alone do what mods do, and thus eliminate the need for mods, that would be a day of great rejoicing on our part
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    It's unfortunate, because there was more value in the discussion than the obvious sentence he posted, but because I simply didn't curb a word or two, the entire conversation is naught.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

Does Safari have 90% market share and a proprietary plugin ecosystem now and nobody told me about it?

Uninen 4y ago
On iOS devices Safari (WebKit) has 100% market share.

tomxor 4y ago

I was a web developer when IE6 support was still a thing. Safari is the new IE, it may not be as bad yet, but it's right on track, cumulative regressions being the norm.

bioemerl 4y ago
I have heard they are improving in recent updates. I'm skeptical, very skeptical, but it's possible that Apple has heard all of this complaining and is trying to pivot to counter it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bioemerl 4y ago

When I hear Internet explorer I don't hear about the monopoly Internet explorer 6, I hear about the Internet explorer 11 that had to be supported for years and constantly just had to be different from everything else in a way that was frustrating and infuriating whenever you were trying to develop a product. Safari does not have the monopoly status, Chrome has that, but safari does have the IE 11 like constant fighting when you have to support it. Also Safari has monopoly status for everyone using an iPhone. The people on iPhone simply can't pick another browser, because Apple won't let them.

laserdancepony 4y ago
Yes, we could just all use Chrome and stop competing. That would be far easier for everyone.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  I mean, relative to having to support safari, yeah, as much as I hate to say it, it's preferable. Firefox is the browser I want to see be the competition.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    > Firefox is the browser I want to see be the competition. Extremely unlikely unfortunately unless the planets align and Google ceases all promotion of Chrome and Mozilla dramatically improves their own promotion game. Firefox would probably need more tangible reasons for people to switch too, because realistically the masses aren't going to care about the privacy or marketshare angles.
    - newaccount74 4y ago
      Google keeps showing alerts in their products (eg. Gmail) telling people to download Chrome. I don't see how Mozilla could "improve their promotion game" to stand up to that.
      - bioemerl 4y ago
        Pipe dream, but Firefox could be installed by default on iOS devices and Apple could invest a lot of money into Mozilla as a partnership.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        Mozilla can't stand up to that, which is why I mentioned that Google would need to cease all promotion of chrome (including cross-promotions in other Google products). But that alone wouldn't suffice. From what I've seen of Mozilla's efforts to promote Firefox, they don't have any idea of how to appeal to the broader audience, or really any audience beyond the privacy-conscious. That Firefox allows better control of one's data is great but it's not nearly enough to carry most people past the friction point of switching browsers. For that you need things like major advantages in battery life and features that fix common web browsing annoyances.

lycos 4y ago

Oh for sure, having to support IE 5.5/6/7/8 at the same time was a nightmare of conditional comments and css hacks, and testing as you typically could not run multiple versions side by side due to the deep integration into Windows.

tomxor 4y ago
Yup, it's not like we have to support Safari 15,14,13 ... wait
- lycos 4y ago
  See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146633
  - tomxor 4y ago
    Yea, it's not like they substantially diverged from the iframe spec and then abandoned that idea but left it active in a major version that needs support... wait
lucb1e 4y ago
That's literally what I'm now doing for Safari, though. There are very, very few things that don't work automatically across Firefox and Chrome/Chromium/Edgium, but quite a lot where Safari wants it differently. Having to type 'apple' (apple-touch-icon) or 'webkit' (-webkit-text-fill-color) literally into your code is a bad thing in my opinion.
- lycos 4y ago
  I'm just gonna comment on this instead of everyone and I won't reply after this because I've said my part. In my opinion this is not comparable at all, slightly differently or prefixed property/attribute names are really very acceptable to me compared to the hacks we used to implement. Having to hack for multiple IEs while also ensuring those hacks are not applied to other browsers was a special kind of evil to battle, and we are not just talking about "oh IE does not support this so we need to do this another way" but also things like "oh IE like to double the specified padding because why not" - and then at some point they removed conditional comments because they were like "IE is good now." which of course it wasn't. I develop for Safari amongst other browsers daily and have for years, and do not share these frustration everyone else seems to have for it. Do I agree there should be more frequent updates of Safari (also for older MacOS)? Yes. Do I agree iOS should allow other browser engines? Yes. Is supporting older Chromium engines annoying too? Yeah of course, I've run into that as well (don't have any concrete examples right now unfortunately). People like to think that you can expect Chrome to always be the latest version because of the auto updating, but I have experienced multiple issues caused by users with a (very) outdated version. Whether or not you support these depends on your business / target audience, I had to, and it was frustrating. Different browser engines will always be different and implement standards at different rates, and standards are often implemented before they are finalised and some do this with prefixes and others do not. Supporting multiple browsers is part of the job, if you don't like it you should not be doing front-end web development. I for one would hate living in a world that is run by Google (Chromium).

osrec 4y ago

Safari 7-8 years ago was potentially worse than IE in my opinion. Totally broken indexedDB implementation. Random rendering issues, especially if you happen to ever use z-index. Hacks needed to get the most basic events to trigger. Idiotic scrolling behaviour. Choppy animations that didn't adhere to basic CSS standards (even the ones that weren't added by Google). Honestly, it was a mess, and sometimes felt like a deliberate ploy to stop web apps from becoming viable. Things are better now. Just waiting for them to finally add web push notifications.

realusername 4y ago
Broken rendering issue with zindex still happens often. Try to put something in absolute on top at width 100% and height 100%, if you scroll down, the snapping goes further than the div...

simonw 4y ago

The claim that "Safari is the new IE" has nothing to do with perceived quality of Safari's implementation of things. It's that Safari is the only browser allowed on iOS. Which means that we are stuck with the subset of the standards that Safari has chosen to implement. So Safari has outsized influence over which standards are actually feasible to build an application around. One example: I've lost count of how long I've been waiting to build web apps that can send (user requested) push notifications.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
least 4y ago
> So Safari has outsized influence over which standards are actually feasible to build an application around. Which, considering the alternative is Google having complete control over the web, I'm quite thankful for. It doesn't line up with how I'd like things to be in either case but it's much better for there to be some sort of check against Google. Google is far too aggressive about implementing new tech in the browser for very obvious reasons.

rapind 4y ago

> Then everyone else can look like they're behind! I’m not one to defend google, but in the matter of a datepicker… it’s 2023 for crying out loud! A datepicker standard should have been solved and implemented about 20 years ago. Admittedly it’s non-trivial dealing with dates across regions, time zones, DST, etc, but c’mon, it’s been clearly solvable for decades.

zeroimpl 4y ago
I didn’t even know <input type="date"> was a thing, I rely on JS datepicker libraries in various places. However there’s usually plenty of configuration that goes along with that, so I’m not surprised it isn’t optimal in all cases.

manigandham 4y ago

Of course it's the new IE. What else would it be? It's all relative, and relatively it's the worst at implementing UX and standards (across mobile and desktop) compared to the rest of the field. Just because it doesn't exactly match up to the same scenario of IE6 doesn't takeaway from the point that you can develop for everything else easily, then must deal with Safari's failures specifically.

thefounder 4y ago

Just try to develop an offline app on safari. Last time I tried it was unusuable. Safari is just bad and on iOS it's the new IE.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

echelon 4y ago

> Edit: I have removed this comment due to post-specific moderation downweighing. > https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues/64 https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/issues... Can you elaborate on this? How does this happen, and is it a permanent de-buff?

dang 4y ago

That's an abusive use of editing. You've deprived the entire subthread of the context people were replying to. This is unfair to the other commenters in the thread, and is no different from when people rage-edit their comment because they don't like being flagged or downvoted. Please don't do it again. p.s. A comment beginning with "I hate these stupid parrots claiming Safari is the new IE" obviously broke the HN guidelines and therefore did not belong at the top of the thread. The moderation here was correct; your comment and laster destructive edit were out of line.

culi 4y ago
thanks for the context. I can see how the comment broke the guidelines, but can also imagine the frustration a user feels knowing they've been secretly screwed by the mod team. Couldn't the comment have simply been flagged instead? Just feels more honest
- dang 4y ago
  I don't think anyone has been "secretly screwed". HN is a complex system consisting of different factors, including community, software, and moderation, that all have their proper place and do things the other parts can't do.* If there's a way to modify the system to function better, I'm certainly interested, but I don't think mods doing their jobs properly is screwing anybody. On the contrary, the things mods do—including downweighting top subthreads when they break the guidelines or aren't in the intended spirit of the site—are vital to why HN functions as well as it does (not that it functions particularly well; just that it could and would be worse). In fact, that process of downweighting top subthreads is probably the biggest thing we've ever figured out to improve thread quality, at least in recent years. * Btw, if there were a way to have the community and software alone do what mods do, and thus eliminate the need for mods, that would be a day of great rejoicing on our part
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  It's unfortunate, because there was more value in the discussion than the obvious sentence he posted, but because I simply didn't curb a word or two, the entire conversation is naught.