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> I chalked up the "New IE" stuff to annoying little CSS issues Here, too, Safari is the cause of 2/3rds of the lines of exceptional UI code now that Edge swit

by lucb1e 4y ago

> I chalked up the "New IE" stuff to annoying little CSS issues Here, too, Safari is the cause of 2/3rds of the lines of exceptional UI code now that Edge switched to a compatible render engine. Or blocks features altogether. All major browsers settled on doing things a certain way and then you remember that you always need to check Safari and of course they want it another way, so you get to re-do the work and duplicate your code with a comment "//because safari wants x to be done this way". I had less trouble with MSIE6 back in the day, though I can't rule out that I did less fancy things back then. These things are not like "oops we render it differently by chance", it's conscious choices like not supporting SVG or being able to read file names in JavaScript (can't have javascript-based upload progress bars or local file encryption if you want to keep the filename; need to encrypt on the server and have the server report progress back via another channel).

kiratp 4y ago
> now that Edge switched to a compatible render engine What is the definition of “compatible” here? The point of “one specification, multiple implementations” is to explicitly leave the door open for slightly deviant implementations.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  My definition of compatible is basically what I described in the comment: "[not being] the cause of 2/3rds of the lines of exceptional UI code". There's the occasional situation where Chromium doesn't support something or Firefox doesn't support something, but it feels like Safari has double the rate of both combined.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  The computing industry has a pretty poor track record of multiple-implementations ever agreeing or being a net positive for the user. Instead it always seems to devolve into pile-of-hacks for platform X and pile-of-hacks for platform Y, regardless of what the specification says.
Spivak 4y ago
Can any browser that is not a reskin of Chrome with feature and bug-for-bug parity actually satisfy web developers at this point? If Firefox had the marketshare of Safari and was mandatory to support because they were a major platform’s browser devs would be cursing their name too but with a different set of things that aren’t exactly like Chrome. It really does feel like devs are literally developing against Chrome with not even so much a thought at cross-browser compat or a glance at caniuse and then taking their finished site and then working backwards from there on other browsers cursing the compatibility issues when they could have avoided it entirely had they started with a cross-platform subset of browser features. Just the same as how cross-platform native development works. Hell someone did all the hard work for you https://github.com/amilajack/eslint-plugin-compat https://github.com/amilajack/eslint-plugin-compat Then multiply by all the npm packages blindly imported that were developed with the same methodology and I see where the rage comes from.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  I develop with Firefox on the desktop, and for the vast majority of cases if you develop for Firefox on the desktop, Chrome just works perfectly fine, and most of the time the mobile browsers work as well. Safari (mobile), however, will be broken. Firefox on Android often breaks for more complicated stuff, but works better in my experience.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  > If Firefox had the marketshare of Safari and was mandatory to support Uh, it kind of is? At least, I use Firefox exclusively and thus also support it when developing things. The browser I have trouble with sometimes is a webview skin on mobile (whose engine is blink or whatever it's called nowadays), there some sites block the http user agent string for some reason or it's missing some advanced this or that and I have to switch to mobile firefox which is a lot slower. > Can any browser that is not a reskin of Chrome with feature and bug-for-bug parity actually satisfy web developers at this point? Uh, yes? Firefox? I don't understand your question.
mikl 4y ago
> now that Edge switched to a compatible render engine Not “compatible”. The same render engine. Edge is essentially just Chrome with a slap of Microsoft paint. That’s nice for uniformity, but having all browsers use the same engine is not good for the health of the open web. We do not want Google as a single point of failure any more than Microsoft.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Hah, tell that to Edgium. There are still incompatible sites, same as with Google Chrome® and Chromium. Their own Google Meet will not work properly in Chromium whereas it does in Google Chrome and Firefox. I don't use Edge myself since I'm on Linux (though, surprising fact of the day: there is an Edge release for Linux!) but my girlfriend has stories (which I apparently failed to remember or I'd give examples now; they might also be company intranet sites though). Might have something to do with trying to be more IE-compatible.
deleted 4y ago
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by lucb1e 4y ago

kiratp 4y ago

> now that Edge switched to a compatible render engine What is the definition of “compatible” here? The point of “one specification, multiple implementations” is to explicitly leave the door open for slightly deviant implementations.

lucb1e 4y ago
My definition of compatible is basically what I described in the comment: "[not being] the cause of 2/3rds of the lines of exceptional UI code". There's the occasional situation where Chromium doesn't support something or Firefox doesn't support something, but it feels like Safari has double the rate of both combined.
fbdab103 4y ago
The computing industry has a pretty poor track record of multiple-implementations ever agreeing or being a net positive for the user. Instead it always seems to devolve into pile-of-hacks for platform X and pile-of-hacks for platform Y, regardless of what the specification says.

Spivak 4y ago

Can any browser that is not a reskin of Chrome with feature and bug-for-bug parity actually satisfy web developers at this point? If Firefox had the marketshare of Safari and was mandatory to support because they were a major platform’s browser devs would be cursing their name too but with a different set of things that aren’t exactly like Chrome. It really does feel like devs are literally developing against Chrome with not even so much a thought at cross-browser compat or a glance at caniuse and then taking their finished site and then working backwards from there on other browsers cursing the compatibility issues when they could have avoided it entirely had they started with a cross-platform subset of browser features. Just the same as how cross-platform native development works. Hell someone did all the hard work for you https://github.com/amilajack/eslint-plugin-compat https://github.com/amilajack/eslint-plugin-compat Then multiply by all the npm packages blindly imported that were developed with the same methodology and I see where the rage comes from.

bioemerl 4y ago
I develop with Firefox on the desktop, and for the vast majority of cases if you develop for Firefox on the desktop, Chrome just works perfectly fine, and most of the time the mobile browsers work as well. Safari (mobile), however, will be broken. Firefox on Android often breaks for more complicated stuff, but works better in my experience.
lucb1e 4y ago
> If Firefox had the marketshare of Safari and was mandatory to support Uh, it kind of is? At least, I use Firefox exclusively and thus also support it when developing things. The browser I have trouble with sometimes is a webview skin on mobile (whose engine is blink or whatever it's called nowadays), there some sites block the http user agent string for some reason or it's missing some advanced this or that and I have to switch to mobile firefox which is a lot slower. > Can any browser that is not a reskin of Chrome with feature and bug-for-bug parity actually satisfy web developers at this point? Uh, yes? Firefox? I don't understand your question.

mikl 4y ago

> now that Edge switched to a compatible render engine Not “compatible”. The same render engine. Edge is essentially just Chrome with a slap of Microsoft paint. That’s nice for uniformity, but having all browsers use the same engine is not good for the health of the open web. We do not want Google as a single point of failure any more than Microsoft.

lucb1e 4y ago
Hah, tell that to Edgium. There are still incompatible sites, same as with Google Chrome® and Chromium. Their own Google Meet will not work properly in Chromium whereas it does in Google Chrome and Firefox. I don't use Edge myself since I'm on Linux (though, surprising fact of the day: there is an Edge release for Linux!) but my girlfriend has stories (which I apparently failed to remember or I'd give examples now; they might also be company intranet sites though). Might have something to do with trying to be more IE-compatible.

deleted 4y ago

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