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My impression is that the Safari team is just very small. They are often more quirky than other browsers, and they lag in features (but not nearly so badly as I

My impression is that the Safari team is just very small. They are often more quirky than other browsers, and they lag in features (but not nearly so badly as IE used to). On the other hand they've brought some very welcome improvements: the :has selector and container queries being the standout ones in recent times. And their engine is more power efficient and often faster than anyone elses. EDIT: I would add: 90% seems waaay too high. If this isn't an exaggeration then you may want to consider that you might be doing something wrong (Not checking caniuse for support before using a feature? Trying to use features that are unsupported / poorly supported by your target browsers anyway?)

als0 4y ago
Really enjoying the power efficiency of Safari on a Mac, it keeps me away from the other browsers.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  It’s disheartening that Google and Mozilla seem so disinterested in trying to match or exceed that power efficiency. I like having multiple options for web browsers but because of the difference is so stark it’s only actually a choice on desktops.
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  - kevingadd 4y ago
    Mozilla has invested a lot of effort into power efficiency. It's a pretty painful treadmill considering how often platform-level things change (OS X compositor changes, OpenGL being killed, etc) which means you end up losing ground and having to rearchitect or rebuild stuff to get back to where you were previously. Part of Firefox's power efficiency challenges on OS X are specifically due to how Apple designed the platform, and not something wrong with the browser. They've had to incrementally add in lots of machinery to feed the OS the information it suddenly wants. If Safari has better power efficiency on OS X (I don't doubt it), that's partly just because they work next door to the video driver and OS compositor people. It's not because Mozilla doesn't care. (Does Google care? I can't say for sure, but I suspect they do.)
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      Part of the difference is compositor integration for sure, but there's also design decisions that factor in, like how Safari has throttled JS in non-active tabs for years, where Chrome only started doing this last year. One gets the impression that Google at least is more concerned with Chrome being an attractive app platform than they are with it being responsible with user resources.
- bombcar 4y ago
  You can turn on lockdown mode on MacOS Ventura and it basically disables active compiler JavaScript for all sites - you can turn it back on site-by-site but it’s interesting to see what keeps working. Benchmark scores go to ass but much of JavaScript I’m actually used is just fine.
intellix 4y ago
caniuse... It's like yeah it supports animations and then fails to mention everything with a transform flickers. Or how the introduction of rubber band scrolling completely broke fixed positional elements but "safari supports position fixed". I had a feature which shown an element if the browser UI was expanded and you weren't using the full potential height of the browser... So it tells you to swipe up to trigger a page scroll which minimises the UI. 15.6 gets released and the whole thing breaks and basically becomes impossible now. Or how flex with 100% height is only not inherited in safari. It's missing alot of footnotes for a myriad of issues. Whenever it mentions support for anything new you have to take it with a fist full of salt. I'm sorry, 90% was an exaggeration and it's probably closer to 70%
- realusername 4y ago
  That's also my experience with Safari, not much is really "supported", most of the features are "supported, conditions may apply". And i'm not talking about cutting edge features, there's still zIndex bugs and click event bugs on safari mobile for example.

als0 4y ago

Really enjoying the power efficiency of Safari on a Mac, it keeps me away from the other browsers.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
It’s disheartening that Google and Mozilla seem so disinterested in trying to match or exceed that power efficiency. I like having multiple options for web browsers but because of the difference is so stark it’s only actually a choice on desktops.
- deleted 4y ago
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- kevingadd 4y ago
  Mozilla has invested a lot of effort into power efficiency. It's a pretty painful treadmill considering how often platform-level things change (OS X compositor changes, OpenGL being killed, etc) which means you end up losing ground and having to rearchitect or rebuild stuff to get back to where you were previously. Part of Firefox's power efficiency challenges on OS X are specifically due to how Apple designed the platform, and not something wrong with the browser. They've had to incrementally add in lots of machinery to feed the OS the information it suddenly wants. If Safari has better power efficiency on OS X (I don't doubt it), that's partly just because they work next door to the video driver and OS compositor people. It's not because Mozilla doesn't care. (Does Google care? I can't say for sure, but I suspect they do.)
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Part of the difference is compositor integration for sure, but there's also design decisions that factor in, like how Safari has throttled JS in non-active tabs for years, where Chrome only started doing this last year. One gets the impression that Google at least is more concerned with Chrome being an attractive app platform than they are with it being responsible with user resources.
bombcar 4y ago
You can turn on lockdown mode on MacOS Ventura and it basically disables active compiler JavaScript for all sites - you can turn it back on site-by-site but it’s interesting to see what keeps working. Benchmark scores go to ass but much of JavaScript I’m actually used is just fine.

intellix 4y ago

caniuse... It's like yeah it supports animations and then fails to mention everything with a transform flickers. Or how the introduction of rubber band scrolling completely broke fixed positional elements but "safari supports position fixed". I had a feature which shown an element if the browser UI was expanded and you weren't using the full potential height of the browser... So it tells you to swipe up to trigger a page scroll which minimises the UI. 15.6 gets released and the whole thing breaks and basically becomes impossible now. Or how flex with 100% height is only not inherited in safari. It's missing alot of footnotes for a myriad of issues. Whenever it mentions support for anything new you have to take it with a fist full of salt. I'm sorry, 90% was an exaggeration and it's probably closer to 70%

realusername 4y ago
That's also my experience with Safari, not much is really "supported", most of the features are "supported, conditions may apply". And i'm not talking about cutting edge features, there's still zIndex bugs and click event bugs on safari mobile for example.