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Derided by whom? From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. Performance, smoothness, battery life

Derided by whom? From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. Performance, smoothness, battery life, mobile integration, password management, the list goes on. I had to support and still know by heart the bugs and idiosyncrasies of IE 5, 6, 7, 8 etc. I have no sympathy for people who say Safari is the new IE.

tambourine_man 4y ago
It’s also a great Mac app. Open a link in a new tab or window, frontmost or background? What happens by default, what keyboard shortcuts should work in each case? No browser has a better answer to these questions. Also, Cocoa text niceties work as expected. Multi language spelling, dictionary, text to speech… I’m a huge fan, one of the best apps Apple ever made. It made the iPhone possible.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  The OS integration aspect is indeed big. The various Cloniums (Chrome, Edge, etc) are probably second best in this regard with Firefox sadly placing last… Mozilla stuff has always lagged behind in that department. For example, it only got native context menus in the past year or two after the issue sat on the bug tracker for over a decade
wintermutestwin 4y ago
>Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. I couldn't disagree more. Ignoring the lack of uBlock Origin and multi-account containers (which are table stakes for a browser), Safari's interface is unwieldy and lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs. I can't believe that a $2t company is so careless with their apps.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  While Safari is no paragon of customizability, Chrome and its derivatives are easily the worst in that regard. At least Safari lets you to customize its toolbar, which is more than Chrome allows.
  - catach 4y ago
    > Chrome and its derivatives are easily the worst in that regard. Vivaldi is indeed a paragon of customization. Grandparent commenter was invoking Firefox, however.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  All of those things are quite niche. I use Wipr, block third party cookies and use private mode when needed, use bookmarks and tab groups. Not liking the UI is very subjective, personally I think they all suck somewhat.
  - wintermutestwin 4y ago
    >All of those things are quite niche. The reasons vertical tabs are niche: 1. horizontal is the default in every browser 2. The most popular browser doesn't have any way to have functional vertical tabs 3. It is a huge pain to set up vertical tabs in Firefox 4. Safari's implementation of vertical tabs is a sad joke. Vertical tabs are clearly superior and there is no doubt that horizontal tabs will eventually be a relic of the dysfunctional past.
    - catach 4y ago
      > Vertical tabs are clearly superior The tradeoff of sacrificing some horizontal page space for a vertical tab list is indeed worthwhile if you're opening and revisting 10 or 15+ tabs. I've got about 150 open right now. However, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority only have open between 4 and 7 tabs almost all of the time. If this is true, and if it remains true, then it's likely the primary reason why horizontal tabs have been the default in browsers, and why it will remain the default.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  >lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs I can assure you that doesn't even register as something most end users would consider useful, if they manage to parse it at all.
culi 4y ago
by far the worst devtools I've ever had to use. I definitely deride having to pick up a Safari-specific front-end bug for this reason alone
- thiht 4y ago
  The devtools in Safari are completely unusable to me.
elvin_d 4y ago
Safari on iOS is plainly wrong for users, it's stopping the progress.
pjmlp 4y ago
By those that decided whatever Chrome does is the Web, while arguing against IE having done the same for a decade.
thiht 4y ago
> From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser Maybe if you’ve never used another browser. Safari is good enough and offers the best battery life. This is all that’s good about it. The dev tools suck, especially the network tools. The extensions suck. The weird distinction between bookmarks, favorites and reading list makes no sense so I always lose the pages I wanted to keep. On desktop the animations are awful (e.g. when swiping to go to the previous page, it blinks way too much, this is especially visible with Dark Reader because the dark-white transitions will kill your eyes). I use Firefox on my work laptop and it’s just a better browser. I’ve got no complaints about it.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  >The dev tools suck, especially the network tools. Dev tools are terrible, that's why I said “end user point of view”. >The extensions suck. Again, the amount of of people that even know what that is tiny. >The weird distinction between bookmarks, favorites and reading list makes no sense so I always lose the pages I wanted to keep. I love them. They are completely distinct things in my mind and the fact that the browser reflects it is just another thing to love about Safari. >swiping to go to the previous page I never do that. Command-Left arrow. >Dark Reader… I hate dark mode for everything other than my terminal.
jsnell 4y ago
If Safari were the best browser for end users, why has Apple been blocking competing browsers for such a long time? Surely the users would stay on the Safari given it is both the default and the "best browser", and nothing would change. They could have avoided so much regulatory scrutiny. Or maybe, just maybe, Safari actually hasn't been the best. It's been a vehicle to kill the web as a competing open platform. It's only now that regulators have finally woken up that Apple actually needs to compete, and suddenly discovered all these decade-old features that they need to actually implement to even reach parity, let alone being the "the best".
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Many of those features are not in the interest of the end user. It’s Google’s idea that the web should be converted into a cross platform product it controls. And Firefox follows along in the hopes of remaining relevant. The idea that simply by visiting a web page can fill many gigabytes of the user’s drive and keep using CPU resources even after a tab is closed is antithetical to what the web is supposed to be.

tambourine_man 4y ago

It’s also a great Mac app. Open a link in a new tab or window, frontmost or background? What happens by default, what keyboard shortcuts should work in each case? No browser has a better answer to these questions. Also, Cocoa text niceties work as expected. Multi language spelling, dictionary, text to speech… I’m a huge fan, one of the best apps Apple ever made. It made the iPhone possible.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
The OS integration aspect is indeed big. The various Cloniums (Chrome, Edge, etc) are probably second best in this regard with Firefox sadly placing last… Mozilla stuff has always lagged behind in that department. For example, it only got native context menus in the past year or two after the issue sat on the bug tracker for over a decade

wintermutestwin 4y ago

>Safari is the best browser, hands down, on any platform, by a long shot. I couldn't disagree more. Ignoring the lack of uBlock Origin and multi-account containers (which are table stakes for a browser), Safari's interface is unwieldy and lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs. I can't believe that a $2t company is so careless with their apps.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
While Safari is no paragon of customizability, Chrome and its derivatives are easily the worst in that regard. At least Safari lets you to customize its toolbar, which is more than Chrome allows.
- catach 4y ago
  > Chrome and its derivatives are easily the worst in that regard. Vivaldi is indeed a paragon of customization. Grandparent commenter was invoking Firefox, however.
dontlaugh 4y ago
All of those things are quite niche. I use Wipr, block third party cookies and use private mode when needed, use bookmarks and tab groups. Not liking the UI is very subjective, personally I think they all suck somewhat.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago
  >All of those things are quite niche. The reasons vertical tabs are niche: 1. horizontal is the default in every browser 2. The most popular browser doesn't have any way to have functional vertical tabs 3. It is a huge pain to set up vertical tabs in Firefox 4. Safari's implementation of vertical tabs is a sad joke. Vertical tabs are clearly superior and there is no doubt that horizontal tabs will eventually be a relic of the dysfunctional past.
  - catach 4y ago
    > Vertical tabs are clearly superior The tradeoff of sacrificing some horizontal page space for a vertical tab list is indeed worthwhile if you're opening and revisting 10 or 15+ tabs. I've got about 150 open right now. However, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority only have open between 4 and 7 tabs almost all of the time. If this is true, and if it remains true, then it's likely the primary reason why horizontal tabs have been the default in browsers, and why it will remain the default.
tambourine_man 4y ago
>lacks serious customization and a usable implementation of vertical tabs I can assure you that doesn't even register as something most end users would consider useful, if they manage to parse it at all.

culi 4y ago

by far the worst devtools I've ever had to use. I definitely deride having to pick up a Safari-specific front-end bug for this reason alone

thiht 4y ago
The devtools in Safari are completely unusable to me.

elvin_d 4y ago

Safari on iOS is plainly wrong for users, it's stopping the progress.

pjmlp 4y ago

By those that decided whatever Chrome does is the Web, while arguing against IE having done the same for a decade.

thiht 4y ago

> From an end user point of view, Safari is the best browser Maybe if you’ve never used another browser. Safari is good enough and offers the best battery life. This is all that’s good about it. The dev tools suck, especially the network tools. The extensions suck. The weird distinction between bookmarks, favorites and reading list makes no sense so I always lose the pages I wanted to keep. On desktop the animations are awful (e.g. when swiping to go to the previous page, it blinks way too much, this is especially visible with Dark Reader because the dark-white transitions will kill your eyes). I use Firefox on my work laptop and it’s just a better browser. I’ve got no complaints about it.

tambourine_man 4y ago
>The dev tools suck, especially the network tools. Dev tools are terrible, that's why I said “end user point of view”. >The extensions suck. Again, the amount of of people that even know what that is tiny. >The weird distinction between bookmarks, favorites and reading list makes no sense so I always lose the pages I wanted to keep. I love them. They are completely distinct things in my mind and the fact that the browser reflects it is just another thing to love about Safari. >swiping to go to the previous page I never do that. Command-Left arrow. >Dark Reader… I hate dark mode for everything other than my terminal.

jsnell 4y ago

If Safari were the best browser for end users, why has Apple been blocking competing browsers for such a long time? Surely the users would stay on the Safari given it is both the default and the "best browser", and nothing would change. They could have avoided so much regulatory scrutiny. Or maybe, just maybe, Safari actually hasn't been the best. It's been a vehicle to kill the web as a competing open platform. It's only now that regulators have finally woken up that Apple actually needs to compete, and suddenly discovered all these decade-old features that they need to actually implement to even reach parity, let alone being the "the best".

tambourine_man 4y ago
Many of those features are not in the interest of the end user. It’s Google’s idea that the web should be converted into a cross platform product it controls. And Firefox follows along in the hopes of remaining relevant. The idea that simply by visiting a web page can fill many gigabytes of the user’s drive and keep using CPU resources even after a tab is closed is antithetical to what the web is supposed to be.