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Safari has been absolutely crushing things in terms of standards and general shipping velocity for nearing on 3 years now. Your comment would be 100% true 3 yea

Safari has been absolutely crushing things in terms of standards and general shipping velocity for nearing on 3 years now. Your comment would be 100% true 3 years ago, but today is basically completely incorrect. A sibling comments corrects some of it, but needless to say the endless FUD around this is bad. Safari is an incredible browser - standards wise - but also way faster and more efficient than Chrome. I use it for everything except the dev tools and switching to Chrome always feels like I'm using a gas car vs electric - clunky, slower, heavier.

no_wizard 3y ago
They have done a ton on the CSS side in particular, I agree with that, and its in a better place than it was 3 years ago, no doubt about that either. My point still stands on interop though: They aren't picking anything where the interop is divergent and tricky for developers to navigate, and most of this was on their roadmap as going to implement soon anyway. They aren't tackling any thorny issues like OPFS, which is where developers want them to figure out interoperability for consistency because it moves the entire platform forward in big meaningful ways (for instance, makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps) I applaud their CSS and HTML work though, that's been nice to see.
- novov 3y ago
  Interop is a joint initiative between all three browsers though, not just Safari. Its not just Safari that picks these focus areas.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    It is Apple throwing up objections to focusing on other things as far as interop goes though. They have alot of weight in the discussion at hand. I know Google throws some up too (JPEG XL much) but Apple is somewhat notorious for this. I should also mention, there was an episode of the ShopTalk Show podcast where their developer evangelist was pushing for most of the things in this list when talking about Interop, which makes me believe they had their minds pretty well decided going into the whole thing.
    - JimDabell 3y ago
      Whenever I see people complain about this, it always seems to be specs. that aren’t on the standards track. Which basically means that it’s a spec. that Google wrote and both Mozilla and Apple rejected. It takes only two independent implementations to make something a standard. If it’s not on the standards track, it means Google couldn’t convince anybody else to implement it. This is not Apple throwing up objections. This is Google trying to push bad stuff unilaterally and nobody else going along with it.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps You will need to be specific about what missing API will magically make this true. Because all I see people on here ask for are things like MIDI support which are nice and all but have been used by companies to track you. Which is why Google who is fully supportive of this has no issues adding it in without any thought to privacy.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Filesystem persistence removes a whole host of complexities from applications For instance, I would no longer have to store files on a server, I could simply save them locally for the user, which makes it easier for them to have portable files, use it with other apps etc. It also reduces the startup cost of some apps. If for instance I wanted to make a photo editing app, its going to be cheaper to store edited photos back onto the users device, than it is for me to upload them to a server and store them, especially over time. It removes alot of developer overhead and it has benefits for the user (IE, the files are more portable, since they're on your machine, not someone elses). Currently we are perpetually stuck with having to re-create virtual representations of file systems and they aren't the same thing, not by a long shot.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      But it also makes tracking much easier, right?
      - no_wizard 3y ago
        Not by default. It’s not inherent to it at all. I’m honestly not sure how it does, given the idea would be to restrict FS access to only files the user grants permissions to read / write, so they can’t write arbitrary things to the file system. There’s other techniques they can use to make it blind / privacy focused as well
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Where's "here"? As far as I can tell, yours is the only mention of MIDI in these comments. Arguing against MIDI is a total strawman.
- om2 3y ago
  Safari has supported OPFS for some time. But Interop isn’t mainly a “please implement this” list, it’s a list of priority areas for browsers to become consistent with each other and with standards. If you think there’s a problematic lack of cross-browser consistency for OPFS, then definitely nominate it as a focus area for Interop 2025. Anyone is welcome to propose work items.

no_wizard 3y ago

They have done a ton on the CSS side in particular, I agree with that, and its in a better place than it was 3 years ago, no doubt about that either. My point still stands on interop though: They aren't picking anything where the interop is divergent and tricky for developers to navigate, and most of this was on their roadmap as going to implement soon anyway. They aren't tackling any thorny issues like OPFS, which is where developers want them to figure out interoperability for consistency because it moves the entire platform forward in big meaningful ways (for instance, makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps) I applaud their CSS and HTML work though, that's been nice to see.

novov 3y ago
Interop is a joint initiative between all three browsers though, not just Safari. Its not just Safari that picks these focus areas.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  It is Apple throwing up objections to focusing on other things as far as interop goes though. They have alot of weight in the discussion at hand. I know Google throws some up too (JPEG XL much) but Apple is somewhat notorious for this. I should also mention, there was an episode of the ShopTalk Show podcast where their developer evangelist was pushing for most of the things in this list when talking about Interop, which makes me believe they had their minds pretty well decided going into the whole thing.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    Whenever I see people complain about this, it always seems to be specs. that aren’t on the standards track. Which basically means that it’s a spec. that Google wrote and both Mozilla and Apple rejected. It takes only two independent implementations to make something a standard. If it’s not on the standards track, it means Google couldn’t convince anybody else to implement it. This is not Apple throwing up objections. This is Google trying to push bad stuff unilaterally and nobody else going along with it.
threeseed 3y ago
> makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps You will need to be specific about what missing API will magically make this true. Because all I see people on here ask for are things like MIDI support which are nice and all but have been used by companies to track you. Which is why Google who is fully supportive of this has no issues adding it in without any thought to privacy.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Filesystem persistence removes a whole host of complexities from applications For instance, I would no longer have to store files on a server, I could simply save them locally for the user, which makes it easier for them to have portable files, use it with other apps etc. It also reduces the startup cost of some apps. If for instance I wanted to make a photo editing app, its going to be cheaper to store edited photos back onto the users device, than it is for me to upload them to a server and store them, especially over time. It removes alot of developer overhead and it has benefits for the user (IE, the files are more portable, since they're on your machine, not someone elses). Currently we are perpetually stuck with having to re-create virtual representations of file systems and they aren't the same thing, not by a long shot.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    But it also makes tracking much easier, right?
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Not by default. It’s not inherent to it at all. I’m honestly not sure how it does, given the idea would be to restrict FS access to only files the user grants permissions to read / write, so they can’t write arbitrary things to the file system. There’s other techniques they can use to make it blind / privacy focused as well
- jsnell 3y ago
  Where's "here"? As far as I can tell, yours is the only mention of MIDI in these comments. Arguing against MIDI is a total strawman.
om2 3y ago
Safari has supported OPFS for some time. But Interop isn’t mainly a “please implement this” list, it’s a list of priority areas for browsers to become consistent with each other and with standards. If you think there’s a problematic lack of cross-browser consistency for OPFS, then definitely nominate it as a focus area for Interop 2025. Anyone is welcome to propose work items.