6 ms·
All web browsers on iOS are just Safari with different design
- robertlagrant 3y agoIs this true? I thought it was purely the rendering.
- weikju 3y agoThe title/community post are wrong - it's WebKit, not Safari itself. But the intended meaning is true, all browsers on iOS are "skins" on the WebKit engine, no Gecko, Blink, etc. This still ignores all the differentiation between the browsers on iOS, even if they're all on WebKit. And even as Orion proves, browsers on iOS can support Firefox/Chrome extensions! So WebKit isn't something that prevents that...
- smcleod 3y agoOh what I’d give for a real Firefox browser on iOS. I see lots of value in preventing chrome based browser from running through as they already dominate and shape the web too much as it is.
- gnicholas 3y agoBut iOS is WebKit, not chromium. Am I misunderstanding your concern?
- smcleod 3y agoYes that’s correct. What I’m saying is I don’t think chrome based browsers should come to iOS (brave, chrome)
- SahAssar 3y agoWhy would you prevent others from choosing the browser they use?
- sharps1 3y agoAllowing choice is good. All that is going to happen though is chrome will take over on iOS.
- al_borland 3y agoSafari is the only thing stopping Google from having a monopoly on the browser market. Take that away and Google will single-handedly control the future direction of the internet. While I may like the idea of browser engine choice on iOS, I think preventing Google from owning the web is more important.
- SahAssar 3y agoWhile I hate the tech-giant control of the internet as much as anybody else I don't think that restricting user choice of their browser is at all the right way to fix it. Why do you think that forcing people to use safari/webkit is a good solution?
- al_borland 3y agoIt’s not a perfect solution, but I’m not sure what the alternative would be that wouldn’t lead to Google’s domination. It’s still technically the market doing this, as it’s an Apple rule. People who don’t like Apple’s ways of doing things are free to use Android. I guess I’d prefer that over some kind of government enforced control. I’m also going to assume the percentage of users who know this situation exists, care, and have an actual impact to their user experience is exceptionally small. 999,999 times out of 1,000,000, when someone is downloading a different browser on their phone it isn’t for the engine, it’s to get something like tab and bookmark syncing.
- SahAssar 3y ago> I guess I’d prefer that over some kind of government enforced control. You know what the "government enforced control" is? Choice. Literally, the so called "government enforced control" is giving you the choice of doing the exact same thing you did before or, if you'd like, something different. Telling people to "just use android then" will be fine when apple destructs the walls of its walled garden.
- SahAssar 3y agoSome people equate blink and webkit because of their shared heritage. I think it has definitely diverged enough to be considered separate engines (like how webkit is considered separate from khtml), but some disagree.
- smcleod 3y agoI’m not talking about WebKit, I’m saying it would be good for the internet if chrome didn’t come to iOS
- stavros 3y agoYou can move to the EU.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe changes that would permit Firefox on iOS will make Chrome’s dominance worse. Losing iOS users is the only reason we don’t have “only works in Chrome” everywhere.
- drivingmenuts 3y agoIs there a technical reason or is it just ideology?
- smcleod 3y agoJust googles stranglehold on the web, so yes I guess ideology
- anste 3y agoSad, but true. Unfortunately, Safari still has some ways to go in terms of feature support. https://ios404.com/ https://ios404.com/ has a great list of stuff that's still missing.
- frizlab 3y agoIn my opinion it is very fortunate that most of these APIs are not supported. I don’t want a webpage to make my phone vibrate for instance. Nor do I want to be able to give the permission for a webpage to do it by the way.
- throwaway2990 3y ago[dead]
- Aloisius 3y agoIt seems like most of the missing features aren't part of any standard.
- shepherdjerred 3y agoMost people wouldn't miss the majority of those APIs. Safari has a lot of quirks, but those are mostly felt more by developers rather than users.
- cjpearson 3y agoThis statement does seem a little ironic coming from a browser which is Chrome with a different design.
- cdata 3y agoThis elides an important detail: outside of iOS a browser implementer can choose the code to compile and link against. Even if they build on Chrome, they can patch it to their heart's content or even fork and carry on. On iOS the browser runtime is set by fiat. Also worth observing that most web browsers in the history of the web (including Chrome and Safari) started out as a fork of some other browser.
- schleck8 3y agoI think so too. Talking about monopoly and then participating in advancing a de-facto monopoly (Chromium on Android and Chromium on Windows)
- ryleyrandall22 3y agoIf you want to be even more cynical you could say they are all limited versions of Safari. There are valid security concerns for why Apple does this but I would love more choices as a developer.
- fsflover 3y agoWhich valid security concerns?
- Devasta 3y agoAnd most browsers on other platforms are just Chrome with different design.
- cloudking 3y agoI wouldn't be mad if all browsers were Chromium powered. Then I can stop doing so many browser CSS/JS hacks.
- t-sauer 3y agoWhat kind of stuff are you doing that you need many CSS/JS hacks nowadays?
- al_borland 3y agoBe careful what you wish for. This is good until it isn’t. With Google owning the market, there is really nothing to stop them from implementing “features” that are good for them, but bad for the intent as a whole.
- Spivak 3y agoIt's kind of funny hearing this from Brave which is Chrome with a different design. I'm guessing Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, Opera GX, Orion, Sigma OS, Arc all consider themselves to have differentiated themselves from Chrome despite being Chrome under the hood. If Webkit === Safari then is Blink === Chrome? Do people actually want alternative browser engines or do folks just want all iOS browsers to be backed by Chromium?
- weikju 3y ago'hearing this from Brave' -- this is a community post on the Brave forums, and doesn't even seem to be from an employee of Brave. edit: Also, Orion is WebKit based
- frizlab 3y agoGood. Let’s keep it that way, please.
- waiwai933 3y agoThis is no longer necessarily true in the EU as of last month - https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi... - though I don't know if any browsers have in fact changed their rendering engine from Webkit yet.
- pluc 3y agoAll browsers on everything but iOS are just Chrome with different design
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- armadsen 3y agoSomething that annoys me about this post is the emphasis on Chromium being open source as if WebKit is not. Chromium started out as a fork of WebKit!