Safari is a great browser and I'm sometimes surprised at how huge Chrome's mindshare among developers is. Every time I try Chrome out on my Mac I end up running screaming back to Safari. Safari doesn't choke on tons of tabs, it doesn't eat battery and memory for breakfast, it's never started autoplaying videos when I open a tab in the background, it's got support for picture in picture video which is my most used new feature of OS X in ages, and is fast fast fast.
I don't think it is fair to discount battery life, memory usage, and performance so heavily. Looking at the http://caniuse.com list there are plenty of features supported by Safari and not supported by Chrome including Audio Tracks, Video Tracks, ES6 modules, SVG Fonts, Animated PNG, CSS regions. Safari is actually the first to 100% ES6 compliance; Chrome sits at 89%.
I would also remind everyone that Google chose to fork Webkit to create Blink. They could have contributed their IndexDB engine to webkit at any time but chose not to. They could have contributed to the process isolation refactor but chose to do their own thing instead. They could have collaborated on JSCore instead of creating V8. That isn't wrong or right but it is the truth and it does mean duplicated effort.
Some of the features supported by Chrome are interesting to web-only developers I'm sure, but I don't want the browser on my mobile phone running service workers eating my battery in the background. With great power comes great responsibility and the JS-advertising-infested web has a really poor record on handling responsibility.
If you give a web developer media playback, they force auto-playing media on you.
If you give a web developer responsive layouts, they steal your ability to zoom.
If you give a web developer cookies, they inject tracking bugs to invade your privacy.
If you give a web developer service workers they will absolutely drain your battery.
(Yes not everyone but it will be widespread enough that browsers will be forced to invent countermeasures.)
I find it more likely that Apple and Google's views on key topics (e.g. privacy/advertising) were diametrically opposed (not to mention Android vs iOS).
Note: Chrome exists for many OSs - Safari is only found on Apple ones.
That's only the newest version of Safari, before that it was pretty shit (on par with IE). Can't expect the mind share to change overnight, especially when it has lagged for years.
It's really weird to see this myth about Safari being the new IE6. At no point did Apple abandoned WebKit or add proprietary features to the extent that Microsoft did. They've continued to plug away adding new functionality and as has been mentioned they are ahead of Chrome/Edge in some areas and behind in others.
Some features in particular service workers Apple has deliberately chosen to take a firm position on because they value battery life and security.
I have a lot of small extensions I use with Chrome, but that list's getting smaller everyday. The dev tools are not the same, but they're getting pretty close.
My main gripe with Safari is that its release schedule is basically tied to OS releases. Ever since Chrome, I've come to love continuous releases. It's extremely satisfying to know that your browser will receive those important security updates quickly.
With Safari I have to deal with the App store nonsense (I still can't believe how bad that application is), waiting for stuff because Apple wants major releases to happen with their busted OS releases (your OS is free now! Please do rolling releases).
And I'm not a fan of Apple's positioning for web apps compared to Google or Mozilla. I like fancy new features!
The OS integration is, of course, better. Looks nice to use. And I think Chrome halves my battery life at this point. I should give it a shot again.
We're moved to shipping new web developer features twice a year. That's not near as often as Chrome but still a big improvement to once a year, solely with the major OS releases.
This release also has a ton of compatibility and standards compliance fixes.
> It's extremely satisfying to know that your browser will receive those important security updates quickly.
Apple has shipped plenty of Safari security updates outside of the OS update cycle. Feature releases of Safari are tied to the OS update cycle, not security updates.
I enjoy Safari and use it for general browsing. However, as a developer, I perceive their developer program to be unfriendly with a high barrier to entry. That may be acceptable in a closed ecosystem like iOS but unacceptable in an ecosystem like the general web.
Right, that's what I was trying to get at, sort of. From the developer page for extensions -
> The future of extensions development takes place in Xcode
and
> To develop without a certificate, you must tell Safari each time it is launched
These points can be trivial for someone who is or has no issue becoming a part of the Apple Developer Program. However, the red tape seems contradictory and almost hostile compared to developing extensions for Chrome and Firefox where all you need is your favorite text editor.
It definitely would be great if you could use your preferred tools and build from the commandline, or if Apple could ease the process of self-signing for local deployment.
However, the tension between developer and user friendliness as noted elsewhere in this discussion applies here as well. Presumably a part of the fees that Apple collects from developers covers the cost of auditing extensions for security, and identifying developers which provides a disincentive for user-hostile activity.
Meanwhile, Chrome extensions have been a vector for adware and malware–often because bad actors will buy popular but unmaintained extensions and users will get an updated version that is user-hostile in some way. One could argue that Apple should fund the auditing process out of other revenue, and that it is short-sighted of them to try to make the developer ecosystem self-funding on the backs of deveopers of free extensions, but either way, I've felt a lot safer recommending Safari to my less technical friends and family than Chrome for this reason alone.
I don't know why but I find the Safari Dev Tools to be more usable than the Chrome ones... but that might be a stylistic preference. I've been working with Xcode and iOS since Xcode 3.0, so maybe the UX is just something I've grown accustomed to.
For a long time they were identical, then Safari made some changes that made them MUCH worse. But in the last few years I found that fixed and I haven't gone reaching for chrome in quite a while.
I like Safari too, but end up doing the opposite, returning to Chrome.
My main complaint is that tabs are slower to open, switch, and close, all things I do very frequently and while impatient. I'm going to guess that these are largely fixed costs and aren't noticeable on a newer system (mine is from 2011).
The lack of favicons is a big productivity hit when I have many tabs open and need to find specific tabs. But, I haven't yet given "Show all tabs" a good-faith shot, maybe it is a viable alternative.
A smaller productivity hit is that quick search for websites doesn't lock in or provide visual cues, so you need to pause after typing your query to make sure it didn't switch to searching Google.
Performance seems to be generally better than Chrome, but occasionally much worse. I'm not sure if I prefer Safari's better average-case performance or Chrome's better worst-case performance.
I think I would prefer Safari if just the tab performance matched Chrome's.
For me it's mostly a few minor UX things, such as not displaying favicons, or how it behaves with a lot of tabs.
Also it's extension ecosystem isn't that great. Stuff like ublock isn't in the official safari extensions page, so you have to go discover it yourself. I can't find a good right click to image search extension either.
For me, it's because I use Windows at work, macOS and Linux at home and Android on my smartphone. AFAIK, Safari runs on only one of those 4 platforms. I am a Firefox holdout and it runs on all 4.
Also, IMO Safari until recently was very buggy and lagging extremely behind other browsers in features. Not sure if Apple ever got their act together on that.
I think their point of view is to use the OS Accounts, (Talking about macOS) where the browser is focusing only on specific things, while the OS takes care of things like "Accounts".
This is all well and good but doesn't help when I'm working with multiple clients. For example, I'm an AWS DevOps guy and am generally logged into AWS under 3 different accounts at any one time. Can you do something like that with Safari? Chrome has "Accounts" and Firefox is experimenting with "Collections" but I don't know how to do it with Safari.
I like that Safari supports content-blocking extensions that it guarantees can't read or transmit content from webpages. Makes me feel safer about running them, rather than relying on goodwill. I'm not sure if Chrome has a similar feature.
I find Chrome trashes my battery, and for some reason will never quit reliably and requires force-quitting. I've also never figured out how to start Chrome with an empty blank screen, which I feel should be simple enough...
However, I do still use Chrome sometimes because some websites simply work better with it and it has integrated Flash support (which means I don't need to install Flash globally in my system).
"When the pointer is locked, users will see a banner explaining that the mouse cursor is hidden, and that they can get out of pointer lock by pressing the Escape key."
In my experience (with Thinkpad X1 Carbon, which also had a capacitive touch strip for function keys), it doesn't actually work that way. Your muscle memory might involve hitting the key away from the center or at a slight angle, which registers properly on the usual keyboard, but is sufficiently ambiguous with touch that sometimes it does the wrong thing, or sometimes it does nothing at all.
If I use a normal keyboard, even on my 12" Macbook, I never need to look at the keyboard, but with the touch bar, I simply cannot press the esc key, i put my finger there, touch it, and sometimes nothing happens, its like it doesn't register that you press it, or maybe im touching it wrong.
Regardless I feel like I'm trying to re-learn to type.
I'm moving to a Dell XPS 15 tho. Done with Apple if this is the direction they are going.
What do you mean by "the direction they are going"? Are you implying that next Apple is going to replace the rest of the keyboard with touchbar-like keys? Because I highly doubt that's going to happen.
So far they're third going by the caniuse score, which is based on the features developers can use. Previously it last place.
I don't think it was the developer backlash that forced Apple to start releasing TP previews of Safari and progressing features. I was likely more of a gap between major versions (Safari 9.x vs 10.x)
Safari has actually had WebKit Nightlies for many years. The Technical Preview is just basically a semi-stable beta track (as opposed to the Nightlies which are of course nightly builds).
Microsoft took 5 years to go from IE6 to IE7, and 7 was really bad. IE completely stagnated, while being the default browser on a billion PC's. Then they were very slow to adopt HTML 5 features. Developers were supporting IE6 over 10 years after it was released. I doubt if many people are supporting 5 year old versions of Safari, let alone 10 year old versions.
Sure it was bad, but not for those specific 5 years. When IE6 came out it was a really good browser. The real problem was that people were still using IE6 when IE7 was already out, and even when IE9 was already out.
Yes, sorry: I was afraid of changing the given title and there's nothing new here if you run purple Safari. I assume they put this up to go along with the public betas for macOS 10.12.4 and iOS 10.3. I don't get much out of the release notes attached to the tech previews so this was welcome to me.
When macOS 10.12.4 ships [edited from 10.12.3, because I can't type]. And Apple doesn't comment about future product releases in general, so good luck finding out when that is. :)
“Reduced Motion Media Query” The extents to which Apple goes for people with disabilities is as baffling as it is commendable. I can’t think of another company in any industry that does so much.
I expect that's a function of their traditional position in the educational market. That market is extra-sensitive to accessibility issues, for legal and practical reasons.
The server can do this with the Content-Disposition header. The `download` attribute just lets you trigger downloads (optionally with a filename) for URLs that otherwise wouldn't be downloaded.
It's important to download JS-generated data as well, such as something in a Blob. You can't set a HTTP header on local content. The 'download' attribute lets the user "download" that without having to wastefully post it to a server and back.
To make what AshleysBrain said a little more concrete, imagine an image editor program (or a music editor, or a word processor, or whatever) that's written completely in client-side JS. There are starting to be a lot of these, actually. Without a working download attribute, the only way to save your work is to post it back to the server and redownload it. That is a slow, ugly, and unsatisfying hack to get data that's actually already present on the local machine.
Even IE 11 has a way to do this (non-standard, of course, but it does have a way to do it :-). Edge supports the standard way.
As I noted in a different post, though, support for the download attribute has already landed in Webkit Nightly for macOS, and is apparently being worked on for iOS.
Surprised and shocked that this is not already included in Safari. I use the download attribute on some CDN and it would not download with it (tried everything). So today I learned it would not work on actual Safari :(
I'm always pleasantly surprised when Apple graces us with Safari updates. They tend to come with fairly cutting edge features when they actually ship.
The opportunity they have at the moment is the super long gap between releases, which is even more apparent on iOS. I wish Safari could switch to a more Chrome-like model of shipping smaller updates more frequently, perhaps in an evergreen model. I guess there's only so many new emoji's Apple can use to encourage people to upgrade...
You do realize that Safari's engine WebKit is used for mission critical things in macOS and iOS… many apps like Mail, the App Store, iTunes and many thousands of 3rd party applications, right?
Every WebView in a macOS or iOS app is backed by WebKit—it's not just a browser; it's an extremely important system software component on over a billion devices.
I think Safari Tech Preview and WebKit Nightlies are a good tradeoff—I'd rather that than frequent instability on my Mac or iPhone just for the appearance of being an evergreen browser.
You can see what's being developed and what's being considered for WebKit just like you can for Chrome and Firefox: https://webkit.org/status/
Yup. Of course I realise that. But also I believe that implementation details of iTunes also shouldn't hold users (and/or developers) back.
Safari Tech Preview was a huge surprise and an awesome leap for community engagement and awareness of upcoming works. But the realities are that "the industry" is moving ahead faster than Safari's (at best) twice-a-year release cycle. I can 1005 appreciate vendors taking time to let 'specs' 'settle', but Safari's comparatively infrequent cycle puts them at a weird pace.
The narrative that somehow Safari’s release cycle is causing major problems in the "industry" or that somehow, macOS and iOS users are being left behind is false, especially for everyday users.
I use an old MacBook laptop running MacOS 10.7.5 with Safari 6.1.6, an ancient version of Safari by today's standards--about four years old--when I'm out and about. Otherwise, I'm using macOS Sierra with Safari 10.x on two different iMacs.
On the MacBook I use Facebook, Slack and many other websites without a problem. I get a warning banner on Gmail that says my version of Safari is no longer supported; other than a few cosmetic issues, I can send and receive email just fine.
The point: web developers have long figured out how to deal with multiple browsers across different platforms with different capabilities. Many differences and bugs have polyfills; it's not a show stopper.
Look, there are major features and minor ones; Safari has been at the leading edge with support for CSS Grids, wide-gamut color support, variable fonts, 100% of ES6, CSS Snap Points in addition to rendering speed and power efficiency.
There certainly have been calls to reduce the pace of new specs and releases so we developers can catch their breath and so that Apple, Google and Mozilla can release quality implementations--there's nothing wrong with that.
Hmm, still no support for MediaStream Recording or Media Capture APIs. That's unfortunate as I'm currently developing a web app that makes use of microphone input. I'm a Safari user myself, but I'm forced to direct my users to use Chrome or Firefox to be able to use the microphone utilizing features.
I really wish I could have a bookmarks bar with just favicons showing in safari, it's something that's a key part of my workflow in Firefox and I actually really like safari and other than that and the annoying wide tabs thing which I'd probably get used to if use it more often.
aside from the information: This website is sooo rediculously hard to browse on my smartphone (Nexus). The arrows are the only thing working to expand the information and they are really hard to open and close (with strange go backwards behaviour). Really bad website UX Apple.
Safari is a great browser for MacOS, what it lacks right now, is not more features, is opening the extension system.
Let's face it, it is ridiculous to have to pay 100$ a year to be able to improve Apple's product in exchange for nothing.
Making plugins for a browser doesn't have in any way the same opportunities to make money from it as making apps for iOS or for MacOS.
Still Apple, in all their usual stubbornness refuse to let people to publish and sign their extensions for Safari without paying them their 100$ anual fee.
I don't know whether it's ridiculous or not, but it's definitely a culture clash.
Safari had a hard time attracting ports of other browsers' extensions even when you could distribute them for free and they were fully HTML-based. (Probably because there was no Windows version.) Now, not only do you have to pay, the old extension system has been deprecated in favor of a new system where you have to bundle your extension within a native app and implement a native-code-based interface. It's probably not a bad interface in isolation (haven't tried it myself), and makes it easier for existing native app developers to add extensions, but I expect it makes code reuse between extensions for Safari and other browsers quite difficult.
In comparison, both Firefox and Edge are going in the exact opposite direction and moving to an extension API directly based on, and largely compatible with, Chrome extensions. So pretty soon you'll be able to use popular extensions with any browser you prefer... except Safari.
But hey, at least now Safari will be able to take advantage of the popularity of building apps for the Mac App Store. Oh wait...
If Safari starts supporting WebExtensions we're halfway there, but I don't see them switching from their current model anytime soon — sadly for its users.
That doesn't really matter, they pushed CSS Transforms, Transitions and Animations long before they were "standards", hence the slew of prefixed properties still enabled on many browsers.
Would love better clipboard support so we could paste images into Gmail and GitHub issues. Having to use Safari more often on a new MBP to save battery, this is one feature I miss daily.
I don't understand the down votes since it's factual that you can't sign your plugins and distribute them inside Safari (AND ALSO keep them automatically updated) unless you pay Apple their anual fee.
My best guess is it's just people tired of seeing someone complain about the $100 developer program membership every time the subject of Safari extensions comes up.
Extensions in the gallery also didn't take a $100 membership until 2015. Needless to say not many people developed extensions then either. So blaming Safari membership as being the problem for extensions not being developed seems to also miss the history of extensions. Also you can install extensions outside of the gallery:
https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/releases
So, the way Apple choose to solve the lack of extensions for their browser was to keep everything the same and charge 100$/year on top of that. Doesn't seem like a very smart business practice.
In any case you are forgetting that although you can install extensions made outside Apple Dev. program, you can't update them because they aren't signed. You have to keep checking the extension page (like uBlock Origin), see when there is a new version, download the new version, and re-install it... all manually.
Its basically 10 lines, and the applescript is new to me. Keeping extensions up to date shouldn't be that hard. And now I've got a script for keeping that one extension up to date.
> You have to keep checking the extension page (like uBlock Origin), see when there is a new version, download the new version, and re-install it... all manually.
Or just write a script, which isn't that hard, outside of applescript. And the ability to install extensions outside of the dev program seems to invalidate that one cannot install extensions unless in the dev program. That they're not auto updated is a rather trivial thing to work around.
I wish they made it usable, favoring function over [their idea of ]beauty.
I still can't use it because of the super-annoing "feature" that greys out tab favicons making impossible to immediately see what site is loaded in that tab if you have a lot of tabs open, and of course not showing the full address on iOS (I'm bother by the fact they think it's a good idea, but at least on macOS there's a setting to remove it).
Apple is really falling behind both Microsoft and expecially Google in terms of their own software. It's just not usable anymore. Everything is hidden just to make it look pretty. So annoying.
They should focus on their iOS version, because on the desktop the contribution they make is minimal, on iOS no one will install a custom browser instead of keeping the ad-free default one.
If there were colored icons in each tab, you'd be able to figure out which tab is which at a glance, without reading every single title until you find what you're looking for.
It's so obvious that icons are easier than text—and this is why you see icons everywhere–that I have a hard time understanding how anyone would favor this solution. However, of course I have no interest in convincing you to switch browser, it's definitely a matter of preference.
There is! If you're willing to move to a browser that allows extensions to modify the chrome of the browser. Firefox allows that, and that's where the magical TreeStyleTabs come in, looks something like this: http://i.imgur.com/dTrqpqz.png
The app should force spawning a new window when there are too many tabs to reliably display titles. This wouldn't be that tricky - screen width / min-legible tab size = threshold number of tabs for new window spawn.
Then it would be totally down to personal preference: when I reach maximal tabs, do I want to keep going into the nightmare pit of tabageddon or am I happy with a new clean window?
