Update: This post represents my views before I joined the Microsoft Edge team, and before I got involved with browsers or web standards in general. I leave it up as a historically interesting artifact.
Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a conference populated by many of the leading lights in the web industry. It featured panel talks and breakout sessions with a focus on technologies that are just now starting to emerge in browsers, so there was a lot of lively discussion around Service Worker, Web Components, Shadow DOM, Web Manifests, and more.
EdgeConf’s hundred-odd attendees were truly the heavy hitters of the web community. The average Twitter follower count in any given room was probably in the thousands, and all the major browser vendors were represented – Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera. So we had lots of fun peppering them with questions about when they might release such-and-such API.
There was one company not in attendance, though, and they served as the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wanted to discuss. I heard them referred to cagily as “a company in California” or “a certain fruit company.” Their glowing logo illuminated nearly every laptop in the room, and yet it seemed like nobody dared speak their name. Of course I’m talking about Apple.
I think there is a general feeling among web developers that Safari is lagging behind the other browsers, but when you go to a conference like EdgeConf, it really strikes you just how wide the gap is. All of the APIs I mentioned above are not implemented in Safari, and Apple has shown no public interest in them. (Correction: actually, they have.) When you start browsing caniuse.com, the list goes on and on.
Even when Apple does implement newer APIs, they often do it halfheartedly. To take an example close to my heart, IndexedDB was proposed more than 5 years ago and has been available in IE, Firefox, and Chrome since 2012. Apple, on the other hand, didn’t release IndexedDB until mid-2014, and when they did, they unveiled a bafflingly incompetent implementation that was so bad, it’s been universally derided as unusable. (LocalForage, PouchDB, and YDN-DB, the major IndexedDB wrappers, all ignore Safari’s version and fall back to WebSQL.)
Now, after one year, Apple has fixed a whopping two bugs in IndexedDB (out of several), and they’ve publicly stated that they don’t find much value in working on it, because they don’t see “a huge use.” Well duh, nobody’s going to use IndexedDB if the browser support is completely broken. (Microsoft, I’m looking at you too.)
It’s hard to get insight into why Apple is behaving this way. They never send anyone to web conferences, their Surfin’ Safari blog is a shadow of its former self, and nobody knows what the next version of Safari will contain until that year’s WWDC. In a sense, Apple is like Santa Claus, descending yearly to give us some much-anticipated presents, with no forewarning about which of our wishes he’ll grant this year. And frankly, the presents have been getting smaller and smaller lately.
In recent years, Apple’s strategy towards the web can most charitably be described as “benevolent neglect.” Although performance has been improving significantly with JSCore and the new WKWebView, the emerging features of the web platform – offline storage, push notifications, and “installable” webapps – have been notably absent on Safari. It’s tempting to interpret this as a deliberate effort by Apple to sabotage any threats to their App Store business model, but a conspiracy seems unlikely, since that part of the business mostly breaks even. Another possibility is that they’re just responding to the demands of iOS developers, which largely amount to 1) more native APIs and 2) Swift, Swift, Swift. But since Apple is pretty good at keeping a lid on their internal process, it’s anyone’s guess.
The tragedy here is that Apple hasn’t always been a web skeptic. As recently as 2010, back when Steve Jobs famously skewered Flash while declaring that HTML5 is the future, Apple was a fierce web partisan. Lots of the early features that helped webapps catch up to native apps – ApplicationCache, WebSQL, touch events, touch icons – were enthusiastically implemented by WebKit developers, and many even originated at Apple.
Around that same time, when WebSQL was deprecated in favor of IndexedDB, you’ll even find mailing list arguments where Apple employees vigorously defended WebSQL as a must for performant web applications. Reading the debates, I sense a lot of bitterness from Apple after IndexedDB won out. The irony here is that Apple nearly gave us the tools to undermine their own proprietary platform, but by rejecting WebSQL, we gave them an opportunity to rethink their strategy and put the brakes on any new progress in web APIs.
I find Application Cache, which will probably soon be deprecated in favor of Service Worker, to be a similar story. It gained wide browser support at a time when Apple was still interested in the web, but unfortunately it turned out to be a rushed, half-baked solution to the problem. I worry that Service Worker might suffer the same fate as IndexedDB, if Apple continues to lag behind the pack.
At this point, we in the web community need to come to terms with the fact that Safari has become the new IE. Microsoft is repentant these days, Google is pushing the web as far as it can go, and Mozilla is still being Mozilla. Apple is really the one singer in that barbershop quartet hitting all the sour notes, and it’s time we start talking about it openly instead of tiptoeing around it like we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings. Apple is the most valuable company in the world; they can afford to take a few punches.
So what can we do, when one of the major browser vendors is stuck in the 2010 model, and furthermore has a total monopoly on iOS (because no, “Chrome for iOS” is not really Chrome), showing a brazenness even beyond that of 90’s-era Microsoft? I see three major coping mechanisms:
- Stick with what worked in 2010, and use polyfills to support Safari. This is a strategy I highlighted in my opening talk for the frontend data panel, where I showed that you can get nearly the same features as Service Worker by using AppCache and PouchDB (which falls back to WebSQL on Safari). This approach should appeal to the vast majority of web developers, who tend to hit the snooze button on new technologies until they’re available cross-browser. On the other hand, it’s also a good way to coddle Apple and give them no incentive to step up their game.
-
Use technologies like Service Worker that don’t work on Safari, and consider it a progressive enhancement. Alex Russell made a great point about this during the “installable webapps” breakout, arguing that if we create a large body of free webapps that use Service Worker, and which work fabulously well on Android but only meh on iOS, then it will be in Apple’s interest to suck it up and support the API. Unfortunately, while this would be the best outcome for the web community as a whole, it’s going to be hard to convince developers to write code that only reaches half their audience.
-
Contribute to WebKit. The core of Safari is still, after all, an open-source project, so there’s no practical reason why anyone with the C++ chops couldn’t roll up their sleeves and implement the new APIs themselves. (The absurdity of giving free labor to the richest company on earth isn’t lost on me, but we’re talking desperate times here.) The major problem I see with this approach is that WebKit is not Safari, and Apple could still decide to not deploy WebKit features to their flagship browser. To circle back to IndexedDB again, it was fully implemented by Google well before the Blink fork, and for several years, Apple could have just flipped a bit in their build script to include Google’s implementation, but instead they decided to waffle for a few years and then replace it with their own broken version. (Update: see note on IndexedDB below.) There’s no guarantee they wouldn’t do the same thing for other outside contributions.
So in summary, I don’t know what the right solution is. I’ve engaged many of the WebKit developers on Twitter, and I’ve even done the hard work of writing reproducible test cases and trying out their beta software so I can give them early warning. (Yes, I fork over $200 a year to Apple, for the privilege of testing their own software for them.) And frankly I’ve grown bitter, because most of the bugs I’ve reported have languished, with little response other than a link to their internal Radar tracker.
I appreciate the work that many of the WebKit developers have been doing (Brady Eidson has been particularly patient and helpful), but at this point it seems to me that the best strategy toward Apple may be the stick rather than the carrot. So I’m inclined to take up Alex Russell’s solution outlined in #2 above, and to start promoting the adoption of new web technologies – Safari support be damned.
If we can start building a vibrant ecosystem of web applications where Apple is not invited, then maybe they’ll be forced to pull a Microsoft and make their own penitent walk to Canossa. Otherwise we’ll have to content ourselves with living in the web of 2010, with Safari replacing IE as the blue-tinged icon that fills web developers with dread.
Update on IndexedDB: I’m told by Ryosuke Niwa at Apple that Google’s IndexedDB was not so easily usable in Safari, even pre-fork. So it wasn’t a build flag. However, in a private discussion with a Google employee, I’m told that the IPC layer was abstracted to a degree that it shouldn’t have been too difficult for Safari to use. In any case, it’s true that Apple had something close to a fully working implementation years before they shipped their inferior version.
You can comment on Hacker News, on Ars Technica, and on Twitter. Thanks to Jan Lehnardt, Dave Myers, Beckie Choi, and Julian Applebaum for providing feedback on a draft of this blog post.
Posted by 1 – Safari is the new IE | Offer Your on June 30, 2015 at 5:50 AM
[…] Source: https://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/ […]
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 7:55 AM
Re WebKit having been made open source by Apple: “The absurdity of giving free labor to the richest company on earth isn’t lost on me”
Ironic that you, as an Android developer, don’t have the same prejudice against Google (the second richest company on earth) for making Android open source. ;-))
And if WebKit was never made open source by Apple, you and the many other developers would be complaining that Apple is too “closed” to make WebKit open source.
You view Apple as doing the wrong thing, no matter what it does. Since you are an Android developer, it is understandable that you would have this bigotry (many Android fans are prejudiced against Apple).
I think that most people would view Apple making WebKit (and other software) open source as a positive… Not a negative.
Posted by Dmytrii Shchadei (@MeTroFuN) on June 30, 2015 at 8:05 AM
Well…Webkit is a forked version of open sourced engine KHTML and KJS ;)
Posted by Nick on June 30, 2015 at 8:06 AM
WebKit wasn’t open sourced by Apple, WebKit is a fork of open source software called KHTML which is why WebKit is LGPL
Posted by Michael Rose on June 30, 2015 at 8:15 AM
You realize they had to open source it right? webkit us based on khtml
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 8:25 AM
“Webkit is a forked version of open sourced engine KHTML and KJS”
Yes, but you missed my points, entirely. The points are:
1) Apple chose to go open source rather than doing something proprietary like Microsoft did with IE.
2) If Apple had instead decided doing something proprietary, instead of WebKit, Nolan (and others) would be complaining about THAT!
3) Nolan is being hypocritical by complaining that Apple went the open source route, but he is not just as bothered that Google went the open source route with Android (which he develops for).
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 8:36 AM
“WebKit is a fork of open source software called KHTML”
“You realize they had to open source it right?”
YES! OF COURSE I DO!
I never said that Apple created WebKit from scratch. When I said “And if WebKit was never made open source by Apple” I should have been clearer. The intention was to point out that Apple CHOSE to go open source rather than proprietary.
You seem to have missed the points made, and chose to quibble about semantics instead.
Posted by mherchel on June 30, 2015 at 8:49 AM
@Harvey – So are you suggesting that Safari is not the new ID? Please tell. Are you a web developer?
Also, of course Apple forked KHTML. Building a rendering engine is hard. Forking a FOSS project gives them a huge head start. If they had created a rendering engine from scratch, it would most likely suck beyond belief. The only reason Apple chose to go OSS is because it saved them money.
Posted by Percival Derpington (@ascendantlogic) on June 30, 2015 at 9:04 AM
This is not an Android vs iOS holy war. This is a commentary on how one of the major browser vendors is not keeping up with web standards, just like Microsoft did in the 2000’s. Chrome (partially by virtue of Chromium) have been standard-bearers for keeping up with the cutting edge of web standards so your attempt to frame it as “Pro Google bigotry” fails because it’s an Apples (ha) to Oranges comparison.
Go try to stir up that hornets nest somewhere else.
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 9:48 AM
“So are you suggesting that Safari is not the new ID?”
What is ID. I think you meant IE.
Saying Safari is the new IE is just plain ridiculous. The two have very little in common… other than they are both Web browsers.
IE was built on proprietary software.
Safari was built on open source software.
IE was buggy and slow.
Safari while not the fastest browser is certainly not the slowest, and it has nowhere near the bugs that IE had.
“The only reason Apple chose to go OSS is because it saved them money.”
So you are saying that ALL companies that go open source do it just to save money?
That sounds like a very narrow-minded view.
Posted by Josh Kelley on June 30, 2015 at 9:57 AM
In context, the argument isn’t that an Apple product being open source is inherently absurd. Nolan is arguing that fixing Safari’s shortcomings ought to be Apple’s responsibility, and trying to solve those shortcomings by using the fact that Safari’s core is open source to fix them yourself, for free, has an element of absurdity.
Posted by Matthew Fabb on June 30, 2015 at 10:32 AM
I think just about everyone sees WebKit being open source as a positive. I think what he is saying is that a large number of developers having to help out Apple because they are falling behind is a bit absurd considering their wealth.
Yes, Android is open source, but Android developers don’t feel like they have to write new features in Android in order to keep up with iOS, Google is doing that on their own.
Posted by Kristoffer (@h4emtfr) on June 30, 2015 at 10:53 PM
So you have nothing to say that counters any of his arguments that Safari is the new IE?
Posted by skerfy on July 1, 2015 at 8:23 AM
WebKit is a fork of KHTML, THAT is why it is open source, not because of a philanthropic Apple.
Posted by URbeta on July 2, 2015 at 7:04 AM
I don’t know why you seem to be throwing a temper tantrum. It’s very simple to understand – Safari now sucks like IE used to suck. They might not have anything in common other than sucking big time. Maybe that helps you understand better.
And it’s not hypocritical because doing free labour for android isn’t as bad as doing free labour for Apple because Google isn’t still stuck in 2010.
I think this is part of the problem why people tiptoe around Apple is because Apple freaks can’t handle any criticism.
Posted by dbuc on July 5, 2015 at 8:41 AM
It’s clear you don’t have experience with the pain of Safari – please go write a complex, modern web app (using any of the more interesting standards APIs landed in the last 3 years) so you can find out first-hand why it has become the bane of web developer existence.
Posted by Kerby on July 5, 2015 at 11:22 PM
Apple fan boys in on the starting pistol.
Android developer or not, a valid point is made that safari had become the new IE.
Posted by AGB on July 22, 2015 at 8:56 AM
Seriously, you anti-Apple are as blind as Apple fans.
His point was on: “The absurdity of giving free labor to the richest company on earth isn’t lost on me”, since Nolan is an Android developer.
Then, his point was that in IE’s case, the “community” couldn’t help because it was entirely based on closed source, proprietary code. While Safari WebKit’s is still open source.
Posted by Christopher Ramírez (@chrRamirez) on June 30, 2015 at 9:05 AM
@Harvey Well, Apple forked KHTML at a time when Apple was almost in bankruptcy. Starting from scratch was not a viable option at the time. Why you are bringing Android into the discussion is beyond me…
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 9:34 AM
“Why you are bringing Android into the discussion is beyond me…”
I’ll explain: It’s because Nolan made the comment in his article that “The absurdity of giving free labor to the richest company on earth isn’t lost on me” (I included this in my comment that you are replying to) regarding Apple choosing to go open source.
My point was that Nolan was being hypocritical because as an Android developer he did NOT have an equal comment about the “absurdity” of Google (second largest company) ALSO going open source with Android.
This was not a slight against Android, just an observation of the hypocrisy.
Posted by dmanvr on June 30, 2015 at 4:48 PM
@chrRamirez – Out of interest, what’s your source for the near-bankruptcy claim? The company posted losses in both the quarter before and after the first public beta release of Safari (January 7th 2003), but also posted quarterly profits before and after that. I don’t recall there being any credible reporting that the company had been “almost in bankruptcy” at that stage since the late 90’s…
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 9:51 AM
“This is not an Android vs iOS holy war.”
I agree with you 100%.
Why you see things that way, is another matter.
Posted by JKoehn on June 30, 2015 at 12:34 PM
Harvey, you must be a partially retarded troll. YOU’re the idiot who brought Android into the discussion to make it an Apple vs Google one. Fuck off you instigator.
Posted by Joakim on June 30, 2015 at 1:04 PM
Because you brought up that holy war and attributed that motive to Nolan despite it having nothing to do with the topic of browser APIs. Nobody criticized Apple for open-sourcing WebKit, only you. What he did criticize Apple for is neglecting their open-source project, to the point where others have to do that work for the richest company in the world, and even then it may not be compiled in to Safari, whereas Android isn’t neglected in such a way, as Matthew Fabb said above, so it has literally nothing to do with this discussion.
Posted by Daniel Eran Dilger (@DanielEran) on July 4, 2015 at 6:53 PM
First a clarification for many commenting here: WebKit is not Apple’s fork of KHTML. You’re thinking of WebCore. Like KHTML, Apple’s fork (WebCore) is licensed as GNU LGPL. But nobody found it to be really that useful, because it is just a low level rendering engine. It’s a lot of work to take WebCore (or KHTML) and turn it into a full browser.
WebKit is not WebCore; it is Apple’s BSD licensed, code implementing an entire web browser. It is so useful to other companies that Nokia used it to create its mobile browser, Google forked it for Chrome, and virtually every other mobile browser besides IE implements some form of it. It was Apple’s gift to the browser community. It is not just a KHTML rendering engine.
Anyone who says “WebKit is KHTML” is ignorant and simply trying to denigrate Apple with some trite cliche bullshit and suggest the company is the world’s most successful company for no reason.
But addressing the article: Apple found out rather immediately (in 2007, alongside the introduction of iPhone) that mobile web developers wanted native app development, not a browser-based development API.
Since then, Palm’s webOS, Google’s Android and MSFT’s web-oriented WP have all proven beyond any doubt that web-based apps are not sufficient to rival native environments, specifically Apple’s Cocoa Touch API for iOS.
Facebook admitted that it made a tremendous mistake (that wasted two years of effort) in pursuing a mobile app strategy aimed at achieving cross platform deployment via web apps. It now makes native apps.
Saying that Safari is “IE” because Apple doesn’t work to create a secondary web-centric platform for mobile apps is just plain ignorant. That’s a loser strategy that has been buried long ago. Users don’t want web apps, they want native apps.
Creating a misleading article that gets key facts wrong and ignores reality is easy. It’s also easy to understand why Apple doesn’t support Flash, Java or web development alongside Cocoa development. That would be a huge waste of time and wouldn’t benefit developers or users, apart from a few Android hobbyists who don’t really matter.
You can invent a cynical conspiracy theory that says Apple doesn’t want to undermine the business model of the iOS native App Store, but its easier and simpler to recognize that there’s no benefit in building a second-class set of development tools to shoehorn the web into an app development platform, because that’s a failed dead end.
Web apps suck and will never be competitive with native apps. Nowhere is that more evident than in mobile development, where resources are so limited. Android developers haven’t quite caught on, because Google pursued Java “write once, debug everywhere” development for Android.
The biggest Android licensee is now pursuing Tizen, which dumps JVM-Android for native C development. That should tell you something about how great web tools from the 1990s are for developing mobile apps.
Back to web apps: Half of the installed base of Android is running a version before 4.4, and is stuck with the insecure, dumpy “Android browser,” rather than Chrome. Apple’s Safari is better at being a browser. Demanding that it be an app deployment platform is plain nuts. Apple wants native apps, and everything it does (from Swift to Metal) is aimed at making the best apps possible. Implementing various community plans for building super cookies and other inherently vulnerable mechanisms for hosting web apps is a stupid thing to even wish for, let alone denigrate Apple for not pursuing.
Posted by bgallia on July 6, 2015 at 3:59 AM
From webkit.org:
“WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE.”
From Wikipedia:
“WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript code was originally a fork of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE”
There is also an awful lot of references to khtml prefixed CSS code in the WebKit source code for something that never forked from khtml.
No one is suggesting that Apple is successful for no reason. You are just making a straw man argument where any fact could be filled into your sentence. So, for example, you could take the statement “John Sculley’s greatest accomplishment was the Pepsi Challenge” and then add on the end of it that anyone saying that is claiming Apple is successful for no reason. Or you could take the statement that “Steve Jobs dropped out of Stanford” and end that with the same claim. It doesn’t mean the facts stop being facts, it just means you want to associate it with something we know is not true to discredit the fact.
Also, saying webOS, Android and Windows Platform have proven without a doubt that the current W3C standards can’t rival “native” environments is fundamentally flawed. You might as well be making the leap that the failing of Apple Pippin has proven without a doubt that anyone would want any Apple product connected to their TV. Yet, AppleTV is proof that things can evolve.
In terms of Facebook, his comment regarding pushing HTML5 was that it just wasn’t ready yet (back in 2012). Part of the problems Facebook hit was the immature implementation provided by Apple when running on iOS. This is something which is now sticking out like a sore thumb as the lowest common denominator of web platforms.
But the biggest problem is your claim that users want Cocoa API apps. The fact is most users can’t tell you what the developer used to create their favorite apps. A large chunk of the Apple App Store is littered with Adobe Air based applications. Also, most users can’t tell the difference between a “native” app and one created using PhoneGap or Apache Cordova.
It has been shown time and time again that when an interface or API is controlled by a single company, the industry eventually seeks out alternatives. One main reason for asking Apple to support W3C standards is it scratches the itch of having an alternative which is a set of open standards created by the industry as a whole. While this would only supplement the environment and never fully replace native apps, it is still critical to the health of the system long term for continuing to attract a wide base of developers.
No one wants Mac OS X or iOS to end up like Firewire. No matter how well design the standard is, if only one company controls it then it tends to eventually re-live the fate of Microchannel.
Posted by Yassine Elouafi on July 6, 2015 at 4:25 AM
Your comment greatly explains why Apple is not considering pushing further a web based development platform. In a nutshell “they sucks”, “they will never rival with native apps”. Of course, this is Apple’s choice and they are free on their choices.
But nevertheless, whether this is a justified strategic choice or a cynical conspiracy does not change the fact Safari is indeed becoming the new IE among web developers, (you know those who like to write sucking, slow apps
Just to mention that more than a decade ago, a famous Redmond based company made the same choice: beating on native apps and the monopoly they had then on native platforms, if asked at the time, I’m pretty sure they would have advanced the same arguments above. Everybody knows the rest of the story.
I’m obviously not in a position to give advice to a big company like Apple, but i think beating on the actual monopoly + native apps has proven to be a wrong choice: Indeed, the Web is the future and you can’t fight against that. a more wise choice is to anticipate and adapt.
Posted by Albert Spangler on July 30, 2015 at 6:33 AM
“MSFT’s web-oriented WP have all proven beyond any doubt that ” ….
…. You do not know WP. WP apps are native apps, just like Android or iOS. WP8.1 (and with it, WP10), are fully capable of being rivals to Android and iOS, they just need developers willing to pick up C# and tackle the beast that is XAML.
(Yes yes, they can also code in HTML5/JS, but it still compiles to native, and you wouldn’t want EVERYONE developing for WP would you?)
Posted by tobielangel on June 30, 2015 at 6:15 AM
In the title: s/Safari/Mobile Safari
Posted by Nolan Lawson on July 3, 2015 at 2:12 PM
Heh. :)
Posted by Andrew Rondeau on June 30, 2015 at 6:15 AM
I think you’re missing the point. The browser is a document viewer, not an application delivery platform. Back in 2005 we all thought that web-based applications were going to take the world by storm, but now that we have slick application stores on all major platforms, this isn’t the case.
If you need functionality like you describe, ship a native application via an app store. It’s a much better experience than web development.
Posted by chris portscheller on June 30, 2015 at 6:25 AM
People still use computers…
Posted by foljs on June 30, 2015 at 6:39 AM
Increasingly less.
Posted by Paul on June 30, 2015 at 8:25 AM
…as do companies. I don’t see many native apps being used in the corporate environment. If it doesn’t work in a browser, and if fact, if it’s not certified to work in a browser, then it’s a big problem for us.
Posted by Me on June 30, 2015 at 8:36 AM
For some reason I can’t reply to the “Increasingly less” comment, but this point that people keep trotting out is so irritating. Yes, fewer people use traditional desktop computers now than five years ago, and the decline corresponds to an increase in the use of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. But this does not mean that this trend will continue forever. Equilibrium will be reached at some point (barring another revolution in technology hitherto unforeseen), and when it is there will still be a vast number of traditional PCs in use, not least in business. Deciding to stop fully supporting applications on desktop browsers now because, in this moment, desktop PC usage is falling as mobile device usage is increasing would be ludicrously myopic.
Posted by ronnykaram on June 30, 2015 at 2:17 PM
I fail to understand the approach where people decide that computers are used less than before. Well, smartphones and tablets are the new comers and yes their numbers increased significantly, but that doesn’t mean that people who use computers dropped them completely in favor of handhelds.
There are more people accessing the internet through their smartphones, true, but when you want to do actual work you’re not gonna struggle with your iPad or smartphone to fill a 2 pages Excel sheet.
But that is also not the debate here.
It’s Safari… not implementing Web APIs as fast as they should (or sometimes not at all) because they’re being lazy, or maybe have other plans in mind. And that’s breaking Web developers backs.
Posted by Carlin Scuderi (@carlinscuderi) on June 30, 2015 at 6:26 AM
I disagree. HTML5 in of itself was built with applications in mind, and I’ve seen numerous web applications that, when used, are not different from their native counterparts in terms of performance and features. There’s also technology on the horizon that is going to push this even further.
Posted by robotlovesyou on June 30, 2015 at 6:36 AM
This whole “The web is for documents, apps are for everything else” position is based upon a false dichotomy. There is a whole spectrum of functionality between a dumb web document with a couple of hyperlinks and images in it and a super slick iOS UI coded in swift or ObjC and a more homogeneous and performant web helps us, as developers, deliver it.
Posted by Dennis on June 30, 2015 at 8:44 AM
It is a nonsense line of logic that has everything only ever being useful for its original purpose, ignoring enormous changes that have happened since. The “for documents” line being a particularly dumb one.
Posted by mherchel on June 30, 2015 at 6:42 AM
wut?
Posted by Alex on June 30, 2015 at 6:45 AM
Ahhh shit, you’re right. Someone should tell these people that the browser is just a document viewer. They seem to be wasting their time.
https://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Main_Page
https://github.com/WebAssembly
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebSockets
https://angularjs.org/
http://backbonejs.org/
http://emberjs.com/
http://d3js.org/
http://www.isogenicengine.com/
http://webcomponents.org/
Oh, and Brendan Eich. That guy’s a TOTAL idiot.
Posted by Arielext on June 30, 2015 at 7:36 AM
ignorance is bliss
Posted by Me on June 30, 2015 at 8:20 AM
A native app doesn’t necessarily give a better experience (or it needn’t), and often a native app is just overkill. In any case, I don’t want to live in a world where I have to choose an operating system that has satisfactory versions of the greatest number of apps that I want to use available in its app store. I want to have applications that run on any platform I choose, be it Windows, iOS, Mac OSX, Chrome OS, etc., and this achieved by web applications running in browsers available on all of those platforms.
Moving away from web standards and web apps towards native apps in walled gardens is so glaringly obviously a retrograde step. It’s annoying enough as a consumer when choosing a mobile OS, but it could be crippling for a business if required Native App A is in one company’s app store and required Native App B is another company’s.
Posted by Scott Stawarz (@scottstawarz) on July 1, 2015 at 8:12 AM
@Andrew Rondeau
I think you and whole bunch of commenters are missing the point. Safari usage is quite high thanks to mobile safari iOS and Safari is lagging behind the other browsers in api functionality. If apple doesn’t keep up with chrome, firefox, and IE, then their browser will eventually become obsolete. Right now Web App Developers and website developers, have to choose whether to implement the new API’s.
Not every situation needs a native app.
Posted by joelhandwell on June 30, 2015 at 6:25 AM
I think Apple needs to hire you.
Posted by mherchel on June 30, 2015 at 6:41 AM
Good post. I’ve been saying this for a while now, too.
I think the crux of this comes down to motivations. Apple has a financial interest in selling as many apps as possible. If the web continues to evolve, it has the real potential to include functionality that is now only possible in apps. If this happens, companies will naturally cut out the middleman – who is Apple.
Microsoft did the same thing in the early 2000’s with IE6. They saw the potential of web apps taking over the Windows runtime. It’s scummy.
Apple is the new Microsoft.
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 8:02 AM
“Apple is the new Microsoft”
Yes, Apple has taken over Microsoft’s position as the most valuable company in the world.
Apple and Microsoft also have something else in common… Neither of them is in the business of invading your privacy and collecting personal information about you, the way that Google does.
(͡° ͜ʖ°)
Posted by mherchel on June 30, 2015 at 8:50 AM
What does this post have to do with Google? Why are you drawing ASCII faces? Are you 13? Why are you attempting to defend Apple so much?
Posted by Harvey Lubin on June 30, 2015 at 9:39 AM
I am very sorry that you are offended by “ASCII faces” (text emoticons), but as the saying goes, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
“Why are you attempting to defend Apple so much?”
My comment was NOT to defend Apple in particular, just to point out the hypocrisy. Your comment that it was all about “defending” Apple (as if they needed defending) is just a non sequitur, and may be indicative of your own thinking.
Posted by Luv Duv on June 30, 2015 at 10:06 AM
“Neither of them is in the business of invading your privacy and collecting personal information about you, the way that Google does.”
This statement discredits any viewpoint you may have on this topic.
Posted by JKoehn on June 30, 2015 at 12:37 PM
Harvey is a far too obvious troll trying to get everyone riled up with stupid irrelevant comments. Ignore the pathetic neckbeard.
Posted by Stefan on August 18, 2015 at 12:04 AM
Actually, they do.
Posted by Dennis on June 30, 2015 at 7:05 AM
“but a conspiracy seems unlikely, since that part of the business mostly breaks even”
I actually may have missed the humor, but that four year old link wasn’t even valid then (Apple’s sense of “barely breaks even” was estimated to be around $200 million in profit, which is enormous for most companies), and is certainly untrue now — Apple is making a gross $6-$7 billion per year from their cut of the app store. Running it takes money, of course, but in no imaginations does that cost even withing billions of Apple’s take.
The App Store has turned into the sort of enormously profitable venture that most organizations could only have fantasy dreams about. I’m not trying to support any conspiracy notion (the malaise about Safari is not likely someone weighing the two), but it is a misrepresentation.
Posted by eoghanmurray on June 30, 2015 at 7:49 AM
The ‘app store … mostly breaks even’ source is from 2011
Posted by Safari is the new IE | The WordPress C(h)ronicle on June 30, 2015 at 8:00 AM
[…] visit Read the Tea Leaves […]
Posted by Eugene Bujak on June 30, 2015 at 8:18 AM
1) offline storage is available on safari — https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html
2) push notifications are available in safari — https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifications/
3) “installable” webapps have been since iOS1, it’s called “add to home screen” — http://www.cellcode.com/news/how-to-add-iphone-icon-to-your-website/
4) App Store mostly breaking even — was pointed before me.
Posted by Kroc Camen on June 30, 2015 at 8:29 AM
I wrote something very similar in nature five years ago!
“I do so hope that I will be wrong, but my gut feeling says that Safari will be the next IE6. Not in terms of being out of date (or ever reaching 99%), but in terms of being the elephant that will move for no man but Steve Jobs.” – http://camendesign.com/not_the_web
Posted by beaniiman on July 1, 2015 at 7:18 AM
Nailed it!
Posted by Laurie Ingriss on July 30, 2015 at 6:49 AM
It’s not going to be moving very far now then.
Posted by Pierre on June 30, 2015 at 8:57 AM
Having to add special code to handle Safari, when everything works flawlessly in all other browsers (even IE!) has led me to the same conclusion. Safari still does NOT validate HTML5 form (eventhough it does have all the plumbing in place), it still requires -webkit- prefix for features that are now standardize everywhere else… Ugh.
Posted by Spence Wetjen (@wetjen) on June 30, 2015 at 9:04 AM
I use Safari because its the most energy efficient browser for the mac. My battery life is about twice as long with Safari vs. Chrome. The downside to supporting every new thing will be energy consumption.
Posted by JKoehn on June 30, 2015 at 12:38 PM
Sorry but that’s just idiotic. You are obviously clueless about computers. No wonder you had to buy Apple.
Posted by mherchel on June 30, 2015 at 1:25 PM
Safari hater here. You’d think this is idiotic, but it’s not. I’m a completely remote dev, and whenever I use Google hangouts it runs way better in Safari (meaning my fan doesn’t turn on, computer slow down, etc). It’s very counterintuitive, but it’s 100% true.
I use Safari for two things: 1) Debugging crappy Safari issues and 2) Google Hangouts (so my MBP doesn’t slow to a crawl).
Posted by lattimorethomas on June 30, 2015 at 2:09 PM
I do the same as Mike. When I run any CPU intensive process like Google Hangouts or watch video, I do it in Safari. It handles these far better than Chrome or Ff.
Posted by Ben on June 30, 2015 at 8:08 PM
Google Chrome is designed around a very heavyweight sandbox centric model. They have the Pepper Plugin API and NaCl environments that can be taxing on resources. These are then in turn activated by things that Google installs with Chrome by default like the PPAPI based Adobe Flash and Google’s Search by Voice NaCl module. Adding these sandboxes into Safari probably would increase the energy use of Safari as well. However, none of these are standards from the W3C and will never appear in the list of items on caniuse.com
The idea that supporting the W3C standards will lead to a downside of higher energy consumption is likely flawed. As stated earlier by the article, one of the common ways to address browsers that lack native implementations of W3C standards is to polyfill. That means that functionality which should have already been installed and run as native code is now downloaded as javascript and run as interpreted code. Hence, the polyfill will have it’s own additional energy (and performance) overhead.
If the W3C is writing standards where there is a more energy efficient way of doing it, then Apple should be calling attention to that during the drafting process. After all, the W3C is an open forum. As far as I know, Apple has never claimed battery use as a problem to any of the standards that they currently provide either no implementation or a buggy implementation.
Posted by Laurie Ingriss on July 30, 2015 at 6:42 AM
If energy efficiency is your drive, there are computers that are far more efficient at saving energy than any Apple laptop device. The reality is, most people are not that bothered about energy efficency beyond “will my battery work on the train journey home?” If it will, they are happy, with or without Mac.
Posted by George Stephanis on June 30, 2015 at 9:28 AM
Reblogged this on George Stephanis.
Posted by Jacob on June 30, 2015 at 9:52 AM
Surfin’ Safari used to be something I read on a regular basis. I don’t remember when it died for me, I think it just kind of faded off into the sunset.
Posted by Mike Bell on June 30, 2015 at 9:57 AM
Nolan Lawson blog post… aka how to lose little credibility some jackoff had.
Posted by John Bacon on June 30, 2015 at 12:14 PM
What is wrong with you?
Posted by JKoehn on June 30, 2015 at 12:39 PM
He’s proving how easy it is for a jackoff like him (Mile Bell) to lose credibility with one single sentence.
Posted by Piotr Lenczowski on June 30, 2015 at 1:09 PM
Man, those Apple fans get angry quickly.
Posted by Matthew Fabb on June 30, 2015 at 10:28 AM
I wonder if one of the reasons Apple is dragging behind with Safari is the fact that they lost one of their biggest contributors to WebKit, when Google forked it for Bink. Back when the fork first happened, some people made graphs out of the WebKit repository showing that Google contributed to about half of the code of WebKit, with Apple being responsible for 1/4 and the last 1/4 being made up with various other 3rd parties who use WebKit. That means Apple would have to triple their output on WebKit to keep up. Looks like they haven’t and are slowly but surely falling behind.
Posted by Nolan Lawson on July 3, 2015 at 2:13 PM
Have a link? I saw that same article, but can’t seem to find it now. #lazywebs
Posted by Vimarsh (@VimarshApi) on June 30, 2015 at 1:07 PM
I think it’s an amazing post where someone has the balls to talk about what they feel. I respect his opinion. It is about the Web and the things that should matter in a Browser. It isn’t about Apple vs “Any other Company”.
Posted by Tyler on June 30, 2015 at 2:09 PM
Option 4: Leave Safari behind and just start developing without it. If it’s the new IE, let it be so, with disclaimers that “this site will only work in modern browsers. Please use a different browser or switch to a device that supports one.” That’s the only way to put pressure on a company Apple’s size.
Also, regarding the “these days” paragraph: “Chrome is pushing the web about as far as it will go” is putting it nicely; in reality Chrome is busy introducing as many rendering bugs and regressions as it can.
Posted by Mikael on June 30, 2015 at 2:43 PM
It seems to me that most of the functions you list is WD? and only Chrome and Opera is supporting them.
Posted by Michael Tsai - Blog - Safari Is the New IE on June 30, 2015 at 3:02 PM
[…] Nolan Lawson (comments): […]
Posted by Alex on June 30, 2015 at 4:06 PM
What is the problem in providing good native client interface?
I personally enjoy using native apps unless it is a bad Cordova implementation and I have to have a good network Connection in my packed train which never happens….
Posted by Anonymous Coward on July 1, 2015 at 2:45 AM
The problem with providing good native client interfaces is cost – I don’t mean money per se, I mean developer time. It takes at least twice the time to do the same interface natively vs in HTML5, on both Android and iOS, IME.
There’s a reason for this. Browsers were historically developed to be increasingly powerful and flexible layout engines, since layout was their primary purpose for a long time. Native app development tools were at best developed to support the creation of highly OS-integrated, branded applications. However, in many modern applications looks are what takes up a disproportionate amount of time – not because it is important to users, but because it is important to sales and marketing. This simply makes browsers/HTML5 a more convenient development environment for most applications.
Yes, for businesses the higher development effort translates to money, but it also translates to a higher opportunity cost, which is the actual important cost. They get new products or improvements to existing products out the door in double the time – in software development, adding developers to a project doesn’t increase speed linearly.
Sure enough, neither native nor HTML5 guarantees a quality product. Therefore, I wouldn’t blame the technology for a product’s quality or lack thereof, neither would I automatically ascribe bad quality to a non-native application.
But not providing a standards-compliant browser for developers surely makes development for that platform slower, more error-prone and less speedy. By doing this, at least on iOS HTML5 apps are clearly discriminated against. Which makes sense, in a short-sighted commercial way: why would Apple support developers in their effort of creating cross-platform applications?
Long term, as cloud, IoT, mobile and desktop become more integrated, both from a user’s and a developer’s point of view, this would isolate Apple from the bigger market, but given its current market share that’s not an actual concern for them, I think. Right now, they can afford to trample on user’s and developer’s best interest to maximize their profit – and they do it. This is, IMO, what makes them the new MS, and what drives Safari to be the new IE.
Posted by Barry Johnson on June 30, 2015 at 4:16 PM
Regarding the “conspiracy” aspect – in addition to the changed economics of the store today, thinking about app store revenue alone misses the second-order revenue (and margin) sources: selling apple developer certs and apple hardware (and the additional fees from licensed accessories, etc for said hardware) to developers, both of which are effectively required to produce apps for iOS.
Posted by Jay Maynard on June 30, 2015 at 6:08 PM
I’d cheerfully switch away from Safari on OS X if there was another browser that actually acted like an OS X application and failed to suck. Sadly, neither Chrome nor Firefox satisfy the former condition, and Firefox doesn’t satisfy the latter, either.
Fitting the OS application design rules is much more important to me than whether it supports the latest APIs.
If you want to improve Chrome uptake, get the OS X version to be a good OS X application.
Posted by Anonymous Coward on July 1, 2015 at 2:29 AM
You could always get rid of OSX altoghether … just saying: http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/63903759786/shall-we-buy-macbooks-to-look-cool-but-install
On a more serious note, I don’t find OSX acceptable for heavy computer use. I find KDE a lot more usable and customizable – both usability and customizability being hard, measurable properties, not influenced by taste.
On yet another note: you can make KDE look and behave almost 100% like OSX. Only, you’re not limited to just that.
Posted by Jay Maynard on July 1, 2015 at 4:20 AM
I have a Linux system next to the Mac on my desktop. The problem with Linux, for me, is that I have to spend far more time fiddling with it than I do OS X; if you can customize it, you have to customize it.
My computer is there to get work done, not to give me something to fiddle with.
There’s also the simple problem that one tool I use a lot is Photoshop. I find the GIMP damned near unusable.
Posted by bgallia on July 1, 2015 at 5:34 PM
I don’t think anyone is advocating switching away from Safari. The days of websites having “optimized for Netscape” are behind us and hopefully will never come back.
Also, looking at the desktop browser usage across NetApplications, StatCounter and Wikimedia, Safari (as a desktop browser) only accounts for about 5%. Even if improvements on Mac OS X for Chrome and Firefox could convince 20% of those users to switch away from Safari, that changes things by only 1% in the desktop area.
This still doesn’t address the issue that when you also include mobile browser usage, then Safari’s use jumps to around 20%. It has already been brought up that Chome for iOS does not improve the problem since it is still using Apple’s rendering engine and javascript.
Advocating for W3C standards should reduce the need for another browser war, not create another one.
Posted by noordin400 on June 30, 2015 at 6:42 PM
Reblogged this on noordin400's Blog.
Posted by Madhu Rakhal Magar (@madhurakhal) on June 30, 2015 at 7:58 PM
Haha….. I don’t care about Safari…. I only care about Chrome and IE…
Posted by ekdikeo on June 30, 2015 at 11:05 PM
Webkit is circling the drain.
Posted by chad on June 30, 2015 at 11:22 PM
Meanwhile, I just did another round of personal tests, and Safari is both faster and much more power-efficient than Chrome or Firefox for me. It also has at least two important-to-me features those two don’t, but that’s secondary.
Posted by Jon Tseng on June 30, 2015 at 11:44 PM
@Harvey Lubin
I’ll let people draw their own concluisions…
Posted by Anonymous Coward on July 1, 2015 at 2:23 AM
Two things:
1) Apple is not a fruit company, it’s a fashion company
2) What do you expect, after the fashion company it became already at Jobs’ time was taken over by an accountant?
Posted by Safari是新的IE？ - 基登网 on July 1, 2015 at 3:09 AM
[…] 软件开发者 Nolan Lawson认为，Safari是新的IE，它已经落在其它浏览器开发商的后面。以行业会议Edge为例，Mozilla、Google、Opera和Microsoft都出席会议，乐于讨论行业现状和未来发展，只有Apple没有派人参加。在当年WWDC会议召开前，没有人知道Safari浏览器的下一个版本将包含什么。从某种意义上说，苹果就像是圣诞老人，每年送给我们一些礼物，不会提前告诉我们，而且礼物是越来越小。Safari正成为新的IE，现在是我们是时候公开讨论这个问题，而不是小心翼翼的避开好像会伤害某个人的感情似的。许多认为对此观点不予认同，认为苹果和微软不同，Safari注重安全性能和可靠性，与当年统治互联网的IE6完全不可同日而语。 […]
Posted by Interesting Links for 01-07-2015 | Made from Truth and Lies on July 1, 2015 at 4:08 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Wednesday’s Morning Email: Greece Reconsiders Bailout Offer – Hot Topix Now on July 1, 2015 at 5:05 AM
[…] ~ Is Safari the new Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by Wednesday's Morning Email: Greece Reconsiders Bailout Offer | News on July 1, 2015 at 5:13 AM
[…] ~ Is Safari the new Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by Wednesday's Morning Email: Greece Reconsiders Bailout Offer | Information From World on July 1, 2015 at 5:18 AM
[…] ~ Is Safari the new Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by Wednesday's Morning Email: Greece Reconsiders Bailout Offer | News Cellar on July 1, 2015 at 5:44 AM
[…] ~ Is Safari the new Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by Amanda Downie (@aadownie) on July 1, 2015 at 5:55 AM
All I see with this post is one perspective. Being primarily a front-end dev, I’ve found that IE still lacks most of the support that I would like to see, while Safari has had very few problems with what shouldn’t even be “cutting edge” CSS anymore. I prefer using CSS over JS whenever possible, and found that a lot of effects such as clip-path, various filters, shapes/canvas effects I could pull off in Chrome, FF, and Safari without a hitch, but according to Caniuse even Edge doesn’t support these yet.
My point being, for those who read for the sake of a point and not finding something to attack, is it’s all a matter of perspective. Yes, for some things Safari may be behind. I had more problems with FF than I did Safari in my endeavors, for example. But for my purpose, IE still remains to be lagging behind the most, and causing me to find alternative heavier solutions.
Posted by Safari is the new Internet Explorer | MetDev on July 1, 2015 at 6:52 AM
[…] developer Nolan Lawson says Apple’s Safari has taken the place of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the major browser that lags behind all the others. This comes shortly after the Edge Conference, […]
Posted by Safari是新的IE？-紫金星 on July 1, 2015 at 7:44 AM
[…] Nolan Lawson 认为，Safari 是新的 IE，它已经落在其它浏览器开发商的后面。以行业会议 Edge […]
Posted by Alastair Houghton (@al45tair) on July 1, 2015 at 8:38 AM
It’s perhaps notable that the example you cite, Service Workers, only works on Chrome and Opera. Not on IE, for instance. http://caniuse.com/#feat=serviceworkers
Certainly Chrome supports more than Safari, but I’m not sure that makes Safari the new IE.
Posted by bgallia on July 1, 2015 at 6:37 PM
If you check that page again carefully, you will find the following special note that “partial support can be enabled in Firefox with the dom.serviceWorkers.enabled flag.”
I don’t think the point of the article is if W3C standards work today as much as if they are on the roadmap for tomorrow. As such, it isn’t just about what appears on the pages of caniuse.com but also what appears on the following web page:
https://edgeconf.com/2015-london/schedule
Take note of the 10:25 panel on the serviceworker cache api where there is members from Google, IBM, Facebook, Squarespace and Mozilla.
But this isn’t about any single specific conference either. Apple just is not stepping up to the plate in any open forum on this. It also seems unlikely that Apple is saving this for the wow factor of announcing it at a future WWDC. And we shouldn’t reduce the set of W3C APIs that work across all major browsers (and for the mobile platform, Safari is very much a major browser) to only the APIs which can get a wow factor after uttering the words “one more thing.”
Some of the most important APIs seem boring at first glance. Can you imagine what the world would be like if the success of adoption of AJAX depended on if Apple decided it would produce enough “wow” at WWDC?! When the concept was first introduced, most developers I knew didn’t get it right away and were far from saying “wow” even when they did kind of get it. Now it is an expected part of “Web 2.0.”
While the title of the article may seem a little click-bait’ish, I think you are missing the point about what would make Safari the new IE. In the narrow scope of how the browser is revised, the responses (and lack of response) given by Safari’s official development team seem very similar to what web developers were used to hearing from the IE team.
It used to be Microsoft would include in regression testing a test of the Alexa top 500 visited websites. However, these tend to be websites that would be coded with IE users in mind. Hence, it became a circular environment where the top sites where only using what IE provided and IE developers used that as proof no future W3C standards where in actual use. Putting it another way, the question of if the chicken or the egg came first was transformed into the question of what came first of IE support or web developer use. The answer for top 500 sites was neither came first and new W3C standards were being ignored.
It is only recently with project Spartan and the Edge browser that IE developer suddenly claim “the tail of the web matters!” They then go on to explain what the tail is (sites outside of the Alexa top 500) and why it matters. I doubt I was the only one that felt like yelling “yeah duh, we been tell you that for years.”
But the philosophy of only providing or fixing things when the need comes about seems to be living on. Not at Microsoft but now at Apple. Having to explain to answer the impossible question of if the chicken or the egg should come first for yet another company with an unheard of amount of resources and wealth is taking place again. However, it is right to say the Safari is not the new IE. It is far worse than that. If Microsoft required Trident/MSHTML to be the only rendering engine on their own OS, the European Commission would have started issuing fines every single day. Apple is getting away with making a broken and out of date rendering the engine the only “option” for iOS.
I don’t think it is unfair to expect a company with a stock market value of $700 billion to do a little better.
Posted by Alastair Houghton (@al45tair) on July 2, 2015 at 10:44 AM
I’m sorry, but enabling a developer flag really doesn’t count here. You might as well say that someone could just use the WebKit nightly instead of Safari to get some new feature. All it tells us is that Mozilla is adding support for Service Workers to Firefox, but it isn’t there yet. We don’t know about Apple or Microsoft.
As for iOS, there’s nothing stopping you using a different rendering engine on iOS if that’s what you want to do. About the only objection is that you can’t use your own Javascript implementation if you want it to be fast, because of the restriction on executing data; but you can certainly use the JavascriptCore framework, which has pretty decent performance, and build on top of that.
Posted by bgallia on July 5, 2015 at 11:59 PM
Actually, I can’t think of any strong show of public interest in supporting W3C standards than to have already started implementing it. So, yes, enabling a developer flag does count here.
If you can provide a link to a nightly build of Safari which show the same level of commitment to future W3C standard, feel free to post it.
As far as the claim that “there’s nothing stopping you using a different regndering engine on iOS” there is still App Store Review Guideline 2.17 which states: “Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.” That statement seems to clearly indicate they are stopping. If you have been able to publish an app to iOS (jailbreak does not count here) which uses it’s own HTML rendering engine, please provide a link to it as I would like to try your’s out.
Posted by Scott Wilson (@ScottWLovesYou) on July 1, 2015 at 8:44 AM
Apple needs to hire more engineers and less rappers and fashion designers.
Posted by Rhys Morgan on July 1, 2015 at 8:50 AM
Safari’s had push notifications for a long time.
Posted by Nolan Lawson on July 3, 2015 at 2:17 PM
They’re not the official spec, and they only work on Apple hardware: https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/615863799522832385
Posted by mp on July 1, 2015 at 10:18 AM
Safari is far from the new IE, it might be lagging behind the edge technology but it has NEVER been a virus and worm magnet like IE always was.
Harvey’s comment about Apple vs. Google open source, while true, is not relevant, since this was an article about browser technology, not tech in general.
Totally agree about OS X being the platform for getting work done vs. twiddling and fiddling.
Posted by Joakim Hedlund (@Sleavely) on July 7, 2015 at 7:45 AM
By that logic, Chrome and Firefox – both allowing extensions – are both worm magnets; they both allow custom extensions to be installed and to access your data on sites you visit. I don’t think it’s relevant to this discussion though, since the comparison is about the features they provide and how IE used to and Safari now causes headaches for developers.
I never cared much about the UI or security of IE, but I did care whether my standards-compliant code ran properly on it. The UI and security are merely reasons why I personally didn’t use IE, but that doesn’t mean my website visitors wont. Same thing goes for Safari – I like giving away my data to Google (dem clouds be cray), so I use Chrome, but I can relate to users who just want to browse the web without doing a survey to find the best and shiniest browser that suits their needs, and I will still attempt to cater to that audience assuming the browser they end up with isn’t a relic from darker times.
Posted by Safari the new IE? | Matt Mullenweg on July 1, 2015 at 11:28 AM
[…] “In recent years, Apple’s strategy towards the web can most charitably be described as ‘benevolent neglect.'” Nolan Lawson throws the gauntlet down by asking Is Safari the new Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by intriguingnw on July 1, 2015 at 12:14 PM
Reblogged this on Arts Digital Humanities Technology and Science and commented:
Take a look Matt M passed it onwards and its an interesting post, maybe my I don’t want everything Apple, made this particularly resonate…
Posted by Mark Kelley on July 1, 2015 at 3:25 PM
Ya know, Apple might just be getting ready to reinvent the Web and wreck hackers in the process….. Just sayin…………..
Posted by Pilu on July 1, 2015 at 3:57 PM
The main problem lies elsewhere. Use of browser perse is dwindling at least here in countries of SE Asia like BD, India etc. More of next gen is using apps which being walled gardens sort of kills the concept of internet we knew with http and www. Some very large companies are becoming app only, and kids and youths no longer download WordPress or Joomla ( or Drupal) to make their own sites – many companies have only facebook pages and no www address. While there were movements like SOPA no one is trying to bring back the Browser itself – what can be done by Apps can be done by browser also. If Browser is not as nifty as apps it should be made so. But then the world enslaved by FB is not looking at all these. So first we need to resurrect the http, www and the Browser itself. It looks like a distant (if not impossible) dream
Posted by Double Shot #1520 | Codango.Com on July 1, 2015 at 10:02 PM
[…] Safari is the new IE – Given that Apple is increasingly the new Microsoft, this is not very surprising. […]
Posted by prafuitu on July 1, 2015 at 11:08 PM
What people tend to forget (or maybe didn’t even knew it in the first place) is that IE6 was one of the best, if not the best, browser of its time. It had the broadest support for CSS 2 (despite all the crazy bugs like double margin on floated elements) when launched, support for XHR, webfonts (EOT), CSS filters (through DirectX) and even custom elements. Hell, some of those were even available in IE 5. Yes, sure, they didn’t follow any standard but their owns, but that’s not much different than all the goodies WebKit offered with their prefixed CSS properties and non standard syntax that helped it take the lead in the web space…
So yeah, Safari had its moment, just like IE had, but right now it looks like a serious contender for the most dreaded browser “award”!
Posted by The Cost of Compatibility | spriteCloud on July 1, 2015 at 11:50 PM
[…] at spriteCloud, we discussed how Safari is the new IE, meaning that of the major browsers, Safari seems to lag further and further behind in providing an […]
Posted by ben on July 2, 2015 at 6:26 AM
any negative opinions expressed about safari should consider the fact that no other browser competes with it on an apple product. let’s benchmark yep… FF is overbloated, chrome just asks you to login to him. please guys c’mon
in the end, all you want to do is an iOS app, as it will run equally everywhere (sorry for android… but admit it, too many devices type kill the norm, making it maybe worst than the desktop browser world)
Posted by Kerby on July 6, 2015 at 2:46 AM
“too many devices type kill the norm”.
It’s called choice. I know it frightens most apple cult members buy some of use enjoy making a decision for ourselves.
Posted by Jay Maynard on July 6, 2015 at 4:20 AM
Fragmentation is a real thing. I have four Android devices, and there are more than a few apps that refuse to run on one or more – and the lowest Android version on any of them is 4.1.1.
The Android car stereo is a great thing, but I really wish the SiriusXM app would install and run on it…
Posted by Safari è il nuovo Internet Explorer? | Bicycle Mind on July 2, 2015 at 10:16 AM
[…] Safari è il nuovo Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by seb on July 2, 2015 at 2:52 PM
Safari is the new IE
OS X is the new Windows
Apple is the new Microsoft
LOL, so much bitter, hard to take these articles seriously.
Posted by Richard Boyle on July 2, 2015 at 5:55 PM
I use Mozilla’s Firefox instead of IE. It’s much better than IE once you get used to its particular differences. No complaints here.
Posted by Concerned Citizen on July 2, 2015 at 6:41 PM
I ran into this recently when building my own company website and using webkit within a standard WordPress theme:
.entry-header
{
display: -webkit-flex;
display: flex;
-webkit-flex-direction: row
flex-direction: row;
-webkit-justify-content: flex-start;
justify-content: flex-start;
flex-wrap: wrap;
}
.entry-title
{
order: 1;
}
.entry-thumbnail
{
order: 2;
margin-left: 25px;
}
.entry-meta {
order: 3;
}
.entry-header {
margin-bottom: 15px;
}
.single-post .entry-meta .date
{
display: none;
}
All of this works great in ALL browsers BUT Safari in iOS, OSX, and WIN. Disappointing for sure.
Posted by Mats Svensson on July 23, 2015 at 11:09 PM
WIN?
You still test things on Safari 5?
Posted by bfredit on July 3, 2015 at 12:56 AM
What happened to these comments? All the fanboyism and sheer ignorance of some people… are actual developers answering or just the kids from Xbox Live??
Posted by Mike on July 3, 2015 at 5:25 AM
Read This: http://www.imore.com/safari-isnt-new-ie-its-user-centric-web
Posted by Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Reading List on July 3, 2015 at 8:27 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE writes Nolan Lawson after Edge Conference: “we in the web community need to come to terms with the fact that Safari has become the new IE.” […]
Posted by Jimmy Smutek on July 3, 2015 at 9:39 AM
Reblogged this on smutek dot ninja.
Posted by Article Roundup - Hoverboard Studios on July 3, 2015 at 3:59 PM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Is Safari the new IE? | Rob Fahrni on July 4, 2015 at 11:02 AM
[…] Nolan Lawson: “It’s tempting to interpret this as a deliberate effort by Apple to sabotage any threats to their App Store business model, but a conspiracy seems unlikely, since that part of the business mostly breaks even. Another possibility is that they’re just responding to the demands of iOS developers, which largely amount to 1) more native APIs and 2) Swift, Swift, Swift. But since Apple is pretty good at keeping a lid on their internal process, it’s anyone’s guess.” […]
Posted by someone on July 4, 2015 at 11:26 AM
It’s a pity. RIP my old friend.
Posted by Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari (Nolan Lawson/Read the Tea Leaves) | Flying Drone Toys on July 4, 2015 at 3:44 PM
[…] Lawson / Read the Tea Leaves:Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari — Safari is the new IE — Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a […]
Posted by dtriny on July 4, 2015 at 4:46 PM
HTML has become a religion.
Posted by Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari (Nolan Lawson/Read the Tea Leaves) | Business Brain Food on July 4, 2015 at 11:34 PM
[…] Lawson / Read the Tea Leaves:Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari — Safari is the new IE — Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a conference populated by […]
Posted by Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari (Nolan Lawson/Read the Tea Leaves) | Big Box of Money on July 4, 2015 at 11:40 PM
[…] Lawson / Read the Tea Leaves:Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari — Safari is the new IE — Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a conference populated by […]
Posted by Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari (Nolan Lawson/Read the Tea Leaves) | Golden Gate Daily on July 5, 2015 at 12:17 AM
[…] Lawson / Read the Tea Leaves:Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari — Safari is the new IE — Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a […]
Posted by Collective #175 » CSS 3 & HTML 5 Links und Infos on July 5, 2015 at 8:19 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Steve on July 5, 2015 at 9:14 AM
So well written.
Posted by Collective #175 - InfoLogs on July 5, 2015 at 11:01 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Safari is the new IE 2: Revenge of the Linkbait | Read the Tea Leaves on July 5, 2015 at 11:45 AM
[…] « Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Backpocket | iand.net on July 5, 2015 at 1:25 PM
[…] Safari is the new IE – It just works. […]
Posted by Apples Safari-Browser: ein Leben in der Vergangenheit? - entwickler.de on July 5, 2015 at 11:25 PM
[…] Glaubt man Nolan Lawson, ist eines der Unternehmen, die man erwartungsgemäß auf einer solchen Veranstaltung treffen würde, eher zurückhaltend, was die Anwesenheit anbelangt – ein Fakt, der zwar nicht unbemerkt an den Webentwicklern vorbeigeht, aber trotzdem gerne totgeschwiegen wird. Der sprichwörtliche „Elephant in the Room“ sozusagen. […]
Posted by Safari è il nuovo Internet Explorer? | Edit - Il Blog di HTML.it on July 6, 2015 at 12:03 AM
[…] | Read the Tea Leaves_ajaxurl_ = "http://blog.html.it/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";var tag = 'noalert';var […]
Posted by Bookmarks for July 5th from 09:05 to 22:44 : Extenuating Circumstances on July 6, 2015 at 1:01 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE – 30 Jun Posted June 30, 2015 by Nolan Lawson in Webapps. Tagged: apple, web platform. 126 Comments Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a conference populated by… […]
Posted by Safari is the new IE 2: Revenge of the Linkbait › Martin Wolf Front End Web Development on July 6, 2015 at 6:37 AM
[…] recommended follow up on Nolans first post Safari is the new IE which sparked a lively debate whether the attention grabbing title is […]
Posted by Safari and the User Centric Web | Assorted Nerdery by Daniel Andrews on July 6, 2015 at 7:47 AM
[…] keeping up with this small-scale drama, Nolan Lawson wrote an article about a week ago about how Safari is falling behind other browser vendors. This led to a pretty large outcry from the Apple faithful (which, honestly, I typically consider […]
Posted by Collective #175 - Daniele Milana on July 6, 2015 at 3:16 PM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Regarding Safari | Chris Bateman on July 7, 2015 at 8:38 PM
[…] week, Nolan Lawson posted an article titled, Safari is the New IE (and a follow-up). Nolan admitted that the title is linkbaity, and several folks have pointed out […]
Posted by Apple and Safari | Chris Bateman on July 7, 2015 at 8:44 PM
[…] week, Nolan Lawson wrote Safari is the New IE (and a follow-up), and it received quite a lot of attention. Nolan admitted that the title is […]
Posted by Weekly Links #28 | meshedsociety.com on July 9, 2015 at 3:07 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE Can’t comment on whether there is any substance to this claim, but catchy headline and worth a read. […]
Posted by Daily links 2015-07-10 | Marcin Kossowski on July 10, 2015 at 12:16 AM
[…] Is safari the new IE? […]
Posted by Janina on July 10, 2015 at 7:12 AM
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Posted by Church Tech Snack Pack #079 - ChurchMag on July 10, 2015 at 9:01 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE Yup. It’s true. […]
Posted by HTML5test - How well does your browser support HTML5? on July 11, 2015 at 6:41 AM
[…] happen during the conference itself, but a few days after. Nolan Lawson published the now famous Safari is the new IE article on his blog and all hell broke loose. Even Don Melton – the godfather of Safari […]
Posted by Web! Native! Both? | Elia Insider on July 11, 2015 at 9:44 AM
[…] Nolan Lawson kicked off another round of discussions about using web technologies exclusively to build native apps (and a follow-up here). The native app people always come down on the side of no way. They rightly point to the fact that web apps don’t feel like native apps. The animations between views aren’t as smooth, the look-and-feel can never be native enough, and the “write-once, run-everywhere” approach just means really mediocre applications everywhere. Learn to write native code! […]
Posted by Madden NFL 16 on July 15, 2015 at 8:03 AM
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Posted by The mobile web sucks » Rand0m Stuff on July 20, 2015 at 8:37 AM
[…] performance, and no incentive for Apple to invest heavily in Safari development. In many ways, Safari is the new Internet Explorer. Things are mildly more open on Android, but not much — and Google has Mozilla in some sort of […]
Posted by The mobile web sucks - How to do everything! on July 20, 2015 at 9:42 AM
[…] performance, and no incentive for Apple to invest heavily in Safari development. In many ways, Safari is the new Internet Explorer. Things are mildly more open on Android, but not much — and Google has Mozilla in some sort of […]
Posted by xxx on July 21, 2015 at 2:13 AM
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Posted by ios ad blocking, instant articles: wer killt hier eigentlich wen? on July 21, 2015 at 6:26 AM
[…] Hervorhebung von mir. Naja. Ob das so stimmt? Also zumindest im Falle Apple muss man sich schon fragen, warum es mit der Entwicklung des Safaris nicht so richtig voran geht, ob vielleicht sogar die Aussagen zutirfft Safari is the new IE. […]
Posted by Questions Unasked: Safari as IETabType | TabType on July 21, 2015 at 10:28 AM
[…] discussions have been pretty interesting revolving around Nolan Lawson’s thoughts about Safari as the new Internet Explorer. I think the consensus of commentary has coalesced around a difference of opinion regarding the […]
Posted by Das mobile Internet ist eine hoffnungslose Katastrophe - Netzpiloten.de on July 22, 2015 at 4:26 AM
[…] sie nicht verbessern, da Apple dies nicht zulässt. Safari läuft ohnehin immer mehr Gefahr, zum neuen Internet Explorer zu verkommen. Und genau diese Stagnation führt dazu, dass Apple und Facebook sich bemühen in […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer on July 24, 2015 at 9:55 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | Videosparaflipar.com on July 24, 2015 at 9:55 AM
[…] semanas este artículo Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso después de ser mencionado Arstechnica . Después de un grado que […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | voceros.mx on July 24, 2015 at 9:56 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | Zona Laja Bajío on July 24, 2015 at 9:56 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | HTC Mini - Aplicaciones para tu dispositivo Móvil on July 24, 2015 at 10:01 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy célebre tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | 1Click on July 24, 2015 at 10:14 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | Lockear on July 24, 2015 at 10:45 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | Blog Textual on July 24, 2015 at 10:50 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer | TECNOLOGIA Y NOTICIAS on July 24, 2015 at 8:07 PM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by Victor on July 25, 2015 at 7:07 PM
Why are we attacking the browsers and not the webpages. Modern website are a fucking mess. They scatter resources all over the web, and load up files form up to 10 sources instead of hosting everything on the same server as the website. Should we blame Microsoft for Word when trying to open a document filled with pictures, hyperlinks, inactive source files and loads of text effects?
Isn’t it better to teach (or force) coders to clean up their mess before publishing rather than have developers cope with everybody’s mistakes. I know it’s impossible to control the habits and knowledge of so many people, but when you see code that’s being made 5 times longer just to address an issue that could’ve been dealt with 2 lines, only if they did their research and kept up to date with changes and implementation, you start to think differently.
Posted by 移动Web体验糟糕，谁之过？ | 爱爱 on July 25, 2015 at 8:39 PM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by 移动Web体验糟糕，谁之过？ on July 26, 2015 at 12:31 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Safari no es el nuevo Internet Explorer - TechNoticias on July 27, 2015 at 4:39 AM
[…] unas semanas este artículo de Nolan Lawson se hizo muy famoso tras ser mencionado en Arstechnica. Tras un título, que puede […]
Posted by The mobile web sucks | fragments on July 27, 2015 at 5:07 PM
[…] performance, and no incentive for Apple to invest heavily in Safari development. In many ways, Safari is the new Internet Explorer. Things are mildly more open on Android, but not much — and Google has Mozilla in some sort of […]
Posted by Browser Trends July 2015: Stalled Safari? on July 30, 2015 at 7:31 PM
[…] Lawson’s recent article “Safari is the new IE” had a contentious title but raises several interesting points. Apple hasn’t abandoned Safari […]
Posted by Le liens de dimanche – Disruption[s] on August 1, 2015 at 11:41 PM
[…] à documenter le problèmes et disparités des navigateurs sur le web. dans le débat — Safari est le nouveau IE [en train de retarder le développement sur le Web] — il propose que l’ensemble des […]
Posted by Matt: Safari the new IE? - Webnesday on August 6, 2015 at 5:07 PM
[…] “In recent years, Apple’s strategy towards the web can most charitably be described as ‘benevolent neglect.’” Nolan Lawson throws the gauntlet down by asking Is Safari the new Internet Explorer? […]
Posted by Safari isn't the new Internet Explorer, Google Chrome is. on August 7, 2015 at 5:15 AM
[…] have been discussions recently that badmouth Safari for being a bit behind on web technologies. I agree that Safari needs […]
Posted by The Evergreen Web - Scott Hanselman on August 10, 2015 at 11:53 PM
[…] needs to get on board (coughSafari) and move […]
Posted by How about we make ES6 the new baseline? | Christian Heilmann on August 17, 2015 at 12:59 AM
[…] This sounds familiar and brings back terrible memories of an Internet Explorer monoculture as explained by Nolan Lawson in Safari is the new IE. […]
Posted by Safari is Not the New IE, But... -Telerik Developer Network on August 19, 2015 at 4:11 AM
[…] the butt of the joke. And increasingly, with the popularity of articles like Nolan Lawson’s “Safari is the new IE”, developers’ new target is becoming Safari. As someone who speaks to a lot of web developers […]
Posted by LINK DIGEST — August 22, 2015 | Fractal Realism on August 22, 2015 at 1:59 PM
[…] original post: “Safari Is the New IE”; and a follow up to correct inaccuracies in the first one: Safari Is the New IE 2: Revenge of the […]
Posted by ¿Se ha convertido Safari en el nuevo Internet Explorer? - TodoMovil on August 25, 2015 at 9:46 AM
[…] el mejor navegador que puedes encontrarte en tu Mac. Y es que poco a poco, el navegador de Apple se está convirtiendo en todo aquello que repudiábamos de Internet Explorer en sus peores […]
Posted by Klicks #37: Bots like these - Ole Reißmann on September 21, 2015 at 10:09 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE Nolan Lawson, Read the Tea Leaves „I think there is a general feeling among web developers that Safari is lagging behind the other browsers. (…) So what can we do, when one of the major browser vendors is stuck in the 2010 model?“ […]
Posted by That’s just not what “is the new” means · kbps on October 8, 2015 at 11:42 AM
[…] I’m the last and probably least significant person to weigh in on this, but this “Safari is the New IE” article that I didn’t read when it came out three months ago has been tucked away in the […]
Posted by Howto: Mac configuration for software developers - lastzero's software engineering blog on October 27, 2015 at 12:52 PM
[…] Google Chrome and Firefox – Safari is the new Internet Explorer ;) […]
Posted by Ankit Khatri on October 28, 2015 at 5:02 AM
Great Article! Web is the future and if Apple doesn’t implement the new APIs seriously, they will suck big time!
Anyways, but until Apple change their strategies, I would go with your points 2 and 3 based on what I am developing.
If its a small internal tool for an intra-company purpose, I would go with 2. with a label, “Not Compatible with the f**ked up Safari shit.”
If its an open source library like PouchDB, obviously, I have no option but 3. I will try my two cents to contribute and may be the lazy guys at Apple will wake up to see it.
Posted by Cloudane on November 3, 2015 at 1:22 AM
I agree with you for different but related reasons, having come here as a user on a slightly frustrated Google of “Safari is worse than IE6”
Okay, that’s exaggerating a bit.
But it’s becoming more and more frequent now that I come across a website that just doesn’t work properly on Safari. Menus that don’t respond, entire sites that don’t appear, sites that think the desktop version is a mobile browser and so on. I keep thinking of ranting about this and predicting the backlash of “everything works for me! You must just go on bad sites!” and deciding against it. I keep thinking “it must be a one off, badly designed site” and coming across another one that does something broken on it. Time and time again I find myself breaking out Firefox or Chrome as a “one off” to get something working.
I’m a long time user of Apple products and want to use it – in an ideal world I’d use everything of these since it all integrates so well. It syncs perfectly with the mobile version and iCloud, is battery efficient on my laptop etc. But it seems to me that Safari has now (since around Yosemite) adopted the old IE6 crown of “special snowflake browser that web developers have to test individually and code in workarounds for, and if they don’t it’ll probably be broken”.
To be honest this “it almost works, but I need third party software so I can do x” is becoming commonplace on the Mac now. Photos is almost suitable for my needs (RIP Aperture) but not quite, so I have to use Lightroom. iCloud Numbers almost has what I need but is painfully slow to sync and doesn’t have trend lines on graphs, so I have to use Google Sheets. Shortcomings… shortcomings everywhere! They fix ONE shortcoming per year (to a great cheer and applause from the crowd at WWDC) then that’s your lot, come back next year. Once a piece of software is finally feature-complete and everyone loves it, they scrap it and rewrite it from scratch and it’s back to square 1 with another 10 years of re-adding missing features, rinse and repeat over and over. Anyway, I’m getting on a tangent. Getting a bit jaded with Apple – fortunately for them they’re still the best at certain perks that keep me using them, like being able to type text messages in the OS and send them through the phone (VERY useful).
Posted by Veille Web #8 | Antoine Fatoux, création de site internet à Lille, Arras et Lens on November 4, 2015 at 3:07 AM
[…] Plus d’infos : https://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/ […]
Posted by Which Browser Is Really Holding Back The Web? – BrowseEmAll Web Dev Blog on November 16, 2015 at 12:01 AM
[…] there was (and still is) a discussion the web professionals community if Safari is the new IE and whether Apple is doing the right thing by focusing on the user of if they are holding back […]
Posted by Is Internet Explorer 11 The New Internet Explorer 6? – BrowseEmAll Web Dev Blog on November 17, 2015 at 12:02 AM
[…] we have already mentioned in an older post there currently is a discussion going on if Safari will be the new Internet Explorer dragging the web down with less new features and slow development. I would think that this […]
Posted by Frontend Friday – #17 : Safari on IE 31.8.2015 | Jakso.fi on December 31, 2015 at 3:38 PM
[…] Nolan Lawsonin kirjoitus Safarista […]
Posted by 10 Web Predictions for 2016 on January 6, 2016 at 3:15 PM
[…] I don’t necessarily agree Safari is the new IE, it’s fallen noticeably behind other browsers — including those from […]
Posted by 10 Web Predictions for 2016 | Codango.Com on January 6, 2016 at 8:00 PM
[…] I don’t necessarily agree Safari is the new IE, it’s fallen noticeably behind other browsers — including those from […]
Posted by 10 прогнозов для веба на 2016 год | Dev Tips on January 10, 2016 at 7:21 PM
[…] не согласен с мнением, что Safari это IE нашего времени, но он ощутимо отстал остальных браузеров, включая […]
Posted by Forever Backwards Compatible on February 3, 2016 at 8:58 AM
[…] all the talk about the web not evolving fast enough to catch native UIs, the silver lining is that the web will transcend generations of devices and […]
Posted by Anonymous on March 5, 2016 at 9:50 AM
[…] dass wegen ihm die gesamte Webentwicklung keine Fortschritte machen kann, dann tust du mir Leid. Safari is the new IE | Read the Tea Leaves Zitat von Neikie und jeden tag wenn ich nachhause komme seh ich den imac an, freue mich […]
Posted by chatterkat on March 5, 2016 at 6:26 PM
safari really IS worse than IE in a lot of aspects. I am constantly finding CSS cross browser issues, an important form part on the UPS website does even work at all in safari.
dealing with safari is a damn nightmare all around. i really hope everyone abandons this useless browser.
i am too the point if a browser just can not stay current with development, and standards, and just too many cross browser issues popping up then i really no longer care. my opinion is stop worrying about them, let these junk browsers FADE AWAY..
when no websites will work on them, then people will stop using – or the developers will be forced to do something
Posted by marco on April 19, 2016 at 4:29 AM
My words echo to the title of this blog post, totally agree?
Posted by Safari caches old pages? * Error 53 Iphone Fix on May 3, 2016 at 12:07 PM
[…] something? Has anyone experienced similar problem? Or is it only one of the reasons why Safari is becoming the new […]
Posted by [ASK] apple - Safari caches old pages? | Some Piece of Information on May 3, 2016 at 2:17 PM
[…] something? Has anyone experienced similar problem? Or is it only one of the reasons why Safari is becoming the new […]
Posted by File Upload Regression in Safari for iOS | vcolavin on May 19, 2016 at 2:15 PM
[…] does a great job of implementing and supporting modern web standards. I don’t buy into the Safari is the new IE thing. Also, a friend of mine works on that team and I don’t want to malign […]
Posted by Mobile Safari's Performance Is Not the Problem on May 26, 2016 at 1:04 AM
[…] his own misunderstanding of performance issues on mobile. For instance he uses the recently popular “Safari is the new IE” article and the tweet below to support his performance issue […]
Posted by Why I’m Not Crazy for Making Safari my Default Browser – BirchTree on July 8, 2016 at 7:30 AM
[…] you’ll say. It’s faster, you’ll say. You might get a little snarky and tell me Safari’s the new IE. If you want to appeal to my developer side, you’ll probably tell me that Chrome’s […]
Posted by Jēkabs Kārkliņš (@cyberprodigy) on August 14, 2016 at 2:43 AM
I can tell you for sure that 7 years ago while doing web development you always needed to make tricks and special solutions for IE 6.
These days doing responsive websites no one cares about IE6, however it’s place has been taken by iPhone 4/4S Safari browsers. Many people has it, so you are forced to hack your solutions though.
Posted by John on September 10, 2016 at 7:37 AM
I don’t get Safari either? It used to be so aggressive in gaining user traction. Even going so far as to port to Windows OS. But of late, it seems overly focused on mobile web with the iPhone and that’s it. Even most stuff pertaining to OS X now Mac OS is directly linked to working better with mobile. It’s as if the Mac is a after thought or rather a accessory to the iPhone. It’s probably why Mac users don’t use Safari but Chrome. Safari’s only success is mobile because IOS forces any browser to use the Safari engine. Yeah you think your using Chrome but it’s really Safari. I didn’t think Safari would end up being ignored by Apple like Microsoft did to IE. But it sure looks that way to me.
Posted by Martijn van Halen on January 9, 2017 at 9:49 AM
Funny how almost nothing has changed. Each iOS release we hope for changes. But what is happening now is that Android is the bigger part of the market now. So option 2 makes way more sense now. So hopefully Apple will learn and change
Posted by bgallia on January 9, 2017 at 7:07 PM
I disagree that option 2 make more sense now. I think who is to blame for lack of Service Workers adoption has changed since this article was written. Also, because of that you need to re-evaluate how to respond.
Back around at the end of June 2015, the W3C had just released the working draft for Service Workers. It seem clear at the time the W3C Web Applications Working Group had a clear roadmap for moving forward with the specification and that Google, Mozilla Foundation and Microsoft all had expressed interest in how the specification could fit into their roadmap. Apple, at the time, seem like the clear hold-out from discussing the future of Service Workers on their carefully wall gardened platform.
But the road map issues seem to extend beyond Apple today. Coding to stick it to Apple for still not supporting what remains a working draft seems to ignore the fact it’s adoption is a larger industry issue than just Apple at this point.
First, there is the road map for the W3C itself. The Web Applications Work Group in the W3C which had been working on the specification closed in October 2015. The group that now is supposed to be progressing with the specification is the Web Platform Working Group (WPWG) which seems to be looking over everything from HTML 5.2 to Gamepad API to DOM UI Events. It seems like the WPWG has a lot on it’s plate. For Service Workers, WPWG was targeting a Candidate Recommendation specification following TPAC 2016. But, TPAC 2016 came and went back in September 2016 so it seems unclear what the ETA for the WPWG for a CR version of Service Workers will be.
However, even if a CR specification where to come out today, there is product lifecycle issues from both Microsoft and Google which will impact how quickly the CR specification is supported by the default OS rendering library.
For Microsoft, Windows 8.1 is listed as still being in mainstream support for another year. Microsoft has stated that mainstream support includes additional features to keep the product current. However, Microsoft then has made it clear that applications that use the mshtml.dll on Windows 8.1 will never have Service Workers support and neither will IE.
Android WebView library didn’t support Service Workers WD until Android L (Lollipop). According to Google’s own statistics, 39% of Android device still in active use have a version of Android previous to Lollipop. This is largely due to the fact that several devices only 18-24 months old can’t be updated to the latest version of Android. Hence, it seems like it will be another year before over 80% of Android devices will have a WebView that support Service Workers or at least the Working Draft version of them. If the CR comes out today, it probably won’t be until Android O is released that support for Service Workers CR is baked into the firmware which provides WebView. It may then be another three years from now until over 80% of actively used Android devices support the Services Workers CR.
So, while Apple seems to still not support the Working Draft, if the CR came out today and Apple decided the next versions of Mac OS X and iOS will support the CR specification, the life cycle Apple provides seems to indicate they will have the largest percentage of their user base that will get updated to have that support. Currently, Macs built since 2010 can be updated to the latest Mac OS X and iPhones since fall of 2012 can be updated to the latest iOS.
So, I think the focus today should be less on why Apple still doesn’t support a working draft and more one why the W3C still doesn’t have a Candidate Recommendation. Then the next concern should be, how soon will the CR specification be available on all of your target platforms.
But taking Option 2 to try to force Apple’s hand doesn’t seem like the right next step. I don’t think it is as clear that Apple is the weak link in this specific area.
Posted by 由於編碼支援落後，YouTube 似乎關閉了 Safari 的 4K 播放選項 | TechNews 科技新報 on January 13, 2017 at 1:44 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by 由于编码支持落后，YouTube 似乎关闭了 Safari 的 4K 播放选项 | TechNews 科技新报 on January 13, 2017 at 2:21 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by 要不是因为苹果，混合应用开发将完胜 Native | 神刀安全网 on June 20, 2017 at 6:59 PM
[…] 完全不支持 getUserMedia。这对 Rizer 来说不是问题，但是它阻止了我开始另一个需要这个特性的项目。都 2017 年了，这完全不可接受。也进一步证明了 Safari 成了新的 IE。 […]
Posted by The Weekly Click .11 - Netplus Marketing, Inc. on October 12, 2017 at 7:11 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE […]
Posted by Safari and IE – Hello my name is Niels Leenheer on October 23, 2017 at 12:18 PM
[…] happen during the conference itself, but a few days after. Nolan Lawson published the now famous Safari is the new IE article on his blog and all hell broke loose. Even Don Melton — the godfather of […]
Posted by Things I’ve been wrong about, things I’ve been right about | Read the Tea Leaves on January 1, 2019 at 3:45 PM
[…] “Safari is the new IE” is probably my most-read post of all time, since it got picked up by Ars Technica. Unfortunately I’ve learned a lot about how the browser industry works since I wrote it, and nowadays I regard it with a bit of embarrassment. […]
Posted by Reminder: Safari is not an evergreen browser - Jeffery To on July 10, 2019 at 3:25 PM
[…] brings us to Safari. I am nowhere near the first person to say that Safari is the new IE, but consider this: Out of all of the major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and let’s include Edge […]
Posted by Backpocket – iand.net on October 1, 2019 at 5:15 AM
[…] Safari is the new IE – It just works. […]
Posted by 服务人员和iOS / Safari – 玩编程 on January 16, 2020 at 9:56 AM
[…] 在Nolan Lawson的文章Safari是新的IE（06/2015）引发了关于Apple参与现代Web功能的广泛辩论，其主要观点是 […]