
Safari 13 Is Out - freediver
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari_release_notes/safari_13_release_notes
======
janfoeh
It really, really is a shame that they removed proper extensions. While Safari
never had a good extension story, it was at least bearable, and in all other
regards its simply the best Mac browser.

Now I have to take a really hard look at switching back to Firefox, and that
would be a downgrade in almost every regard I care about. Pity.

~~~
ahurmazda
I made the switch to FF 2 months ago after being a Safari zealot (for nearly
10-14 years). I did not notice any memory hogging (was an issue in past). I
have not rebooted FF in 20+ days. I really enjoy the "container" concept in
FF. (ymmv of course)

~~~
Rebelgecko
The only downside is that FF battery life is much worse than Safari.
Supposedly they're working on being smarter about GPU usage to improve this,
but I haven't checked lately to see if it has made a difference.

~~~
MaxLeiter
On newer versions (of Firefox Nightly), they use the native CoreAnimations
library now for vastly improved battery life:

[https://twitter.com/whimboo/status/1168437524357898240](https://twitter.com/whimboo/status/1168437524357898240)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
It's still a very long way from Safari on battery life. As is Google Chrome,
by the way.

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svieira
* Added support for the Pointer Events API enabling consistent access to mouse, trackpad, touch, and Apple Pencil events.

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer](https://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer) \- now
you can use one unified event capture everywhere, instead of having to choose
between "click" and "touch"!

~~~
ilkkao
Nice to see that all browsers support Pointer Events now. This Microsoft
proposed standard was initially fiercely opposed by Google and Apple some
years ago.

~~~
cptskippy
Well that was before they were shipping devices with a stylus.

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LeoPanthera
This update kills Tampermonkey.

I only used it for a very specific reason - I had a script which removes
multi-item eBay listings where one item is 99 cents (typically some kind of
keychain) and the other items are the actual listed item at a much higher
price.

It's a technique used to break the "sort by price" function, since it sorts by
the cheapest item in a multi-item listing.

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dantondwa
Just opened it again out of curiosity and the first message I got is that the
Bitwarden and Pocket extensions are not supported anymore. Oh, well, as much
as I'd like to use it, a desktop browser without extensions is dead to me.
There are some extensions that provide me with little quality of life
improvements and whatnot. Since, when I'm using my computer, I'm almost always
using a browser, these things become important.

I wonder why Apple decided to axe extensions and not support WebExtensions,
that at this point have become a standard shared by Firefox and Chrome. Too
bad.

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glogla
Apple removed the ability to use uBlock Origin or similar.

I tried few ad blocker from the app store, but non of them block Youtube's
video ad, making it useless.

We still have Firefox for now I guess.

~~~
mml
wipr from the App Store is a serviceable ad blocker, not as good as ublock
origin, but (mostly) does the job for me at least. I miss the ability to kill
specific elements ad-hoc.

~~~
jamesb93
I payed for Wipr and I don't notice the difference between it an uBlock Origin
on my windows machine. Can you report if it works on Safari 13?

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smegmasamurai
> Added support for FIDO2-compliant USB security keys with the Web
> Authentication standard in Safari on macOS.

well this makes me happy at least

~~~
axismundi
Does it work on IOS?

~~~
mikhailt
I believe iOS 13 does via NFC. Yubico was just talking about this:
[https://www.yubico.com/2019/09/yubico-ios-authentication-
exp...](https://www.yubico.com/2019/09/yubico-ios-authentication-expands-to-
include-nfc/)

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zyang
One thing Safari really needs to fix: suggesting a secure password but then
not save it. I have been trolled too many times.

~~~
KenanSulayman
This.. I'm sure it's happening because the respective websites use JavaScript
to submit the form data via XHR, but I've been burned so many times by the
password generator that I'm writing down the password from the field before
submitting it. Very frustrating!

Entering it in the actual login form will then usually trigger a save of the
credentials.

~~~
gumby
Nice thing about 1Password (just a user) is that when you submit a generated
password it is also temporarily copied to the clipboard. I paste it somewhere
(typically at a bash prompt) in case this happens if it does make or adjust
the correct entry. Sucks, but there are, as they say, no standards.

The nice thing about it being at the bash prompt is I can just press ^U and it
doesn't end up stored anywhere (and even if it did it would be a random,
contextless string).

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bouke
For those wondering how to install this update in macOS 10.14 Mojave; it is
distributed as a Software Update in System Preferences.

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thorum
> Added support for the Visual Viewport API for adjusting web content to avoid
> overlays, such as the onscreen keyboard.

This is awesome for WYSIWYG editors, most of which have struggled to keep the
formatting toolbar visible on mobile screens because there's been no good way
to detect whether the keyboard is open.

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brackle
Can it play 4K videos on YouTube?

~~~
ksec
Nope, and probably ( I hope ) never will. The chances of Apple support VP9 is
slim, and in case you want to point out Apple is a Founding Member of Open
Media Alliance, as of today it still doesn't have Apple's Official Logo in its
member page.

Compared to MC-IF, an industry forum focusing on next generation H.266 / VCC
which Apple is also a Founding Member, has an official logo from Day 1.

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tompic823
> Added the ability to Safari for macOS to share your screen with others using
> only web technologies. Plug-ins are no longer required.

This is a nice enhancement. I previously used the Screen Sharing feature that
was buried in Messages, which somehow stuck around from when it was iChat.

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aparashk
Upon completing the Safari upgrade, I was forced to upgrade to 1Password 7.x,
which forced me to upgrade my Dropbox password storage to a new file format…
an avalanche of changes and I am afraid I may corner myself into having to
spend more on 1Password.

~~~
cmer
1Password is an amazing piece of software that is worth every penny.

I used to always buy my license instead of the subscription but recently
switched because frankly, I know it's a better business model for them, and I
get so much value our of 1P I don't mind paying.

I've been a 1P user since before 1.0.

It's too easy to always try to squeeze every penny out of these small
companies, but I think it's worth really thinking hard about their reality,
and how much their software is actually worth to us.

------
pat2man
Safari continues to lead the path for privacy and security. WebAuthN is a
welcome change although supporting the built in TouchID in Apple devices would
have been nice. The new password change prompt is definitely a plus.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Safari is the very last major browser to support WebAuthN. If anything, it is
following the path.
[https://caniuse.com/#search=webauthn](https://caniuse.com/#search=webauthn)

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davidhyde
Safari is the new internet explorer. Too little, too late.

~~~
favorited
Nope. Chrome is the new IE. Standards don't matter when you have a high enough
market share- you can do whatever you want and people have to support it.

IE was the reference browser for the web in the 90s, and Chrome is that today.

~~~
benologist
Yes, Safari is the new Opera. Technically superior in many ways but also
barely competing. Opera went on to abandon their custom technology in favor of
Chrome's after losing their dominant position in mobile to Safari and Chrome.
As long as the EU doesn't force Apple to accept fair competition on iOS
Safari's future looks bright!

~~~
robocat
Safari is the new IE6, because the version of Safari you have is locked to the
version of iOS you have. Features like Pointer Events, visualViewport, ES2017
etc are available on _Android 4.4_ , because Google still updates Chrome on
old Android devices.

I struggle to support iOS 9 (Safari 9) and I barely support iOS 7, because we
have a number of users with old devices and we are not a consumer app so we
can't just ignore our users who _cannot_ upgrade their browser.

I regularly check caniuse and mdn to see if I can use a useful feature that is
in Firefox, Chrome and Edge, and I regularly can't because Safari doesn't
support it. Or often I try to use a feature and it is buggy on Safari. Safari
is the only browser that regularly breaks our web app (most recently Safari 13
changes for the iPad desktop mode). I also see old versions of Safari in use
by some of our MacOS users (presumably because they can't or won't update?)

If our users hit a show-stopping bug in any other browser (browser bug or our
bug), they can usually try a different browser. But iOS users can only use
WebKit, so they are the most vulnerable to serious bugs.

~~~
Synaesthesia
I would say you can pretty much aim for iOS 10 or even 11 as a minimum. The
number of devices running iOS 7 is quite small. My moms iPad 2 runs iOS 9 and
that’s about one of the oldest Idevices going

~~~
robocat
You can do that if you don't have any poor users, or you don't have to care
about them (e.g. many consumer apps).

Our clients are businesses, and our users are their employees (from a wide
range of backgrounds). The employees must use our web app, and our clients
mostly don't get to choose what their employees use.

We log how many users are on old browsers, and we try to support users on old
browsers if it isn't too costly for us to do so.

In my experience, the majority of people using a iPhone 4 or an Android 4.4
device are doing so because they can't afford to update, and they are often
otherwise marginalised. I try hard not to give them yet another kick in the
teeth for stuff outside their control.

