
Safari 9.1 - bpierre
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_9_1.html
======
mwpmaybe
For anyone wondering why anybody uses Safari these days, the simple answer
(for me, at least) is that it consumes much less CPU and energy on my MacBook
Pro than Chrome and Firefox. It can mean an hour or more of battery life when
unplugged, and greatly reduced testicle-cooking when plugged. I still use
Chrome for development but Safari is my "daily driver" for email, surfing,
reading, etc.

~~~
hamhamed
an even simpler answer would be because it is the default browser..

~~~
chris_wot
Not just the default browser - the _only_ browser on iOS.

Which leads to frustrating issues like webpages you can't read because someone
checked in a bit of cide that stuffs up viewport scaling in at webpage that
has style="overflow:hidden" in the body tag.

In other words, don't try to browse source code in OpenGrok.

So you get critical issues that don't get fixed for 3-6 months.

[https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152803](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152803)

------
therealmarv
Great, the Safari 9.1 GestureEvent for desktop PCs is completely different on
how Chrome
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=289887](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=289887)
[http://jsbin.com/cuxopid/1/edit?html,css,js,output](http://jsbin.com/cuxopid/1/edit?html,css,js,output)
and IE are handling pinch to zoom gestures with trackpads on desktops.
Gestures on desktop like pinch to zoom is now a total mess. Where is W3C or
WHATWG on this? Pinch to zoom is now on Firefox: None (there was an attempt in
the past) Chrome: it's mousewheel+ctrl IE: it's mousewheel+ctrl Safari: shiny
new GestureEvent

------
shogun21
Safari is the new Internet Explorer. That was my experience trying to grapple
with its weird, non-standards-compliant implementation of HTML5 required
fields.

~~~
JoBrad
With the caveat that it's basically only on iOS and OS X.

~~~
kevincox
Exactly, Microsoft provides IE VMs that I can use to ensure my sites work on
IE. For Safari? I guess I'll just have to pray.

------
spankalee
The best thing about this release is CSS Variables support:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/General...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_9_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014305-CH10-SW12)

CSS variables are a great way to do theming and cross-scoped styling for
Custom Elements and shadow DOM. Polymer's had a shim for this for a while, but
native support is much faster and more flexible.

------
grumblestumble
A point release every n months is utterly useless for on-the-ground web
developers. Safari needs to move to the Firefox/Chrome deployment model if it
wants to remain at all relevant.

~~~
Longhanks
Please no.

I really love Safari for being just a really good browser. No 'sneaky OS' like
Chrome (I don't need Chromes User management, thank you, and I'd much rather
have my OS's context menus and font aliasing), and speedier, if you will,
'snappier' than Firefox, with its custom animations for every button and
overall not very 'native' look and feel.

No, I want a browser that does what a browser should do; let me easily and
speedily browse the web. Safari is great at that.

~~~
possibleNoob
>No, I want a browser that does what a browser should do; let me easily and
speedily browse the web. Safari is great at that.

Except it isn't. Because it's non standard different way of handling things
means it's a lot more work for Web developers to give the same experience they
give in chrome to safari users. You get a dumbed down experience on safari as
a result.

~~~
ihuman
Are you saying that Longhanks isn't browsing the web "easily and speedily"?
Even though it doesn't follow some standards, it appears to be fast for
Longhanks anyway.

------
constexpr
> Displaying a JavaScript dialog—alert, confirm, or prompt—no longer activates
> the calling tab.

This seems like a regression to me. If some page is bugging me then I'd like
to know which one it is so I can close it.

~~~
andybak
Modals alerts acting 'app-wide' rather than 'tab-wide' is a truly horrible
thing. If there was a subtle indication of a tab showing a modal then it would
be acceptable but this is better than the current state-of-affairs.

------
0x006A
Still no WebRTC support?

~~~
M4v3R
Nope, but it's "In Development" [1]

[1] [https://webkit.org/status/#specification-
webrtc](https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webrtc)

------
carlesfe
Let's hope they fixed the bug where WindowServer hangs up randomly after
closing a Youtube tab. It's an incredibly annoying bug that's forcing me to
reboot every 2-3 days. I don't browse Youtube on Safari, but as soon as there
is a website with an embedded video, boom it goes :(

~~~
joemi
Is this a common bug? Were you seeing it in some kind of developer release,
perhaps? I've never had that happen to me, and I browse Youtube in Safari
every single day.

------
legulere
I guess gesture events on OS X will be quite useful for online maps
(openstreetmap, google maps)

~~~
therealmarv
no it's a new standard. Chrome and IE already support it on Google Maps
because a pinch to zoom is ctrl+mousekey for them. And now Safari has
introduced a new standard. This is nuts. Why is there a W3C? Everybody is
doing it differently.

------
veidr
Please tell me they fixed flexbox rendering? Chrome and FF have had that for a
while, while Safari has been buggy/malrenderish.

------
AJAlabs
How does Apple still not have support for WebRTC in Safari?!?

~~~
cpncrunch
It is in development:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11142913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11142913)

[https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143211](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143211)

------
sksixk
t.co links will now open properly in safari

~~~
lazyjones
only a few days after I discovered that a simple /etc/hosts entry fixes this
problem...

------
andrewstuart
I was forced to stop using Safari on my iPhone 5 because it became unusably
slow after loading only a handful of simultaneous tabs. The changes came after
one of the Apple updates and after that I had to switch to Chrome for iPhone.

~~~
Longhanks
But due to the nature of closed iOS, Chrome on iOS uses the same engine as
Safari...

~~~
joshschreuder
Indeed. Up until recently, Chrome for iOS was actually a lot slower than
Safari as it was yet to switch to WKWebView from UIWebView.

Doing so yielded much better performance:

[https://blog.chromium.org/2016/01/a-faster-more-stable-
chrom...](https://blog.chromium.org/2016/01/a-faster-more-stable-chrome-on-
ios.html)

