I don't think it's about such things, it's about pushing features that are developer convenient but not really user convenient.
I'm on an older MacOS version with Safari 12 (too lazy to update, but that's on me), and there are sites that work just fine one day and then break the next because they changed how they want to load random content for their forever scrolling.
I'm sure there's a business case for the development team, but as a user, all I see is that what worked just fine for users before is now broken. The same happens with Firefox too because of Chrome-focused optimizations that a lot of sites seem to make don't always work with Firefox.
For me as a user, I don't see it as Safari/FF holding developers back, I see that because of some unknown benefit, I'm being corralled into using Chrome. I make my peace and just don't visit sites that decide on such changes, but the benefit for me as a user for these changes is completely non-apparent. It's very tempting to write it off as "it's convenient for the devs" due to lack of any relevant information on why such changes are made.
Personally I find very few sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox. But as a web developer I'm still irked by some of the more "fun" APIs that firefox refuses to support such as USB/PWAs/NFC etc.
Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision.
Who can say why those sites are breaking for your version of Safari. Web devs do love to just use the "latest and greatest" APIs just for fun, but it could also be that their changes have improved the experience for the rest of users on modern browsers, and that for them outweighs the loss of users still of Safari 12.
I'm not saying every use of new APIs is justified by web devs, the population of web devs is too large and varied to make any statement about the group as a whole. I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox _is_ a detriment to users and web devs, and it pushes developers to make native apps instead which I would argue are a worse experience for many users for certain use cases, and a worse experience for many developers as well.
A few years ago there were no sites not working in FF. Now it's my banking site (top 10 or 20, BNP subsidiary), it's a local mountain resort integrated payment, it's several internet shops. My 2fa token is collecting dust because web sites support only google implementation of 2fa. Firefox itself if in shambles and constantly tried to googlify itself, be it UI or addon api. The trend is worse and worse every day, now that FF is below 10% adoption. Soon single Google Chrome browser will take over completely.
> I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox
If only Chrome implements that feature, it’s not “a modern feature” for the web. It’s an “experimental technology”. It’s only a “modern feature” when several browsers implement it.
>Your issue however also ties in to what the article said about how Apple does not auto update Safari. You're tied to Safari 12 partially because the upgrade flow is a huge disruptive process as you have to update your entire OS to a new major revision.
Sorry, but to be clear, my lack of update is just that -- lack of ambition to do so. I don't really have a compelling reason to update MacOS or Safari.
>Who can say why those sites are breaking for your version of Safari. Web devs do love to just use the "latest and greatest" APIs just for fun, but it could also be that their changes have improved the experience for the rest of users on modern browsers, and that for them outweighs the loss of users still of Safari 12.
This is kind of my point though -- WebDev is kind of unique as I see it as there are far more opaque changes than with other software disciplines. Changelists are pretty common for every other software discipline, but I'm not sure I can recall too many websites ever mentioning backend changes they make.
WebDev changes and fast, and a general feeling is that "outdated" in WebDev appears far faster than anything else (e.g., a friend uses my old 2012 MacBook Air -- it works perfectly still, runs modern Editing and Authoring software (adobe suite), plays videos, works on most websites just fine. Some sites like imgur just shit the bed on it except for Chrome because of browser compatibility) For a situation like this, when absolutely everything else runs fine except for a single website on browsers, it feels hard to blame OS Vendors when it's only the site that is having issues being displayed.
>I am saying that the lack of modern features by Safari and Firefox _is_ a detriment to users and web devs,
I'm not sure I'm convinced for the reason above, but it's not really possible for an end user to comment because of:
- Lack of transparency on why the changes were done in the first place
- LifeCycle for features in WebDev are much different than other software life cycles
- Old OSes and hardware can run comparatively contemporary software (i.e., new and modern) without issue, it's only WebDev that bumps into this
- In many cases, the old stack worked "fine" for users regardless of browser
This is where the impression that it's just feature chasing comes from. You can say Safari is a detriment to me, but it has the best battery life (expected), is fastest on MacOS (also expected), has a UI I really like and prefer (likely expected as it's made to look like the rest of MacOS.
The new feature that web developers want to use from Chrome isn't just weighed against my experience on your site; it's weighed against the overall browser performance the computer performance, and the browser experience with the computer.
I might visit a single site for 10-30 minutes on a given day. I'm using the web browser almost constantly for many many many sites. When one site tries to tell me my browser is insufficient/outdated and it's the only one that is causing issues, I don't feel particularly persuaded by this. It's not about raw numbers; Hacker News performs the same way for me today as it did the day I joined, and while I'm sure they've done gobs of optimizations for the amount of traffic and users they handle, from my point of view as a user on many browsers, the experience is the same.
I don't disagree with most of what you're saying, but I think we're coming at it from different perspectives. I am looking at it from the perspective of software which does not yet exist but will be built in the future. In that case, missing Safari features _are_ a detriment to users, because it prevents developers from building this new software.
From the perspective of users of existing software that seems to break with no reason I agree. It's stupid how heavyweight imgur has become when it used to just be a fast simple website that worked everywhere.
Maybe you're content with the functionality your system has now and need no more, but I am still on the quest for new things I can do digitally, and easier way to do things I already can.
Take Figma for example, I'm not even a designer but even I enjoy having access to a collaborative drawing app that is trivial to share with other collaborators. If browsers had not agreed to implement Canvas and all rolled it out, Figma would likely not exist. Perhaps they could have created a packaged native application for all major operating systems, but in reality that's a ton more work, and a huge impediment for users to convince collaborators to buy/install some native app so they can work on a drawing together.
What other software are we missing out on because the barrier for interacting with USB/NFC/Bluetooth/Notifications/Background-Sync is too high.
In a world with native apps only, only the big players can afford to target all platforms, and only the big enough use cases can justify the expense.
> In that case, missing Safari features _are_ a detriment to users, because it prevents developers from building this new software.
> Perhaps they could have created a packaged native application for all major operating systems, but in reality that's a ton more work, and a huge impediment for users to convince collaborators to buy/install some native app so they can work on a drawing together.
> What other software are we missing out on because the barrier for interacting with USB/NFC/Bluetooth/Notifications/Background-Sync is too high.
These are quite a bit overstating the problem. The barrier to entry to develop a native app using safari is quite simple, and you can extend safari to do many things, including being spawned by golang and adding other FFI's for javascript functions. The barrier to entry is your willingness to learn and you only see these complaints coming from new developers. Taking a canvas API and implementing yet another collab drawing app is not innovating, it's using an API.
On the flip side, each new API brings more and more surface area for attacks. And if we keep stacking new APIs we don't have enough time to mature and secure up the existing ones. Notice the only example apps given are attempts to replace native apps with web apps.
This is not about my willingness to learn, it's about my willingness to invest.
Sure I can make a native app that extends Safari with the APIs I need, and I can also do that again for Android, and again for Windows and again for macOS. Or the browsers could implement features developers like me want and I only have to invest once.
Replacing native apps with web apps IS innovative.
Sure the app's functionality is the same as those before it, but the delivery and interaction paradigm is so much improved for users. Being able to invite a friend to participate on what I'm doing without them having to install a native app IS a step forward in user experience.
> I can also do that again for Android, and again for Windows and again for macOS.
This is one file at best per platform, even less now given the frameworks available. And what you learn in the process goes on to benefit your career forever.
> Being able to invite a friend to participate on what I'm doing without them having to install a native app IS a step forward in user experience.
This is entirely subjective. And webapps have their own version of this by forcing usage of chrome, forcing account creation, forcing facebook usage, etc. Web experiences for anything complex doesn’t exactly instill confidence given the shaky experience and devs inability to create seem less offline experiences even with all the required transports available.
Then there’s performance aspects of things. Things like Unreal Engine Editor running in the web, or blender, just seems ridiculous. Sometimes you need native performance.
There’s also security issues with each additional API and web has a bad history with security.
People are making and remaking collaboration apps every day. They’re a dime a dozen now. Apps that truly are innovative that people use to create more things are still native apps for good reason. Otherwise the current set of features supported by safari is enough for me to do my daily work and I feel like Im missing nothing by not using chrome.
I'm on an older MacOS version with Safari 12 (too lazy to update, but that's on me), and there are sites that work just fine one day and then break the next because they changed how they want to load random content for their forever scrolling.
I'm sure there's a business case for the development team, but as a user, all I see is that what worked just fine for users before is now broken. The same happens with Firefox too because of Chrome-focused optimizations that a lot of sites seem to make don't always work with Firefox.
For me as a user, I don't see it as Safari/FF holding developers back, I see that because of some unknown benefit, I'm being corralled into using Chrome. I make my peace and just don't visit sites that decide on such changes, but the benefit for me as a user for these changes is completely non-apparent. It's very tempting to write it off as "it's convenient for the devs" due to lack of any relevant information on why such changes are made.