[HN Gopher] News from WWDC22: WebKit Features in Safari 16 Beta ___________________________________________________________________ News from WWDC22: WebKit Features in Safari 16 Beta Author : monkin Score : 80 points Date : 2022-06-06 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (webkit.org) (TXT) w3m dump (webkit.org) | saurik wrote: | I am confused... wasn't Web Push already supported on macOS? | arecurrence wrote: | "Container Queries" WOW! This is a KILLER feature. Chrome doesn't | even have this yet. | endisneigh wrote: | These are all very welcome. I'll never understand why people | don't want choices and want their tech to be intentionally | limited. | | The flag for web push has been available, albeit non functional | since 15.3. | | Apple needs to hurry and simply allow for alternative app stores | as well. | threeseed wrote: | Because choices come with consequences. | | Web push whilst great for developers and some use cases has | also meant dealing with spam and user hostile behaviour. I have | 50+ websites that I have to block from sending me web push | notifications. It's yet another thing making the web less | enjoyable. | | Likewise alternative app stores mean that I will inevitably | have dozens of companies to deal with for refunds, subscription | cancellations etc. And many of them will be driven by the need | to make money from the store and not the interests of end | users. | rektide wrote: | > _Just when you thought there weren't enough different kinds of | workers, there's a new type of worker..._ | | SharedWorkers shipping Chrome _4_ in January 2010[1] _!!_ Firefox | eventually shipped in 2014 (Firefox 29). | | > _...in Safari_ | | Haha yeah. Maybe re-do your marketing on this one. | | It took Apple _well over a decade_ to support a basic, essential | function required for webapps to be able to have elementary | cross-tab capabilities. Apple kept the web _down_ on this one, | super super hard. Absolutely brutal punching down. They | mercilessly said they would not do it, that it was not going to | happen. And that kept the whole web down. iOS said no. The titan | has spoken. | | [1] https://caniuse.com/sharedworkers | olkingcole wrote: | Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it just entirely | about competition with the app store? That they don't want to | invest in features for apps on a platform "owned" by their | largest competitor that then compete with apps on their own | platform? On the app store Apple makes 15%, on the web they | make zero and Google likely gets whatever ad revenue. I'm not | defending Apple, Safari causes has caused me professional pain | in the past, but it seems predictable. | rektide wrote: | It's a mystery! Who knows? But it's not a mystery. | | There's definitely good people working to advance the web at | Apple. That's clear. Apple's even hired up some. But there's | still endless struggles, endless conflicts, huge huge parts | of the map Apple insists are bad for users that they will not | do. Like SharedWorkers, which until recently they insisted | they would not do & were bad for users. | threeseed wrote: | > Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it just entirely | about competition with the app store | | At a previous WWDC they talked about service workers and how | they have the potential to significantly impact the | performance and battery life of devices if abused. | | And so a lot of effort has been made trying to isolate and | optimise them. | [deleted] | dmitriid wrote: | > Safari 16 introduces a re-architecture of WebKit's | accessibility support on macOS that delivers improved | performance and increased responsiveness | | This is a magnitudes more important improvement and pushing the | web forward than pretending that whateverworkers are a thing | that is usable beyond very few convoluted examples (even if | those examples end up running in production somewhere) | sumy23 wrote: | When has accessibility pushed things forward? In my mind, | accessibility is about parity with some existing standard, | not about pushing the envelope forward. | SahAssar wrote: | Accessibility has made some sites and apps expose their | data in more-easily understandable ways. In general if you | need to make your interfaces accessible you will also make | them easier to parse. | vorpalhex wrote: | Webworkers are a pretty critical foundational component of a | lot of apps these days. You can probably skate by without | them on simple cases but they are up there with ES6+, fetch, | virtual DOM, etc. | coldtea wrote: | We had that functionality back in the 80s even, with anothe | type of app, called a "native app". Those apps are not why | the web was created, it's just using browsers as a poor | man's cross platform sandboxed app delivery mechanism... | thawaya3113 wrote: | There was a time when Apple supporters were huge fans of | web apps. When Gmail and the like meant that it was | possible to have a decent experience on a Mac as well, | because software developers offered web apps. (Let's not | talk about that one year when Web Apps were the best | thing since sliced bread before someone convinced Jobs | that native apps on iOS is actually a good idea). | | But now that it's in Apple's financial interests (not | even its users' interests) to push for native apps so | Apple can collect their tax, the Apple supporters have | seamlessly switched sides. | vorpalhex wrote: | The web was created to serve users. Users benefit from | rich web apps. | kazinator wrote: | Native apps is not why the web was created by Berners-Lee | and gang, but a certain segment of the web has been | chasing the desktop-like experience since, on, | 1990-something. The obsession with the desktop | experience, and the associated inferiority complex, are | pretty much part of the web DNA. | rektide wrote: | > _The obsession with the desktop experience,_ | | The "obsession" is with having a good common platform for | development. Powered by some of the fastest rendering | engines on the planet, some of the fastest language | runtimes out there. With an unbelievably joyous | continuous development brought about by fantastic live | tools. For over a decade, with ongoing & continuous & | highly visible improvement. | | It's disgraceful what sad moaning & endless disdain | people who like working here have to suffer, how berated | we get for seeing potential & chasing it. Getting | insulted & slandered is so common, this is so typical, so | regular; endless dogpiles by the haters, and it's so | cheap, such an expression of negativity & bias & cruelty. | | I never enjoyed writing Win32 or .NET. I never enjoyed | writing Qt. I never enjoyed writing FLTK nor GTK. These | systems did not spark joy. The native platforms always | felt crap, were so much ceremony & encumbrance, and so | controlled & crufty & verbose to work with. On the web, I | had a live canvas of hypertext, with rich information, | ready to go, with a couple lines of HTML. And then I | could sprinkle in programmability, add some JavaScript & | start to move & shake things. This was an endlessly | rewarding loop, was pure joy. The web is joyful. It keeps | bringing better & better capabilities, more and more joy. | People can go play with WebMIDI now, we can work with | Gamepads, or magnenometers or accelerometers. This is | fun, this is amazing. It works on all devices (some iOS | exceptions may apply). | | > _the associated inferiority complex,_ | | News-flash: the web won. It's creaming everything else. | It's where jobs & development are done today, the | default-go-to. It's just better. Webapps like VSCode run | stupid fast & do everything better than native did, and | because they're built on JS & the web they have sick sick | sickeningly awesome plugins that were fast & easy to | build. | | It's a tragedy that there's so many grumpy hurt feeling | abound, around this great & good rise, that such a | wonderful fantastic capable & competent system has so | many cranky sad mopey feelings. If there's anyone that | feels an inferiority complex, it's definitely native | people. They will _not_ simmer down & chill the frak out | with their endless bemoaning & whining & belittling of | the web. The web is constantly endlessly dragged on, shat | on, in thread after thread after thread, by people acting | high & mighty & telling us, effectively, how dare we? I | didn't give you permission to be awesome! My skills are | the only ones that count! What you do isn't right! | | So again, | | > _the desktop experience,_ | | This is a relic, ancient dust to us. Our medium is | networked by default, can be reached instantly via any | device. We have rich servers providing powerful | capabilities behind our thick-client user interfaces. | Network architectures & information design underpin & | shape our implementation decisions, are considered as we | model & extend. The word API? It basically means "web | interface" more than it means "native library interface" | for most people now- because the web is awesome, because | what we do is visible & engageable & more a part of the | world & active than any lonely, isolated, compiled-down | desktop app ever can be. | | That we happen to also have buttons & click on things | doesn't make us the same. | | I will try to insult your platform a little less in the | future. But please ya'll, you too need to show a modicum | of respect. Having nothing but degrading insults for the | web is small, it's out of touch, and the complaining is | seemingly bottomless: here ya'll are, in a submission | about the web, once again complaining that it's | advancing. | SahAssar wrote: | I don't see apple pushing some sort of open standard for | how to write native apps that is cross platform. Google | has done some efforts (like flutter), but all of those | seem to tie the library/runtime to it instead of trying | to make it an open standard. | | The web is the best standardized, cross platform, multi- | runtime app platform we have. | sumy23 wrote: | Could you execute those native apps using only a simple | URL in a secure environment in under a second without any | need for installation or cleanup? | bhouston wrote: | WebXR please! Every one browser and platform has it including | Oculus. Apple you are single handed holding back the AR industry | here. | [deleted] | astlouis44 wrote: | This. | richardanaya wrote: | My kingdom for OffscreenCanvas | [deleted] | sccxy wrote: | Just make it installable from App Store. | | Safari messes up rendering engine all the time and creates bugs | in many websites. | | Usually fixes are fast, but it will take ages to get the fix to | iOS update. | corrral wrote: | Keeping Mobile Safari releases in step with OS releases is | helpful for developers who use webviews in their apps--which is | lots of them. | MichaelEstes wrote: | I've had to opposite experience as someone who's worked | extensively with platforms that utilize webviews, when Safari | 15 released it broke a lot of WebGL things with their shift | to using Metal and all I can say to users that are | experiencing problems is update your OS or disable the | experimental feature to use Metal with Safari, which both | feel like awful answers. Safari has become the modern IE in | my mind. | corrral wrote: | Meanwhile some other developer is really glad their | software, that only supports iOS [previous-version] and | hasn't been updated for the latest Safari, isn't generating | shitloads of bug reports because some of their users | updated the browser separate from the OS, and they aren't | having to test multiple OS/webview combos. | | Your particular case might have worked out better, but _in | general_ being able to test on an OS version and not have | that change out from under you is really helpful. | thawaya3113 wrote: | Tying web browsers to the OS release was a disaster on | the Mac and PCs, to the extent that both Apple and | Microsoft have stopped doing that. | | I don't understand why iOS would be any different. | corrral wrote: | It's a fundamental piece of functionality that you target | with a release, if you're using webviews, and a _ton_ of | apps do. It 's possible to argue that it _shouldn 't_ be, | but it is, and that does come with some real benefits for | developers. | | On desktop, the popular solution to the same problem is | to bundle an entire web browser. | culi wrote: | > Safari has become the modern IE in my mind. | | Fun fact: even with the latest release of Chrome, Safari is | surpassing Chrome in Interop 2022[0] | | Say what you will about Apple, but I think the team behind | Safari has been doing some fantastic work to make up for | its reputation | | [0] https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022 | ydnaclementine wrote: | unfortunately no webm? | corrral wrote: | Damn, that's the single feature I want them to add most. | | Literally only for porn--I doubt I'd ever have noticed the | feature was missing, otherwise--but still. | ArchOversight wrote: | WebM support is already in Safari... | | Visit https://dl8.webmfiles.org/big-buck-bunny_trailer.webm for | example and it will just play. | | From: https://www.webmfiles.org/demo-files/ (where its embedded | with a JavaScript player) | | Also see: https://caniuse.com/?search=webm | sccxy wrote: | Your example confirms that it is NOT working on iOS 15.5 at | the moment... | | It is not javascript player. It is plain old html video tag. | j1elo wrote: | Can confirm over here that iOS 15.5 (just recently updated | a few days ago) doesn't open the WebM file in Safari. It | just offers to download it. | ArchOversight wrote: | You mentioned Safari, and Safari exists on two platforms. | It works on macOS. | skeletal88 wrote: | Well.. now Safari still is the hated browser to support, instead | of IE, because of Apples backwardness | [deleted] | cogman10 wrote: | It's just incredible to me that Apple saw how much people hated | IE and decided "You know what, let's do them one better". | | Really doesn't help that they've pull so far back from open | standards. They used to champion OpenGL, OpenCL, and open web | standards, now they are working like Balmer's Microsoft. | Everything internal and they sabotage open standards. Either by | not implementing them, or obstructing all evolution at the | standards committees. | rektide wrote: | IE maybe have been a default choice, but at least it was a | choice. | astlouis44 wrote: | Was hoping to see WebXR and WebGPU show up, these two | technologies are going to allow an alternative distribution | channel for game and app developers, which comprises the vast | majority of Apple's services revenue from their app store tax. | [deleted] | scraplab wrote: | Finally, push notifications in iOS coming in... oh, 2023. | | > "look for Web Push for iOS and iPadOS in 2023." | google234123 wrote: | That is just next year :P We are already halfway through this | year, right? | | Anyway, I look forward to every shitty site asking for | permission to send notifications adding to the trillions of | requests a year... | corrral wrote: | All the denied sites shitting up my notification-apps list | with noise isn't welcome, either. | | The whole thing's a mis-feature. If it must exist at all, | sites shouldn't be able to prompt for it, but simply | advertise the functionality and let browsers add a little | button or something for the user to _actively_ engage with if | they want to see a permissions prompt. Like the way browsers | used to handle sites that advertised RSS feeds. | zdragnar wrote: | > and let browsers add a little button or something for the | user to actively engage with | | Meh, you'll just get full screen modals begging you to push | the button. So long as a feature which (ostensibly) drives | engagement exists, every ad based website is going to do | whatever they can to get you to use it. | | There are some really good use cases for it, but I think | the balance is tipped by the far too many bad (for the | user) use cases. | corrral wrote: | Having seen it in the wild I agree that it's more trouble | than it's worth, and we'd be better off if the whole | feature was ditched until/unless it can get a serious re- | think. I'd be very surprised if the ratio of unwanted-to- | wanted web-push messages is better than 10:1. I'd not be | at all surprised if it's closer to 100:1. | google234123 wrote: | A mozilla study showed that sites already try and show | <<100s billion notifications to users a year. | | > Notification prompts are very unpopular. On Release, | about 99% of notification prompts go unaccepted, with 48% | being actively denied by the user. | | So 99%+ are spam and the rest are probably users who | accidentally hit accept. | dave5104 wrote: | > Users opt into notifications by first indicating interest | through a user gesture -- such as clicking a button. Then, | they'll be prompted to give permission for your site or app | to send notifications. Users will be able to view and | manage notifications in Notifications Center, and customize | styles and turn notifications off per website in | Notifications Settings. | | Looks like there _will_ be some interaction required to | prompt it. | | That being said, hoping there's a browser-level option to | just turn it off. | hbn wrote: | I came here to ask about that line. | | Is that user flow described actually a requirement | somehow, or is that just an "ideal scenario"? Cause right | after that it says "If you've already implemented Web | Push for your web app or website using industry best | practices, it will automatically work in Safari" and | existing implementations don't require a button press | that they used in their example. Facebook just pops up | the browser prompts to allow or block as soon as you | visit the page, as do many news sites and other stuff I | don't want notifications from. | | Maybe the "using industry best practices" part is key, | and they somehow will block implementations like | Facebook. | google234123 wrote: | It should be a browser-level option to just turn it ON. | perardi wrote: | Push it back to 2033, save us from the pain. | | ...OK, that's too dismissive. I do know that certain web apps | and sites have legitimate uses for push notifications. | | But I encounter these far, far more often on news sites, where | I profoundly _do not want_ notifications, ever. | | Probably too convoluted of a "power user" setting for Apple to | consider, but I would rather have a very strict opt-in | whitelist where I proactively enter sites where I actually do | want notifications. | culi wrote: | I think this is a big step towards more PWA support. Would | love a world where the alternative to building native was | just building a PWA instead of building to some other | framework that only exists as an abstraction to interact with | a few specific platforms. | | That being said, I definitely hope it's off by default | Klonoar wrote: | You would still need to grant access, so... | elxr wrote: | > where I proactively enter sites where I actually do want | notifications. | | Isn't this how it works in Firefox/Chrome right now? I | routinely get prompts from websites asking for push | notification permission, which I always deny. Can't imagine | Safari not doing the same thing. | tiffanyh wrote: | It's so strange to see how many of these features not in Safari | Preview. | | I'm so confused why Safari Preview exists. It's seems like | features in Preview rarely graduate to mainline Safari - yet | mainline Safari will get features that were never tested in | Preview. | sccxy wrote: | Wishlist: | | * controllable PWA install prompt | | * Keep GPS working after screen lock or app change and then | return | | * Wake lock | endisneigh wrote: | I'd be surprised if Apple implements the prompt since they've | been careful to implement the bare minimum. | thrusong wrote: | I would love a PWA install prompt. The typical iOS user finds | it weird to go Share > Add to Home Screen. | productceo wrote: | Still no abolition of policy suppressing PWAs to 50MB? | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-06 23:00 UTC)