Why Safari is the new IE:<p>- No WebRTC (<a href="http://iswebrtcreadyyet.com" rel="nofollow">http://iswebrtcreadyyet.com</a>)<p>- No Service Worker (<a href="https://jakearchibald.github.io/isserviceworkerready" rel="nofollow">https://jakearchibald.github.io/isserviceworkerready</a>)<p>- No WebM/VP8 support<p>- No ASM.js<p>- No MediaRecorder<p>Combined with the following policy decisions from Apple:<p>- Almost complete lack of engagement with the community<p>- Default browser on iOS<p>- No alternative rendering engines supported on iOS. (This is even worse than IE, as users could always install third-party browsers on Windows)<p>- Safari updates tied to OS updates, which mean users of old iPhones are stuck on old Safari versions because they don't get OS updates anymore
Safari performs much better than Chrome and Firefox, and uses less energy.<p>Apple releases a major version about every year, so it's a bit less cutting-edge, but it's very standards compliant contrary to IE in the past.<p>I know it's not a popular opinion, but I believe that for regular browsing (on the Mac) Safari is the superior choice...
Safari is not the shittiest browser on the planet that makes all your good standards based code break . They aren't making weird implementations of all the standard / standardized stuff. so no. it's not even remotely the new IE.
It's definitely hyperbole in a sense because Safari is certainly nowhere near the Enterprise monoculture that IE once had, but it's a fair comparison not in any way to deride the work that Safari does, but to point out the things that Safari could do better to learn from past mistakes to help the web and web developers.<p>I think it's important to make the distinction between Safari and iOS Safari. It's iOS Safari that is the most comparable to the issues with IE in the past, particularly IE6:<p>- Updating it is tied to iOS releases, which in turn is tied to hardware model. Thus real world usage of iOS Safari drastically lags behind "Safari latest" as users stick to hardware that works and for various reasons cannot/ upgrade iOS.<p>- Safari on the iOS is as much as possible intended to be a monoculture on iOS devices.<p>- iOS still has enough marketshare and share of total browser users and to a lot of people the "smartphone" is still nearly synonymous with "iphone" and "tablet" with "ipad". (That's a lessening concern these days with Android doing well enough, but it was definitely a big problem in early "mobile website design".) So web developers need to develop with it in mind, sometimes from an "iOS first" mentality when their businesses have invested much into iOS hardware. (Some businesses do have an iOS mobile device monoculture and probably will for several years to come.)<p>That last issue is the one where the comparison to IE has been the scariest in the past and the one where Safari will likely leave its mark on the web "geological strata" in a similar way to classic versions of IE: there will be some things like notable -webkit prefixed CSS rules that will last a long, long time on the web and the other browsers have simply had to adopt checking for the -webkit version. (Edge and Firefox both have lists of -webkit CSS rules they follow.)<p>The reason to make the comparison is to especially remind web developers to test outside their personal monoculture bubble. To remember that there are mobile devices that aren't iOS out there and there are many users out there not using Safari (or Chrome or whatever the flavor of the month is among developers) as their daily drivers.<p>"Safari is the new IE" is hyperbole, but it's useful hyperbole.
In what way? The latest Sarafi Development Preview implements 100% of ES6 features which no other browser has done yet. And as far as I know, I haven't ran into any CSS features that Safari doesn't support recently when doing front-end development.
I don't think so. I still cannot watch a 720p Twitch stream on Chrome without lots of frame loss. I can watch those same streams just fine in Safari. In my opinion, Safari might be a bit behind on some of the standards but Chrome and Firefox are behind on performance. IE is bad at both of those things.
I've read that, but I feel like it is hyperbole.<p>Safari is a little behind Chrome/Firefox/Edge but it is only roughly a couple of releases behind, IE6 on the other hand felt like it was a dozen releases behind and they had a much larger market share relative to Safari.<p>A better analogy might be "Safari is like IE 11." Meaning out of date, but not by a huge amount. Plus their latest dev' builds seem to have picked up the pace a little, so this might just be a blip.
No. If you're asking this question, you don't remember how bad developing for IE was for a while. Safari doesn't have newer features like WebRTC or Service Workers, but the things that it <i>does</i> support, it supports well in a standards-compliant way.
Sure, but only in the sense that for many casual computer users, it's the default and therefore browser of choice. As for comparisons re: stability and usability it's night and day. Safari is a fine browser for OS X machines, and I've found it to be way more battery-friendly than Chrome on my Macbook. It has a decent enough built-in pop-up blocker and is supported by a few big adblocker plugins. I'd say the comparision is more or less unfounded, except on the grounds that it's the default browser for many users, hence its market share.
Safari basically ties with Edge when it comes to HTML5 feature support [0]<p><pre><code> Safari (iOS): 65%
Edge: 72%
Safari (macOS): 76%
Chrome (Android): 79%
Firefox: 84%
Chrome (desktop): 87%
</code></pre>
Those numbers become much worse when you factor in how long it takes to get rid of old versions of Safari.<p>[0] (scroll to bottom): <a href="http://caniuse.com/#cats=HTML5&compare=ios_saf+9.3" rel="nofollow">http://caniuse.com/#cats=HTML5&compare=ios_saf+9.3</a>
No, I think UC Browser is the new IE.<p><pre><code> According to StatCounter, UC browser is the second most
used smartphone/"mobile" web browser worldwide, passing
Safari in October 2015.
</code></pre>
Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Browser" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Browser</a>
One pain point I have with Chrome is that it eats all of my memory. I often get warnings about low memory. I don't use safari often, but I don't have this problem with Safari.