WebKit Goals for 2020

Apple apparently hates the name &quot;progressive web apps&quot;, so how about: &quot;offline web apps&quot; or &quot;installable web apps&quot; or just &quot;unrestricted web apps&quot;? I&#x27;d like those names more, too. Regardless of the name, where is WebKit&#x27;s commitment to joining Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, and countless web developers in making web apps first-class apps on iOS?<p>Apple keeps silently &quot;considering&quot; and &quot;accidentally&quot; messing up various aspects of web app support, while strictly prohibiting browsers that work well. By prohibiting high-quality browsers, Apple pushes developers toward Apple-proprietary &quot;native&quot; technologies--those that are both allowed to be the only things that work well on Apple devices and are NOT allowed to work anywhere else.<p>Two WebKit goals I&#x27;d like to see for 2020: (1) Allow non-WebKit browsers on iOS (start outperforming your competition instead of merely banning your competition), and (2) Make iOS the best platform for powerful web apps instead of the worst, the leader instead of the spoiler.

We use WebKitGtk[1] (embedded WebKit) in our presentation software Tech Talk PSE[2]. It would be great if SVG rendering, used for diagrams, was of equal quality to Firefox, but unfortunately Firefox seems to render SVG in a far superior way so we usually have to convert to PNG files to make diagrams embed correctly.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webkitgtk.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webkitgtk.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rwmj.wordpress.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;tech-talk-pse-1-1-0&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rwmj.wordpress.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;tech-talk-pse-1-1-0&#x2F;</a>

Please finally implement the date and time input times! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;caniuse.com&#x2F;#feat=input-datetime" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;caniuse.com&#x2F;#feat=input-datetime</a>

I&#x27;m glad that battery life is a top priority.<p>Though WebP would still be nice to have..

Will 2020 be the year when WebKit, and the Safari browsers by extension, will have full and proper support for Service Workers and PWAs on par with other browsers? I recall reading that Safari lags behind on it, and the allegation was that Apple prefers native apps and doesn’t want web apps to be more popular.

I&#x27;ve been implementing FIDO2 into my serverless application, finally there will be iOS support!<p>It really is the golden authentication method, it&#x27;s very thought through and incredibly easy to use (unfortunately not to implement though)

I find it incredible that MediaStream Recording is still not out there on WebKit. They have taken so long to ship this. There&#x27;s an open ticket[1] since 2012, and we still don&#x27;t really know if they will implement this for sure on 2020, while Opera, Chrome, and Firefox already support this for years.<p>This is the main reason why we at Standups don&#x27;t support video recording on Safari[2]. They are on the same level as Microsoft Edge, which also does not support video recording. It&#x27;s hard for me to understand they did not want to catch up with the main players.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.webkit.org&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=85851" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.webkit.org&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=85851</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;standups.io&#x2F;help&#x2F;not-using-chrome&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;standups.io&#x2F;help&#x2F;not-using-chrome&#x2F;</a>

The Web Push API is missing. I was hoping for that one.

No matter what, any and all improvements to JSC will do wonders to the React Native ecosystem and it&#x27;s nice to have a list of targets.

Pardon the all-too-typical off topic: woa, Trac! I haven&#x27;t seen that in a long time. I have fond recollections of its customizability. Is it still being used in anger and improving, or is this just a legacy system we&#x27;re looking at?

Hard to understand what each of this items mean since there is no tracking issue# mentioned. Some of items cannot even be googled, what&#x27;s &quot;Turbo DFG&quot;?

What is &quot;logged in API&quot;?

In response to all those complaining about no competing browsers on IOS. Why doesn&#x27;t someone compile chromium for ios and then publish it using AltStore?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromium.googlesource.com&#x2F;chromium&#x2F;src&#x2F;+&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;ios&#x2F;build_instructions.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromium.googlesource.com&#x2F;chromium&#x2F;src&#x2F;+&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altstore.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altstore.io&#x2F;</a>

as is tradition already, webkit is missing:<p>- full PWA<p>- ServiceWorkers<p>- VP8&#x2F;9<p>- webvr<p>- and many others<p>this could all be mitigated if aapl would let us install custom non-webkit browsers on ios. unfortunately it seems we will need the courts to force aapl.

I appreciate this declaration

Does webkit support Native messaging like chrome...?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.chrome.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;nativeMessaging" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.chrome.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;nativeMessaging</a>

No mention of PWA features (specifically manifest&#x2F;installation&#x2F;web push) is so lame. Classic Apple politics.

No WebP? Safari is about to become out of date, and websites will stop working for it. I&#x27;m using WebP on my websites with no fallback to jpeg&#x2F;png at the end of the year.

It&#x27;s fascinating to see how pathetic this roadmap is. The totality (100%) of their planned features are already available on chromium. Guess what, even after that the chromium of today (not 2020) still has an order of magnitude more features, optimisations and testing. In human hours wise, comparing the number of full-time safari developers vs the number of full-time chromium (Google, Microsoft, opera, etc) developers is like comparing a third world country vs the USA GDP. Or more exactly: 217,369 commits vs 835,383 commits!<p>Apple should just be rational and make the same synergistic move as Microsoft: migrate to chromium. It would save them R&amp;W (reinventing the wheel) money, and they could allocate it to true R&amp;D, allowing the web to move forward for making the world a better place.<p>If for whatever reason they wanted to opt out of some chromium features such as PWA they could still do it.<p>With such absurd politics, I wonder how Apple survived through history. Indeed the lack of rationality from the demand must help and irrational supply to thrive.