{"id":35170,"date":"2022-03-04T16:11:13","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T21:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=35170"},"modified":"2022-03-04T16:11:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T21:11:13","slug":"open-web-advocacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/04\/open-web-advocacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Web Advocacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open Web Advocacy<\/a> (via Tim Hardwick<\/a>, tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Apple’s ban of third party browsers on iOS is deeply anti-competitive, starves the Safari\/WebKit team of funding and has stalled innovation for the past 10 years and prevented Web Apps from taking off on mobile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That part we’ve already heard a lot about over the years, but they also make an important point about the limits on third-party iOS browsers that do<\/em> use WebKit.<\/p>\n\n

Thomas Claburn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

OWA organiser Stuart Langridge said not only is it the case that every iOS browser is just a re-skinned version of Safari but that the WebKit-based versions of Chrome, Edge, and Firefox are even less capable than WebKit-based Safari because they lack access to certain APIs that Apple makes available to its own browser.<\/p>

As an example, he described how he has a shortcut to Wordle, a web app, on his iPhone home screen. “I normally use Firefox on iOS,” he explained. “And I had to switch back to Safari because you can’t add things to your home screen from another browser. It’s only available to Safari. So third-party browsers, even if they’re the same engine as Safari, don’t have access to the same APIs.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Third-party browers also lack access to Security Code AutoFill and bookmarks.<\/p>\n\n

\n

Langridge acknowledges that different browser teams have different tolerance levels for new proposals, but says there’s a whole set of APIs that don’t raise security or privacy issues that Safari tends to fall behind on because of its slower release cadence – Safari updates tend to come out with iOS updates, often with months between releases, while Chrome ships every four weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n