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Comment by danh | Hacker News Reader

Also (from right now) it seems that Gruber doesn't know what browser sniffing is (or at least pretends to), but still has an opinion:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/04/html5-safari-ope...

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Yeah, this piece really riled me.

I agree with the original post, he has been pushing harder and harder on Apple doing the right things with its control complex, whereas previously he wouldn't have done. If you swapped "Apple" from some of the pieces on the App Store and HTML5 stuff with "Microsoft" or "Adobe", you could be sure he'd be a frothy mess.

I loved the Gruber of old. Where's he gone? Why is it just "If you don't love Apple, you can git out?" Fortunately, at least Wil Shipley has been holding his feet to the fire on Twitter, but I don't know why Gruber's gone this route at all.

But he does now (a couple of hours later):

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/04/modernizr

Apparently after reading HN:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/04/df-hn

More likely from seeing my tweet: http://twitter.com/KuraFire/status/15401140612

What’s hard to understand about Apple’s pages?

> The demos below show how Apple’s Safari web browser supports the capabilities of web standards such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

Gruber’s point is this: if Opera wants some better “HTML5” demos (presumably that work across browsers, and don’t just “use HTML5 as a buzzword”) they can easily make some themselves. Why should Apple be responsible for making sure their Safari promotion showcase works perfectly in every other browser?

As for why they block other browsers: probably some or most of the demos break in some way or another. If a naive user with (say) Firefox visited a page and the layout looked like shit and nothing worked, the user would quite reasonably think that Apple’s site was broken.

> Why should Apple be responsible for making sure their Safari promotion showcase works perfectly in every other browser?

Because the whole point of the exercise is to show how standards-compliant, open, web apps work so great on iPhone OS. Except by excluding every browser but Safari, it may as well be a front for the App Store. It might be standards-compliant, but it sure as heck isn't open or inclusive. In that regard, even Flash runs in more browsers than this showcase does.

It seems to me that these are really WebKit demos, which is the defacto standard for mobile browsing. Historically, I think that standards have caught up with practice on the Web, rather than the other way around.

I don’t think that’s actually the point of the exercise, from Apple’s perspective. (Even though they use “openness” and so on as buzzwords.)

Instead, as far as I can tell, the primary point is to promote Safari and prove that Flash is unneeded to make pretty neat graphics/interactive thingums.

Opera is maybe justified in being miffed if Apple can get traction off the back of using “open” and “HTML5” as buzzwords, but I really don’t think the primary audience for this showcase knows or cares much one way or the other what HTML5 really means.

Why are you irritated that Apple is making it hard for Firefox and Chrome users to see an advertisement for HTML5?

> The demos below show how Apple’s Safari web browser supports the capabilities of web standards such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

Just sayin.

Actually, Safari is the only actual browser allowed on the iPhone/iPad. Also, it IS open/inclusive. Anyone can code his web app for the iPhone/iPad, and they have to target Safari, but they can code anything the want and bypass the App Store.

("Opera for the iPhone" is using a mediator service, and as such is not a real web browser).

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