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Comment by ducaale | Hacker News Reader

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ducaale·

Is Safari becoming the new Internet Explorer?

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Nah, pretty sure Chrome is. I'm apparently not alone[1][2][3] in believing so.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16805216/google-chrome-onl...

[2]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3199425/top-web-browse...

[3]: https://erik.itland.no/chrome-is-the-new-internet-explorer-4...

GP is comparing it to IE6 in terms of being behind other browsers in implementing features, not in terms of publishers only checking that their pages render correctly in that browser.

IE was both the browser that were first with features and had lots of features the others didn't have, and the browser that lagged with new features.

It has been for a long time... It's opensource even, but they seem to ignore patches

(To be pedantic: Safari is closed source, the WebKit that ships with Safari is mostly open source.)

How different is this than Google Chrome being closed vs Chromium being open? Does Safari have more substantial closed-source components?

Chromium basically ships with a usable, “de-Googled” browser in tree doesn’t it? WebKit has what you might call a demo. Look up MiniBrowser to see what I mean. It’s a web view and three buttons, basically.

What about the Webkit Nightly builds though? Those basically seem to be Safari.

...oh, huh, did something change in the past few years? I just checked, and the nightly builds do not download a full, usable app.

I could have sworn they used to though. You’d get an app called “Webkit”, but it functioned just like Safari for all intents and purposes.

Yes, Safari has more substantial closed source components. WebKit is comparable to Blink, not Chromium.

Primarily because of mobile. You can download a nightly build of Safari but you can’t install one on your phone.

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