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Comment by crazypython | Hacker News Reader

Safari tends to be slow to implement features, but they rarely outright reject implementing a feature.

Google Chrome hasn't implemented MathML yet, even though Firefox and Safari have: https://caniuse.com/mathml

Safari has been holding the web back for years on features that make the web competitive with Apple's app ecosystem. I don't believe the distinction of "rejecting" vs being slow has merit.

https://caniuse.com/push-api https://caniuse.com/mediasource

Safari vs. iOS Safari is a distinction that needs to be made and people need to keep in mind. Apple's a lot more likely to allow stuff in desktop that it won't even consider for iOS. I mean your own link for media source has it being fully supported since 2014 in desktop Safari.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think mobile safari is most safari usage.

Technically true but is it mean anything? Support on iOS Safari is the important thing.

Apple has refused to implement a large number of features, at least as many as Google. They're usually more quiet about it though unless it's part of marketing related to privacy. All the browsers take strong architecture and ecosystem positions.

Actually, they do refuse sometimes, not that I’m against it, but it’s inaccurate to say they don’t.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16...

There “due to privacy concerns” could still be a real motivation.

The MathML support in Firefox and Safari are barely usable. Even if my target audience all browsed on Firefox and Safari, I'd avoid MathML.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Use MathML, put up noticea that your content only works in Safari and Firefox. These are all attacks against Google. FIGHT!

Have you misunderstood me? MathML does not work well even in Safari and Firefox, and that is why they are avoided.

>MathML does not work well even in Safari and Firefox

Parent understood that, that's why they said "Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good".

They mean "It might not work too well, but it works well enough to use".

I understood well what was said about Safari and Firefox.

I may have misunderstood how well it works/doesn’t in Chrome. For right or wrong I understood that MathML didn’t work at all in Chrome.

If there’s some support for a feature, even if it’s ropey, and if there’s no support for that feature in Chrome, then using that feature attacks Chrome. People will have to use other browsers in order to use that feature. They might then continue using that browser.

MathML is being added to WebKit; an implementation offered for Safari was rejected years ago.

It looks quite capable:

https://mdn.mozillademos.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Proje...

I followed your first link on Safari. Some things look fine. Some things are ugly, which is too bad but tolerable. If it was just that, I might consider MathML. But some things are rendered in a way that changes their meaning, and that’s totally unacceptable.

MathML support in Blink is under active development.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606

I think that’s misleading since Safari’s development is not generally discussed outside the occasional WebKit blog post and the rare Safari developer on Twitter who may or may not rightfully ignore any questions/arguments.

A lot of features are implemented late and incorrectly. I think that the first Safari version that supported PWAs was so broken that many had to manually exclude the browser in their support detection code.

Search for rniwa on GitHub, he's one of the core developers, and is active in all discussions (including meeting notes that are often published in GitHub issues).

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