[HN Gopher] WebKit Features in Safari 17.4
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WebKit Features in Safari 17.4
Author : feross
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-03-05 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webkit.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (webkit.org)
| AprilArcus wrote:
| > custom menu commands that will appear in the File menu and the
| Dock context menu
|
| This is pretty neat, but the "File" menu is sort of a vestige of
| a file-based approach to content management that isn't especially
| popular in the present era.
|
| Web apps aren't usually file-based (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) or
| aren't file-based in a way that is exposed to the PWA's API (e.g.
| Figma). It would be better to put these in the application menu
| (the bold faced one with the application name to the left of
| "file").
|
| > <input type="checkbox" switch>
|
| This grieves me a bit. Because the semantics of a checkbox and
| switch are identical, I wish it were handled at the CSS layer and
| not by means of an attribute. Then you could e.g. switch from
| checkboxes for desktop user agents to switches for mobile UAs
| using a breakpoint.
| danaris wrote:
| > It would be better to put these in the application menu (the
| bold faced one with the application name to the left of
| "file").
|
| This is not an unreasonable proposal in itself; however, it
| does not conform to how Apple still treats the File menu in
| general, or its guidelines for its use.
| dabinat wrote:
| The feature most interesting to me, that was buried a long way
| down, is that iOS now supports VP9 decoding. VP9 now has 97%
| browser support according to CanIUse and could feasibly replace
| H.264 as the base video codec for the web.
|
| (I know AV1 is superior but it has not achieved widespread
| support yet and requires hardware support on Apple platforms)
| chipweinberger wrote:
| wow that's a really huge feature! VP9 is pretty good.
| danaris wrote:
| Aside from the VP9 support and switch checkboxes, which others
| have mentioned, I'm particularly interested in the "Align content
| everywhere" feature, allowing you to use div {
| align-content: center; }
|
| to get nice center-aligned content without having to use flexbox
| or grid.
| CM30 wrote:
| Seems like a few interesting features to me. Shortcuts and
| categories definitely improve the PWA experience a bit, so they
| should be useful there. The switch control is long overdue,
| though it might be better if they standardised the styling
| options for ALL input elements first, since too many of them are
| hard to style consistently across browsers right now without
| using browser specific selectors. Vertical form controls are
| useful, and seem like a logical inclusion.
|
| And align content inside block elements... damn, that's something
| that really should have been in browsers from the get go. Might
| finally kill the memes about centering text in CSS!
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Glad to hear they're rewriting their flexbox algos. Both Chrome
| and Safari had a huge number of issues around a decade ago, but
| Chrome managed to rewrite their engine and now has a very good
| engine. Safari was lagging behind a lot here, so it's really
| welcome news
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _" We built two new iOS frameworks with hundreds of new APIs to
| support functionality used by web browsers, including
| multiprocess, JIT, and advanced keyboard & touch event access --
| and we are pivoting WebKit to use these new frameworks."_
|
| "Used by web browsers" implies that these APIs were _designed_ to
| be used by both 3rd-party rendering engines and WebKit, which is
| interesting. It would mean that Apple 's been building OS infra
| for 3rd-party browsers for many years.
| lapcat wrote:
| They could just mean in-app browsers, which use WebKit.
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