Until its recent demise, Internet Explorer was the browser hated most by web developers.
Internet Explorer is now a thing of the past, replaced by the far-better Microsoft Edge.
Why did developers and software engineers hate IE so much? Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today.
With IE now out of the way, the distinction of ‘most-hated browser’ goes to Apple’s Safari – which all along had been a close second to IE.
In a similar vein, Safari has consistently lagged behind competing browsers in supporting modern web APIs and features, presenting considerable challenges for developers wanting to create products that work consistently across all the major browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari).
However, the annoyance with Safari gets deeper and more nuanced, which I’ll explain further below.
I’ve been trying to use Safari for work for the past month. I feel like I kept running into walls. Lack of extensions was a big thing.
One of the things that annoyed me the most, was that if you put YouTube videos in 2x speed it distorts the audio (sounds metallic and inside a box) whereas setting in 2x on Chrome doesn’t give the same distortion.
I don’t think that’s a good idea. If anything we should have less legislation around software. As long as the operating systems providers do not have a monopoly - and are not actively blocking the use of other software, I don’t see why we need to have our politicians and lawmakers involved.
Funnily enough I was wondering why YouTube didn’t use a decent time-stretch algo last time I did that… didn’t know it was browser dependent and done on the fly!
They pretty much have free will to do what they want now and that’s the situation we have now… yet we still find ourselves in situations like this (and this)
Lol I feel bad, I do like Safari… Especially the integration, like, when I receive a code via SMS for 2FA, I automatically put the value in the input field, it’s nothing but I’m lazy and it’s tedious otherwise.
At first it was because of power consumption, when I was on a MBP, this Chrome stuff was draining my battery too fast.
I mainly use Bitwarden, Dark Reader (paid… a shame), Grammarly, Vimari and Wappalyzer.
Since I do not work on the front end I don’t really care of React, Vue or Angular extensions, and that’s true it’s a shame to not have them.
AFAIK for the notification issue, Apple does not support PWA, because it’d bypass the Apple Store and the taxes I guess, plus the Developer account at 99$. So I think that’s the main reason for this.
I’ve ditched Chrome and I do not regret it. Brave is way better. I can’t use Firefox because of this.
I find the OS browser is usually best because of things like that, passwords stored in keychains and all the other system integrations - at least on a Mac. The only other browser I have used as my main browser (many years ago) was Opera - until they started using the Chrome engine and basically lost everything that made it special
I thought the old Opera devs left when Opera was bought out and they are who made Vivaldi?
And I use firefox because it’s properly fully open source and is significantly lighter weight than chrome based browsers for my usage somehow (both win10 and linux, thousands of tabs).
To a large degree, this is why I fled to mobile app dev after doing web dev for 13 years. I know I’m gonna sound like the old guy here (probably because I am…), but web dev in general has just become a mess.
If it isn’t safari it would be some other browser just like IE used to be. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter if the web is “open” because it order for the web experience to be a cohesive experience, you need all parties involved developing browsers to work as a single unit. MS, Apple, Mozilla, Google all need to upgrade their browser and set the the same priorities on their implementations.
Since this didn’t happen, web devs got tired of waiting and decided to put in yet another abstraction (js 6). I shook my head to the point of passing out when I realized that you have compile your js. LOL. That was the biggest advantage (if there were any) to js. The moment we started compiling a dynamic language was the moment that we negated the need for it. In my mind it was just a missed opportunity for using a compile static language for js apps, which lots of other devs are realizing this hence the rise of TypeScript. Woah, i might have gone off on a tangent LOL.
I’m hoping one day web dev will find it’s way back to easy accessibility and will got back to the interactive programming experience that it used to be.
I am looking to exit web dev as well but as usual, the problem is to NOT start working for less money. Any advice on that? I know I can use my free time to gain the extra skills but still, if you don’t have at least 2-3 years professional experience under your belt then people don’t care if you are now an expert due to being smart and senior.
I kind of got lucky with my transition to app dev. Several years ago my department wanted a mobile app for our customers. They made us do a hybrid web app which was even a worst dev experience than a regular browser app. So I started learning the app dev skills on my own while working on a native version of our app in my spare time. Management found out what I was doing and asked if they could use it. Of course I said yes because I started on a native app project to get the skills so I could leave my company.
I think if you can build a project or an app and have it visible whether it’s in an App Store or on GitHub, I think you will have your “proof” that you can do the work and land a job making more (app devs supposedly get paid 20 percent more) or the same. I had my proof in my pocket in a meeting with managers and I showed to them and that was that.
