iOS404

by LaSombra • 2 years ago

157 82 2 years ago

isodev4• 2 years ago

Looks awesome!

While the visualization is cool, I hope some of these will remain "not found" indefinitely. Just because we can stick everything into a web-spec, doesn't mean we should.

tgv2• 2 years ago

Me too. Device orientation, USB, Bluetooth, vibration, they don't belong in a web app.

Izmaki• 2 years ago

Even something as simple as auto-focus on a form field on page load... imagine that your keyboard jumps up and takes up half of your screen space, just because a web-dev wanted you to be able to "immediately input your name". I'm actually quite happy that my iPhone doesn't shove a keyboard in my face "for my convenience of being able to input text immediately".

hestefisk• 2 years ago

I agree with you. Notifications is another “feature” I just want to stay out of my browser. To that extent, I actually don’t mind Safari on iOS being deliberately slow to adopt some of the more intrusive standards.

yccs27• 2 years ago

Also clipboard reading and volume change, no thanks.

agust4• 2 years ago

Why would they belong in a platform-specific app but not in a standard-based web app? Because Apple can't get 30% out of it?

buildfocus2• 2 years ago

All the dangerous ones come with comprehensive permissions prompts, and browsers can offer options for don't ask again/never ask etc, so if you're not interested there's still little downside to those being available for those who are.

Personally, I've found a bunch of these super useful, as user and a developer. Being able to use tools like https://www.espruino.com/ide/ to play with hardware straight from the web is amazing.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 2 years ago

Many of these belong into a web app, the problem is that browsers can't distinguish between a web app and a web site.

perks_12• 2 years ago

They belong in the browser engine so that they could be used by a web-app that is presented and served as a standalone app. They do not belong in the scope of just any website out there.

mavhc• 2 years ago

Correct, we need to be hiring 3x the amount of programmers to make our apps on 3 platforms instead of one, webusb is killing jobs!

RicoElectrico• 2 years ago

TBH Bluetooth is useful for Xiaomi e-paper clock-thermometers which can't be set without a Mi Home app... smh

dariosalvi78• 2 years ago

They absolutely do, if well implemented they are no more risk than any other API. The web can be what java wanted to be, if we don't screw it up.

shepherdjerred• 2 years ago

I didn't understand why these APIs existed until I used ESPHome. It can use the Web Serial API to flash an ESP32 board using Chrome + a USB cable.

jsheard• 2 years ago

Weren't some of these like WebUSB and WebBluetooth unilaterally pushed by Chrome without going through the usual spec processes? Firefox doesn't have them either.

hmottestad• 2 years ago

And some things aren't great on mobile but make more sense on desktop. Autofocus doesn't cover half my screen with a keyboard when I'm on my laptop...

keepamovin• 2 years ago

Sometimes, it's about what you take away. Good design is not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to take away.

But very cool site. And I definitely think Safari should have some of these! It's a bit cruel on them! Hahaha! :)

gowthamgts12• 2 years ago

so basically if an app can be ported as a web app, safari in ios won't support it? seems.....convenient

al_borland4• 2 years ago

The original intent for iOS was for developers to use Safari, not making native apps. For apps that won’t pass the Apple approval process, Apple’s direction is still for them to make we apps.

Hamuko• 2 years ago

Immense disappointment that I opened up the site on my iPhone's Safari and it renders perfectly fine.

shalanah4• 2 years ago

Lol - can't say it didn't cross my mind to use tech that wouldn't work on iOS :)

parski• 2 years ago

Hypertext

dogma1138• 2 years ago

For most of them it’s good that they are missing.

K0nserv3• 2 years ago

This site should really include Mozilla's position on the spec too. Google shipping some, potentially harebrained, idea in Chromium doesn't mean that Safari and Firefox MUST also ship it. There should be links to relevant entries from https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ and https://webkit.org/standards-positions/

This is a good example of how the chromium monoculture hurts the web. It ends up being Google's way or highway.

EDIT: You can filter by features that both Firefox and Chrome support by tapping the Chrome icon. This takes the list from 63 entries to 29

notpushkin• 2 years ago

You can compare with Firefox by clicking on the Chrome icon – even enable both to see only features supported by both. (I think it would be a nice default view, though.)

K0nserv3• 2 years ago

Thanks! I totally missed that

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Geez was staring at this trying to find icons and didn't realize on mobile the bottom drawer wasn't just part of the browser. Good stuff. Took this fun milk carton concept to a usable next level.

lucideer• 2 years ago

I think the feature to compare could be made a little more obvious - I can see why they would default to Chrome (both the most popular browser & also the one that shows the starkest difference), but tbh I find the most interesting comparison being against macOS Safari - that list seems really surprising to me.

This also would of course be even nicer if you could define any browser as the "target" (e.g. compare Chrome -vs- Firefox) but then that wouldn't serve their very nice domain purchase as neatly.

plufz2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I would like to know more about the Mac vs iOS WebKit as well. I would have guessed that the development of both would be done by the same team and that it would be very close for all features where they didn’t take a strategic decision to hinder web apps on the phone or performance/ux. But for example not having the autofocus attribute or pseudo selection css seems a little strange even though I can see how it could affect ux on the phone, especially the autofocus which would show the keyboard.

rainbowzootsuit• 2 years ago

I think it's normally "harebrained" like hare/rabbit but hair brain doesn't imply any greater intelligence for sure. I've said folks are "single threads" to indicate something similar in more nerdy settings.

K0nserv3• 2 years ago

Right you are! I guess I'm one of today's 10000

pjmlp• 2 years ago

With the help of a generation of developers hating Microsoft and IE, Google has managed to turn the Web into ChromeOS.

mikeger• 2 years ago

How iOS would support `::selection` with the tap-based interface?

achairapart• 2 years ago

Same for the CSS3 Cursor properties, doesn't make much sense on a touch-based device.

guipsp2• 2 years ago

iOS still supports selection, and as such it is not unreasonable to desire the ability to style it, or react to it.

dmaa• 2 years ago

I guess that they are missing for good reason? Web notifications? Sparsely useful, 99% is just some clickbait website trying to feed you junk. Thanks Apple! The website look cool tho.

Aaargh20318• 2 years ago

One that stood out was the audio element being able to read the volume, but not set it. Apple has always had the stance that user preferences like this should only directly be changed by the user, not by an application. There are 2 convenient buttons on the side of my iPhone, there is no need for any website to ever be able to mess with my volume settings.

guipsp2• 2 years ago

The website would not be able to mess with your volume settings. The implication of this choice by apple is that you cannot play two sounds at different levels, for example.

Y-bar• 2 years ago

It seems wrong to mix and match actual accepted standards with things that only Chrome implements which are not standards.

Should iOS adopt [feature] because Chrome has it, or why else is it on the list? What benefits am I missing as a user?

As a mainly desktop Firefox user, any time I have a web bug my developer colleagues asks me to try Chrome instead because they only develop and test in Chrome. I would say if we care about standards and an open web we should not cater so much to Chrome's whims and wishes…

afandian• 2 years ago

You're saying some of the 404s should be 400s.

madeofpalk5• 2 years ago

Cute. Some of these are already/soon out of date. Safari Technology Preview just shipped View Transisitions API https://webkit.org/blog/15260/release-notes-for-safari-techn...

In practice, I've never missed an API on Safari for building websites that customers ask for. I have missed Chrome dragging it's feet on CSS properties like Snap Points or backdrop-filter.

The difference in culture couldn't be any more apparent, with this website having a complete disregard for users as it's actual content is just rendered into an image, not available to basic web browser functionality like copy and paste.

shalanah4• 2 years ago

The text copying is a good point.

The text is actual text.

I must have disallowed selecting for the swiping feature to work. Definitely something I should look to revert or allow for copying buttons.

the_gipsy• 2 years ago

Eh. The thing I miss the most: stop reloading pages/tabs when switching back to safari (or any browser, since it's all the same webview).

If apple wants to treat the web like documents, that's fine, but then don't make it suck like an app. If a page is loaded, there is NO reason to randomly reload it because iOS deems it has been too long. Maybe it's a general problem with iOS killing apps in background, I don't care, it sucks.

sph2• 2 years ago

Off topic: We don't have missing people on milk cartons here in Europe. Seeing them always reminds me of being a teenager, watching Blur's Coffee and TV music video on MTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oqXVx3sBOk

al_borland4• 2 years ago

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a missing person on a milk carton in the US either. It is only something I’ve seen in TV and movies, and I’m in my 40s. My assumption is that this was a thing from the 1950s, but someone who grew up during that era would have to speak to it. I suppose it’s also possible it was a regional thing and I wasn’t in a region that did it.

sph2• 2 years ago

You sent me down a rabbit hole. Wikipedia got us covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing-children_milk_carton

mg2• 2 years ago

The one browser API I wish every browser would support is the File System Access API.

Because with it, we can offer users to hold their data natively on their devices. Instead of storing everything in the cloud.

So far, I think only Chrome on the desktop supports it. Here is a nice demo:

https://googlechromelabs.github.io/text-editor/

A text editor that works just like a native application.

madeofpalk5• 2 years ago

You can check why Mozilla and Apple have opted to not support this.

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154

https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/28

Neither Mozilla or Webkit are satisfied that the proposal is safe by default, and contains footguns for the user that can be pretty destructive.

agust4• 2 years ago

And what are they suggesting to improve the proposal? Apple, which makes $20B a year with Safari, surely has enough resources to make a counter-proposal?

mg2• 2 years ago

I think there is a pretty secure approach of doing it.

1) When loading a file, nothing needs to be different from the already available upload functionality. The user picks the file to load.

2) When saving a new file, nothing needs to be different from the already available download functionality. The user picks the name and the place to save it.

Only after 1 or 2 have already happened can the page request to update the file. With the same name and location. In this case, the user gets a prompt that explains the risks and asks the them to confirm the update.

Pesthuf2• 2 years ago

We’re crying at a pretty high level IMO. So many cool APIs are available now in all browsers that enable us to build things that used to be impossible on the web.

So don’t only focus at what isn’t here yet.

al_borland4• 2 years ago

If problems aren’t called out they can’t be solved.

Pesthuf2• 2 years ago

I don't really see it as a problem that other browsers don't immediately implement non-standard, underspecified APIs some Googler made and put into Chrome to get a promotion.

It's a problem when Apple refuses to implement standards because it hurts their 30% cash cow monopoly, but most APIs on that site aren't that.

realusername• 2 years ago

The list doesn't tell the full story though, my biggest problem with it is that it's overall a buggy browser. I've encountered bugs on localStorage & indexDB, forms, SVG and CSS overflow, buggy border radius on videos (not sure if this one is fixed now) all of those being very basic web features.

I feel like they lack a lot in the QA side of things, it doesn't feel very polished.

I'd be more accepting of Safari if it would be more polished and had a better release cycle (it's also the last major non-evergreen browser), all the next gen features are good sure, but not a replacement for those problems.

joshstrange2• 2 years ago

I’m seeing a lot of “draft”, “candidate”, “recommendation”, and “other”. Aka, I’m seeing a lot of bullshit.

Yes, Apple has dragged its feet on standards but things that Chrome just decided on by itself are not standards.

A number of the partially implemented (on iOS) things (like clipboard or volume) have legitimate privacy concerns or UX concerns. I don’t want a website to read my clipboard, I don’t want a website to change my volume.

There are some more legitimate looking things but a number of those are not part of the spec according to this very website.

I’ve said for years that Chrome is closer to IE in writing their own standards and Safari is closer to IE in conforming to the standards. But blanket “Safari is the new IE” statements are just silly and miss the forest for the trees.

hasanhaja4• 2 years ago

I'd highly recommend this document to establish the scale of impact these different vendors have: https://open-web-advocacy.org/walled-gardens-report/

Google is definitely not in the clear, but Apple's anti-competitive practices is much more damaging to the open web.

joshstrange2• 2 years ago

That has nothing to do with my point that these aren’t web standards in most cases. Walled gardens are a separate concern. You can’t point to things that aren’t standards and talk about walled gardens.

shalanah4• 2 years ago

Hi all - this is quite fun!

I'm Shalanah. I made iOS404.com.

A couple of feature notes:

- Compare to other browsers by clicking on the Chrome icon to switch to FF for Android or Safari Desktop (or a combo).

- Select or deselect specification by clicking on the filter icon.

On what's to come: I'm looking to add MDN features next. There are wayyyyyy more missing iOS features there.

Thanks! -Shalanah

hu32• 2 years ago

You might want to ping HN admins (email works best in my experience) to reposition this post in HN since it has been nuked out of the atmosphere for some reason. It is nowhere to be seen in HN listing.

For example this other post is older (6 hours ago), with less points (70) and less comments (34), and yet it shows on top 12 of HN:

    12. Show HN: a Rust based CLI tool 'imgcatr' for displaying images (github.com/silinmeng0510)

shalanah4• 2 years ago

I just emailed HN via the contact below. Not sure if that's the right method -- thanks the tips!

iOS404

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