All web browsers on iOS are just Safari with different design

https://community.brave.com/t/why-is-the-ios-app-updated-so-sparingly/512155

by rrr_oh_man • 2 years ago

33 53 2 years ago

community.brave.com

Is this true? I thought it was purely the rendering.

weikju2• 2 years ago

The title/community post are wrong - it's WebKit, not Safari itself. But the intended meaning is true, all browsers on iOS are "skins" on the WebKit engine, no Gecko, Blink, etc.

This still ignores all the differentiation between the browsers on iOS, even if they're all on WebKit. And even as Orion proves, browsers on iOS can support Firefox/Chrome extensions! So WebKit isn't something that prevents that...

smcleod4• 2 years ago

Oh what I’d give for a real Firefox browser on iOS. I see lots of value in preventing chrome based browser from running through as they already dominate and shape the web too much as it is.

gnicholas• 2 years ago

But iOS is WebKit, not chromium. Am I misunderstanding your concern?

smcleod4• 2 years ago

Yes that’s correct. What I’m saying is I don’t think chrome based browsers should come to iOS (brave, chrome)

SahAssar10• 2 years ago

Some people equate blink and webkit because of their shared heritage. I think it has definitely diverged enough to be considered separate engines (like how webkit is considered separate from khtml), but some disagree.

smcleod4• 2 years ago

I’m not talking about WebKit, I’m saying it would be good for the internet if chrome didn’t come to iOS

stavros• 2 years ago

You can move to the EU.

ceejayoz6• 2 years ago

The changes that would permit Firefox on iOS will make Chrome’s dominance worse.

Losing iOS users is the only reason we don’t have “only works in Chrome” everywhere.

drivingmenuts• 2 years ago

Is there a technical reason or is it just ideology?

smcleod4• 2 years ago

Just googles stranglehold on the web, so yes I guess ideology

anste• 2 years ago

Sad, but true. Unfortunately, Safari still has some ways to go in terms of feature support. https://ios404.com/ has a great list of stuff that's still missing.

frizlab2• 2 years ago

In my opinion it is very fortunate that most of these APIs are not supported. I don’t want a webpage to make my phone vibrate for instance. Nor do I want to be able to give the permission for a webpage to do it by the way.

Aloisius• 2 years ago

It seems like most of the missing features aren't part of any standard.

shepherdjerred• 2 years ago

Most people wouldn't miss the majority of those APIs.

Safari has a lot of quirks, but those are mostly felt more by developers rather than users.

cjpearson• 2 years ago

This statement does seem a little ironic coming from a browser which is Chrome with a different design.

cdata• 2 years ago

This elides an important detail: outside of iOS a browser implementer can choose the code to compile and link against. Even if they build on Chrome, they can patch it to their heart's content or even fork and carry on. On iOS the browser runtime is set by fiat.

Also worth observing that most web browsers in the history of the web (including Chrome and Safari) started out as a fork of some other browser.

schleck8• 2 years ago

I think so too. Talking about monopoly and then participating in advancing a de-facto monopoly (Chromium on Android and Chromium on Windows)

ryleyrandall22• 2 years ago

If you want to be even more cynical you could say they are all limited versions of Safari. There are valid security concerns for why Apple does this but I would love more choices as a developer.

fsflover• 2 years ago

Which valid security concerns?

Devasta• 2 years ago

And most browsers on other platforms are just Chrome with different design.

cloudking• 2 years ago

I wouldn't be mad if all browsers were Chromium powered. Then I can stop doing so many browser CSS/JS hacks.

t-sauer• 2 years ago

What kind of stuff are you doing that you need many CSS/JS hacks nowadays?

al_borland5• 2 years ago

Be careful what you wish for. This is good until it isn’t.

With Google owning the market, there is really nothing to stop them from implementing “features” that are good for them, but bad for the intent as a whole.

Spivak• 2 years ago

It's kind of funny hearing this from Brave which is Chrome with a different design. I'm guessing Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, Opera GX, Orion, Sigma OS, Arc all consider themselves to have differentiated themselves from Chrome despite being Chrome under the hood.

If Webkit === Safari then is Blink === Chrome? Do people actually want alternative browser engines or do folks just want all iOS browsers to be backed by Chromium?

weikju2• 2 years ago

'hearing this from Brave' -- this is a community post on the Brave forums, and doesn't even seem to be from an employee of Brave.

edit:

Also, Orion is WebKit based

frizlab2• 2 years ago

Good. Let’s keep it that way, please.

waiwai933• 2 years ago

This is no longer necessarily true in the EU as of last month - https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi... - though I don't know if any browsers have in fact changed their rendering engine from Webkit yet.

pluc• 2 years ago

All browsers on everything but iOS are just Chrome with different design

armadsen• 2 years ago

Something that annoys me about this post is the emphasis on Chromium being open source as if WebKit is not. Chromium started out as a fork of WebKit!

All web browsers on iOS are just Safari with different design

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