Safari 14 Added WebExtensions Support. So Where Are the Extensions? (sixcolors.com) 14
At WWDC last year, Apple announced it was going to support Chrome-style browser extensions (the WebExtensions API) in Safari. Months after Safari 14's release, are developers bothering with Safari? Jason Snell: The answer seems to be largely no -- at least, not yet. The Mac App Store's Safari extensions library seems to be largely populated with the same stuff that was there before Safari 14 was released, though there are some exceptions. [...] So in the end, what was the net effect of Apple's announcement of support for the WebExtensions API in Safari? It's a work in progress. A very small number of extensions have appeared in the App Store, and it seems quite likely that others will follow at their own pace. Other developers remain utterly unmoved by all the extra work moving to Safari would entail. It strikes me that Apple could rapidly drive adoption of Safari extensions if it would finally bring that technology to iOS. Targeting the Mac is nice, but if they could target iPads and iPhones, we might really have something.
Apple theft (Score:2)
Other than the user share being poor, Apple has a habit of ripping off developers in their own app ecosystem.
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I'm guessing it is bang for buck... (Score:3)
App developers only have a limited budget, so if they write for Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, they have most of the world covered. Safari likely will get a backseat with most things.
I wonder how developer friendly Apple is these days. I'm sure "fatbinary" support, plus having to test on two architectures, as well as always being in the dark of what Apple will do next, where one only finds out about something show-stopping in a beta of an OS, has made Apple a chore to develop for.
The good thing is web extensions are not really a mainstream thing. A password manager, an ad blocker, and perhaps an inbound Javascript rewriter like Tampermonkey are the big ones.
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I wonder how developer friendly Apple is these days.
Generally (and I know others' opinions will differ), I would say not very friendly.
Dealing with buggy yearly releases is bad enough, but having to put up with some of their asinine app store requirements makes you waste nearly that other half of your dev time (with the first half being figuring out the workarounds for their damn bugs!)
As a dev, you're in a hard place: you have to please your own customer/users, but you also have to please your platform provider (Apple) even more - it can be really hard to f
They don't exist (Score:3)
Ever since Safari killed off the old-style extensions they had, and forced the annoying 'you must bundle in an app' on everything so that it has to be on their app store, it's basically been dead to me.
If it doesn't run uBlock Origin, it's not a real browser (so Firefox it's been for me ever since).
The most developer-hostile (and hence user-hostile) move they did was to also force devs to be registered to be able to distribute extensions for Safari, something that's free to do with all other browsers (or basically free - I think Google charges a one-time $5 fee to basically verify you're a person, whereas Apple requires a yearly $100 dev account).
There's simply no incentive for developers to support it when Apple puts up such barriers. Of course some will say that's a good thing because it supposedly enhances security - but what good is a secure extension that doesn't even exist?
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This. I wrote an extension in an hour or two back when Safari 5.1 was brand new and I was bored of reading through research papers in grad school. It scratched an itch I had by restoring behavior that had changed to how it worked previously. Nothing fancy, and certainly not something I ever profited from nor sought to profit from. I enjoyed the experience and enjoyed having the itch scratched. While I'd have been fine if technical considerations forced it into obsolescence (and I thus got some more experien
Useful stuff is there (Score:2)
Funny that you ask, I currently have a Password Manager, Authentication Tool, Media Database / Capture Tool and Adblocker in my Safari on OSX, I use them frequently but they don't seem something to talk about.
What extension am I missing out on, what extension should exist but does not because $REASONFORAPPLEBEINGEVIL?
uBlock Origin (Score:2)
Like I said earlier [slashdot.org], if it can't run uBlock Origin, it's not a real browser.
That's not to say there aren't any really useful extensions for the mac version of Safari - just that Apple's put up enough barriers ("must have dev account", "must wrap in a macOS app", "macOS app must meet appstore requirements" etc.) that's it's simply not worth it for some developers to even look at supporting it. And less extensions = less support for Safari = less incentive for devs to create extensions = less extensions = ...
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I currently have a Password Manager, Authentication Tool, Media Database / Capture Tool and Adblocker in my Safari on OSX
Sure. And if I have a Ford Pinto, live in a rat-infested apartment in the worst part of town, and source all of my food from dumpsters, I could say that "I currently have a car, a home, and ample food", but that doesn't mean things are great.
I want to love Safari (Really! Besides being more memory efficient, more battery efficient, and noticeably faster than the competition on Mac, it was also my primary browser for a number of years and I even wrote an extension for it [aichon.com]), but full-fledged ad blockers are cu
Firexfox for Android always Extensions, so... (Score:2)
...where the fuck are they, Mozilla ?
"However, we have noticed that the number of add-ons available for Firefox today can be overwhelming for some users."
Mozilla are a bunch of absolute up-themselves wankers.
Apple should join Chrome (Score:2)
Apple should use and improve the Chrome engine by assigning their engine developers to work on that .. think of all the bugs that can be squished and optimizations made. I don't see a strategic reason for them to not do it.
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Google already controls the web, no reason to go down to 2 engines instead of 3. Also, remember that apple and google can't get along at this. Google used to use webkit and forked blink because of it. It was the same engine previously!
Webkit is the most portable browser engine followed by firefox's engine. Killing webkit means killing browsers on some platforms entirely. Firefox is now limited to platforms and architectures that can run rust. Google refuses to take upstream patches for other operatin
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Apple should use and improve the Chrome engine by assigning their engine developers to work on that
Not quite sure Apple's "privacy-first" goals are in line with Google's privacy rapist agenda - there might be a mismatch there.