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WebShield – A new wide-spectrum content blocker for Safari

(github.com)
143 points tW4r | 3 comments | 28 Feb 25 11:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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perdomon ◴[28 Feb 25 15:15 UTC] No.43206511[source]▶
I like projects like this since Safari is probably the biggest competitor to Chrome, but historically Apple hasn't been kind to these sorts of extensions. I hope they're able to find a way to make it work, because Safari is well-integrated into the iOS ecosystem.
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wobfan ◴[28 Feb 25 15:24 UTC] No.43206620[source]▶
While everything you're saying is correct, Safari is only the biggest competitor to Chrome because Apple is going out of their way to make it hard or even impossible in the case of iOS for developers to develop well-oiled browsers for their OSes. Just wanted to add that, because I'm pissed.
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atonse ◴[28 Feb 25 15:40 UTC] No.43206807[source]▶
Eh not quite. I switched off Chrome many years ago (on macOS) because it had gotten so bloated and was constantly running my fans.

I remember reading that Chrome had worked on fixing a lot of that bloat (so did FF). But Safari was a breath of fresh air in how fast it worked and didn't seem to constantly kill my battery.

Yes it has the occasional quirks. But I do like that Apple focuses more on UX than just DevEx by trying to implement everything and the kitchen sink web standards.

As others have said, we definitely need alternative browsers and browser engines.

But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox, so it's not like there's all that much competition.

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1. troupo ◴[28 Feb 25 18:42 UTC] No.43208915[source]▶
> But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox

Blink is a separate engine, as it has significantly diverted from WebKit.

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2. atonse ◴[01 Mar 25 02:46 UTC] No.43215152[source]▶
How significantly could it actually change? Maybe the process model, etc but I doubt most of the layout algorithms etc have changed much.
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3. solardev ◴[01 Mar 25 20:30 UTC] No.43223348[source]▶
Blink forked from Webkit more than a decade ago. There are tests that try to measure their compatibility, like https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&ali... (part of https://web-platform-tests.org/). They also have different JS engines these days (V8 vs JSCore).

That said, as a frontend dev, I very very rarely run into real world issues between Safari and Chrome. More often it's Firefox/Gecko that lags behind, usually in some sort of graphics optimization (SVG and canvas stuff). Also some differences in WebGL and webgpu support, but those are niche enough that it's not a big deal yet.