Tag: Choice

iOS Browser Choice

Just last week I got one of those really?! 🤨 faces when this fact came up in conversation amongst smart and engaged fellow web developers: there is no browser choice on iOS. It’s all Safari. You can download apps that are named Chrome or Firefox, or anything else, but they are just veneer over Safari. If you’re viewing a website on iOS, it’s Safari.

I should probably call it what the App Store Review Guidelines call it: WebKit. I usually think it’s more clear to refer to browsers by their common names rather than the engine behind it, since each of The Big Three web browsers have distinct engines (for now anyway), but in this case, the engine is the important bit.

I’ll say how I feel: that sucks. I have this expensive computer in my pocket and it feels unfair that it is hamstrung in this very specific way of not allowing other browser engines. I also have an Apple laptop and it’s not hamstrung in that way, and I really hope it never is.

There is, of course, all sorts of nuance to this. My Apple laptop is hamstrung in that I can’t just install whatever OS I want on it unless I do it a sanctioned way. I also like the fact that there is some gatekeeping in iOS apps, and sometimes wish it was more strict. Like when I try to download simple games for my kid, and I end up downloading some game that is so laden with upsells, ads, and dark patterns that I think the developer should be in prison. I wish Apple just wouldn’t allow that garbage on the App Store at all. So that’s me wishing for more and less gatekeeping at the same time.

But what sucks about this lack of browser choice on iOS isn’t just the philosophy of gatekeeping, it’s that WebKit on iOS just isn’t that great. See Dave’s post for a rundown of just some of the problems from a day-to-day web developer perspective that I relate to. And because WebKit has literally zero competition on iOS, because Apple doesn’t allow competition, the incentive to make Safari better is much lighter than it could (should) be.

It’s not something like Google’s AMP, where if you really dislike it you can both not use it on your own sites and redirect yourself away from them on other sites. This choice is made for you.

My ability to talk intelligently about this is dwarfed by many others though, so what I really want to do is point out some of that recent writing. Allow me to pull a quote from a bunch of them…

iOS Engine Choice In Depth — Alex Russell

None of this is theoretical; needing to re-develop features through a straw, using less-secure, more poorly tested and analyzed mechanisms, has led to serious security issues in alternative iOS browsers. Apple’s policy, far from insulating responsible WebKit browsers from security issues, is a veritable bug farm for the projects wrenched between the impoverished feature set of Apple’s WebKit and the features they can securely deliver with high fidelity on every other platform.

This is, of course, a serious problem for Apple’s argument as to why it should be exclusively responsible for delivering updates to browser engines on iOS.

Chrome is the new Safari. And so are Edge and Firefox. — Niels Leenheer

The Safari and Chrome team both want to make the web safer and work hard to improve the web. But they do have different views on what the web should be.

Google is focussing on improving the web by making it more capable. To expand the relevance of the web, to go beyond what is possible today. And that also means allowing it to compete with native apps, with which the Android team surely does not always agree.

Safari seems to focus on improving the web as it currently is. To let it be a safer place, much faster and more beautiful. And if you want something more, you can use an app for that.

Browser choice on Apple’s iOS: privacy and security aspects — Stuart Langridge

Alternative browsers on iOS aren’t just restricted to WebKit, they’re restricted to the version of WebKit which is in the current version of Safari. Not even different or more modern versions of WebKit itself are allowed.

Even motivated users who work hard to get out of the browser choice they’re forced into don’t actually get a choice; if they choose a different browser, they still get the same one. If there’s a requirement from people for something, the market can’t provide it because competition is not permitted.

Briefing to the UK Competition and Markets Authority on Apple’s iOS browser monopoly and Progressive Web Apps — Bruce Lawson

[…] these people at Echo Pharmacy, not only have they got a really great website, but they also have to build an app for iOS just because they want to send push notifications. And, perhaps ironically, given Apple’s insistence that they do all of this for security and privacy, is that if I did choose to install this app, I would also be giving it permission to access my health and fitness data, my contact info, my identifiers sensitive info, financial info, user content, user data and diagnostics. Whereas, if I had push notifications and I were using a PWA, I’d be leaking none of this data.

So, we can see that despite Apple’s claims, I cannot recommend a PWA as being an equal experience an iOS simply here because of push notifications. But it’s not just hurting current business, it’s also holding back future business.


I’ve heard precious few arguments defending Apple’s choice to only allow Safari on iOS. Vague Google can’t be trusted sentiment is the bulk of it, privacy-focused, performance forced, or both. All in all, nobody wants this complete lack of choice but Apple.

As far as I know, there isn’t any super clear language from Apple on why this requirement is in place. That would be nice to hear, because maybe then whatever the reasons are could be addressed.

We hear mind-blowing tech news all the time. I’d love to wake up one morning and have the news be “Apple now allows other browser engines on iOS.” You’ll hear a faint yesssssss in the air because I’ve screamed it so loud from my office in Bend, Oregon, you can hear it at your house.


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Choice Words about the Upcoming Deprecation of JavaScript Dialogs

It might be the very first thing a lot of people learn in JavaScript:

alert("Hello, World");

One day at CodePen, we woke up to a ton of customer support tickets about their Pens being broken, which ultimately boiled down to a version of Chrome that shipped where they ripped out alert() from functioning in cross-origin iframes. And all other native “JavaScript Dialogs” like confirm(), prompt() and I-don’t-know-what-else (onbeforeunload?, .htpasswd protected assets?).

Cross-origin iframes are essentially the heart of how CodePen works. You write code, and we execute it for you in an iframe that doesn’t share the same domain as CodePen itself, as the very first line of security defense. We didn’t hear any heads up or anything, but I’m sure the plans were on display.

I tweeted out of dismay. I get that there are potential security concerns here. JavaScript dialogs look the same whether they are triggered by an iframe or not, so apparently it’s confusing-at-best when they’re triggered by an iframe, particularly a cross-origin iframe where the parent page likely has little control. Well, outside of, ya know, a website like CodePen. Chrome cite performance concerns as well, as the nature of these JavaScript dialogs is that they block the main thread when open, which essentially halts everything.

There are all sorts of security and UX-annoyance issues that can come from iframes though. That’s why sandboxing is a thing. I can do this:

<iframe sandbox></iframe>

And that sucker is locked down. If some form tried to submit something in there: nope, won’t work. What if it tries to trigger a download? Nope. Ask for device access? No way. It can’t even load any JavaScript at all. That is, unless I let it:

<iframe sandbox="allow-scripts allow-downloads ...etc"></iframe>

So why not an attribute for JavaScript dialogs? Ironically, there already is one: “allow-modals“. I’m not entirely sure why that isn’t good enough, but as I understand it, nuking JavaScript dialogs in cross-origin iframes is just a stepping stone on the ultimate goal: removing them from the web platform entirely.

Daaaaaang. Entirely? That’s the word. Imagine the number of programming tutorials that will just be outright broken.

For now, even the cross-origin removal is delayed until January 2022, but as far as we know this is going to proceed, and then subsequent steps will happen to remove them entirely. This is spearheaded by Chrome, but the status reports that both Firefox and Safari are on board with the change. Plus, this is a specced change, so I guess we can waggle our fingers literally everywhere here, if you, like me, feel like this wasn’t particularly well-handled.

What we’ve been told so far, the solution is to use postMessage if you really absolutely need to keep this functionality for cross-origin iframes. That sends the string the user uses in window.alert up to the parent page and triggers the alert from there. I’m not the biggest fan here, because:

  1. postMessage is not blocking like JavaScript dialogs are. This changes application flow.
  2. I have to inject code into users code for this. This is new technical debt and it can harm the expectations of expected user output (e.g. an extra <script> in their HTML has weird implications, like changing what :nth-child and friends select).
  3. I’m generally concerned about passing anything user-generated to a parent to execute. I’m sure there are theoretical ways to do it safely, but XSS attack vectors are always surprising in their ingenouity.

Even lower-key suggestions, like window.alert = console.log, have essentially the same issues.

Allow me to hand the mic over to others for their opinions.

Couldn’t the alert be contained to the iframe instead of showing up in the parent window?

Jaden Baptista, Twitter

Yes, please! Doesn’t that solve a big part of this? While making the UX of these dialogs more useful? Put the dang dialogs inside the <iframe>.

“Don’t break the web.” to “Don’t break 90% of the web.” and now “Don’t break the web whose content we agree with.”

Matthew Phillips, Twitter

I respect the desire to get rid of inelegant parts [of the HTML spec] that can be seen as historical mistakes and that cause implementation complexity, but I can’t shake the feeling that the existing use cases are treated with very little respect or curiosity.

Dan Abramov, Twitter

It’s weird to me this is part of the HTML spec, not the JavaScript spec. Right?!

I always thought there was a sort of “prime directive” not to break the web? I’ve literally seen web-based games that used alert as a “pause”, leveraging the blocking nature as a feature. Like: <button onclick="alert('paused')">Pause</button>[.] Funny, but true.

Ben Lesh, Twitter

A metric was cited that only 0.006% of all page views contain a cross-origin iframe that uses these functions, yet:

Seems like a misleading metric for something like confirm(). E.g. if account deletion flow is using confirm() and breaks because of a change to it, this doesn’t mean account deletion flow wasn’t important. It just means people don’t hit it on every session.

Dan Abramov, Twitter

That’s what’s extra concerning to me: alert() is one thing, but confirm() literally returns true or false, meaning it is a logical control structure in a program. Removing that breaks websites, no question. Chris Ferdinandi showed me this little obscure website that uses it:

Speaking of Chris:

The condescending “did you actually read it, it’s so clear” refrain is patronizing AF. It’s the equivalent of “just” or “simply” in developer documentation.

I read it. I didn’t understand it. That’s why I asked someone whose literal job is communicating with developers about changes Chrome makes to the platform.

This is not isolated to one developer at Chrome. The entire message thread where this change was surfaced is filled with folks begging Chrome not to move forward with this proposal because it will break all-the-things.

Chris Ferdinandi, “Google vs. the web”

And here’s Jeremy:

[…] breaking changes don’t happen often on the web. They are—and should be—rare. If that were to change, the web would suffer massively in terms of predictability.

Secondly, the onus is not on web developers to keep track of older features in danger of being deprecated. That’s on the browser makers. I sincerely hope we’re not expected to consult a site called canistilluse.com.

Jeremy Keith, “Foundations”

I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture here. To be fair, there were some tweets with the Yes!! Finally!! vibe, but they didn’t feel like critical assessments to me as much as random Google cheerleading.

Believe it or not, I generally am a fan of Google and think they do a good job of pushing the web forward. I also think it’s appropriate to waggle fingers when I see problems and request they do better. “Better” here means way more developer and user outreach to spell out the situation, way more conversation about the potential implications and transition ideas, and way more openness to bending the course ahead.


The post Choice Words about the Upcoming Deprecation of JavaScript Dialogs appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

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