New WebKit features in Safari 15.4

Re:New WebKit features in Safari 15.4 by whywhywhywhy on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @01:25AM (#30681932)

No WebUSB either (Or ever I guess), I know some HN people might not be a fan of it but personally I think it has huge potential to cut down on engineering waste. No need to build custom apps for every platform to just interface with a hardware device and also because it's a shared spec makes hardware devices hackable and alternative clients easy to create so devices can live on if their creators companies go under.

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Re:New WebKit features in Safari 15.4 by dmitriid on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @03:18AM (#30682502)

WebUSB (and bluetooth and HID and Serial) are not standards. They are Chrome-only non-standards.

Neither Safari nor Firefox are going to implement them.

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Re:New WebKit features in Safari 15.4 by whywhywhywhy on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @08:55AM (#30684636)

Firefox is implementing WebMidi so I don't think this idea people are passing around that these are "not real standards" so won't be implemented holds much water.

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Re:New WebKit features in Safari 15.4 by dmitriid on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @09:32AM (#30685005)

I was responding to WebUSB, and tacked a few other hardware APIs there. Both Firefox and Safari view them as harmful in their current form. They are not really on a standards track for now, they are "Draft Community Reports" or somesuch.

For something to become a standard that something needs two independent implementations. Before that it's just some browser's prototyping stage, no matter how many times Chrome will tell you otherwise.

According to chromestatus, WebMIDI now has positive position from Mozilla and negative position from Safari: https://chromestatus.com/feature/4923613069180928

Just three years ago Firefox's position was also largely negative due to unresolved security issues: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 It's possible those issues are now resolved, that's why it's making its way into Firefox. This means that Safari's stance may also change.

Same goes for other hardware APIs: from the point of view of both Safari and Firefox those specs have security and privacy holes the size of Jupiter. Not to mention that the quality of some of these so-called specs is very low. If/When these issues are resolved, we may see them implemented in these browsers, too.

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