Safari’s recent large number of improvements has been noticed by folks in the web development community. Many of the improvements are fixes for longstanding bugs. Safari is also adopting a large number of features championed by folks who want to create web applications that work similarly to native apps, called progressive web applications.

Why It Matters

Apple’s increased investment and growth is a good sign for the future of the web. We continue to have a robust alternative built to natively work well with MacOS. Many folks who previously needed to make native applications can now choose to make a web app.

Zoom Out

A majority of websites do not take advantage of the new features. It is exciting that Safari can do so much more, but many of us just need to read a restaurant menu. These features are exciting for software engineers like me and well resourced companies, but most sites will not need them.

What They’re Saying

I asked my colleagues how they felt about these changes and a couple themes emerged:

• Excitement that a bunch of things that are currently native apps with lots of web views can maybe be just a web application now.
• Relief that longstanding CSS bugs that have been driving them bonkers are fixed. Safari users should see less weirdness on websites.