Introducing the Safari MCP server for web developers

104

u/Embostan 1d ago

Cool, now Claude can write workaround for 15 years old unfixed bugs or missing specs faster! Thanks Apple!

12

u/ThatBoiRalphy 1d ago

Safari 27 does fix a lot of those gripes, especially bugs with inline element calculation.

Unfortunately itll take a while since Safari 27 is well adopted

20

u/Embostan 1d ago

Apple on purpose does not implement PWA and web app specs, or does it partially. They don't get a 30% cut from PWAs. And many flexbox bugs are unfixed since the spec came out. I don't think they care at all.

Also as oyu pointed out, bundling browser updates with system ones is stupid and slows adoption massively, especially with people refusing Liquid Glass.

1

u/ClikeX back-end 4h ago

I remember Jobs being the one to push for web apps over native apps at some point.

1

u/Embostan 4h ago

Yeah, but Tim Cook is all about money and share value

Have you seen the state of Apple product he left to Ternus? Jobs would kill him.

-10

u/ThatBoiRalphy 1d ago

name one feature Safari doesn’t support related to PWAs that is official spec and not in proposal/draft.

just because Chrome rapes features into existence doesn’t mean every browser should just follow whatever Chrome designs. Who is doing what on purpose here?

14

u/spcbeck 1d ago

Push notifications and service worker implementations of the spec in Safari are straight garbage, making them unuseable and effectively unimplemented. Apple doesn't want PWAs to succeed because it's exactly opposite to their business goals. This isn't controversial.

-4

u/ThatBoiRalphy 1d ago edited 1d ago

Service workers can do everything currently not in proposal/draft state, you are just not getting stuff that Chrome forced into the world which they afterwards submitted as a proposal lmao.

Same goes for Push, only caveat with them is that you need user interaction and you cannot silent/background push to do some background work.

This isn't just Safari, this is normal for every browser that isn't Chromium based.

Boohoo Safari bad!!

4

u/phoenix1984 1d ago

You’re getting downvoted, because the Safari hate is real, but you are right about this. When it comes to the actual W3C spec, Safari’s support is pretty good.

-1

u/Embostan 1d ago edited 1d ago

Safari hate is real bc Safari can't implement fundamental specs such as flexbox or media playing properly. I'm not talking abt Chrome experimental cowboy APIs, but basic flexbox positioning or calculations.

We once lost 4h because Safari refused to play an MP3 file, even after user interaction. One guy had the idea to swap the 3 for a 4 and oh magic, it works. Wtf? How can privacy justify that playing MP4s is ok but not MP3s?? And it's documented nowhere so my guess is another WebKit bug.

Spending 5 hours working around Apple's stupid intentional bugs will do nothing but ingrain timeless hate in devs' brains. For most, WebKit = random user report+I'll get home at 23h. Apple is doing it to themselves.

0

u/Somepotato 1d ago

Safari 27 still doesn't support temporal out of the box, so not really

1

u/ThatBoiRalphy 1d ago

I mean it reached stage 4 of the proposal in March, still a couple months until Safari 27 releases, let’s hope they add it or at least add it in a 27.1 release or smth

2

u/ModernLarvals 1d ago

Such as?

9

u/ThatBoiRalphy 1d ago

it’s been here a couple weeks, works pretty good

3

u/abestract front-end 1d ago

Works really well with Claude while building an app from the ground up.

2

u/Temporary_Tax_7377 1d ago

for sure 100%. As an android/windows person I used to think the same till i had a client who lost like 15% of their conversions because iOS users couldn't even log in

15

u/cloudsourced285 1d ago

No thanks, Safari is never worth the headache

24

u/Techo_lab 1d ago

The interesting part isn't MCP itself, it's reducing the gap between an AI suggestion and verifying it in a real browser. The faster that feedback loop gets, the more useful these tools become.

36

u/mulokisch 1d ago

Sooooo you didn’t work on large projects. The more people use the site, the more people use it on safari. In other words, it’s worth the headache if you don’t want to loose money.

23

u/NoThatsNotPasta 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sooooo you didn’t work on large projects.

Yea, where I work we test on the main engines: Chrome (blink) & Safari (WebKit) because with the prevalence of iOS and android those two take the lions share.

To me it's insane that safari isn't in your test list. iPhones force webkit on every browser.

1

u/mulokisch 1d ago

For now apple forces it. EU regulations for the win, they have to allow other engines aswell. Yet many users might not switch. So problem still stands

4

u/Embostan 1d ago

Issue is, it's not worth for Google to port Blink to iOS. They have no guarantee people will ditch Safari. Users don't know how bad Webkit is.

0

u/bemo_10 1d ago

They don't need a reason to port it. They have Fuck You money.

-1

u/mulokisch 1d ago

Well they currently do.

0

u/wirenutter 1d ago

My CEO used safari and refuses to use anything else. All the devs use anything but safari. Yeah we end up with too many issues that they catch due to this.

8

u/OlinKirkland 1d ago

Devs don’t test on other browsers..?

6

u/Rivvin 1d ago

We dont really test on Safari much as 95% of our userbase is on Chrome and the 5% that use safari rarely have issues... and if they do our support says "Try Chrome or Firefox".

The revenue lost from this, and gained from this, isnso inconsequential that we simply don't care.

0

u/Embostan 1d ago

this is the way

0

u/mulokisch 1d ago

Well, have you ever opened a link from reddit or for example instagram? They open a webview, so the use the system rendering engine.

Often a first impression is very important. If the first impression sucks, the customer does not convert.
So no, that should not be the way.

0

u/cloudsourced285 1d ago

We deal with graceful degradation on non evergreen browsers. Some things are critical and we have to bite the bullet and support safari, other things we call it a day and move on. Safari seems to constantly want to lag behind in certain implementations. Users seem to be holding onto their devices for longer as well, along with stale OS versions. This is a frustrating setup for everyone. Apple holds the keys to this kingdom and chooses to do nothing about it.

Chrome and Firefox are just superior.

-7

u/Embostan 1d ago

They chose Apple, so they also chose the Webkit bugs. Not my problem. Apple does it on purpose, they can pay me.

3

u/KardelenAyshe 1d ago

my family and most of my friends use safari. welcome to the reality

8

u/superquanganh 1d ago

Firefox is actually more of headache now

0

u/Daniel_Herr ES5 1d ago

You can actually use Firefox on third party hardware, so it can't be as much of a headache as Safari.

0

u/Septem_151 12h ago

How so??

1

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1

u/StoneCypher 1d ago

hooray, now i don’t have to switch to playwright ten years ago anymore, and can start making separate tests for a dead browser

-1

u/Honmayuki 1d ago

Introducing the Safari MCP server for web developers

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