Until that happens, Safari will always be the only browser that truly matters if you use a iOS device and that's a fact.
This is a double sided coin. 90% of the browsers on Google Play are absolute trash (if not, arguably, straight up malware), and some are apparently very popular.
Give 3rd party iOS browsers more permissions, and devs will exploit every single bit of privilege to the max, and then some, en masse.
Chrome, Brave, Firefox, Edge, DuckDuckGo, etc. are used by ~100% people.
https://support.apple.com/en-eg/guide/security/sec15bfe098e/...
> Memory pages marked as both writable and executable can be used only by apps under tightly controlled conditions: The kernel checks for the presence of the Apple-only dynamic code-signing entitlement. Even then, only a single mmap call can be made to request an executable and writable page, which is given a randomized address. Safari uses this functionality for its JavaScript Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler.
In other words, Apple only allows Apple to do Javascript JIT on iOS.
But Vivaldi (the company), over the course of many years, took their desktop browser from a Chromium clone to the most feature-packed browser currently available. I’m confidently they’ll do the same with their mobile browsers.
Alternative browsers don't have that much control over what's rendered, so they are probably using the same content blocking functionality baked into Safari.
Vivaldi's schtick is that they have every setting and feature that you want and quite a few that you don't. Tab stacks, pinned tabs, split screen, mouse gestures, notes, a full mail client, an RSS reader, ad blocker, custom themes, all built into the browser. And just a ton of customizability. You can control the position and show/hide every UI element (vertical tabs is amazing if you've never tried it), you can create "command chains" (a set of commands which fire in sequence on a keyboard shortcut), and if that's not enough, you can install CSS and JS mods for arbitrary functionality.
But this is just on desktop, just about none of those features exist on mobile right now.
The only other bottom address bar browser with gestures that I have seen is Kiwi on Android and I am surprised this paradigm is still not more common.
There are nice ideas there, but if I were them, I'd focus on making sure you are not losing users before going all in on growth and features.
It's literally a game changer, sonething many want, yet the sheer lack of care and concern for those with vision disabilities, or just older users, is astounding.
Every desktop browser does zoom reflow, and it was removed from chrome just because google wanted to punish website who didn't make proper mobile websites. What a bunch of asshats.
yeah, "supposed to" is doing a quite a bit of heavy lifting. it has gotten soooo much better than in the past, but yet things still do slightly weird things depending on browser. the closer to the designer you are, the more you notice. by notice, i mean have it pointed out to you.
There is ongoing pressure to open that up and there have been changes to allow non-Safari default browsers, but at the moment WebKit is still the name of the game for iOS.
Check out https://browser.kagi.com/ for one that wraps WebKit with web extensions and other goodness in a unique brand feeling browser.
And of course https://www.icab.de/ for offering a unique WebKit experience for over a decade now:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090426232408/http://www.icab.d...
> We’ve integrated an elegant desktop-style Tab Bar in the UI by default.
I think there's a good reason why no mobile browsers implement desktop style tabs. Even the Vivaldi screenshots in this post show just 2.5 tabs with significant truncation of all the visible tabs. On tablet this might work (where other browsers have a more traditional tab view), but on portrait phone this seems like a terrible idea.
You could also do the same with the url bar, and then you're looking at just a bit more vertical space vs safari with more information and functionality
iOS Safari has done it for a long time, since the first Plus iPhone, as long as you use it in portrait.
Still a little rough around the edges (sometimes freezes; restart it; and switching orientation is slow), but the pros outweigh the cons.
Edit: I can’t find any hard and fast rule about browsers not being allowed WebExtensions on iOS, so interesting to see for sure.
It happily crashes, lags, as in, the touches take a couple of seconds to register, and overheats the iPadlet like I've been using the pen for 30+ minutes in the summer.
Also, I can not understand why they do not have the custom themes on mobile, Android or i*OS.
It's interesting to note that other people have entirely different usage patterns of their phones and actually prefer a small screen to a proper computer.
Not saying either is right/wrong, just curious. How prevalent is this on HN, I wonder?
Edit:
It is quite fast. Search button tries to fix address bar location, but I don’t like it. Switching tabs is a pain and sweeping them interferes with iOS app switching. Difficult to add a new tab
