Apple’s Safari and WebKit team has reached out for feedback on Twitter as it faces heavy criticism of the browser’s bugs and missing support.
Apple Evangelist and developer advocate on the Web Developer Experience team for Safari and WebKit Jen Simmons, tweeted that “Everyone in my mentions [is] saying Safari is the worst, it’s the new IE.” This led her to ask users for feedback, preferably highlighting specific bugs and instances of missing support that inhibit websites and apps.
Simmons also asked users to contact her with bugs that are “several years old and not fixed” including links from bugs.webkit.org or a Feedback number from Apple’s Feedback Assistant so it can be looked into more closely.
Safari has long been criticized for its many bugs, website compatibility, and overall user experience. Apple unveiled a substantial Safari redesign last year at WWDC, leading many users to complain that the changes were “counterintuitive.” After months of working to tweak the ambitious redesign according to the feedback they received the team gave up and reverted back to the previous Safari design by default.
Apple continues to demand that apps on iOS and iPadOS use the WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript to browse the web.