They have done a ton on the CSS side in particular, I agree with that, and its in a better place than it was 3 years ago, no doubt about that either.
My point still stands on interop though: They aren't picking anything where the interop is divergent and tricky for developers to navigate, and most of this was on their roadmap as going to implement soon anyway. They aren't tackling any thorny issues like OPFS, which is where developers want them to figure out interoperability for consistency because it moves the entire platform forward in big meaningful ways (for instance, makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps)
I applaud their CSS and HTML work though, that's been nice to see.
> makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps
You will need to be specific about what missing API will magically make this true.
Because all I see people on here ask for are things like MIDI support which are nice and all but have been used by companies to track you. Which is why Google who is fully supportive of this has no issues adding it in without any thought to privacy.
Filesystem persistence removes a whole host of complexities from applications
For instance, I would no longer have to store files on a server, I could simply save them locally for the user, which makes it easier for them to have portable files, use it with other apps etc.
It also reduces the startup cost of some apps. If for instance I wanted to make a photo editing app, its going to be cheaper to store edited photos back onto the users device, than it is for me to upload them to a server and store them, especially over time.
It removes alot of developer overhead and it has benefits for the user (IE, the files are more portable, since they're on your machine, not someone elses).
Currently we are perpetually stuck with having to re-create virtual representations of file systems and they aren't the same thing, not by a long shot.
Not by default. It’s not inherent to it at all. I’m honestly not sure how it does, given the idea would be to restrict FS access to only files the user grants permissions to read / write, so they can’t write arbitrary things to the file system. There’s other techniques they can use to make it blind / privacy focused as well
When you ask people about "what PWA standards are you talking about" people inevitably bring up Chrome's half-baked non-standards half of which both Safari and Firefox are in opposition to.
WebMIDI is just one such example. Safari and Firefox were against it. Then Firefox relented and implemented it, and ran into tracking literally the day after they released it.
Others are WebUSB, WebHID, WebSerial etc.
It's refreshing to see people discussing something else like Origin Private Filesystem for a change.
It is Apple throwing up objections to focusing on other things as far as interop goes though. They have alot of weight in the discussion at hand.
I know Google throws some up too (JPEG XL much) but Apple is somewhat notorious for this.
I should also mention, there was an episode of the ShopTalk Show podcast where their developer evangelist was pushing for most of the things in this list when talking about Interop, which makes me believe they had their minds pretty well decided going into the whole thing.
Whenever I see people complain about this, it always seems to be specs. that aren’t on the standards track. Which basically means that it’s a spec. that Google wrote and both Mozilla and Apple rejected.
It takes only two independent implementations to make something a standard. If it’s not on the standards track, it means Google couldn’t convince anybody else to implement it.
This is not Apple throwing up objections. This is Google trying to push bad stuff unilaterally and nobody else going along with it.
Safari has supported OPFS for some time. But Interop isn’t mainly a “please implement this” list, it’s a list of priority areas for browsers to become consistent with each other and with standards. If you think there’s a problematic lack of cross-browser consistency for OPFS, then definitely nominate it as a focus area for Interop 2025. Anyone is welcome to propose work items.
My point still stands on interop though: They aren't picking anything where the interop is divergent and tricky for developers to navigate, and most of this was on their roadmap as going to implement soon anyway. They aren't tackling any thorny issues like OPFS, which is where developers want them to figure out interoperability for consistency because it moves the entire platform forward in big meaningful ways (for instance, makes PWAs more potent alternatives to native apps)
I applaud their CSS and HTML work though, that's been nice to see.