WebKit: ‘Designing Websites for iPhone X’

Nice piece by Timothy Horton writing for the WebKit blog on how websites can properly deal with the notch and “safe areas” on the iPhone X.

This is one reason why Apple considers it a strategic advantage not to permit third-party web rendering engines on iOS (in addition to maintaining control over the security and battery life aspects): on day one, every web view in iOS will support these CSS extensions, because they all use WebKit.

In the hypothetical world where Chrome for iOS was allowed to ship using Google’s own Blink rendering engine, Apple would be at Google’s mercy to support these features for Chrome users. I bet the Chrome team would adopt them quickly, but they might not be ready on day one, because Apple wouldn’t have given Google advance notice of the notch. And Apple simply wouldn’t want to cede that control.

★ Thursday, 28 September 2017