Apple has imposed a strict “Safari only” policy for its recently launched HTML5 demo. Other browsers – including Google’s Chrome – are blocked from loading the showcase features.
“Apple is using trickery to block out browsers other than Safari, with the end result that browsers with better support for web standards than Safari can’t access the demos,” explained Thom Holwerda of OS News.
“[For example], if you compare Safari’s and Chrome’s support for HTML5, you’ll see that Chrome has far better support. [So] it seems like Apple is using the same sneaky marketing tactics as Microsoft does with its HTML5 demos page – which doesn’t really use any HTML5 either.”
Holwerda’s assessment was echoed by an Opera employee known as “Haavard” – who opined that HTML5 appeared to be little more than a “buzzword” to Apple.
“Apple claims to promote HTML5 and an open Web, but the page uses browser sniffing to block other browsers, vendor prefixes for the CSS3 stuff they are using (even if other browsers support border-radius it won’t work because it’s coded using -webkit-border-radius), and the patent-encumbered H.264 for video,” Haavard wrote in a blog post.
“In fact, it seems that the only things that are HTML5 on that page are HTML5 <audio> and <video>. So when the page doesn’t work in Opera or other browsers it isn’t because these browsers don’t support HTML5. It’s because Apple uses browser sniffing and vendor prefixes, and in addition to that they aren’t really testing a lot of HTML5 at all. Most of their demos seem to have got nothing to do with HTML5, as a matter of fact.”
