Man, this is frustrating! Every browser I try has everything running smoothly, but then there’s Safari. It’s unbelievable that a multi-billion dollar company can’t get the basics right.
Today I learned that Safari has a ~20% market share. Who knew? Not me, since I’ve never owned an Apple device, so I never got to check my site on one until yesterday. After three years of development, I opened my website in Safari for the first time, and wow, it was a disaster. There were blue outlines, elements were all over the place, and the font rendering was awful. I’m just doing this as a hobby and to learn, but one thing I’ve learned is that frontend development on Safari is a real struggle. And it seems like that’s a pretty common opinion!
Trying to get started with Safari when you don’t have any Apple products is a pain. Safari for Windows? Nope! You’re left relying on third-party apps like Browserstack, which aren’t cheap. After some frustrating searches, I found a way to test with Playwright. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.
And don’t get me started on the font rendering! I spent 40 minutes yesterday trying to figure out how to fix it, but no luck. I have no clue what the problem is or how to resolve it. Google, Reddit, and Stack Overflow didn’t provide any helpful solutions either. The fixes that everyone raves about didn’t work for me. My variable fonts look bold and strong on other browsers, but on Safari? They look like they’re on a diet!
Why does something that should be straightforward turn into such a headache?