Safari website compatibility issues increasing

[theorist9]

Safari has always had compatibility issues with certain sites; there are some specific ones that historically haven't worked well with Safari.

But starting about a year ago, the problem has become more general. I frequently notice sites that used to work fine with Safari not loading, or loading very slowly (e.g., nytimes.com). When I switch to Firefox, everything is fine. Has anyone else noticed this on their Mac devices?

I specifically recall having a serious issue with the 3D embed on NASA's whereIsWebb site (in June 2022), in which not only Safari, but my entire computer, froze for several seconds. And this was repeatable. This did not occur with Firefox, Chrome or Edge.

Over this time, I've been using a 2019 27" i9 iMac running the latest versions of Monterey and Safari (which are currently 12.7.1 and 17.1, respectively). My internet connection is reasonably fast—certainly fast enough to load websites:

 

[KingOfPain]

My e-mail provider revamped their login screen a while ago. Since then it takes over 10 seconds to display anything other than a blank screen on Safari.
With the Vivaldi browser it takes only a second. I‘m not exactly sure what is going on there.

 

[Andropov]

I fear this is only going to get worse after the EU regulations force Apple to allow non-WebKit browsers on iOS

 

[theorist9]

I fear this is only going to get worse after the EU regulations force Apple to allow non-WebKit browsers on iOS

Sorry, not following how this relates to what I'm experiencing--could you please explain?

 

[Andropov]

Sorry, not following how this relates to what I'm experiencing--could you please explain?

I fear that we could see a replay of what happened around Internet Explorer 6, where many webpages only worked on IE6 because that’s the only browser where they were tested. Currently, the only thing stopping Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera) from becoming the de-facto standard is Safari (w/WebKit). It’s just not economically reasonable to have a webpage that can’t be read well on iPhones and iPads.

However the EU regulations will force Apple to allow non-WebKit based browsers on iOS and iPadOS. Currently the iOS version of Chrome is based on WebKit too. If this becomes popular and the market share of Safari takes a significant hit, many business/developers would be happy to just test their webs on Chrome, essentially leaving many more bugs like this open in Safari.