Tag: Web

Apple continues pushing passkey technology through its Developer portal. This time Apple provided:

• Spotlight on: Passkeys – case studies of passkeys usage by notable vendors;
• Q&A with the passkeys team – questions and answers on passkeys adoption;
• Secure your apps and games – guide on passkeys materials available on Apple Developer portal.

Recently Google started supporting passkeys, making passwordless sign in process more mainstream.

WebKit team announces new documentation resource for developers.

New resource provides information on WebKit internals, its subsystems, security aspects and many more.

New portal provides following features:

• Built-in search helps you quickly locate articles.
• Documentation can be read offline and online.
• Documents are authored in Markdown, allowing members to easily contribute. 
• Theming matches your system appearance (Light/Dark mode).
• Documentation is hosted on GitHub, allowing developers to submit PRs to make edits and review changes.

WebKit: Documentation

WebKit Blog: Introducing WebKit Documentation

Google now supports passkeys allowing passwordless experience. Also, when using passkey you don't need to use 2FA to sign in to your account.

Passkeys created on Apple devices are synced through iCloud Keychain, making it easier to sign in from any device.

As per 9to5Mac, for passkeys to work, user should be using:

• Google: Chrome 109+, Android 9+, ChromeOS 109+
• Apple: Safari 16+, iOS 16, macOS Ventura
• Microsoft: Edge 109+, Windows 10/11

In order to set up passkey for your account, follow this link.

Google Blog: The beginning of the end of the password

Apple Developer: Passkeys

References:

• You can now use passkeys to sign into your Google Account
• Google Announces Support for Account Passkeys

Apple Safari is now second most popular desktop browser.

Statcounter reports (at the moment this post was created):

• Google Chrome – 66.13%
• Apple Safari – 11.87%
• Microsoft Edge – 11%
• Mozilla Firefox – 5.65%
• Opera – 3.09%
• Microsoft IE – 0.55%

Statcounter: Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide

References:

• Apple is still battling the fallout from iPhone’s Batterygate throttling controversy
• Apple’s Safari is once again the world’s second most-used desktop web browser

WebKit team publishes guide on push notification usage to control app icon badges using Badging API.

Guides covers badge control, notification system prompt, and other technical details.

W3C: Badging API

WebKit Blog: Badging for Home Screen Web Apps

Weekend is here, so is another list of great reads.

• Starting with good NSPredicate guide by Natascha Fadeeva – Get started with NSPredicate to filter NSFetchRequest in Core Data;
  
  
• Activities and attachments in the XCTest framework by Majid Jabrayilov covers good practices to make your tests more understandable by other developers;
  
  
• Marco Eidinger covers important topic of debugging of authentication flow – Debugging ASWebAuthenticationSession;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee explores proper error handling approaches in Swift – The operation couldn’t be completed: solving errors in Swift;
  
  
• From Concept to Code: Strategies for Planning Animations in SwiftUI is truly nice guide by Leonardo Maia Pugliese on animations in SwiftUI;
  
  
• A little bit of pixel hunting from David Smith – Spot the Difference;
  
  
• SwiftUI layout technique is covered in Working with percentages in SwiftUI layout by Ole Begemann;
  
  
• Using foregroundColor(), foregroundStyle() or tint() to set text color in SwiftUI by Natalia Panferova explores several ways of setting element color in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Couple of hints by Jesse Squires – Improving multiplatform SwiftUI code and Xcode Tip: filter to show modified files only;
  
  
• Enabling the Inspection of Web Content in Apps by Patrick Angle provides invaluable help on debugging of web content;
  
  
• And nice guide on attributed strings in iOS 15 and up – AttributedString in iOS 15 by Sarun W.

And that is it for today. See you next week!

Apple publishes first beta for iOS/iPadOS 16.4, macOS Ventura 13.3, watchOS 9.4, tvOS 16.4. This time operating systems are accompanied by Xcode 14.3 beta.

Developers will now be able to enable developer beta from Software Update on iPhones and iPads.

Apart from that new beta versions add support for more emojis.

iOS 16.4 brings support for Web Push to Apple's mobile devices.

A web app that has been added to the Home Screen can request permission to receive push notifications as long as that request is in response to direct user interaction -- such as tapping on a 'subscribe' button provided by the web app. iOS or iPadOS will prompt the user to give the web app permission to send notifications. The user can then manage those permissions per web app in Notifications Settings -- just like any other app on iPhone and iPad.

WebKit team

Also this beta works on Matter support for Apple platforms including Apple TV.

Beta download: Operating Systems

Release notes:

• iOS & iPadOS 16.4 Beta Release Notes
• watchOS 9.4 Beta Release Notes
• tvOS 16.4 Beta Release Notes
• macOS Ventura 13.3 Beta Release Notes
• Xcode 14.3 Beta Release Notes

WebKit Blog: Web Push for Web Apps on iOS and iPadOS

Reference:

• iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 Betas Add Support for Web Push Notifications
• iOS 16.4 Beta Adds New Emoji Like Donkey, Jellyfish, Pink Heart, Hyacinth, Ginger, Goose, Shaking Face and More

Following recent updates to tvOS and HomePod software, Apple now releases updates to iOS/iPadOS, watchOS and macOS. tvOS and HomePod software are updated to 16.3.2 to address Siri and HomeKit issues.

iOS 16.3.1 updates Crash Detection algorithms to address recent reports of false positives.

These updates fix issues and address important security vulnerabilities. Notably, WebKit security issue is resolved in macOS 13.2.1.

However, there are reports that iOS 16.3.1 is breaking Google Photos app.

References:

• iOS 16.3.1 Breaks Google Photos App
• macOS 13.2.1 update fixes WebKit security breach that has been ‘actively exploited’
• iOS 16.3.1 includes iPhone 14 Crash Detection changes after false positive complaints
• macOS 13.2.1
• iOS 16.3.1 and iPadOS 16.3.1
• Big Safari & Kernel issues fixed in iOS 16.3.1, macOS 13.2.1 updates
• PSA: Make Sure to Update Soon, macOS Ventura 13.2.1 and iOS 16.3.1 Address Actively Exploited Vulnerability
• Apple fixes Siri bug in tvOS 16.3.2 & HomePod update
• Apple Releases HomePod 16.3.2 Software With Fix for Siri Request Failures
• Apple fixes annoying HomePod bug that caused HomeKit requests to time out and fail the first time you ask

Are we server yet? page launched with references to current uses of server-side Swift,list of tools and educational materials to get started.

Developers could contribute to this page with their projects or tools.

Website: Are we server yet? (GitHub)

Wow! It's 50th episode here. Let's get something interesting for today's good reads.

• Let's start with good explanation on how Rosetta 2 translates x86 code into ARM – Why is Rosetta 2 fast? by Dougall J;
  
  
• Swift Concurrency – Things They Don’t Tell You by Wojciech Kulik provides great deep dive into proper concurrent code development;
  
  
• And another article on proper concurrency practices – How Does Swift Concurrency Prevents Thread Explosions? by Lee Kah Seng;
  
  
• Brett Ohland goes into details on data formatting – You can stop writing date format strings like “yyyy-MMM-dd”;
  
  
• Apple Maps are getting better now, learn how to add those to your web site – Using MapKit JS to Embed Apple Maps in Websites by Moritz Philip Recke;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese shares an article on making SwiftUI code modular with SwiftPM – Introduction to SwiftUI Modularisation with SPM;
  
  
• Core Data property mapping to Swift is suboptimal, learn how to better handle those with article by Natascha Fadeeva – How to handle non-optional Core Data properties in Swift;
  
  
• When .animation animates more (or less) than it’s supposed to by Ole Begemann covers interesting aspects of animation behavior in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Jordan Morgan explains how to make your collection or table view better compatible with keyboard – Basic Keyboard Navigation for Collection & Tableview.;
  
  
• Widgets and other extensions need access to shared files – Share files between your iOS app, Widget and WatchKit extensions by Marco Eidinger covers exactly that;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee provides good guide on result builders in Swift – Result builders in Swift explained with code examples;
  
  
• Pin a view to the bottom of safe area in SwiftUI by Natalia Panferova solves one of simple things you might need in your app;
  
  
• Craig Hockenberry shares a hint on how to keep your storage free space under control – Managing Xcode Downloads.

Big list for this week. And, as always, more to come next time!