iOS 7 Safari: Features and bugs HTML5 developers need to be aware of

Safari, Apple's web browser on both Mac and mobile, got a substantial update with iOS 7, including a new interface, new features, and for developers, new API. The latter brings with it some benefits, but apparently a bunch of bugs that need to be avoided, worked around, or otherwise dealt with. From Max Firtman on MobileXWeb:

Apple has rolled out iOS 7 and in a few days the new devices iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C . As expected Apple has publish just 10% of the necessary information for web developers and I can say without fear of mistake that this is the buggiest Safari version since 1.0. In this post I’ll show you the new APIs and abilities and most of the problems that you will need to deal with right now if you have a website or a webapp.

And from Michael Mullany on Sencha:

[There] are two very big bugs in iOS 7. First, WebSQL permissions to increase the default 5MB of space for an app to the previously permitted 50MB limit no longer work correctly, and require a workaround. Second, “Save to Home Screen” apps are basically broken. Once more than four apps are saved to home screen, the save slots are recycled and sometimes duplicated, and the phone has to be rebooted in order to clear itself. Further, any external URI no longer opens correctly and all JavaScript modal dialogs (alert, prompt etc.) are disabled. Finally, If your app uses AppCache and you are managing state via hash or other mechanisms, the history object will never update, disabling history.back.

This stuff is way above my brain grade, so if you're a developer working on HTML5 apps that depend on Safari, give the full articles a read and let me know what you think. Either way, iOS 7.1 is already being tested at Apple, let's hope a lot of fixes are already being tested with it.

Source: MobileXWeb, Sencha, thanks Dev!