Comments on: Browser Warfare, Supporting Safari, and the Future of Macs

By: Firefox Descargar

Firefox Descargar — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 20:59:25 +0000

La versiÃ³n mÃ¡s Ãºltima del browser 2 del firefox del mozilla estÃ¡ en mi opiniÃ³n muy buena. Â¡CaÃ a Internet Explorer 7 y el firefox y yo de la transferencia directa nunca iremos detrÃ¡s!

By: feeef

feeef — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:07:58 +0000

I think that Apple has to (and will?) update Safari to work better with Ajax stuff that are compatible with Firefox. That would save a lot of work!
However, in my opinion, Apple is aware that intel based macs that will soon have great software for virtualization, as well as being the only computers to run natively OS X, Windows and Linux, will be the best machines for cross platform developpment. So maybe Apple is playing with that to force web developers to switch to an intel based mac in order to install Windows on it while keeping the ability to test everything on OS X without the requirement for another machine.

By: Eduo

Eduo — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:12:35 +0000

It’s really amazing the arguments come up with for not supporting the third-largest used browser in the market. It’s kind of deja-vu

“Why should we develop for Netscape 0.9 if Mosaic already works for everyone and hasn’t got enough market share?”

Replace the above with any of several combinations in the past:
Netscape/IE
IE/Netscape
Firefox/IE
IE7/IE

Oh, wait, I know what it is this time. Firefox is the new darling and IE is “the cousin that won’t leave”, we want to support the former because we like it and we have to support the latter because we need a job. We justify not supporting Safari with the same insipid, fanatical, shortsighted arguments that were used in the past(*) for browsers that are now the norm.

Safari is a better-than-average browser and engine. It’s better than IE (and some would argue than Firefox) in a lot of aspects and just because it’s not the “fashionable” browser is not reason enough. Tell it like it is. You don’t want to bother with it, you don’t know how to adapt to it, you care not for competition to your chosen browser (choose any that fits) but please, please, stop with the whining about Safari. Having more than two browsers is a GOOD thing. If you can’t hack it enough to adapt to Safari then provide suitable degradation (which you should be doing anyway) as for most users the level of compatibility provided by Safari is more than enough (gosh, that means you may lose all the nifty web2.0-ish stuff you’ve shoved into your website without proper degradation, I guess that must be Safari’s fault then).

If your website doesn’t work at all in Safari then you’re a mediocre programmer. Users of Netscape, Firefox, IE on the mac and Safari are more than used of having limited functionality from sites that cater only to IE for Windows (and, to a lesser degree, other combinations).

Get a grip, be professional, degrade properly, stop whining.

And please, PLEASE, stop with the insane suggestions of “let Safari use Gecko, which is so good I’d go to bed with it”. It’s childish and makes you look like a bigoted fanboy.

(*)Arguments I’m so glad others didn’t pay attention to, as in the end most of new standards and the new generations of browsers that pushed them are what have pushed the evolution of HTML, CSS and JS to their current level.

By: John Beppu

John Beppu — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 07:05:07 +0000

The Safari developers seem to be using Mozilla’s Javascript test suite ( http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=27 ), so I have hope that the 2 Javascript implementations become equally robust in the future. Every little bit they could do to make their Javascript implementation Just Work ™ would be appreciated.

By: btn

btn — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 04:18:13 +0000

As a product manager, I’ll chime in that Safari support is worthwhile, and it’s a great service differentiator. (Your market may vary.) Safari is the default Mac browser, and it’s the most Mac-like browser. I’m surprised that there’s not a debate about Opera support. ;-)

By: Alexei

Alexei — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:00:03 +0000

As a marketer, I feel I should pipe in.. I find that consistently about 10% of ‘average’ urban samples are on safari.. this is middle and upper income brackets. For a public audience, safari is essential.. for an enterprise audience, you have more lattitude.

By: Chris Iufer

Chris Iufer — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:40:53 +0000

Being around mac people all day at work I know that very few who stray outside of Safari. Being on a Mac myself, I can crosscheck my work in firefox and safari…never letting either one get out of step with the progress of the app. When Im to a stable and well developed place, then I will switch over to a PC and do my IE testing. Believe it or not, there are even consistencies in Firefox across the two platforms, so its absolutely mandatory to check both. You can choose not to support mac, but judging by the large mac web-developer base these days, you will alienate most of your peers who’se opinions you mostlikely will value the most. Mac people have accepted cross-os testing for years so join the crowd and make the web better.

By: Mark Wubben

Mark Wubben — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:46:04 +0000

Rob, fair enough. Then the question becomes “is this site worth installing a different browser for”, which unfortunately perhaps is a business decision/risk the site owner makes.

By: Rob Sanheim

Rob Sanheim — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:17:10 +0000

Mark: Its not that they don’t know how, its that they have no reason to. The same reason that so many IE users never install Firefox – inertia. And with Safari, there is even less of a reason to install FF or anything else, because Safari works fine and doesn’t have security issues like IE does in the win32 world.

By: Matthew Ratzloff

Matthew Ratzloff — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:13:06 +0000

Since Apple has made Safari open source, in my ideal web application developer fantasy world the KHTML guys would retire Konqueror and put all their effort fully behind Safari. I doubt that will ever happen, though. Still, I look forward to the day when we can download Safari for Windows, Linux, or OS X.

Also, expect Opera share to rise some in the coming year or so, what with the Nintendo Wii deal and all.

By: Mark Wubben

Mark Wubben — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 18:57:05 +0000

What’s up with Mac users supposedly not knowing how to install a different browser? You mean they also cannot install Adium or TextMate? Can’t drag-n-drop?

By: Kris G.

Kris G. — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:51:37 +0000

Yup. Gotta have Safari as a first class citizen.

For a custom intranet web-app I’m building, over half of the users are Mac based. They have been relegated to “also ran” for far too long.

The downside is the development effort seems like torture…

By: Rob Sanheim

Rob Sanheim — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:20:12 +0000

Also, for some of those asking what Safari lacks – one thing I’ve been bitten by is the rich text thing. Safari has very limited support for the API that 99% of the rich text editors use (I think its “contentEditable” ?) – not sure what progress is made on this in the nightlies.

So that means that TinyMCE, Dojo’s Editor, FCKEditor, whatever – all of theme have very limited support or none at all in Safari.

By: cedric

cedric — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:18:11 +0000

+1 for the mac mini. It’s inexpensive and compact (I use synergy as a virtual KVM switch).
If you need a workaround for the lack of XSL support in Safari (scriptable XSL that is..), check out Freja (http://www.csscripting.com/Freja).

By: Rob Sanheim

Rob Sanheim — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:18:03 +0000

The answer of “just use Firefox” just doesn’t work. The typical college kid who has a MacBook because its sexy will not care (and may not know how) about getting Firefox since Safari is there and it works. I’m sure most developers have multiple browsers installed, regardless of platform (I think I have 5 or 6, though I only use the “holy trio”), but for your typical user Safari will be it.

By: Mark Wubben

Mark Wubben — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 16:44:37 +0000

Leland, I’d say that such metrics are largely moot, but I’ll agree with you that Safari is the default browser on OS X and should therefore be supported by public websites and applications.

That said, I also find Safari isn’t the greatest browser for JavaScript-based applications. At least Firefox/Gecko is cross-platform and has far less issues.

By: assaf

assaf — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 16:41:14 +0000

Unfortunately, there’s just enough differences between Safari and Konqueror that testing with one doesn’t mean it will work with the other. They come from but no longer share the exact same codebase.

So I went and bought a Mac (I always wanted one). True they’re not that expensive, but it’s money, it’s time, it’s a lot of energy spent chasing minor nuances, and not all projects can justify that expense.

I’m impressed with Safari, I think it’s a good browser. But does the world really need another browser?

By: Tom Trenka

Tom Trenka — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:59:27 +0000

In all honestly, if you are developing (public) web sites for a living you can drop the $500 or so on a Mini and use it as a testing platform. This is called an operating expense in most countries; you may think that not many people use Safari but the gains that Apple is making in the hardware market should be enough to justify the expense.

I’ve been based primarily on Windows since 3.1, and recently I bought a MacBook Pro with Parallels, and use that to do an awful lot of development now. While I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that spending that kind of money is necessary, I would say that it’s possible now to be working cross-platform without a huge outlay, and that means there’s no real excuse to not develop for Safari, shortcomings of the browser non-withstanding.

By: Leland Scott

Leland Scott — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:52:47 +0000

Once again, I see the knee-jerk reply from some of those commenting here: Why not just use Firefox? I suggest you read the article to understand why, but in a nutshell, the answer is: Safari is a much better, faster browser on the Mac than Firefox is. It provides functionality to Mac users that Firefox doesn’t. It’s about one-half as fast on a Mac as it is on a PC. In CSS parsing, Safari is the fastest browser available. In JavaScript on both platforms, Opera is the fastest, though Safari isn’t far behind. The issue isn’t so much supporting Safari as it is avoiding IE-specific, proprietary JavaScript and CSS. If you avoid those things and stick to standards, you’ll likely be fine with Safari. (The one big area is XML and Content-Editable, but those are coming.) However, it wouldn’t cost anybody very much to just do a quick run-through with Safari. It only costs $20 for a day of remote connection to a Mac through browsercam, as just one possibility. I don’t know how close Konqueror is to Safari these days, but that would be better than nothing.

By: Dale

Dale — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:35:32 +0000

Hakan and Phill - Safari does support XSLT, though it's not hooked up to a Javascript API. Either you didn't know this, or are being purposely vague. Why is it a frequent response in these comments to say 'I have a PC and can't test Safari'? Why aren't you testing your web sites with real users? Not only could you support Safari but you could get real feedback during the development of your sites. All application/desktop programmers do this. Why don't many web developers?