Safari doesn't work with some websites, but Firefox does, why?

Hello KB:

There are a few (very few) web site that do not code to standards. I have Firefox as a backup. However, I always send the site in question an E-mail politely suggesting that they fix their code to run with Safari (most do fix the code).

Barry

I think we're seeing a trend where websites aren't going to code for Safari. For instance, the Lancome site I've always ordered from just re-did their site and now it won't work with Safari. I wrote to them and amazingly, they wrote back that day to inform me of their change and asked me to use Firefox instead. I told them that I wasn't going to switch to Firefox for some instances. They said they would send my communication up to the decision maker, but I'm not holding my breath.

And guess what, Delta airlines is doing the same thing. I'm a Platinum member with that airline and now can't purchase my tickets online with them any longer.

I'm hoping someone at Apple is lobbying with these companies to keep programming for Safari. Apparently, I'm not being influential enough. It's just not little mom-and-pop websites not programming for Safari users. It's the biggies like Lancome and Delta Airlines.



iBook G4

Hello Lisa:

Welcome to Apple discussions.

I used to be Platinum with Delta, but I had different but most annoying experiences with that carrier pre Chapter 11. I think the casual approach to customer service is one reason why they are not successful. I switched to America West (now US Airways). Their site has Safari problems as well, but they are addressing the problem - not "blowing customers off."

I still contact any site that does not work in Safari.

Barry

Barry,

As an experienced developer, I honestly cannot code any more for an extra browser.

It is Apple's responsability to make their own browser compatible with the rest of the world.
Not the other way around.

If and only Apple really wants to make Safari a success like other browsers: IE, Firefox or Opera.
I still have doubts about that after seeing the latest Beta release.

Why are all the other known browsers enjoying some form of popularity like Netscape originally did? They are trying to make sure that they remain compatible up to some point with old standards too. If Apple cannot make it in the compatible world, then that's too bad. People will be more and more turned off to use it. Like many colleagues and co-developers.

Why is Firefox getting so much support these days from developers as well as getting bigger and bigger market share?
Because they are making it easier for us and they try to stay as compatible as they can be. Not the other way around.

Thinking that the site developers are all going to make the necessary tweakings to always remain compatible with an extra browser that isn't, it kinds of defeats the purpose of using a new product. More, it's utopia. A new product to debug? No thanks.

Honestly, Apple did not make the right decision in developing their own browser.
From what I heard from the Firefox world, Apple has decided not to work with the Firefox team in order to stay independent.
So that is where Safari is now.

If a customer of mine asks to be compatible with Safari, I just tell them that it will cost them a lot more than just being compatible with the mainstream browsers like IE, Firefox or Opera. And I show them the usage stats on most web sites.
Those usage statistics in most cases finalize the discussions. The low numbers speak by themselves. Most customers will not invest more to insure extra compatibility for such a small percentage. Let's be realistic too.

When Apple stops playing in this field on their own as an "independent" developer trying to push their own standards for marketing purposes or/and Safari becomes more usable, then I might reconsider. Otherwise not.

The main reason is economies of scale. No one except very few big ones (and still) will recode their web sites for Safari.

Apple has to do its job to be compatible. Only them can do it. They really want to have their own browser? Fair.
Then let Apple do it right.

Also, right now, Safari in its pre-release version is not compatible with lots of main Open Source applications.
Just to name a few very popular ones: vBulletin, Drupal CMS and FCKeditor, etc.

How come?

I am not sure the Open Source community will recode their applications either. The tendency is that they won't from what we can see in many support groups and forums. They expect Apple to do it and insure the upmost compatibility.

It's just too much time, energies and money in the end.

I think that Apple should start being reasonable and agree to alleviate some of the pain... they are creating in this arena.

Hopefully, they will make it the biggest goal: to make it compatible if they can.

We don't care about speed and gadgets. We all care more and more about compatibility to old and new standards and even more to all the other Open Source software that has already been developed world-wide that are out there right now.

Please don't contact your site. Instead, please ask Apple to be compatible.

Jean

HP Pavilion Windows Vista

HP Pavilion Windows Vista

Apple, are you listening?

Thanks for your informative explanation of how the browser world operates - and then there's Apple! I hope they take your message to heart.

In testing a community's website I find that Safari loses the ability to increase/decrease text size whenever I open a document on that site. The icons to increase or decrease simply "grey" out on me. The documents in question are pdf files containing minutes, agenda, etc. Any other page on that site can be be readily increased/decreased with Safari. Odd, to say the least. Firefox handles everything on the site beautifully.

Barry's post is on the money. I remember reading at some point that Safari was the most standards compliant browser available, but that just can't be true when you're required to bend standard code to support it. I was excited to see Safari 3, hoping it would support Google Chat and lots of other web features but it's a real disappointment.

If a customer of mine asks to be compatible with Safari, I just tell them that it will cost them a lot more than just being compatible with the mainstream browsers like IE, Firefox or Opera.

The problem with that is that IE is the least standards-compliant browser available, and is even inconsistent from version to version (as well as between platforms) in the way it renders sites. Historically, people have used IE as the standard, but that's problematic because (1) its developers haven't bothered to follow standards agreed upon by the W3C and (2) it doesn't even comform from version to version to its own standards.

A web site shouldn't be designed to be "compatible" with a set of browsers. The best web design practice is to design to W3C standards. Then you can tweak the code (while staying within standards as much as humanly possible) to deal with browser issues that you find in your testing, checking in as many modern browsers as is possible and reasonable.

Safari is closer to rendering according to web standards than some browsers, most especially IE. Safari is not perfect and there is room for improvement.

The most irresponsible party in this situation is Microsoft, since they have long ignored the trend in the web community to move towards a set of standards that could make this problem nonexistent or at least minimal.

And before anyone tries to say that IE should just be the standard, there are more problems with that than just the fact that IE in itself has been inconsistent in its rendering. Web standards exist for more reasons than just to pick a set of rules. Web standards are based largely on creating a code structure that is portable and accessible, logical in a way that allows web pages to render according to the device being used to access a web page. This is intended to enable access by everyone from the sight-impaired to the PDA user, as well as devices and methods of access not yet imagined.

Just curious. I went to the Lancome site and it seemed to work fine for me. What issues did you experience on their site?
I'm using Safari 3.0.2 on OSX 10.4.10





Mac Pro 2.66, 6GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.9) Convergent MI, Blackmagic HD Extreme, int RAID

Hi Jean:

I am a long way from "developer" status. I managed "VERY LARGE" IT organizations for many years. The parochial/myopic view of people who roll code is.....a bit amusing. I do not mean to denigrate your view. However, Apple has - albeit smaller than the folks elsewhere - a market share. Mozilla and the other people have (crass but true) a commercial interest just like Apple. I do not work for Apple nor am I an apologist for any corporation. However, the view is from the rarified atmosphere of corporate America, not people who roll code.

Barry

Browsing around the Lancome site works as it should with Lancome. It's when I tried to put something in the shopping cart. No matter which item I selected, nothing would be saved to the shopping cart. That's when I contacted Lancome, thinking they had something buggy with their site at the moment. After they learned my OS and browser, they informed me that they built their site with Firefox in mind and not Safari and recommended that I use Firefox.

Same thing with the Delta Airlines site. I've always purchased tickets through their site, but they changed something within the last two weeks and though I can browse around the site just fine and use certain features (including their "Contact us" links), which interact with me fine, it's the purchasing of a ticket where it gets hung up. Say, you're searching for flight options and it gives you 12 to choose from for your date of travel. There's no way for you to select the flight you want to take. No buttons show up.

Some developers are lazy and don't want to incorporate another browser into their testing. So what they do is purposefully not let their sites work with any browsers other then the ones they tested their sites with.

Sometimes, however, browsers like Safari will still work with their sites. The trick is telling Safari to identify itself to the website as the other tested and approved browser (e.g. Firefox). If you are using Safari 3 (the beta), you can do this by first selecting the debug menu, then user agent, and then choosing a browser like Firefox. I do not think the debug menu is listed by default on Safari 2. However, you can download the free application Tinker tool and enable it. Then try the Site again. This does not always work, but it often does.

Hello,

Some websites don't work in Safari. I also still have
an old web based email account at 12move.nl, which I
cannot use with Safari. Also couple of other sites
simply seem not to work when I try to open them with
safari, menus don't work etc. Why is there still such
an incompatibility issue with Safari? I love all mac
stuff, and also the software, but now I'm forced to
use Firefox instead.

Power Mac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Power Mac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Power Mac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Just another quick note that was surprising... the eBay site just told me this:

"You are currently using: Safari 1.0"

Seems a little strange that it would identify version 3 as version 1. It recommended I use Firefox.

It isn't enough to say they are 'most compliant'. The browser works differently than the others.

I really wanted to use the Apple product. I initially used Firefox since I used it in the Win world. I tried Camino - very similar.

Several of the sites I frequent don't consistently work with Safari - e.g. TV guide frequently breaks, townhall.com and several others. In every case, Camino and Firefox work flawlessy. When one tries to scroll in a frame with a scrollbar within another frame, the outside frame scrolls too. None of the other browsers do this.

When all of the others behave uniformly and Safari doesn't, I would submit that de facto, Apple is the deviant.

When all of the others behave uniformly and Safari doesn't, I would submit that de facto, Apple is the deviant.

That's really not how it works and it actually can't work that way.

First, it should be stressed that Safari is not perfect in its compliance with standards. There is room for improvement. But it is better in its standards compliance than most, and much better than some glaringly bad browsers (in particular IE).

But more important to this discussion is the following (which I just realized is a repetition of the ideas in my post further up in this thread):

There is a set of web standards that has been centrally agreed upon (and is continually developed) in order to ensure that web sites can be coded consistently. This is not just to arbitrarily choose a set of rules (which is what some web browsers do). It's more fundamental than that. W3C standards are largely decided upon to ensure the best accessibility for everyone, from people with disabilities to people who speak different languages, and for people using any platform, browser, or device to access web pages. The idea is that the standards ensure a code framework that, if followed by both web page designers and web browser rendering, creates pages that will make sense and work properly no matter how they are accessed.

Web browsers that don't conform to that set of standards (Internet Explorer being the biggest offender in this area) are in large part to blame for the problems that occur with inconsistency in web page rendering from browser to browser. Many web designers, in particular the less-informed, tend to try to code for IE for Windows, which in itself is a flawed concept since IE isn't even consistent from version to version. This exacerbates the problem. IE's rendering in itself can't successfully be used as a standard, partly because of its own inconsistencies, but even more because its web page rendering methods don't satisfy any standard that would enable portability from device to device, language to language, and platform to platform.