Can't load the web page

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Nothing wrong with your Safari. Their website forwards me to a blank page

http://www.oldnavy.com/browse/info.do?cid=8759
http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/info.do?cid=8808
http://www.gap.com/browse/info.do?cid=8768

Which if you open it on Firefox says that Firefox 1.0 and Nescape 7.0 for the Mac are the browsers that are compatible when I go to the page that Banana Republic, Oldnavy, and Gap forward me to. Going back to their homepage on Firefox appears to work. This is clearly a case of their not following http://www.w3.org/ and accessibility standards. I suggest contacting their webmaster, and use http://www.anybrowser.org/ 's form letters to ask that they use more open standards for their website.

Firefox can be downloaded here:

http://www.mozilla.org/

Yes, Firefox is another browser. The point is though you and anyone else you know who depends on Safari should contact their webmaster and complain of their closing off your accessibility to their website by doing the change they made. The more who do, the more likely they will realize their mistake and fix it.

Looks like if you 'spoof' your browser you can access it fine, though I did not go through and see what happens when you try creating an account/purchase etc. Did not seem to like IE6 but Mozilla was fine.

This should hopefully be an easy fix.

You can enable Safari to act like a Mozilla browser by enabling the Debug menu via Terminal (quit Safari first):

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

Select Mozilla via User Agent option.

Shua,
The problem is the webmaster who last updated those sites is limiting Mac users to those who run Firefox and Netscape. Copying the pages that Safari bounces to into Firefox's URL entry field yields a page which tells me "Best viewed on the Mac in Netscape 7 and Firefox 1." If I go to their homepage on Firefox it does work. Obviously these stores don't want Mac users to cater to them. If you think they ought to, send a complaint to their headquarters. I even tried e-mailing their business office, and it bounced. What can you do? It seems they don't care what their online presence is like.

The problems with Gap & BR have existed for several weeks. For awhile they had "under construction" pages up. (During back to school sales?) After that, websites were not functional for Mac. Chase, as another example, had an online banking system until recently that rejected all Mac users, Safari or IE. I was about to close that account after a conversation with an obviously anti-Mac customer service rep. However Chase apparently decided to fix the problem since then.

I figure, why buy something from a company that doesn't want your business? There's plenty of alternatives that do use Mac friendly technology.

jen

Thank you for the interesting information (and links) about the Any Browser campaign. I agree with your conclusions so did send in a polite request to make the website more accessible.

(At least this doesn't seem like an anti-Mac/pro-PC move by Gap since they didn't choose IE and Netscape :-))

But keep in mind that spoofing your browser will show in their logs that they are "winning" in a sense because people are being forced to use IE or Firefox.

It's possible they'll think that there's not enough demand from Safari users and might just say there's no point in updating their code to be W3C valid (stupid, yes but possible). In the end, it always pays off to send a note to their webmaster to at least make them well aware of their mistake and, honestly, carelessness.

-Ryan

Agreed with Ryan there. The more you give those webmasters reason to make more accessible websites, the better a chance you'll have at making it compatible with all web browsers, and not have to spoof to browse certain pages. If you spoof you do indeed make it seem like you are using a browser you otherwise wouldn't load.

Duane,
Welcome to Apple Discussions!

By enabling the Debug menu which was mentioned in this thread, the third to last menuitem in that menu is the User Agent menu, and its submenu includes the various types of User Agents you can choose. Just select one of them, and reload the website you are trying to visit.

I recently created two Web sites on MS Windows XP machine using FrontPage 2003. After I published the first site, I reviewed it and can see only partial pages. Clearly, the problem is FrontPage 2003 being incompatible w/Safari.

Is there a setting to fix this or do I have to disable FrontPage extensions at the server and again upload the Web site? I am new to the Mac world and since those sites were created originally w/FrontPage. I reviewed the existing Mac Web page development programs and found them great for pictures, etc, or requiring that I know HTML. I wanted to develop on my Mac since I am thrilled at having made the switch.

Any suggestions on how I can either change code on FrontPage extensions or on an easy to use Mac development tool. (Tried FreePage -- or whatever it was and it was not as easy as developing WYSIWYG without code like FrontPage.)

Thanks.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!

WYSIWYG web development while it exists is very much in its infancy. Remember HTML is a markup language. If you attempt to bypass the HTML standards, that's when compatibility issues can arise. There are cases where for instance if you use a WYSIWYG development tool, images are given automatic height and width tags which don't work well when the alternate tag tries to portray text under an image that is smaller than the text. Learning HTML isn't that hard, and once you do, you will be well on your way to making websites that are more fully accessible to the common public. HTML is just pretty much tags between greater and less than surrounding text on a page. I strongly recommend using the web development tools that make websites more compatible on http://www.anybrowser.org/ You may not get the same exact look on every browser, but at least what you are trying to communicate will be more visible in most browsers. A lot of people here like Dreamweaver for semi-WYSIWYG development, though my favorite webpage editor, while not WYSIWYG actually comes much closer to giving you full control over what appears on your page, and that is Barebones BBEdit:

http://www.barebones.com/

It has many palettes to help you generate HTML code, and lets your preview in any web browser you want.

there's nothing wrong with safari. they changed something with the website. gap (same ownership) also has the problem. contact them.

These sites aren't working for me either...
Safari 2.0.1, officially released webkit, Tiger 10.4.2.

Of course I can use Firefox, but should I have to?? (Not saying it's Apple's fault)