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Ancestry won't support Safari

Robertus

Robertus

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 5, 2009
63
1
the great state of O-H-I-O
I am a longtime subscriber to Ancestry.com. I have used its Member Tree program online primarily for family history research and family tree compilation. Alternately, I have used Firefox and Safari (both Mac versions) to conduct my research with Ancestry.com's vast search archives. Before I will explain why Ancestry won't support Safari (for Mac or Windows), I will explain this:

I find using Safari on Ancestry.com to be much faster than Firefox (webpage refresh, graphical content loading, editing data, accessing to search archives). When I used Firefox, I founded that it's slow and bit cumbersome, especially page refreshing and loading of content after editing data or accessing to search archives. On Safari, page refreshing (command-r) and content loading to completion lasted about 2 to 3 seconds; on Firefox, it varies from 3 to 5 seconds. I'm on 2 MBps Internet speed (it's all I can afford under my ISP plan) under Mac OS X.4.11, PPC-based G4.

However, the biggest frequent and annoying issue I have with Ancestry.com while using Safari is "bad server response". At times, I had Firefox and Safari running at the same time, comparing them while using Ancestry.com. Under Firefox (ver 3.6.3), using Ancestry.com's search archives or editing a person's data generates no "bad server response". Under Safari, the "bad server response" pops up almost every time whether editing a person's data, switching to another person or accessing search archives. The command message is this:

"Safari can't open the page. Safari can't open the page "(URL address)". The error is "bad server response" (NSURLErrorDomain:-1011) Please choose Safari> Report Bugs to Apple, note the error number, and describe what you did before you saw this message."
Click to expand...

This kind of problem forced me to click "command-r" several times to force a server response and usually it works. At one point, I had to "com-r" about 50 times and finally got a result!

Reporting bug message to Apple several times produced no results for me. I don't know why Apple won't reply back to me (I gave them my email address) on this issue. It appears that Apple won't fix or solve this issue with Ancestry.com.

Few times, I sent messages to Ancestry.com asking for assistance to deal or fix this issue. They responded back to me the usual message:

Please note that Safari is not a supported browser for use with ancestry.com and we do not have a way of making it completely compatible. Please always use firefox when accessing ancestry.com.
Click to expand...

While I have no problem using Firefox on Ancestry.com, I still founded it to be slow and bit cumbersome to use anyway. I would rather work with Safari on Ancestry.com because time is of essence for me (for accessing on the fly). I had encouraged Ancestry.com tech people to consider make the site compatible to Safari, considering that maybe more Ancestry subscribers are using Macs or using Safari for Windows (I don't know the exact numbers of how many subscribers using Mac or Win).

I'm worried about Ancestry.com could try to make its website completely compatible with only strictly Microsoft Internet Explorer or Firefox, leaving out Safari. It's similar to OneGreatFamily.com (they won't support Mac or make compatible for Safari).

Has any Mac subscriber encounter this "bad server response" issue while using Safari on Ancestry.com? I don't know if this is a web engine issue or programming problem (I'm not familiar with the more technical details of the browser's engine and codes).

It's kind of ironic that Ancestry is working on FamilyTreeMaker for Mac soon.

Any comment or insight is appreciated. Please do NOT ask or tell me to cancel subscription. All I wanted from Ancestry.com is to change its attitude regarding Safari and try to work on a positive level with current and potential Mac subscribers to Ancestry.com.
 
could be something with house safari is requesting information or reacting to a slower server on their end. Safari times out and crashes.

Personally if it is working well in Firefox and not Safari it to me says the problem is in Safari end and it is an apple problem.

Test it with google chrome and see what the results are. If it stays there then it is clearly an Apple problem and not an Ancestry.com problem.
 
Just noticed this post today and wanted to add that I am using Chrome with Ancestry and having no issues.
 
XnavxeMiyyep said:
If Chrome works, and the two have similar rendering engines, you may want to either try Chrome or changing your user agent string for Safari to pretend to be another browser (such as Firefox).

Changing your user agent string:
http://www.onedigitallife.com/2005/08/03/changing-safaris-user-agent/
Click to expand...

Can't use Chrome because I'm on Mac OX 10.4.11 PPC. Chrome is supported from OS 10.5 and up for Intel Mac. I'm angry at Google for making that way. :mad:

I can try with Safari's user agent string and see what happens. Thanks.
 
After further review Safari is working fine with Ancestry. In fact, Safari on the iPad works fine as well. I am running 10.6.4 on a C2D white iMac. I go through spells with Safari were I quit using it because I don't like how it acts. It was during one of my dalliances with an alternative browser that I started using Ancestry. The latest release of Safari brought me back.
 
aviddk said:
After further review Safari is working fine with Ancestry. In fact, Safari on the iPad works fine as well. I am running 10.6.4 on a C2D white iMac. I go through spells with Safari were I quit using it because I don't like how it acts. It was during one of my dalliances with an alternative browser that I started using Ancestry. The latest release of Safari brought me back.
Click to expand...

I would suggest you try it on a PPC Mac with OS 10.4.11 instead of your current system or your iPad. :D
 
Ancestry.co.uk and Safari

After 5 years of using Ancestry on Safari I have had only two occasions when there were major problems.
On the first occasion Ancestry stated to me that they "don"t support Safari".
I find it works fine most of the time.
However the current problem is so serious that I shall delete my tree and cancel my subscription unless Ancestry fix it in the next day or so.
I have now lost the ability to view or alter my privacy settings. I noticed via "Collaborate" that one of my pictures has been taken by an unknown person. I had thought that my tree was private. I cannot now check this in Safari.
As an aside my tree is still private when checked on another browser. The question is "how did they get my picture?
These are questions for Ancestry, not Apple. Why does a large organisation like Ancestry not support Safari. Is there some bad feeling between Apple and Ancestry? It looks to me as if this is the only explanation.
 
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