Is it me, or are fewer websites supporting Safari?

[Mr Skills]

Maybe this is just coincidence, but over the last couple of weeks I have noticed more and more websites that are having trouble with Safari. None of them have any trouble with Firefox. They range from "sorry, Safari won't work" messages to little things, like not being able to save progress on an ebay sale. A few examples I can remember off the top of my head:

odeon.co.uk* (works with Firefox, but some text entry fails with Safari)
Cancer Research (won't save & progress when making donation)
eBay (won't save & progress when selling item)
First Direct (UK bank - officially ceased Safari support last week)
eSessions (similar flash Text entry problems to Safari)

EDIT
Some more sites that don't work properly are the google ones. GMail is missing features; the word processor, spreadsheet and Calendar don't work at all in Safari.




When I switched 6 years ago you got the *occasional* site that needed IE. Now almost all work with Firefox but fewer than ever seem to work with Safari.

Have I just been unlucky or is this a trend?


*I know Odeon used to be even worse. But they're supposed to have mended their ways now.

 

[fimac]

Please send feedback to Apple

Maybe this is just coincidence, but over the last couple of weeks I have noticed more and more websites that are having trouble with Safari.

Please send feedback to Apple, so that they can improve Safari. (Also the Surfin' Safari blog makes quite interesting reading.)

I actually had the feeling that more sites are supporting Safari -- But I have never visited any of the sites you mention Mr Skills!

 

[cwedl]

At the end of the day, 90-95% of web users are on non-mac computers. why would a company want to spend money employing someone to support safari for when customers call up with problems. its best to isolate the mac users.

 

[Mr Skills]

At the end of the day, 90-95% of web users are on non-mac computers. why would a company want to spend money employing someone to support safari for when customers call up with problems. its best to isolate the mac users.

I can understand why people might not provide phone support or whatever... but that's quite a different thing from just not testing the website properly. I thought that was simple good practice in web-development - I am talking of large organisations here.

Besides, if Safari and Firefox are both meant to be 'standards compliant' why should Safari so often have trouble opening the same sites?

I actually went on a site the other day and a dialogue appeared saying "we do not support Safari because there are too many bugs - please download Firefox" wish I could remember which site it was.

 

[cwedl]

I actually went on a site the other day and a dialogue appeared saying "we do not support Safari because there are too many bugs - please download Firefox" wish I could remember which site it was.

I remember reading a macworld (uk) magazine about 3 years ago that said someone went to Virgin money website and it said some like "you're on a mac, what a big mistake, do an buy a proper computer and then come to out website" The funny think was the guy phoned Virgin up and they were not aware of who did this, it was taken off, but it was worrying that they do not monitor their website especially if its a banking website.

When you closed the dialog box though you are able to get onto the website though!

 

[GodBless]

Please send feedback to Apple, so that they can improve Safari. (Also the Surfin' Safari blog makes quite interesting reading.)

I actually had the feeling that more sites are supporting Safari -- But I have never visited any of the sites you mention Mr Skills!

Yes, click here (and then OS X in the software category) for professionally sending Apple feedback.

At the end of the day, 90-95% of web users are on non-mac computers. why would a company want to spend money employing someone to support safari for when customers call up with problems. its best to isolate the mac users.

Well Mac users are more than ever a growing market (and a growing market that uses the internet at that) and plus Safari is one of the greatest browsers out there and is in 3rd place under Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Maybe this is just coincidence, but over the last couple of weeks I have noticed more and more websites that are having trouble with Safari.

Remember Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) is coming out soon (probably in about a month). Almost all of the troubles with Safari will be fixed in the clean update that Leopard will provide (at least that's how it was with the Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.4 transition).

 

[Mr Skills]

Well Mac users are more than ever a growing market (and a growing market that uses the internet at that) and plus Safari is one of the greatest browsers out there and is in 3rd place under Internet Explorer and Firefox.

They also tend to have more disposable income than the average computer user, plus the browser share is distorted against Safari because of all the people browsing from the office...

 

[cwedl]

Well Mac users are more than ever a growing market (and a growing market that uses the internet at that) and plus Safari is one of the greatest browsers out there and is in 3rd place under Internet Explorer and Firefox.

True but I'm sure companies will face that reality when Safaris market share is a lot more.

 

[GodBless]

They also tend to have more disposable income than the average computer user, plus the browser share is distorted against Safari because of all the people browsing from the office...

True but I'm sure companies will face that reality when Safaris market share is a lot more.

Let's look forward to it getting more of the attention that it really deserves in the future.

 

[clevin]

True but I'm sure companies will face that reality when Safaris market share is a lot more.

well, the problem is "a lot more" isn't realistic, safari's market will be capped by Mac's market share, so safari's marketshare, in foreseeable future, won't exceed 10%.

for OP, its both, there ARE more websites supporting firefox than safari and you are unfortunately using those incompatible website more.

 

[Foxglove9]

Back before I upgraded to Tiger (which was the only way to upgrade safari) a year ago there were certain sites that I couldn't access, but ever since then I rarely ever encounter a site I can't navigate. So it's still not perfect but I'd say it's gotten better, or maybe I'm the lucky one.

 

[Mr Skills]

Is it possible that there have been some new 'standards' released recently, hence all these sites have upgraded and suddenly become broken? In which case Leopard should fix them...



.

 

[radiantm3]

One of the big issues with the current version of safari is the way it handles some javascript. This is the reason why many google apps don't support safari in their early betas. Let's just say that the current version of webkit (nightly betas) has fixed a lot of these js issues and should be less of a problem with the next major update of safari. The only sites that you should never expect to work well are sites that are very activex and windows media heavy.

 

[Mr Skills]

Oh yeah, I fogot all the sites that have missing features in Safari. GMail is the most famous example, and of course the Google Calendar, Word Processor and Spreadsheet don't work at all.

 

[Eraserhead]

Please send feedback to Apple, so that they can improve Safari. (Also the Surfin' Safari blog makes quite interesting reading.)

And to the site webmasters too so they know compatability matters .

 

[Mr Skills]

You wrote that just as I was mentioning Google!

Actually, I suspect that all these examples may be Javascript related. You can probably judge that better than me (I know nothing about Java) if I explain the issues:

- eSessions and Odeon both have animated (presumably flash) interfaces, and text boxes will not accept input from Safari

- ebay and Cancer Research both hang when you press the button to make a credit card payment. eBay also doesn't give you the word-processor style layout abilities (this used to be IE only but now works in Firefox)

- First Direct have done a security upgrade on their site and it now does not work with Safari (their customer support phone line has been telling people that this is because Safari is less secure than FF or IE!!)

- GMail doesn't have instant messaging and various other bits

- Google Apps don't work at all.


So - to someone who knows more about this stuff - does this sound generally like JavaScript problems? And if so, is this a fault with Safari, or just changing JavaScript standards?


.

 

[clevin]

Is it possible that there have been some new 'standards' released recently, hence all these sites have upgraded and suddenly become broken? In which case Leopard should fix them...
.

1. don't count on it, IE, after all, has 80% market share (thanks to firefox, IE has 93% before )
2. even if standard are being implement fully, you would enjoy the advantages more by using opera, rather than safari.

So - to someone who knows more about this stuff - does this sound generally like JavaScript problems? And if so, is this a fault with Safari, or just changing JavaScript standards?

No, u can try some UA spoof addons to fake your safari as firefox, and see if that works. some website just deny visit according to UA, which can be spoofed. My experience is simple faking of UA works in limited situations.