The sorry state of Mac web browsing

[e-coli]

The state of Mac web browsing is a train-wreck, IMO. Of the two main browsers, one is buggy and slow (IE), and the other is bloated and has numerous maddening plugin configuration issues (Netscape). To make matters worse, Flash MX has some very serious bugs and performance issues under OS X. The bugs are such that it renders the product almost useless due to its unreliability. Flash has actually gotten worse for the mac over time with MX being an all-time low.

Coupled with the fact that Mac users often are unable to run many of the Java scripts and apps available to Windows users (see: MSNBC navigation, and Yahoo! sports gameday broadcasts).

That said, I think Mac users are in a very bad state these days on the web. If the trend continues this way, it will certainly be detrimental to the future of the platform. What do you guy think?

 

[sparkleytone]

i think you should use chimera and shutup.

when it doesnt work for a page, use ie. just wait a little while, chimera is moving along at breakneck speeds, and is already the best and most usable browser on OS X.

netscape has always sucked in my opinion. mozilla is bloated and slow on mac platforms. opera blows on everything except for linux, where it is probably the best browser. iCab...blah. ie is buggy. chimera looks damn good, is faster than any other browser on the mac, and is a continuously progressing project. omniweb looks nice, but has a smelly rendering engine.

 

[Backtothemac]

I use Chimera, and I have never had problems with anything but our own store

I agree there are problems, but as more people switch then it will force companies to develop for the mac better.

 

[e-coli]

Yes, but as a web developer, it's quite unnerving.

I recently spent three weeks posting my portfolio online (in Flash 6), only to find out that the problems Mac users have with Flash 6 makes the site unuseable.

We should form some type of Mac Users Web Standards Organization (MUWSO?).

...or Mac Internet Standards Organization (MISO)...mmm...hungry now.

 

[macmax]

this is strange.
in a page that i can't recall now was an info in that needed flash 6 to be seen , my beautiful macs did just fine while the pc that we own (note the difference when i talk about my beloved macs,i own 2 , and the pos pc that we own in my house;the pc was supposed to be so powerful and the only thing it does is breakdown adn crash)
couldn't do anything for a long while.
i don't know how, but the macs payed just fine,they are my beloved girls .

 

[irmongoose]

Originally posted by macmax
i don't know how, but the macs payed just fine,they are my beloved girls .

Just don't get all nasty on em. That will be just plain sick.



irmongoose

 

[machinehead]

When I try to view PDF documents, Chimera 0.5 responds with a Save dialog box, rather than opening the PDF in Preview or Acrobat, both of which are accessible to Internet Explorer.

Is this a limitation of Chimera, or something wrong with my settings?

 

[Fukui]

No...

i think you should use chimera and shutup.

when it doesnt work for a page, use ie. just wait a little while, chimera is moving along at breakneck speeds, and is already the best and most usable browser on OS X.

netscape has always sucked in my opinion. mozilla is bloated and slow on mac platforms. opera blows on everything except for linux, where it is probably the best browser. iCab...blah. ie is buggy. chimera looks damn good, is faster than any other browser on the mac, and is a continuously progressing project. omniweb looks nice, but has a smelly rendering engine.

Uh, no.

Sorry to rain on ya, but Chimera does not handle certain pages correctly and neither does IE or any other web browser except one running in VPC.

The problem isn't in rendering the pages per se, but the problem is in Java Script (a lot of sites program for the twisted windows version) and don't work on a mac. Second problem comes from websites that call Active-X (M$ prorietary web-plugin system, again only for WinDos) and no web browser understands that except IE on PC. Third comes from Active Scripting which is M$'s version of java script (which uses Visual Basic Scripting), and again only the IE on PC works with this correctly.
Fourth, Windows Media Player only Works with IE5 AND even then doesn't work with all the file formats that the PC version does, and since MS doesn't conform to the standard Browser Plug-in architecture, no one else can test the problem!

I can give you a few examples, others I have found require passwords and such...

1) http://music.bugsmusic.co.kr/search/album.asp?album=11297
This site is in korean, but you can try this page anyway, just click any of the pink buttons on the right side to listen to the song on the list..

Don't try it in anything but IE or youll just be stuck looking at "Loading" screen. In IE, you get to the music player, but it's a mess, and, WinMP doesn't work either!! Cool, heh?

2) http://www.xmlsweb.socalmls.com/Login.asp
This website requires a password to use that I don't have, but if you check the top, it says Internet Explorer for windows only. You can get in with IE on Mac, but nothing works right. So my mom, has to use VPC to do her work!! There are thousands of realtors that are stuck in her same position thanks to this ***** "Compatibility" that IE is supposed to give us.
(BTW, this is the only Listing Service for homes in California, so she has no choice but use this service...)

My main point is, if Chimera, Mozillia et al, want to take percentage from IE then they must be compatible with those Technologies (VBS Script, Windows Style J-Script, Windows Media Plug-ins, and Active-X). Either that or MacPU should get off thier @sses and fix these problems. Maybe in Mozilla 2.0...sigh...or else most switchers and others with just blame-it-on-the-mac...and go back to thier PC.

I am sure others can give more examples, my post is long enough.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: No...

Originally posted by Fukui
Uh, no.

Sorry to rain on ya, but Chimera does not handle certain pages correctly and neither does IE or any other web browser except one running in VPC.

…

And why is that? Because of web developers with blinders on. Developing for one platform and browser is ridiculous in this day and age.

A car analogy (something new, I know):
There are several types of roads in a given country. 95% are road "A"; proprietary and full of "extra features", and pretty fast. Now the other 5% is split between 20 or so other types of roads. A car manufacturer says, "Hey, why bother making sure my car can run on those other 5% when the vasy majority of my customers will be driving on "A" roads?". So they go ahead and make a car that uses all those special features of road "A", but immediately crashes, killing all its occupants if they happen onto any of those other 5% of roads.

It's the fault of web developers who buy into MS' proprietary technology and exclude users running anything else. There's a little thing called the W3C that a lot of people seem to forget about...

 

[DeadlyBreakfast]

Re: No...

Originally posted by Fukui


. So my mom, has to use VPC to do her work

You know what stinks about that?? It just gives M$ more money for the license of whatever flavor of Windows you are running on VPC. So for every person that buys a Mac and then buys VPC they put a win in Apples column and a win in M$'s column. Now that stinks.

 

[Backtothemac]

I agree with Rower on this one. Chimera is a .5 release. It is a beta for God sakes, and all I run. It never crashes, and is really fast. Point it, it isn't Apple's fault that narrow minded people develop for only one platform.

20% of the computer in use are Macs worldwide. That is more than any PC company. Sure PC's consitute the other 80% but Dell has only 9% of the market. People are too focused on the crap of Apple having a 5% market share.

 

[Fukui]

It's the fault of web developers who buy into MS' proprietary technology and exclude users running anything else. There's a little thing called the W3C that a lot of people seem to forget about...

Yes, and less than 3% of the websites that the companies that comprise the W3C have websites that even conform to ther own standards...

Yes, there is this LITTLE thing called the W3C and the BIG thing called MS...

You know what stinks about that?? It just gives M$ more money for the license of whatever flavor of Windows you are running on VPC. So for every person that buys a Mac and then buys VPC they put a win in Apples column and a win in M$'s column. Now that stinks.

Yep, thats prolly why MS tollerates apple so much...they are just another OEM that gets windows sales!!

On another note, my dad just reciently got his first mac bout 9 months ago. He bought VPC with WindowsXP on it, but he said it was pretty slow. So a few weeks ago he bought winXP for his old PC!! ***!! First MS gets a licence for his original PC, then MS gets more for VPC, and then he gives them more again for his old one!! I h8 MS....

That is why I am a switcher.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by Fukui
Yes, and less than 3% of the websites that the companies that comprise the W3C have websites that even conform to ther own standards...

Yes, there is this LITTLE thing called the W3C and the BIG thing called MS...

Stats? Examples? Proof? You really need to back up a statement like that.

MS is bigger than the W3C, this is true...but MS has nothing to do with determining web standards, try as they might to have web developers believe differently.

 

[Fukui]

4.6 Percent (Sorry)

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956778.html?tag=mainstry

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: 4.6 Percent (Sorry)

Originally posted by Fukui
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956778.html?tag=mainstry

Ah, so it's the companies that have pledged cooperation that are not in compliance...that's pretty ridiculous...

As a web designer I am constantly frustrated by the myriad of browser/platform scenarios that I have to test out...but it's an effort worth making to ensure that my content is reachable by anyone out there.

 

[JamesDP]

I've posted most of this before over on MacNN, but here goes anyway...

I tried using Chimera, and I use Mozilla sporadically, but I find myself forced to use IE on my Mac. Mozilla crashes anytime there's a java applet on the page (I've tried it on multiple sites). I had completely switched to Mozilla on my home and work PCs because it was so much better than IE and it crashed less. Unfortunately this week while car shopping on the web on my work PC, I couldn't use the Mazda site with Mozilla because it was optimized for IE 5.x or Netscape 4.7x. Same thing at home. Had to use IE.

Here's my issues with Chimera:

1. The Pop-up stopping mechanism is too broad. Even ones I want, I can't have. And once I turned them off, I couldn't figure out how to turn them back on.

2. Right-clicking on a picture only had two options, neither of which was the image's properties or location.

3. Having to switch from option-left/right arrow to go back or forward to option-[ and option-] (I know, nitpicky, but there was no reason for them to change that).

4. Preferences don't allow me to change enough of the browser's behavior. I like to do a lot of customization.

I did like how the bookmarks are set up on Chimera, but on the other hand, having to drag them one-by-one in order to import them into Mozilla was a supreme pain in the ass. Took me like 45 minutes.

And I have an entirely different set of issues with Mozilla. As mentioned it crashes when a java applet shows up without fail. It's ugly as hell compared to Chimera. Also it absolutely refuses to organize my bookmarks alphabetically. When I go into Manage Bookmarks, they're all alphabetical, but when I access them from the Bookmark menu, they're scattered willy nilly with no apparent rhyme or reason. And when I try to organize them manually in Manage Bookmarks, it does nothing.

Bookmarks are a pain in IE too, but until Mozilla and Chimera can open all the same sites that IE does without hassling me, I'm forced to use IE. I love the tabbed browsing of Mozilla and Chimera, but it's not worth it at this point, and I can't figure that out since Mozilla is so great in Windows.

 

[Nipsy]

Here's a clue for everyone:

Write standards based code, not proprietary code. If you decide to use proprietary code, it will fail in some browsers, and require more maitnenance over the life of a page.

Use known releases. Unless you absolutely require some feature of the newest version of [Flash, HTML, ShockWave, etc.] code to the version which is common. Don't make something the newest tools just because you, a developer, have it. Code for the broadest audience, by knowing what the installed base is using.

Write compatible code. By using anything which is incompatible, and not handling it in an elegant way, you are inviting trouble. Although the lion's share are IE/PC users, one decision from AOL could change that in a matter of weeks. My code is compatible, so I'll be in the tropics enjoying my bonus. Everyone who's saved time in the past by using kludges will be working 18 hour days fixing it.

Well designed web is compatible first, and feature rich second.

 

[Gaz]

See the big problem is not designers buying into one technology at all. It's buying into the technology and not understanding it to use it to it's full potential.

As other people have said it's bad designers that cause the problem not M$ or the browsers to a certain extend. Unfortunately people are too quick to try and use all the wonderful technologies without understand the full extend of their implementaitons.

The problems are caused by people with a lack of knowledge and being given tools (net****e, ie) that allow them to build things that are not portable. Any GOOD designer/developer will know how to design to take advantage of the different offerings without comparamising the end user.

The sad truth is that we are not discussing the sorry state of web browsers, we are discussing the sorry state of people who pretend to be web developers and don't think about the different types of users.

Sorry to rant but I see these problems occur so many times when they could be easily afford with a little thought and knowledge.

Gaz

 

[Fukui]

Ah, so it's the companies that have pledged cooperation that are not in compliance...that's pretty ridiculous...

Yes

As a web designer I am constantly frustrated by the myriad of browser/platform scenarios that I have to test out...but it's an effort worth making to ensure that my content is reachable by anyone out there.

Absolutely

Just write for Normal Java, Normal HTML, Normal CSS, Normal J-Script, and avoid Active-Hex, and VBS Crap.

You know who I really feel sorry for?
Linux users...they don't got Windows Media, IE, or Quicktime...

And I disagree with the idea that it is not MS's fault. They were in a perfect position to poison Java (as a monopoly), and they did...now look how wonderful things work...