I'm curious why it is that certain sites don't work well with Safari (like the new Yahoo homepage) or why certain features work better in Fireforx (like viewing pictures on Friendster). I'm sure I could come up with many more examples but I'd love to know what the technical reason is for this. Is Apple purposely not integrating certain web technologies from rivals (like Microsoft)? I just don't understand why Mozilla can produce a browser that works fine on a Mac, but Apple's own browser still seems to be behind?
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Why don't certain sites work well with Safari?
- Thread starter sir42
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ahh you've just opened a huge can of worms.
But the short story
Internet Explorer (Microsoft) owns the majority of the browser market. As per usual Microsoft practice they integrated non-standard features and non-compliant rendering.
Because of IE's large market share many web developers only test on IE and thus they are building sites & applications that are non-standard and only work in IE.
So no, this isn't a case of apple/mozilla/opera being behind, it's a case of poor developers & Microsoft trying to control the web with their own proprietary junk technology.
But the short story
Internet Explorer (Microsoft) owns the majority of the browser market. As per usual Microsoft practice they integrated non-standard features and non-compliant rendering.
Because of IE's large market share many web developers only test on IE and thus they are building sites & applications that are non-standard and only work in IE.
So no, this isn't a case of apple/mozilla/opera being behind, it's a case of poor developers & Microsoft trying to control the web with their own proprietary junk technology.
It's not necessarily a problem with the browser, but in many instances a problem with the website.
When a website gets created, the webdev typically will test the look/feel/use for multiple browsers to make sure that everything works. In the case of Firefox there's a Windows version that is easy to get and there's many people using FF as their browser in Windows. So when it "works", that translates to it working on the Mac.
A lot of webdevs don't have access to Macs (or don't care), so Safari never gets tested, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't work or not. They'll tell you to use FF.
When a website gets created, the webdev typically will test the look/feel/use for multiple browsers to make sure that everything works. In the case of Firefox there's a Windows version that is easy to get and there's many people using FF as their browser in Windows. So when it "works", that translates to it working on the Mac.
A lot of webdevs don't have access to Macs (or don't care), so Safari never gets tested, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't work or not. They'll tell you to use FF.
It is a matter of poor programming. Sites are meant to be coded using certain standards. When these standards are violated, browsers that strictly conform to these standards have problems, like safari and firefox.
Internet explorer, such as nearly all of Microsoft's products, never conformed to the programming standards (a few versions ago, you could still use 'void main() in Microsoft's Visual C++, lol), and because many sites are designed using Internet explorer in mind, they tend to not follow the global coding standards. Therefore, we, safari and firefox users, have a problem.
That said, I think that whatever pages cannot be opened using safari, can open using firefox and vise versa. So, if you want to be able to open nearly all webpages, maybe you should have installed firefox also.
Internet explorer, such as nearly all of Microsoft's products, never conformed to the programming standards (a few versions ago, you could still use 'void main() in Microsoft's Visual C++, lol), and because many sites are designed using Internet explorer in mind, they tend to not follow the global coding standards. Therefore, we, safari and firefox users, have a problem.
That said, I think that whatever pages cannot be opened using safari, can open using firefox and vise versa. So, if you want to be able to open nearly all webpages, maybe you should have installed firefox also.
dornoforpyros said:
While I understand what you're saying, I'd just like to say that since the large large majority of the market uses IE for their internet browsing needs, what MS does with their browser is really more "standard" than what others are doing. If the other 3 browsers that make up like 15-20% of the browser market rendered websites more like how Internet Explorer does it, this wouldn't be a problem.
Just saying, that's all.
Abstract said:While I understand what you're saying, I'd just like to say that since the large large majority of the market uses IE for their internet browsing needs, what MS does with their browser is really more "standard" than what others are doing. If the other 3 browsers that make up like 15-20% of the browser market rendered websites more like how Internet Explorer does it, this wouldn't be a problem.
Just saying, that's all.
There are web standards, not set by any one browser, but set by the W3C. The standards dictate what a browser should and shouldn't do. Firefox follows these standards, as does Safari. IE does not. Just because it is the most popular browser, does not make it standard.
Say the iPod had trouble playing MP3s encoded in a certain way. The iPod would be unable to play certain MP3s correctly because it doesn't follow standards, but then someone saying, "well since the iPod is the most popular MP3 player, others should conform to it." Wrong. If this was the case, if Apple wanted the iPod to stay on top, they should modify it to fit the standards, not modify the standards to fit the rule-breaker. If Microsoft wants to keep IE as the leader in web browsers and stop losing ground to Firefox, they need to make IE fit web standards, which have been accepted and followed by all of their competition.
And to continue this, the sites that "dont" work in Safari most likely actually will, they just have a block if you're not using IE. You can set Safari to pretend to be IE for a web site, theres plenty of info in the forums on that.
I believe FireFox does something like that too.
I believe FireFox does something like that too.
yg17 said:
As much as I'm not a fan of how IE poorly supports the W3C standards, the fact that it is the most popular browser, by quite a large margin, does make it a standard, of sort. More or less, by way of having the largest number of installations, IE is the de facto standard for browsers. Not that that is a good thing.
I remember working at a company building a web application. They wanted certain things done that only IE was able to do, because of their departure from the W3C standards. Because logs showed that no customers accessing the application were, at that time, using non-IE browsers, we were instructed to build it for IE-only and not to spend any extra time (time = $$) building in support for other browsers. It was not something the developers were always happy with but at least we understood the reasoning.