I’m completely sick of “web 2.0″ applications/companies/websites not working in Safari. I’m even *more* sick of people who say that users critiquing a web application’s inability to work in Safari are lame or don’t know what they’re talking about. This rant was brought on by comments on TechCrunch about the new version of Writely tools. I left a comment that basically said, “it’s lame that Writely is introducing new features when the basics of their application still don’t work on Safari” and then I got flamed.
Safari Matters
If you care about the Macintosh user base, then you should care about Safari. If you don’t care about Safari, then you’re saying you do not care about the Mac user base. It’s quite simple.
The default browser on Mac OS X is Safari, take it or leave it. How many non-tech-guru Mac users out there actually took the time to download Firefox or Mozilla when they had a spyware-free and completely capable browser like Safari already installed on their machine? People download Firefox because they’re sick of IE6 and all its shortcomings. A tiny percentage of the real world downloaded Firefox because they like the theming or the standards-compliance (I fit into this category, as do most of the people who read this site, but we’re not exactly the majority), but that’s not the allure of Firefox. People don’t switch to Firefox because they’re eager to get rid of the float margin bugs in IE6 or want 24-bit PNG support with alpha transparency, they switch because they hate spyware and the Fox is billed as a better alternative to IE6.
But on Mac OS X, there is no IE6. The default browser for my operating system is elegant, spyware-free, standards-compliant, quick, and easy to use. Why would a normal Mac OS X user download Firefox when Safari does what they want? Firefox on Mac OS X looks bad, doesn’t load as quickly as Safari, and has some goofy bugs. I’m not saying that Firefox is a bad browser because it’s not, it’s terrific, but on Mac OS X it just doesn’t wallop Safari the same way it wallops IE6.
Best Practices
A web team not supporting a crappy, old browser that doesn’t work well is one thing, but not supporting a modern browser like Safari is just ridiculous. If a web team can make an application work on IE6, then there is absolutely no reason they can’t make it work in Safari. No reason at all. Yes, Safari has some Javascript quirks, but so does IE6 and every other browser, and web developers have found ways around different Javascript implementations in the past so why is this any different? I’m not just some graphic artist spouting off like this, I’m someone who’s been writing Javascript for web UIs since 1996.
Writely doesn’t support Safari so I won’t be using it — not a big loss since Writeboard does a better job at what I need anyway.
About Mike Rundle
I agree. The equivalent of saying “We don’t develop for Safari” is like saying – “Forget all those silly Windows users out there, IE is old.” Normally, I would point out Firefox as an alternative, except because of the glaring memory leak bug, Mac users don’t have this luxury. So, that leaves them with what – Camino, Omniweb?
I think that in 2006 we will see the rise of more and more Mac usage, not to mention less Microsoft-centric methodologies in general, as a result of open source efforts. So, as a designer, do yourself a favor – Go the extra mile, if only to show off that you can, and develop for cross-browser situations.
On my site, the browser breakdown is: Firefox 56%, IE 29%, Safari 10%. For me to ignore those numbers would be foolish.
I’ve never used Writely but I imagine it uses some form of WYSIWYG editing inline. If so, the problem is actually Safari’s fault as none of the good WYSIWYG editors can play nice with it. Dojo works the best but even with Dojo, the support is incomplete.
I love Safari and it’s of course my browser of choice, but standard WYSIWYG capabilities are still lacking and that’s nobody’s fault but Apple’s. It’s the only glaring hole in Safari at this point… as far as I can tell.
With the Writely/Writeboard thing: Safari basically doesn’t have a WYSIWYG component that functions in a reasonable capacity, last I checked. Since Writely is seems critically dependent on that component, it’s no wonder they can’t support Safari :) Of course, I’m not saying that being critically dependent on the browser WYSIWYG component is defensible — and perhaps the real interesting questions here have to do with the state of such editing in the browser.
Either way, until Safari fixes the component, it’d be literally impossible for them to support Safari.
Other than that little thing, Safari has been extremely simple to support from my Squarespace experiences. If you’re coding/testing in Firefox by default, Safari almost comes totally free. It’s flat out a great browser.
I guess it depends on who Writely’s intended audience is – obviously it’s not Mac users. I use Firefox on my powerbook – mostly because my content management system doesn’t work in Safari.
Yeah — the Gap (and its other stores, Old Navy and Banana Republic) don’t support Safari at all, and actually prevent Safari users from shopping on their websites. Seems idiotic.
Mostly off-topic:
Actually I’ve seen many non-techie people walk up to a Mac and fire up IE 5. That icon is just too recognisable and the name just makes too much sense. Why would I go on safari when all I want to do is explore the Internet?
I’m thankful that Apple removed it from the clean install of Tiger and thereby making Safari all the more ‘default’.
I guess I just have to laugh when I read stories like these. It doesn’t make ANY sense why a company would alienate a specific user group for any reason. There are exceptions to the rule (when you are talking larger corporation sites, carmakers, etc {some, not all}), but why would you bottleneck like that?
Firefox is significantly slower on the mac. I will continue to use safari because it works, and it works with all my other programs and RSS feeds. My setup at work uses both mac/pc and connects the two with synergy. I will use firefox on the pc, but continue with safari on the mac side (I like firefox web developer extension – so I keep it open to use that).
I, too, am glad that Safari is the ‘clean’ default and the E is gone.
In the long run, it’s their loss. I guess thats a price they are willing to pay to be ‘web 2.0′.
Thanks for mentioning this. As someone who uses Safari and doesn’t use Firefox for many of the reasons you mentioned, it constantly frustrates me that people give Safari the cold shoulder. Granted, there are sometimes technical reasons for this – Safari could be improved in a number of areas – but a lot of times, it just seems like simple laziness/ignorance more than anything else.
The goal in life is to help all people use a Mac simply because they are the epitome of greatness and all that is right in the world. If everyone used a Mac there would be no war or famine. There would just be a world like the one in Aeon Flux. An utopia. Where people where panties and get kidnapped.
Bob, I don’t get your point. And I think you didn’t get the article’s point.
It’s nice to know my sites work in Standards-compliant rendering browsers like Safari.
Typical bigoted hatred with no credible experience tend to extrapolate beyond the argument and paint themselves fools, ‘Bob’.
Re: Your initial entry – agreed.
It’s weird the way you all seem to thing off ‘Web 2.0′ as a PC only thing, As iv always though of it as more of a Macintosh approach to the net. Am i alone in thing that?
It seems to me, from reading the article (and comments) linked to, that the Writely team does intend to support Safari, it is just going to take a bit more work.
When given a choice of getting something out quickly and only on the top 2 browsers, or waiting longer to gain the final few percentage points of the users out there, most development teams won’t even think twice about it. You can argue the merits of that decision, but 80%-90% of the browsing population is still more than 0%.
As for the people flaming the mac users and claiming they should just “use another browser”, they really are just trolls. Of course jumping in on any web application that doesn’t support Safari and calling them lame isn’t all that productive either. ;)
Yes! Tell it like it is brother. Pretty much every site I use supports Safari (good for them), and the ones that don’t I avoid as much as possible.
When I design sites, I think:
Do companies who don’t support Safari have idiots building their sites or what?
WRT WYSIWYG editors working in Safari.
I develop using OpenCms which now (as of version 6.x) uses HTMLarea and this works absolutely fine in Safari. If there are problems, I haven’t encountered them!
I’m pretty sure the same comments apply to FCKedit which I have used with the Magnolia CMS – I don’t remember any problems whatsoever in Safari. But I could be wrong here – it was a while ago…
Does anyone here know differently?
I’m genuinely interested because I want to be able to push OpenCms solutions to Mac-using clients and be able to say it works fine!
BTW I recently came across a client who didn’t want her second tier banking website to support Mac users because her graphic designer boyfriend had a Mac and she hated looking at it. So sometimes there is no rationality behind the marginalisation…
:)
I run a non techie website in the UK, and to be perfectly honest Safari/Mac users are less than 0.01% of my users. In fact from my log files are saying I should be more worried about the 2.3% of people who are still using IE5.
As far as I can see the importance of safari support has a lot to do with where you are and also who your target audience is.
Do people just not understand that running a company is about trade offs? I run two web sites and quite frankly over 90% of my traffic is from IE. That is just reality. I also work for a company with over 20,000 macs. I am sorry, but Safari is just lacking in some features that businesses want to target. If they can get a product out that hits 90% and costs say a million to develop and then costs another 1/2 million for the other 10%, is it worth it? I don’t know, it just depends on your goal as a business. Companies do this everywhere, not just on the web. It is the same reason the majority of clothing sizes fall within a size range around the population norm. If you weighed 500lbs would you be here pissing and moaning because 90% of the clothing out there does not fit you? Well maybe, but I am sure you would not see the support you are seeing here. You made a choice to use a mac. You love it, great. But you knew that going into it things would be a bit different than the PC experience which is why you did it in the first place.
Hear Hear!
If Apple wants developers to make Web 2.0 apps compatible with Safari they need to make a Safari for Windows. I develop Web 2.0 apps and I have no desire to pay for an over priced computer just to test for a relatively obscure (in terms of overall market share) browser. Give me a Safari I can download for free and run on my Windows box and I’d test with it.
who cares about safari. if its not to standards, much like IE then leave it behind. is firefox that much better then them all?
who cares bout safari! if its be hind schedule like ie then forget it. is firefox and opera the only browsers left?
Why doesn’t Apple make Safari work as well, or identically, to Firefox? And save everyone the trouble of futzing around for this small browser marketshare app? Why not fix Safari instead of making it a standout for failing? I stopped using Safari because, like IE5, it just had wayyyy too many idiosyncracies. I blame Apple, not the developer community.
A cleverly whiny post… which is sure to get lots of linkage now that it’s been picked up by digg.com.
I think you’re being totally naive about the realities of web development. I work at a successful software company who develop online financial apps. While we’re happy to support Firefox and linux desktops, the only way we can support Safari is by going out and buying a Mac.. because that’s the only way to run Safari.
Considering that Macs are still a tiny proportion of desktops out there… and when it boils down to it we could always just recommend that Mac users use Firefox.
I hope that things will change when OSX goes Intel, but in the meantime you should accept the fact that you’re a tiny minority, and it’s hard to push the business case of supporting Safari when it’s tied to a particular hardware platform. Things might be different if Apple released Safari for linux (which shouldn’t be too difficult considering its origins).. then we’d have more reason to support it. The future of the web is hardware-agnostic, and Safari isn’t that way at all.
Why would anyone (any company) want to spend disproportionately more money per user just to satisfy a few Mac anti-establishment zealots?
If it costs $50,000 per project to get it out and working on IE and FireFox, it would be supid to spend another 10 percent making sure 1-2% of total visitors (if that) can see it in some off-the-wall (statistically speaking) browser?
Mac zealots remind me of the different cults out there. All they need is black sneakers and cool-aid.
And then GOD [ehrm. Intelligent Designer] said:
“Let the flaming begin.”
I have more users who log on with a PSP than safari. I find it funny also that the PSP browser works better than Safari. Safari users for me are about as bad as people who still use dial up. I could care less. People who use dialup are too cheap to buy something from my site and people who use Safari are probably too poor from all the money the spend on applications and computers from a company that is just too overpriced already!
Go Firefox! Even go IE!
The other issue is, of course, not everybody has access to an apple. Also, JS support on safari isn’t ‘quirky’, it’s bizarre – to support safari using any JS app requires a total rewrite and browser detection code. Which is just horrible.
PC users who said “Windows comes with a browser already, why should I change?” were branded as idiots. Now Mac users say the same thing, and there’s righteous indignation that the rest of the world isn’t toeing the line to meet their needs.
All browsers have quirks. You’ve just defined Safari’s quirks as the default “this is the right way to be”, the ideal 100% against which every other browser is found lacking. Now you say you’ll take your ball and go home if people don’t cater to your needs. This is just as absurd when the subject is Safari as it was when the subject was IE.
Give them a mac and I’m sure they’ll support it.
“If you don’t care about Safari, then you’re saying you do not care about the Mac user base.”
I think you hit the nail on the head there. I’m not trying to be trite, but there’s really not much incentive to develop for such a small segment of the internet population. That’s the price you pay for being in the minority on anything – you have little ability to sway market forces.
Good idea to create standards based designs? Absolutely. But until Macs/safari make up a significant enough percentage of the population (don’t ask me what that percentage is), I don’t see it changing. That said, I think Apple is in a unique position to challenge MS supremecy in many of these areas if they continue to do what they’re doing and make some good strategic choices along the way, but that’s a different topic ;)
For what it’s worth, I agree with your premise in theory, I just don’t think it’s very realistic for the most part. But all the innovative people aren’t realistic, so you’re probably far smarter than I :)
As others have pointed out, the number of people visiting my client’s web sites are very low, about the same number of people using Lynx to surf the web.
Does that mean I shouldn’t make pages that support Safari? No it doesn’t, but it does mean that Safari goes to the very bottom of my browser priority list. Just like the creators of Writely, I do intent for the sites to be Safari friendly, but I’m not going to wait to go “live” with the site just because I can’t get some Safari quirks ironed out.
And when I say quirks, I’m referring to the JavaScript issues with Safari, which are very irritating.
How would you test for Safari if you don’t have a Mac (and getting one is not an option)? I am sure that is a problem for many web developers. There should be a Safari for Windows.
This is fascinating, let criticize developers for trying to create rich cross platform apps which run in a web browser.
I don’t support Safari or Konqueror (webcore is based on the khtml rendering engine) for a lot of apps for 3 reasons:
1 This is the big one – no js support client side XSLT (same reason why Opera isn’t supported)
2 It is less than 3% of the browser market – http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0
3 No client is willing to pay me enough to buy an Mac for testing purposes
I agree with you on this.
reading the Writely site, they say they want to, but cant since it doesn’t have a “design mode”
i dont know if they didn’t notice, but Safari got a “design mode” with version 2 (Tiger version)
It uses the exact same commands as IE does, so the pages should work without many changes.
On my mac I prefer firefox, purely because I use both windows and mac and like to use the same extensions etc…
Just setting the scene.
However in development Safari is usually the last thing we test (unless I have convinced someone to support opera). When it comes to CSS and HTML there is usually very little needed to make safari look beautiful. But since the first version and continuing now javascript support has sucked.
There are things that you just can’t do with safari, and writely has run up against several of these. I guess they could have cut back on their features to support safari, but I think they made the right choice. They state on their blog that they have identified the issues which deny the safari support and have communicated them to the safari team, so I think they are being responsible.
Seriously though, 99% (ish?) of websites should have no problem supporting just about any browser. When it comes to complex web applications though, I think the browser makers have to meet us halfway. If there are issues with how their browsers work, either fix them or publish work arounds for the developers to use.
I don’t know if this is realistic, but after working through the late nineties and then the first few years of this decade I don’t want to get back into a situation where we cannot make innovative web applications because we have to cater to browsers which refuse to keep up with the evolving web.
Safari does keep up (and indeed leads in some ways) in most ways but I still don’t like some of its js issues.
Would you like some whine with your cheese?
I find it absolutely amazing that so many “trendy” shops (Gap, Banana Republic etc.) shun the default browser of the “trendy” persons choice of computer.
Mac users are, on average, more stylish, have higher incomes etc. etc. (this isn’t trolling – zdnet did a report on this some time ago) Surely therefore shops should be embracing Safari.
Crazy, just crazy. Someone at Gap needs a rocket up their backside for this. Seriously, it must be losing them a lot of business.
“If a web team can make an application work on IE6, then there is absolutely no reason they can’t make it work in Safari. No reason at all.”
Uhm…not having a mac? I’d be glad to support that 0.5% of my visitors using Safari if it was only a matter of popping open another browser and fixing the quirks, but shelling out a hefty price for a mac just to test web pages? That’s hardly “no reason at all”…
My view is this (and I guess it’s immature, but I doubt I’m the only one with it): Safari is the new guy, and if my applications use only standard features and work find in Firefox, then any bugs are shortcomings in Safari that are Apple’s job to fix (And perhaps a problem is that I have too much confidence that they will)
Safari is an essential application. Macintoshes may not be a massive percentage of the market, but they still account for MILLIONS of computers people use every day.
To not support Safari is to ignore MILLIONS of potential users/customers.
’nuff said. Great job on the write-up!
For all of your computing life you have been stalked by a sociopathic monopolist who actually worked for apple for a while.
He foisted CPM and a public domain basic on the public as DOS and ms basic. Then borrowed apples GUI to sell Windows 95.
The endless theft of others IP culminated in Windows dominating every thing in computing. The web caught M$ by suprise, they needed to catch up they stole a browser coupled it to DOS (XP uses a stolen DEC kernel NOW),borrowed A bsd tcp ip stack. Unfortunatly for every internet user this crap was priced low enough to catch on. Welcome to the world of Microsoft. It is common Microsoft practice to break other Operating systems so that only M$ stuff works right
I agree. I have both a PC and Mac and have Firefox on my Mac for testing purposes, but Safari is my default browser. I’m not thrilled about switching browsers on my Mac just to use a web app. So I don’t. It would be too much a hassle if it’s a website that I use/view often.
Luckily, all 37s apps so far support my use of both PC and Mac systems.
I totally agree :)
I agree that web developers should have legacy methods of providing their services to various browsers.
The truth of the matter is, if the technologies on the web are advancing, how long should developers support browsers that are not up-to-date?
For new web site start-ups and small companies, writing one application is daunting enough. You have to go for the largest possible audience. If Safari doesn’t support what the mainstream audience does, it’s just as much Apple’s fault as the developers.
“Oh, I use Mac, so everyone must support it.”
“Oh, and I use Lynx, why doesn’t your web app display appropriately in my browser?”
I’m with Mike B; Safari is waaay down the food chain in terms of visitors to my site.
You guys are so self-centered. If I have limited time and a limited budget, I’m going to target IE. Not because I love Microsoft or hate the Mac user base, but because I enjoy having the lights on each night when my children are trying to study.
Optimizing for the last 2% just isn’t good business sense.
so your new browser isnt backwards compatible you say. really now whos fault is that.
I agree! I am a Mac user. I love Safari. However, I have used every other available web browser for OS X out there (Firefox, IE 5.2, Opera, Flock, Shiira), and I must say I always come back to Safari. Why? Seemless bookmark syncing, the most standards compliant browser on the web, and easy, elegant use. What can I say….it just works. WSIWYG is lacking, but I can wait for it.
Develop for Safari! The Mac userbase is growing everyday. Since switching to Mac, 5 years ago, I do not let any of my departments dev work go out without debugging in IE, firefox, opera, and safari. Even though we are still a MSFT shop with an IIS intranet, I want it done right. No shortcuts.
It’s a matter of market share, you know that. It only makes sense to develop for Safari if I can earn enough revenue to cover the extra development cost. What is at issue here is not people not caring about Safari, it is about business decisions. Instead of imploring web developers to research and fix every little bug for Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari, Kommander and Lynx, we need to be getting together to beat down the doors of the people writing the browsers and get them to start following standards. That sounds easier than it really is, but it is possible, and it needs to happen.
apple made a big mistake when choosing KHTML as the base for its CoreHTML components.
Gecko is light years ahead.
Btw, Firefox 1.5 runs much better on my archaic G3 than safari.
whoever flamed you are fooolish.