Browsing on a Mac
Discussion
We have a prospect. First time in many, many years that have Macs. Lots of Macs - about 50% of their users.
Our software is a 100% HTML/JavaScript/Ajax app that runs in Internet Explorer.
Blimmin' Microsoft dropped IE for Macs a while back.
So - for any "Mac heads" out there I have a few questions:
1) What's the favourite browser on a Mac? Firefox? Opera? What?
and for any Firefox aficiandos:
I've played with Firefox a bit now. Time was it was dire to write stuff for and you could really tell - we developed our app solely on IE because of it. It looks like its got much better. And I mean good enough.
But what is it like when you really get under the covers? What's it like to try and create client side code that works on IE AND Firefox...and I mean heaps and heaps of DOM manipulating JScript?
Anyone who's been there and done that care to comment?
We don't ordinarily bother with prospects like this - but I've started thinking: What if we were the only people doing what we do with Mac compatibility.... it would be a nice USP and we could go round Mac sites with the only thing they could buy....nice position to be in.
So - would I go bust trying to do it or am I looking at load of "Find and Replace" but otherwise it'll work?
Our software is a 100% HTML/JavaScript/Ajax app that runs in Internet Explorer.
Blimmin' Microsoft dropped IE for Macs a while back.
So - for any "Mac heads" out there I have a few questions:
1) What's the favourite browser on a Mac? Firefox? Opera? What?
and for any Firefox aficiandos:
I've played with Firefox a bit now. Time was it was dire to write stuff for and you could really tell - we developed our app solely on IE because of it. It looks like its got much better. And I mean good enough.
But what is it like when you really get under the covers? What's it like to try and create client side code that works on IE AND Firefox...and I mean heaps and heaps of DOM manipulating JScript?
Anyone who's been there and done that care to comment?
We don't ordinarily bother with prospects like this - but I've started thinking: What if we were the only people doing what we do with Mac compatibility.... it would be a nice USP and we could go round Mac sites with the only thing they could buy....nice position to be in.
So - would I go bust trying to do it or am I looking at load of "Find and Replace" but otherwise it'll work?
Don said:
So - for any "Mac heads" out there I have a few questions:
1) What's the favourite browser on a Mac? Firefox? Opera? What?
The default browser for recent Macs is Safari - not saying it's the favourite, but it's the one that ships with it. Can't help you otherwise, other than saying it sounds like a good plan. 1) What's the favourite browser on a Mac? Firefox? Opera? What?
Thanks chaps....still considering. I'm going to need to work out what the investment is to get to a "cross-platform" state in order to work out if the plan would fly...but it would be a useful commercial advantage to be the only provider of enterprise class time recording software that ran on a Mac - I think! - it will depend on the costs and the proportion of prospects we're looking at with hundreds of Mac users.
I've been to the website in your profile using Firefox, Safari and Camino on my Mac and I can't get the tabs to work I'm afraid. I'm not sure if you use this sort of code in your application but it doesn't bode well!
I guess it depends how many proprietary Microsoft properties/methods you're using...
I guess it depends how many proprietary Microsoft properties/methods you're using...
Edited by ad551 on Wednesday 28th March 19:59
I'm afraid he's right Don, and if Firefox can't work with your site, nothing else will properly either.
IE on the Mac was always a cut-down rubbish version of IE for the PC, rest assured you site would have never worked on that.
Firefox is truely standards compliant and cross-platform. I've developed using it and on Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac. That's why Microsoft don't like it
The established web development route nowadays is Firefox, then checking and tweaking against IE because of the monopoly usage. Microsoft messed up the CSS box model and a few other details, so tweaks are needed, then confirming with Opera, Safari and Konqueror.
Starting with IE only is starting to be a risky business these days, as you've just found to your cost because if you were Firefox/standards compliant your stuff would 'just work' for the Mac..
IE on the Mac was always a cut-down rubbish version of IE for the PC, rest assured you site would have never worked on that.
Firefox is truely standards compliant and cross-platform. I've developed using it and on Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac. That's why Microsoft don't like it
The established web development route nowadays is Firefox, then checking and tweaking against IE because of the monopoly usage. Microsoft messed up the CSS box model and a few other details, so tweaks are needed, then confirming with Opera, Safari and Konqueror.
Starting with IE only is starting to be a risky business these days, as you've just found to your cost because if you were Firefox/standards compliant your stuff would 'just work' for the Mac..
The best thing if you fancy discovering why things aren't working is to install the Firefox extension called Firebug www.getfirebug.com/ - the most useful extension I've ever used.
ad551 said:
I've been to the website in your profile using Firefox, Safari and Camino on my Mac and I can't get the tabs to work I'm afraid. I'm not sure if you use this sort of code in your application but it doesn't bode well!
Not for me either, nor in Opera, but it is fine in OmniWeb on a Mac. As others have said, Safari is the standard Mac browser and I know of very few sites which don't work properly in Safari. OmniWeb is raved about by those who use it, and often does well in reviews, but it's not freeware so it's not widely used.
Stats on my web site for OS X clients show Safari first, then Firefox. I'm surprised you don't suffer already from only supporting IE. I know the company I work for wouldn't buy/use any 3rd party web based apps if they don't work in Firefox.
I'd second the recommendation for Firebug to aid testing and debug of CSS/XHTML/Javascript in Firefox. It really is most useful.
I'd second the recommendation for Firebug to aid testing and debug of CSS/XHTML/Javascript in Firefox. It really is most useful.
Globulator said:
I'm afraid he's right Don, and if Firefox can't work with your site, nothing else will properly either.
That's not strictly true.
Globulator said:
Firefox is truely standards compliant and cross-platform.
Again, close but not quite. It's very good but it's not 100%.
Globulator said:
Starting with IE only is starting to be a risky business these days, as you've just found to your cost because if you were Firefox/standards compliant your stuff would 'just work' for the Mac..
That's true but it's not Firefox compliant that he needs to be, it's STANDARDS compliant. Something he seems to be quite a long way from at the moment. Get it standards compliant and then it will "just work".
Here is a little test for you...
www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html
So far, I have only come across one browser that passes it and that's Safari. Most other sites work well in Safari but I do find that I have to switch to Firefox occasionally. It's usually sites that are written with IE in mind
ad551 said:
I've been to the website in your profile using Firefox, Safari and Camino on my Mac and I can't get the tabs to work I'm afraid. I'm not sure if you use this sort of code in your application but it doesn't bode well!
I guess it depends how many proprietary Microsoft properties/methods you're using...
I guess it depends how many proprietary Microsoft properties/methods you're using...
You probably all already know this, but the "IE Tab" add-on for Firefox allows sites to be rendered by the IE engine within Ff. Quite handy if something's "misbehaving" and saves the hassle of swapping browsers.
Of course Don, doesn't solve your problem though.
Thanks, guys. Useful info.
Oh - the tabs on my site don't work on FF because simple things like the event object aren't present. I seem to remember even "windows.location" doesn't work. I keep meaning to getting around to fixing it on our site but our web-app is HUGE and if we're going to attempt a port I'm going to need to estimate the effort necessary.
I don't suppose anyone has a list of JScript (JavaScript) functions that don't work on FF/Safari?
Or is it worse than that? We have a pile of code that does DOM manipulation: adding rows to tables, options to combo boxes and so on. We also do loads of replacement of the contents of DIVs using the "innerHTML" feature. Lots and lots of XmlHttpRequest stuff too (we had our own middleware to do "AJAX" before the facility got built into browsers).
Most pages in our app feature "document.all.xxx" for example...
Does anyone have a list of "gotchas"?
Oh - the tabs on my site don't work on FF because simple things like the event object aren't present. I seem to remember even "windows.location" doesn't work. I keep meaning to getting around to fixing it on our site but our web-app is HUGE and if we're going to attempt a port I'm going to need to estimate the effort necessary.
I don't suppose anyone has a list of JScript (JavaScript) functions that don't work on FF/Safari?
Or is it worse than that? We have a pile of code that does DOM manipulation: adding rows to tables, options to combo boxes and so on. We also do loads of replacement of the contents of DIVs using the "innerHTML" feature. Lots and lots of XmlHttpRequest stuff too (we had our own middleware to do "AJAX" before the facility got built into browsers).
Most pages in our app feature "document.all.xxx" for example...
Does anyone have a list of "gotchas"?
A good list of Gochtas are here www.quirksmode.org/
Standards are the main thing to follow, but each browser does have it's own interpretation, for instance I think Safari and Firefox can differ with spacing rules, I can't remember the exact effect but it was something like bunging in a bit of Javascript caused a linefeed or visible gap on Safari where it didn't in Firefox - so standards 1st but allow for a little shuffling for a perfectly rendered page if you are trying something out of the ordinary.
Events are just given a different name in Firefox - have a look on the internet and you soon see an easy way in Javascript to separate the two methods and handle them correctly, as long as your event handling is fairly modular and contained this should not take too long. 'what' to get an event from with overlapping items is another thing, but I'd have to charge by the hour if I was to reveal everything
(not literally, obviously. Down in the back there).
Standards are the main thing to follow, but each browser does have it's own interpretation, for instance I think Safari and Firefox can differ with spacing rules, I can't remember the exact effect but it was something like bunging in a bit of Javascript caused a linefeed or visible gap on Safari where it didn't in Firefox - so standards 1st but allow for a little shuffling for a perfectly rendered page if you are trying something out of the ordinary.
Events are just given a different name in Firefox - have a look on the internet and you soon see an easy way in Javascript to separate the two methods and handle them correctly, as long as your event handling is fairly modular and contained this should not take too long. 'what' to get an event from with overlapping items is another thing, but I'd have to charge by the hour if I was to reveal everything
(not literally, obviously. Down in the back there).Globulator said:
A good list of Gochtas are here www.quirksmode.org/
Great! Thanks for that.
Hmmmn. Hard to get a handle on the effort involved...
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