Discussion on:

Good news for Web developers: Safari 3 does Windows

I have a few questions:

1) Is the Windows Safari identical in rendering, compliance, etc. to the Mac version? If not, this makes it Yet Another Browser to test for, and doesn't help with test Macs. If it does, great!

2) Is the Windows Safari (or Mac Safari) identical to Konqueror for those items? If so, couldn't folks just test on KDE in a VM?

Now I know that a while ago, the answer to #1 was that the Windows Safari would be a touch different, and that the answer for #2 was that they were not the same. At least, that's my memory. What's the current status on those two items? That makes all of the difference if this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.

Thanks!

J.Ja

I have the same questions as well, but I am unable to get definitive answers.

mainly due to the article/blog. Anyway, there are a few
nice things about it. However I would like the toolbar to
be more customizeable...

1 good thing though. TR has not caused my browser to
FREEZE up yet. when in IE6/IE7/FF the browser crawls
along after a few minutes, and I cant do anything. In
Safari, no issues yet.

After playing with Konqueror and Swift as attempts for "Safari-on-Windows" types of browsers, I was pleased late last spring to hear about Safari for Windows. I had much better luck and ease-of-use with the Safari for Windows than Konqueror and Swift didn't really work. I downloaded Safari v.3 Public Beta for Windows in early June 2007 and played with it. Browser detection detected it as Safari build 522.11. It behaved as one would expect Safari to behave on Mac with regards to JavaScript discrepancies (Safari vs. IE vs. Firefox), with regards to pages that are customized for Safari users, and with regards to graphical dimensions when image swapping. In testing it, I found an example where CSS behaved differently in Safari for Windows as opposed to Safari for Mac. When the zero-day exploit came out via the Windows version and my job pushing for development that works in IE7, Safari (Mac), and Firefox (Mac/Win), I lost interest in testing and haven't played much with it since. Further, between Leopard on MacIntel and Safari being upgraded for Windows, this may all be fixed. My recommendation is that developers should test in Safari on Mac as well.

I'm confused - hasn't Safari been available for Windows for over a year now? Why are you so surprised? I had to double-check the article date to make sure this was a current article

the browser development groups should get with the program and just write browsers that handle standards compliant code only.

and website developers should force the issue by only writing standards compliant code.

anyone who doesn't meet standards with their code is to stupid to be in business.
STANDARDS compliancy is a legal defense. you leave yourself open for litigation by not having STRICTLY compliant code.

Jaqui -

I *would* agree with you, but the W3C writes pretty lousy programs. I keep trying to use Amaya for HTML editing, it may be one of the top 10 worst applications I have ever used in my life, in terms of quality. Between it turning portions of text invisible after I delete a block, crashing, and a thousand and one other problems... the W3C is not a vendor I want my software coming from. A lot of the problem, I am sure, is that many of its most important members are software vendors who make software for these things...

J.Ja

J.Ja

that website should be strictly standards compliant code.

the web browser called IE should refuse to display any website that is NOT strictly standards compliant.
[ or firefox, opera, seamonkey ]

I never said use the W3C's tools, I said write the code to be standards compliant, completely different.

As nice as it would be to see all websites using strictly standard compliant code, most websites on the web today would break and cause a HUGE loss in revenue for companies. On top of that, they would be required to have their websites reprogrammed using standard compliant code. Some smaller companies wouldn't be able to take the double hit and larger companies would lose too much revenue.

Some sites would take weeks to months to completely reprogram using strict web standards. It would be suicide for browser vendors to one day say "Sorry, not using strict standards? Now your site doesn't work." If that happened, someone would come along and make a browser that will display poorly coded sites and create a name for themselves taking the market share. It would never get to that because browser vendors are not that stupid. They need to slowly start pushing the standards but keep the backward compatibility for some time.

I read that wrong! I thought you said "browser standards development groups", I have no idea why my mind inserted the word "standards". Yes, I agree with you.

J.Ja

that's why I was more specific in my response.

I figured you had misread it, since I know you agree with writing standards compliant code.
[ heck it's actually easier to do so, and maintain than non compliant code ]

I don't agree. I think browsers should "do their best" to render the documents they're given. Users should be free to choose the one that does the best job for their needs (and not be force fed a single option that meets the needs of everyone). The browser market is still rapidly evolving. Standards bodies, while well intentioned, move far to slow to keep up with the rate of innovation. There must be competition in the market to incentivize the developers to meet the demands of the users.

However, I do think mainstream software should be more "forgiving" and the developers should stay "true" to the cause and not try to use their market share as a anti-competition weapon (i.e. don't deliberately cause incompatibilities to gain a competitive advantage).

You're a follower, and I respect that, but somebody has to invent new stuff or else all of the followers would have no one to follow, and they would be out of their jobs. You may not enjoy testing for multiple platforms; it can be a real pain for certain. But that is a "job" for better or worse.

multiple platforms?
me?
I test against lynx, if it works, then it works for everyone.
the only testing.

since I only write strict standards compliant sites.
[ ie STRICT DTD none of this loose or transitional bull crap ]

In a perfect world, developers would all use a single programming language, modularity and code reuse would always be utilised (re-inventing the wheel would be punishable by death), and we could have as many cigarette and coffee breaks we ever wanted...

But until that day, if the boss demands he have annoying flashing text, and IE doesn't support annoying flashing text, I'll show it to him in firefox!

The point I'm trying to make is there is more than one way to skin a web page, and if there wasn't, where would the fun be in that?

Microsoft Expression Web?

Yeah it's MS, but for someone who finds dreamweaver a bit messy and convoluted, it writes pretty clean standards comp code in a WYSIWYG manner, and it uses the nice Visual Studio intellisense to prompt you to the correct standards compliant usage when coding manually!

I was quite impressed by it, even wrote a glowing review of it for TechRepublic.

J.Ja

because it's the most standards-compliant browser, and very helpful development add-ons: the Web Developer Toolbar, and Firebug. I can't imagine ever going back to IE.