About Web Browsers....

[WhateverJoe]

( I did not want to continue on the previous thread )

I have a major concern that has a large part to do with Web Browser quality and speed in OS X.

As an IS during the day and Mac Loving Addict at night... I do try to find ways to use Macs in the work place... Of every mac that has been placed in the work enviroment... all complain currently about the following top 3 things:

1) Internet Explorer Has Quit
2) Page loads but there is White space that a quick resizing of the window seems to cure...
3) Loading pages from the intranet that are large and long "tables" displaying data... Takes much longer and scrolling is much slower compared to the "Celeron 733mhz system they were using before"

I have asked some to try using other browsers such as Omniweb and Netscape, but those seem to be worse about quiting and scroll speed with pages containing large tables of data.

There has been enough complaints about this.. That I have been asked to replace the iMacs with cheap $599 systems... Of which "For Web Browsing Purpose" I admit to being better because the windows version of IE is pretty rock solid and displays much faster than the Mac version...

So what can I do... I work on and maintain our 100+ systems out there with me using my little powerbook... and There is a difference and it's very.. well.. you can see a difference in "Browser happiness" ...

Another observation of mine... of late... I bought my girlfriend one of those new 14" iBooks... Having never used a mac before.. she first commented on how nicer looking and neat the Mac OS X was.. but all she complains about.. is "Why does IE quit everytime I visit this site? ... It loads fine on my PC!".. and "Why in the world does IE just Quit out of the blue............ This thing sucks..." ....

She is nothing but an iTunes and WebSurfing user... with the main thing being a WebSurfer... she as asked me to get her a PC... she's frustrated...

So what can I do... ??

I understand things.... and to be honest... most of these things do not bother me.. But I realize now-a-days... not everyone is as calm and "Oh-Well" about things as I am... She looks at her iBook as being a useless pain in her but because the "Best?" web browser currently around is crapy put against what she was use to using, and her experience with surfing using the Windows IE 5.5....

This is not a letter to apple directly... I just want to vent here because.. hey... I've e-mailed support@microsoft.com many of times about the mac version of IE .. humm... (23 letters in my sent-items folder) and have never recived a responce other than "Automatic responce letter"........ so I do beleive as I have known others to have sent their opinion to microsoft... that Microsoft just dosn't give enough of a "%$*m" about their mac version... Perhaps they do.. perhaps not... but the only developers out there that I see working hard as they can to produce a great product is from the OmniGroup... it's not there yet .. but by gosh you see them trying and responding to their customers...

So perhaps if Apple does read these message boards.... Put pressure in some fashion on Microsoft.... Buy or "Covertly" help OmniGroup make OmniWeb a direct "same level" of web-browser that the Win IE 5.x-6 browser is... Do something.. because if the i in all the iMacs and iBook is for internet ... it's a joke with the Web Browsers...

[edX]

apple - if you don't get the logic in that post, then we all have misplaced our trust in you. So far you have been responsible for developing all the great apps that set the mac apart. how about one more that keeps it on par?

[gradic]

yes, please.

[symphonix]

There is an agreement in place between Apple and Microsoft, as part of their court settlement, that goes something like:

- MS buys a sizeable chunk of non-voting stock in Apple (their incentive to stop attacking Applee head-on)
- MS agrees to continue producing Office for Mac for 5 years
- Apple agrees to make MS Internet Explorer the default browser for the Mac

So, Apple has agreed to put forward Internet Explorer as their browser for OS X, and I'm sure they would have trouble producing their own browser as they would not be able to include it as the default.
If there are instabilities in IE for mac, then the blame lies with Microsoft. The real question is whether they have deliberately allowed bugs to get through on IE for Mac, or if these are just the usual bugs you'd find in any project of this scale.
Now, in defence of MS, I quite like IE for Mac. It seems stable and fast most of the time and loads most pages with no hassles. I am suprised that it sometimes stumbles over pages that work fine under windows versions of IE, and annoyed that these crashes bring down the entire browser in a sudden crash.
It is not up to Apple to deal with this though, except by keeping the pressure on MS to up the quality, and to advise their customers that other browsers exist and some are of excellent quality.

[Boyko]

Ah, but that deal is quickly running out.

Which brings up another question. Mac platform gets Office. Microsoft gets money. Mac platform uses IE as default browser. Microsoft gets mindshare. Apple is no longer in the financial situation it once was. Why bother reintroducing the agreement.

As soon as a viable alternative to IE exists, I'll use it.

Brian.

[koim]

Sorry folks, the PC IE is lightyears ahead of the Mac IE. The Mac IE lacks support for a lot of Javascript and soforth. Many pages look totally broken in the Mac IE. Anyone ever made a website on a mac and then checked how it looked on a PC? I did, and I had to tweak a lot of things to make it look relativly identical on both platforms.
The OSX IE is even worse. Here, the list of non-working pages is even longer. And it simply quits when it stumbles upon some unrecognized code.
Come on Microsoft, are you doing this on purpose to make people buy XP? I´ve heard that Microsoft has the biggest staff of mac-programmers outside of Apple. In that case, how come it takes ages to get out a new version of IE and MSN?
At the moment I´m using OmniWeb as my head browser, and I sure look foward to a new version that will support all that IE6 does.

[nkuvu]

symphonix said:
these are just the usual bugs you'd find in any project of this scale.

I think that should read "these are just the usual bugs you'd find in any MS project of this scale."

[apb3]

shouldn't some of the blame lie with the sloppy web page coders????