About Web Browsers....

W

WhateverJoe

echo $row['what_tha'];
( 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...
 
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?
:confused:
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
symphonix said:
these are just the usual bugs you'd find in any project of this scale.
Click to expand...
I think that should read "these are just the usual bugs you'd find in any MS project of this scale."

:D
 
Hrm, HTTP, HyperTextTransferProtocol.

Well, it seems to me that Lynx is the best browser ever.

The WWW was not designed for FLASHy, FRAMEd, SHOCKWAVEd, JPG,
blah blah blah.

A few tables here and there, some (gasp) Text, and some other Links,
and all works well.

I know, I know. Times change. Maybe something else needs to be done.
Maybe it will occur with IPV6. Maybe it is a plot.

But people are not even using HTML STANDARDS to post their web stuff.

Look at the HTML source. NO wonder the browsers dump. No wonder the OS
hangs.
 
No, I'm sorry, the browser should never hang the OS. That's just wrong. :)

So yes, a lot of it does have to do with sloppy web page coders. But a lot of that code is done by WYSIWYHYG (What you see is what you hope you get) editors. Very few people that I know of write clean HTML code anymore. All of my web pages (All two, I think :D ) were written with a text editor only. I am fully aware that the maintenance of large web sites is probably done better with something other than a text editor, though.

I don't enable a lot of plugins -- Flash isn't even installed on my machine. Since I am currently stuck on a Windows box, I use Opera, and disable the animated gifs. It's so nice not to have flashing banners! I'll be even happier when I get my iMac and I can use something like OmniWeb and block banners altogether...

But I digress. I'd love to say that if you can't write HTML, you shouldn't have a web page. But that argument is pretty weak. I mean, when does the extrapolation of that stop? You can't program in C/C++, so you shouldn't have an operating system. You can't program in binary, so no device drivers for you!

We just need to get some programmers to write HTML-editors that produce clean, W3 compliant code. And when pigs fly, we can make all HTML-editors produce clean code...
 
exactly..

I'm not saying if YOU cannot code X, Y, or Z that you shouldn't be able to use it. Thats what people who cannot code pay for. Did you write any of the drivers you use? Did you write OmniWeb or Killer.app?

I'm just saying if someone's gonna code in HTML, STICK TO THE STANDARDS!!!!!:eek:
 
I´ll have to disagree on you on that. The web moves forward, sorry, and with IE6 web designers are given a lot of things that they could never have done before. And they don´t care about some mac users that just weren´t smart enough to buy a PC to surf the net with.

Come on Microsoft, give us IE6!!!
(I´m hoping OmniGroup will be fast enough to give us a fully-supporting OmniWeb before MS:) )
 
I wasn't "smart enough to buy a PC?"

Consult brain before engaging mouth (or fingers in this case).:smilie(':D')

I do have a network of over 700 PCs. Not my personal machines, but my responsibility. Not corporate just friends and family and hangers-on - well ok a few corporate.

YES. the "web" as you put it - I'd say, "Internet technology," moves forward. I pretty much think that's a given.

But people spend a lot of time and effort making this tech work. And, sorry, this includes STANDARDS :smilie(':eek:') that should be followed if you want your page to work "correctly."

If someone doesn't want to follow the standards, fine. Just hope he never applies at any company I own in the tech area. His first project would get him shown the door.

IE6 will not fix your woes... It my be a bit more forgiving in terms of bad code, but Come on, let's fis the problem where it starts, not just patch an already bad system.:confused:

Yeah! and I hope OW does this thing and does it right! Beating MS would be a feather their cap!!!

Apple should use some of their cash reserves to buy (or at least ally) with OmniWeb.
 
The real problem is that web designers code for IE and they don't give a rats...errr behind about standards. They code sloppily or use really old deprecated html. If you tell them that it doesn't work in other browsers they say screw you because they are brainwashed by microsoft. The real future is the combination of html/xhtml with css. all your text and data is stored in the html and css defines how it appears. So no styling is in the actual code, it is linked to in an external css file. Then you can change one file and change the whole site. Once browsers start supporting this better and web designers decide to care the web will be better.

It will get better when AOL switches to gecko because web designers will be forced to support that very large market. They can't ignore it.

I'd love to see browsers grow up with standards support, but the best engine right now is gecko... which is why chimera is so promising. I downloaded the latest OW sneaky peek and it was actually better at some css stuff.

Be glad that we have a much better choice of browsers on os x rather then windows.
 
Yes, Standards are a MUST! If you think otherwise, you've been brainwashed by Microsoft. Sure, it's hard to follow them to spec, but it's not too hard to get very close. As long as there are people using IE and .Net and FrontPage, standards will continue to die. Right now we're in a situation no one would have expected - AOL may be the one to save web standards. If they use Gecko, it's a major victory for the internet. If not, then there's no hope (unless Microsoft would suddenly be broken up into tiny pieces). IE will continue to dominate Windows and the Internet, Windozers will follow, and use Frontpage and other WYSWYG editors that pump out IE-only non-standard slop code. Mac users will continue to pray to Microsoft and beg for IE updates. I am so sick of seeing banners of burning Netscape logos or messages saying to "Upgrade to IE." It's just sick and not how the internet was meant to be!
 
The whole browser war has no winners - so far.

Yes, AOL should switch to Gecko. But when Netscape 6 came out (and 6.2 is not much of an improvement) AOL/Netscape shot itself in the foot.

It was buggy, it crashed the OS, it was bloated, and it was full of ads, and it was ugly.

I use Mozilla now - and I can't believe the difference. But most people (Jim and Jane End User) aren't going to even HEAR of Mozilla, let alone try it.

There are people here that hate IE - but have been using the same browser for 5 years (Netscape 4.5+) instead of using Mozilla or another standards compliant browser because, lets face it, Netscape 6 stinks. And there isn't much coverage in the mainstream press about Mozilla.

AOL *really* shot itself in the foot with it's release. Since (justifiably) no one uses Netscape - and very few will use the "beta" Mozilla, IE (for right now) *is* the standard.

In order to push for standards-compliant browsing, here is what AOL needs to do - and this is SQUARELY on the shoulders of Steve Case & Co...

1) Release a non-buggy version of Netscape 6 that works like Mozilla.
2) Integrate Gecko into AOL.

That said, even Mozilla isn't ready for Prime Time. I *do* like it, but Chatzilla needs work (although maybe finally there will be some widespread acceptance of IRC after this) as does Composer (Which is actually DAMN GOOD for a free web page WYSIWYG designer - and if you've used earlier versions of Netscape Composer this will shock you) because they both tend to quit unexpectedly in both the PC and Mac versions I've used.

There's also a few problems I have with Mozilla/Netscape in general.

1) Clicking on a Mailto link opens mozilla mail - not the default system mail.
2) Components must be downloaded as a package - not seperately. (I use Jediknight, Adium, and Mail.app, and I just need a *browser*... JUST a browser.)
3) Keyboard shortcuts must be better organized - yes, I can Apple-Click and open the link in a new window, but can I open a new Tab?
4) It should be easier to support Flash and Java - even if a simple "Get Common Plugins" were put into the help menu which takes you to a link on the Mozilla page which tells you how to download and install the programs for your platform.

Granted, these issues should perhaps be addressed post-1.0 - but it still burns me.

Brian.
 
koim said:
And they don´t care about some mac users that just weren´t smart enough to buy a PC to surf the net with.
Click to expand...
koim, be careful! There's a troll behind your keyboard! :)
 
Take a look at Launch.com

Web designers shouldn´t feel limited because the browser support on mac is lousy. Just my opinion.....

And another thing, one here mentioned "brainwashed by ms". I would say that there´s a higher percentage of mac users that´s "brainwashed by Apple.

(like: "Windows sucks, mac rules. Period)

Microsoft does a lot of good stuff. Put Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9.2 up against each other. There´s no arguing about what´s the best OS of them.
At the moment, OSX has some issues to sort out (mostly in terms of speed :mad:), to REALLY claim that it´s better than XP.
But that doesn´t belong in this thread......:)
 
koim, people do get brainwashed by apple sometimes, but in the area of browsers there is SERIOUS brainwashing going on. Everyone just assumes you use IE and if you don't they think something is wrong with you.
 
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