MAC Safari compatibility problem 2

[Simon Wigzell]

document.[Form Name].[Field Name].focus() will scroll the form to move the
specified text field into view on everything I have tried it with except
Safari on the MAC. The form doesn't move. Any work around? Thanks.

 

[VK]

document.[Form Name].[Field Name].focus() will scroll the form to move the
specified text field into view on everything I have tried it with except
Safari on the MAC. The form doesn't move. Any work around? Thanks.

Go to <http://www.caminobrowser.org> and get yourselve a Browser (not a
buggy HTML renderer). Advise the same to your visitors is they are
still suffering under Safari.

P.S. window object has (had?) .scroll, .scrollBy and .scrollTo methods.
Try these -but I would not hold my breath on it.

P.P.S. Usually on Safari everything either doesn't work at all or it
works in the least expected way. If you are determined to bring this
stuff to life no matter what, you may want to summarize all glitches
first - otherwise we'll come to "MAC Safari compatibility problem 122"
post rather soon ;-)

 

[Simon Wigzell]

document.[Form Name].[Field Name].focus() will scroll the form to move
the
specified text field into view on everything I have tried it with except
Safari on the MAC. The form doesn't move. Any work around? Thanks.

Go to <http://www.caminobrowser.org> and get yourselve a Browser (not a
buggy HTML renderer). Advise the same to your visitors is they are
still suffering under Safari.

P.S. window object has (had?) .scroll, .scrollBy and .scrollTo methods.
Try these -but I would not hold my breath on it.

P.P.S. Usually on Safari everything either doesn't work at all or it
works in the least expected way. If you are determined to bring this
stuff to life no matter what, you may want to summarize all glitches
first - otherwise we'll come to "MAC Safari compatibility problem 122"
post rather soon ;-)

That bad is it? Geez! We just put in a check for IE on the MAC to just
diallow it and told them to use Safari instead. I've never even heard of
Camino. Is that now the accepted browser for the MAC? Is that what most MAC
users are now using? I've been a PC man for 20 years not out of any love for
Microsoft but because PCs always had the vast majority of the market and I
wanted to be compatible with the majority of the market. And all these years
I've been hearing how wonderfull the MAC is and now it looks like the stupid
thing doesn't even have agreement on a browser than works.

 

[VK]

document.[Form Name].[Field Name].focus() will scroll the form to move the
specified text field into view on everything I have tried it with except
Safari on the MAC. The form doesn't move. Any work around? Thanks.

Go to <http://www.caminobrowser.org> and get yourselve a Browser (not a
buggy HTML renderer). Advise the same to your visitors is they are
still suffering under Safari.

P.S. window object has (had?) .scroll, .scrollBy and .scrollTo methods.
Try these -but I would not hold my breath on it. Usually on Safari
everything either doesn't work or it works not as expected.

 

[VK]

That bad is it? Geez! We just put in a check for IE on the MAC to just
diallow it and told them to use Safari instead.

The latest IE for Mac is 5.2, and it's support is officially
discontinued by Microsoft a while ago. So it is indeed something to
forget.

How bad Safari is? It is not a security hole or something that crashes
your computer etc., no. But my personal experience you have two options
only with Safari: either you spit on it and hope that your solution
will be still semi-functional; or you hire a whole separate department
only to port each and every of solutions for Safari only. As I said,
too many features are missing - and too many features are implemented
in ...strange... way.

I've never even heard of
Camino.

Camino 1.0 is the same Firefox 1.5 but for Mac OS: the same features
and the same standards - made by the same organization. The only (but
huge) difference is that Camino is written as a native Mac OS
application and uses the same Cocoa graphics. These were the majore
problems with Firefox for Mac:
1) too long startup
2) lesser performance as compared with the native applications.
3) too "functional" interface.
I would guess that the latter was even the biggest problem. Many Mac
users are kind of... say... artistic natures and spoiled by the Mac
fine-tune design care: aqua, transparencies, gradients, bluring,
blah-blah In such surrounding Firefox (despite any themes) was
looking like a plain-vanilla hammer in a fine art boutique.

Camino was in testing for several years, but until the official release
(1.0) it was difficult to suggest it. Now: welcome to
<http://www.caminobrowser.org> And it's free - unlike Safari (OK, you
don't pay for the browser itself, but you have to pay for the OS
upgrade to get a half-descent version of this browser).

Is that now the accepted browser for the MAC? Is that what most MAC
users are now using?

Mas OS didn't have special browser for the longest time, and when it
first appeared (Safari) it happened to be a junk for several versions
in the row. So Mac OS users have everything one may imagine from
wherever they could get it, even Netscape 4.x for Mac
The question is what are you ready to support without wasting your
time and money? I told you my opinion, but it's my opinion.

I've been a PC man for 20 years not out of any love for
Microsoft but because PCs always had the vast majority of the market and I
wanted to be compatible with the majority of the market.

I wouldn't count that Microsoft will ever port again Internet Explorer
on any platform besides Windows. So you have to support standards
(Firefox and Camino) and IE - lucky it seems getting closer and closer
every year, at least in the most important aspects (XML, XSLT, XPath,
XMLHttpRequest, behaviors and so on).

 

[Simon Wigzell]

<snip>

Thanks, I have installed Camino and it doesn't have any of the flaky
behaviour of Safari so I'm sold on it.

Thanks for all your comments. I will be forwarding them to my client to back
up my susggestion that we throw safari into the same garbage heap with the
nasty MAC IE.

 

[VK]

Thanks, I have installed Camino and it doesn't have any of the flaky
behaviour of Safari so I'm sold on it.

Good deal!

Thanks for all your comments. I will be forwarding them to my client to back
up my susggestion that we throw safari into the same garbage heap with the
nasty MAC IE.

Right.
Full disclosure: Camino is made with a big care and after long
throughout testing - but not by Gods (like any software though). In
case of any problems - or to request a new feature - do not neglect
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided&product=Camino>

Good luck!

 

[RobG]

document.[Form Name].[Field Name].focus() will scroll the form to move the
specified text field into view on everything I have tried it with except
Safari on the MAC. The form doesn't move. Any work around? Thanks.

It works for me in version 1.0.3 (OS X 10.2.8). What version are you using?

<input type="button" value="focus on fred"
onclick="document.sue.fred.focus();">

<div style="height: 100em;">&nbsp;</div>

<form name="sue" action="">

Go to <http://www.caminobrowser.org> and get yourselve a Browser (not a
buggy HTML renderer). Advise the same to your visitors is they are
still suffering under Safari.

Perhaps you should test in Safari to see if the OP has a case. There is no
code shown and the functionality works in an old version of Safari (1.0.3),
I can't test in a newer one until later.

There were issues with Safari and focus() in older versions than 1.0.3.

P.S. window object has (had?) .scroll, .scrollBy and .scrollTo methods.
Try these -but I would not hold my breath on it.

Care to point out where any of those are described in a W3C specification?

P.P.S. Usually on Safari everything either doesn't work at all or it
works in the least expected way. If you are determined to bring this
stuff to life no matter what, you may want to summarize all glitches
first - otherwise we'll come to "MAC Safari compatibility problem 122"
post rather soon ;-)

Safari has it's problems for sure, but likely no more than other browsers.
It is generally pretty good for standards compliance.

 

[RobG]

Simon Wigzell said on 11/04/2006 6:28 AM AEST:

<snip>

Thanks, I have installed Camino and it doesn't have any of the flaky
behaviour of Safari so I'm sold on it.

Thanks for all your comments. I will be forwarding them to my client to back
up my susggestion that we throw safari into the same garbage heap with the
nasty MAC IE.

Don't be surprised if your client is as receptive as if you'd said dump
IE on Windows and install Firefox.

I don't particularly like Camino (just personal preference), you might
like to try OmniWeb too. I used version 4 until Safari became useful,
version 5 is better than Firefox (I was too lousy to buy a licence at
USD29.95 but I'm reconsidering).

<URL:http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/>


If you include Safari in your development and test environments, you'll
quickly learn its foibles and to work with them. Overall, I don't think
it has any more scripting eccentricities than IE (but different ones) -
though it probably has more than Firefox.

 

[VK]

Safari has it's problems for sure, but likely no more than other browsers.
It is generally pretty good for standards compliance.

We must be happened to test on Safari's from parallel universes

But you are right that Camino is not the *only* choice for Mac users -
but I never said that. There is OmniWeb
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/>, there is iCab
<http://www.icab.de/>, there is a whole list here:
<http://darrel.knutson.com/mac/www/browsers.html> (some links are
already dead); if one diggs in public FTP archives it is still possible
to find IE 5.2 for Mac or NN 4.x for Mac.

The problem with OmniWeb and iCab (and many others) is the fee. There
is a noticeable difference between to say "go download a newer browser"
and "go buy a newer browser". The first is my holly right I reserve to
use; the second is kinda users' monetary business I'm hesitating to
implore.

And the universal problem with all Co is that as of the year 2006 there
is a big difference between Browsers and HTML Renderers. The latter
ones may have better or worser interfaces, render HTML by W3C or by
their own etc. But it does not promote them into Browsers - thus into
something one can cover by support without having a separate
development unit or by switching onto lower-level solution model.

I'm willing to change my mind about OmniWeb though: if you visit
<http://www.geocities.com/schools_ring/test.xml> and tell me that you
see a formatted table with misic collection. It doesn't make OmniWeb
free of course, but at least I'm ready to talk about it as of a
browser.

If you see a jagged XML source text instead, then the question is over,
I'm affraid.

 

[VK]

Safari has it's problems for sure, but likely no more than other browsers.
It is generally pretty good for standards compliance.

We must be happened to test on Safari's from parallel universes

But you are right that Camino is not the *only* choice for Mac users -
but I never said that. There is OmniWeb
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/>, there is iCab
<http://www.icab.de/>, there is a whole list here:
<http://darrel.knutson.com/mac/www/browsers.html> (some links are
already dead); if one diggs in public FTP archives it is still possible
to find IE 5.2 for Mac or NN 4.x for Mac.

The problem with OmniWeb and iCab (and many others) is the fee. There
is a noticeable difference between to say "go download a newer browser"
and "go buy a newer browser". The first is my holly right I reserve to
use; the second is kinda users' monetary business I'm hesitating to
implore.

And the universal problem with all Co is that as of the year 2006 there
is a big difference between Browsers and HTML Renderers. The latter
ones may have better or worser interfaces, render HTML by W3C or by
their own etc. But it does not promote them into Browsers - thus into
something one can cover by support without having a separate
development unit or by switching onto lower-level solution model.

I'm willing to change my mind about OmniWeb though: if you visit
<http://www.geocities.com/schools_ring/test.xml> and tell me that you
see a formatted table with misic collection. It doesn't make OmniWeb
free of course, but at least I'm ready to talk about it as of a
browser.

If you see a jagged XML source text instead, then the question is over,
I'm affraid.


P.S. Does it mean that I'm excluding current Opera from the list?
Sorry, but partially true. This browser failed too much behind the
trends. I'm waiting to see the v.9 but I do not put too much of hope on
it. In the new Opera's marketing model they seem moving to thin and
ultra-thin clients: something like WORA for the Web. So they seem be
targeted not to new technologies support, but ensure that the very same
solution would be equally functional on a fat client (desktop PC),
palmtop and web-enabled cell-phone.

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

We must be happened to test on Safari's from parallel universes

Without actually having access to one, the impression I get from reading
about Safari problems is that its standard compliance is a little lacking
the behind Opera and Mozilla based browsers. It might not have more bugs,
but they are in more central parts. I also get the impression that they
are continuously improving.

(A saying from my course on programming large systems: "The number of bugs
in a large system is constant over time" - bugfixes just move them further
out into obscure corners where they are less likely to cause trouble).

(And even if you discount Opera for your uses, some of us swear to it -
and it is free
/L

 

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

[the same thing twice again, with Google Groups]

Go to <http://www.caminobrowser.org> and get yourselve a Browser
(not a buggy HTML renderer).

[rest of VK nonsense moved to /dev/null, where it belongs]

PointedEars

 

[RobG]

We must be happened to test on Safari's from parallel universes

Most likely. I read the OP's comment, created a test case, tested it in an
old version of Safari (1.0.3 in Mac OS X 10.2.8) and found that the focus
method does indeed work just fine.

You, on the other hand, simply made assertions and generalisations without
a shred of evidence.

But you are right that Camino is not the *only* choice for Mac users -
but I never said that.

And I didn't say you did. I just said that OmniWeb is a good browser, and
also pointed out that it costs.

[...]

The problem with OmniWeb and iCab (and many others) is the fee. There
is a noticeable difference between to say "go download a newer browser"
and "go buy a newer browser". The first is my holly right I reserve to
use; the second is kinda users' monetary business I'm hesitating to
implore.

No one is denying your right to use whatever browser you wish, nor did I
suggest OmniWeb as the solution to the OP's non-existent problem. As a
browser, I think it's better than Camino.

And the universal problem with all Co is that as of the year 2006 there
is a big difference between Browsers and HTML Renderers. The latter
ones may have better or worser interfaces, render HTML by W3C or by
their own etc. But it does not promote them into Browsers - thus into
something one can cover by support without having a separate
development unit or by switching onto lower-level solution model.

It has always been that way. Whenever someone has tried to create a
ubiquitous standard that, if supported, would guarantee interoperability
everywhere it has failed to be widely applicable. Browsers have, arguably,
succeeded better than any other GUI platform.

If you only want to support the two most popular browsers and ignore the
rest, fine. Some choose only one, others as many as they can. Ain't
freedom of choice great?

I'm willing to change my mind about OmniWeb though: if you visit
<http://www.geocities.com/schools_ring/test.xml> and tell me that you
see a formatted table with misic collection. It doesn't make OmniWeb
free of course, but at least I'm ready to talk about it as of a
browser.

I don't need to visit that site to see if I like OmniWeb. My test is to
use it for general browsing for a month or so, and try a library of
utilities and functions to see if they work. If it passes all that, I'll
like it.

If you see a jagged XML source text instead, then the question is over,
I'm affraid.

It displays in Safari 2.0.3 (Mac OS X 10.4.5) just like it does in Firefox
1.5.0.1. OmniWeb displays the element content as plain text, but that is
irrelevant in whether I decide to use OmniWeb or not. XML on the web is
something of a novelty, though it may be in serious use for other purposes.

My opinion is that XML is highly overrated as a data transfer medium for
most purposes to which it is put - but that's another argument altogether.

 

[RobG]

Without actually having access to one, the impression I get from reading
about Safari problems is that its standard compliance is a little lacking
the behind Opera and Mozilla based browsers. It might not have more bugs,
but they are in more central parts. I also get the impression that they
are continuously improving.

That's about right. Apple have decided that to get upgrades, you have
to buy a new copy of Mac OS. That annoys me, I'd rather they updated it
independently of the OS for free. Maybe that's why Apple is a
multi-billion dollar business and I get paid by the hour.

(A saying from my course on programming large systems: "The number of bugs
in a large system is constant over time" - bugfixes just move them further
out into obscure corners where they are less likely to cause trouble).

(And even if you discount Opera for your uses, some of us swear to it -
and it is free

I haven't tried Opera on Mac for quite a while, just updated to 8.54...

 

[VK]

[rest of VK nonsense moved to /dev/null, where it belongs]

Love you Pointy,your're giving to c.l.j that spice which gives to the
brewing stuff that kick to be the real sh**.

I mean it's often that you're like that spit in the smoking copper, but
as it never brings down the sh** strength, so you're just fine I say.
;-)

btw I'm on Bodensee once again and I have to say that Schwaben got even
more Schwabisch than they ever were before: but it did not affect the
beer, God thanks.

 

[Richard Cornford]

RobG wrote:

If you only want to support the two most popular browsers
and ignore the rest, fine. Some choose only one, others
as many as they can. Ain't freedom of choice great?

<snip>

Do you really think VK has a choice? Surely he supports just a couple of
browsers in their default configurations because that is the limit of
his ability? Have you observed the HTML he has been posting recently?
Nobody else jumps through such ludicrous hoops to address such a minor
'issue'.

It doesn't take much observing of those who recommend Internet authoring
for just one or two browser to see that they are incapable of doing any
better themselves, don't want to learn how to do better, and are keen to
encourage others to never attempt more because that way their own sills
won't look obviously deficient.

Richard.

 

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

It doesn't take much observing of those who recommend Internet authoring
for just one or two browser to see that they are incapable of doing any
better themselves, don't want to learn how to do better, and are keen to
encourage others to never attempt more because that way their own sills
won't look obviously deficient.

D'oh! How do I get this into four lines? ;-)


Regards,
PointedEars

 

[VK]

Love you Pointy

Did I actually write this?! I be damned... need to be careful with
Metzkater...

Please sign off as a momentary weakness of a Bud water victim.

 

[VK]

First of all let's us clarify the situation, as you seem masterly
substituted the subject: it is not about supporting "two browsers
only". It is about supporting the W3C standards (Firefox, Camino) and
supporting the browser being in the widest use at the current segment
of time (IE for now).

This is the "must" - as opposed to "may". You may support any amount of
browsers you can squeeze into your time and funds: 2, 3 or 33 and more.
No one browser I'm aware of is "simply not functional" - so one could
make an easy choice of dropping it. It is always these subtle small
nasty details here and there like in the OP's case.

And this brings the old question: how many riders (browsers) one horse
(developer) can hold. I was reading one Opera adept's blog where he was
complaining for GMail support for Opera 7.x Something like "see, they
just had to move it here, this there, add this line - and it would
work":- In summary indeed just few keystrokes. So Google team are lazy
bastards? Not at all if we remember that this very code was tested for
Firefox, Netscape, IE - on a great number of different versions. Opera
7 simply did not get its ticket in the line.
And it is normal, because no matter how wide your support is, in the
real (not abstract) run there is a point you have to stop: and very
possible that the UA makers you stopped before will be "upset": "and
what about us?" Well, you have to stop somewhere, so there is always
going to be a browser you've closed the door right in front of. Let's
us add Opera 7... then Opera 6 will be upset; add Opera 6 - "why you
did not check Safari?"; add Safary - "why you did not fix for OmniWeb -
it is so easy, look..."

I'm sorry, but the horse can hold only so many riders. Any wannabe have
to fight for its place: and not with developers, but with other riders.
You'll get a noticeable share of market - you'll get you place. Until
then be *exact* as one of current winners - because no one will give a
damn about you personal bugs. And then become noticeable *better* in
some or many aspects: because to be simply as good as someone else is
not enough - why would anyone switch equal to equal?

What happened with Opera and GMail btw? Well, current Opera works just
fine - after *Opera* adjusted its engine to be like one of the winners.