Mac Safari compatibility questions

[jdlwright]

Hi,

I have a big script that doesn't work in Safari 1.3, but does work in
FF, and IE. I've given up going to my local Uni. to use their Macs
(they've prevented the Debug menu from appearing after running that
widely known hack), and so I want to buy my first Mac to do this
properly.

Being a PC person I am generally ignorant of Mac OS issues;

a) it looks like Safari 2 only works with OSX v10.4, is this true?

b) it also appears that Safari 1.3 ONLY works with OSX 10.3 - will it
work on 10.4, and if it will, is it obtainable (ie. public download?).

c) if answer to b) is 'no' - would I be safe to assume that scripts
which work on v1.3 will work on v2? Or the other way around? (I'd
prefer to get a new Mac and get the script working on 2 and roughly
working on 1.3, then refine it in the Uni library

d) if a), b) and c) are all 'no' - I presume I can get two hard drives
and install 10.3 on one and 10.4 on the other... joy.


Sorry this is a little OT, but you cant post to comp.sys.mac from
Google Groups (and FYI I cant reach our ISP news service from behind
our office firewall...).


Thanks and any general tips/pointers are gratefully received,
Jim

 

[RobG]

Hi,

I have a big script that doesn't work in Safari 1.3, but does work in
FF, and IE. I've given up going to my local Uni. to use their Macs
(they've prevented the Debug menu from appearing after running that
widely known hack), and so I want to buy my first Mac to do this
properly.

Being a PC person I am generally ignorant of Mac OS issues;

a) it looks like Safari 2 only works with OSX v10.4, is this true?
Yes.


b) it also appears that Safari 1.3 ONLY works with OSX 10.3 - will it
work on 10.4, and if it will, is it obtainable (ie. public download?).

Will it work? Dunno - but a moot point really. The version of Safari
that you get is essentially tied to the version of Mac OS that you are
running. OS X 10.2 has Safari 1.0.3, 10.3 has 1.2 and 10.4 has 2.0.

<URL:http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/uamatrix.html>

As far as I know, you can't get installers for Safari, so you can't
have multiple versions on the one OS. No doubt there is a hack
somewhere to do it, but it may be more trouble than it's worth (the Web
Kit is open source, you can download and compile different versions if
you like...).

c) if answer to b) is 'no' - would I be safe to assume that scripts
which work on v1.3 will work on v2? Or the other way around? (I'd
prefer to get a new Mac and get the script working on 2 and roughly
working on 1.3, then refine it in the Uni library

Yes, but there's no guarantee. It may be too much to ask, but check in
1.0.3 (OS X 10.2) also to ensure graceful fall-back - it lacks some
important features and has a number of quirks.

d) if a), b) and c) are all 'no' - I presume I can get two hard drives
and install 10.3 on one and 10.4 on the other... joy.

No need for separate hard drives, just partition the one drive. 5 GB
is plenty for a basic install if you just want to test the browser.
You can pick up old copies of OS X pretty cheap on eBay, install on an
old iMac so you have a test machine separate from your dev box. A good
setup is a Mac mini on top of a Wintel laptop and a KVM switch to
change environments.

Sorry this is a little OT, but you cant post to comp.sys.mac from
Google Groups (and FYI I cant reach our ISP news service from behind
our office firewall...).


Thanks and any general tips/pointers are gratefully received,
Jim

Apples Safari support pages may be useful, their developer stuff is
here:

<URL:http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/>

 

[jdlwright]

Thanks very much Rob, very helpful.

Jim