I don't think it is so bad
Oh it is so bad. It's the least developer friendly browser available.
IE allows us to debug with visual studio (or the
lite script debugger they offer). Netscape 6/7 had Venkman
(which sucked, but it was something). Firefox gives us the
always improving Firebug. Safari - Nothing !! They have Drosera
that allegedly works with Webkit, but Webkit is not Safari. I
don't think I want to be downloading a nightly build of Safari
and having to build it myself to debug a web page.
Without a debugger we're left to putting in alerts. How 1994 is
that? Safari doesn't even offer a JavaScript console by default,
and the one it does offer (if you know how to enable it) is
total garbage.
Here's an example, I have a page right now that has a JS error
on line 192. It's accessing a variable called Map which is
undefined. So what do the browsers tell me when I load that page?
IE7 ------- Line 192: Map is undefined.
Firefox 2 - Map is not defined : Line 192
Safari ---- ReferenceError-Can't find variable:Forbidden:Line 0
Now if this error was unique to Safari what help would I get in
finding the error? None at all. I'd have to install SVN (OK I
have it anyway but most web developers don't). I'd have to
download the whole webkit project and build it, and only then do
I get any chance at debugging a web page.
Considering also that Safari gets more problems than other
browsers, I think it's clear why I hate it so much. There are
lines of code that all other browsers are happy with but Safari
pukes at and you have no idea why or where it's happening.
I've tried loading that page with the error on line 192 into
Windows Safari beta. Guess what, it doesn't have a javascript
console or any published way of enabling it. Even less helpful
than Mac Safari 1.3.