A scary thought for Apple users

I just read this post, "Do Firefox Developers Still Care About Mac?," at MacSlash.  It actually sent a shiver down my spine.  I have also noticed a fair number of problems recently with Firefox and my Macs running Firefox 2.0.0.1.  I hope it is just getting the bugs out of the newest version and not really a lack of commitment to the Mac.

Right now Firefox is my lifeline to my Mac.  The reality I face is, that for whatever reason, Safari has not become a great blogging tool.  Still when I log into Typepad, I don't get a full suite of tools compared to the tools in Firefox.  It might well be the fault of the folks at Typepad.  I don't know.  I've brought it up with Apple system engineers and can't seem to get any good answers on whether the problems are going to be fixed.

I think the problem is with Safari since the support is even worse at Blogger where there are almost no tools when you use Safari compared to when you do a post with Firefox.

I find this typical of Apple's short attention span.  I recently had to go through all sorts of contortions to convince .Mac that my wife's mailbox actually had some space.  I have tons of space on .Mac but because .Mac is not a priority and Apple has chosen to not provide any decent email tools, I can't provide any extra space to my wife's email only account.  My frustration led me to create her an account for her on my Google apps for you domain account. It has roughly fifty times the storage, it's free and is more reliable.  This will be my last year with a .Mac account. I personally think it you want real email you need to go to an email outsourcing company, though I have to admit the Google stuff is getting pretty good unless you need support.

There is no more innovative computer company out there than Apple.  Most of us would agree on that.  Yet sometimes the way Apple ignores important basics just drives me crazy.  How about some updates to Safari which started out with the promise of being such a great browser?

I wonder how some of these great small companies with almost no money in the bank can churn out four or five updates before they do a for fee one.  I'm willing to bet the only way I'll see an upgrade to the iTools suite is to pay for a full Leopard upgrade and a full iTools upgrade.

Even Microsoft had the decency to provide the IE7 upgrade for Windows XP.  Of course if you want any real iTools from MS, the tariff is a Vista upgrade which brings some unwanted annoyances as well as being very expensive.

Still, these days a great browser is a key element to a satisfying computer platform.  The last I checked with Technorati, there were lots of people doing blogs, and I know a bunch of bloggers do them with either Blogger or Typepad.

Firefox being such a great browser has contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the Apple platform.  The bad news for Apple is that Firefox works really well on Windows and on Linux.

Any problems with commitment from the Firefox team to the Mac platform could have a serious impact on the Mac unless Apple decides to get serious about fixing Safari.  Not all of us want to browse the web on the iPhone or whatever it will be called.

In spite of the technical and driver challenges, Ubuntu Linux keeps looking better and better.

Comments

[OS11]

Not sure why it's a problem... FireFox is a mozilla based "PC" browser, not a Mac one. Any serious Mac User will use mozilla based "Camino", not FireFox in the first place.

FireFox doesn't work well with the keychain, the interface is poorly crafted, it's slower, so move on over to the Mac built browser "Camino" and you'll never worry about FireFox again.

http://www.caminobrowser.org/

[pauldwaite]

Maybe try Camino? Same rendering engine as Firefox, but without the Mozilla UI stuff.

It doesn't do Firefox extensions though.

[anonymous]

You should really consider checking out Camino as an alternative to Firefox. While you can't use the Firefox plugins, it combines the speed of Safari and the rendering of Firefox. (Plus all your blogging tools will work the same as in Firefox)

[Ted]

Try Camino. It has the same engine as FireFox and so should be able to do your blogging and it has a dedicated following who would keep going even if FireFox for Mac died.

[Roger]

DotMac is not for heavy users of any kind. You can put these services together elsewhere if you have heavy needs. Anyone with heavy email needs should move on from .Mac.

I don't have a need for browser tools beyond Camino so I cannot comment on any failings by Safari or Firefox; I have trouble imagining what all the Firefox tools would even be used for. Good luck on that front.

roger

[Nick]

This will likely be down to JavaScript support--specifically AJAX:

"The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

JavaScript has enjoyed something of a renaissance on the web, because of the frenzy for AJAX. It enables some nice technology like Google Maps. However, there is a downside: client-side scripting is bad news both for people's security and for the exclusion it can cause people with access problems (who are all too often forgotten). See the remarks in the wiki article on section 508 compliance.

As far as security goes, I think I'm right in saying that no fewer than three cross-site scripting vulnerabilities have been found recently in Google's Gmail service. To say there are a lot more out there on the web would be to wildly understate the problem.

So JavaScript is not all roses, and we'd arguably be better off if there were less of it around. I don't know how long the trend towards AJAX has been running. I suppose it's possible it caught Apple out. However, it think it is only fair to the Safari developers to point out that they have done wonders and have added a lot of functionality.

I'm not blindly talking up Apple as so many people do. I think they should be held to account by their users for, for example, some of the flaws the Month of Apple Bugs pointed out.

However, I think Apple and its developers should get credit where it's due. Now, while there are standards for HTML and CSS, JavaScript is a different matter. Apple's people have taken KHTML and worked hard to turn it into a world-class rendering engine. Its CSS support is years ahead of IE7's. There are parts of the CSS standards that *no* other browser has yet implemented. And Safari was the first browser in the world to pass the "Acid Test" for rendering engines:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#008042

To be sure, IE7's poor quality will not disturb its users on the web. But that is merely an artifact of Microsoft's dominance of the market, because no-one can use perfectly valid markup that it doesn't support without shutting out over 80% of users.

Webmasters can throw around IE-specific JavaScript (some of which Mozilla's browsers also support) and only inconvenience the minority of Mac and Linux users with browsers like Safari and Konqueror. But they can't use certain perfectly valid, safe, standards-compliant CSS declarations because, although they are W3C standards -

http://www.w3.org/

- Internet Explorer cannot cope with them. I think it's simply not fair to Dave Hyatt and his team to say "Apple ignores important basics".

And I think it is equally unfair to say by contrast "Microsoft had the decency to provide the IE7 upgrade". Microsoft let that browser rot for *years*. And they've still not caught up with the standards--no way. In fact, Microsoft probably deliberately let IE rot to put a brake on web applications, so as to protect the Windows API (i.e., their desktop applications) and only began work again when they felt Firefox's hot breath down their neck. I don't think the concept "decency" is in the Microsoft handbook.

The webkit people have actually done so much work and added so much capability (including, doubtless, support for Microsoft-specific JavaScript) that, according to their blog, they have now had to enter a "stabilization" phase. Here is the post:

http://webkit.org/blog/?p=93

I really don't know what more they can do. I recall awhile back that the people at KDE (where the KHTML engine comes from in the first place) were complaining that Apple's engineers were going *too* fast and adding too much.

Surely, they can only go as fast as they are able--and consistent with ensuring that the product remains stable and bug free.

It really is a very high-quality product. And it's also superior to Firefox in many ways. Here's one example--the most basic thing of all, viz.,handling of text:

http://www.zeldman.com/2006/11/27/safari-beats-firefox/

[Bill Stevenson]

Go to webkit.org and download the latest nightly build and try your rich text editing.

[Steve]

Opera

Camino

OmniWeb

All very good browsers - all very acceptable alternatives - all very well supported

Firefox development falling a bit behind for the Mac isn't scary - it's just a bit of a bummer. I've always used it as my backup browser when Safari has had trouble (a very rare occurrance in my experience).

Hearing that Google Maps is only going to be IE7 compliant in two weeks - THAT'S scary.

[Kenneth]

I LOVE Firefox on my Mac. I thought Safari was okay, but it lagged behind FF in the compatibility issues.

Let's hope FF will continue to support the best commercial OS out there (Mac OSX).

[ocracokewaves]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions on Camino.

Camino does pretty well with Typepad.

http://coastalnc.org/camino

But it doesn't do as well as Firefox.

http://coastalnc.org/firefox

Firefox and Camino are close on Blooger, but 90% of my posts are done on Typepad.

This brings up an interesting twist. One of the reasons that I hadn't tried Camino in a while is that after my morning newspaper browsing with Camino, I use it as a stand alone app for my email.

http://coastalnc.org/webmail

Webmail.us, the company where I use to work, has an option that lets you use a browser without borders for you webmail. I find it is a lot better than dealing with email as a tab. Consequently I usually leave Camino running as an email app for most of the day.

http://coastalnc.org/borderlessbrowser

It's nice to see that Camino has made progress with some of the blogging issues. I hope it becomes a completely viable alternative for Firefox.

Actually I just did a closer look and Camino is exactly the same as Firefox on Blogger.

I sure wish that was the case on Typepad, but I guess that means the problem is likely Typepad's

http://coastalnc.org/screenshot

[Nick]

I think the current version of Camino (1.03) has a less up-to-date version of the rendering engine than Firefox 2; so they may not behave identically.

The next pre-release of Camino uses Gecko version 1.8.1, just like Firefox. It also has some nice refinements like the ability to hand off RSS feeds to an aggregator such as NetNewsWire, Mac-style window-zooming, and more. Since it's numbered 1.1, it's obviously considered to be quite an improvement. However, it is still pre-release:

http://beta.caminobrowser.org/

Having said that, I use it quite a lot, and I've yet to see a problem. But presumably it will be coming as a release in due course.

[Huge Seagull]

An alternative to Camino is the Mac-optimized version of Firefox called "BonEcho". Give it a try!

http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/01/06/firefox-2001

[joe in oklahoma]

i like safari...get mad at it from time to time, wander off to FF or camino or opera, but keep coming back...

i understand the leopard version of safari will make some folks forget FF

i use camino as my backup browser to safari. i have tried 3x to like FF... but it gets clunky and glitchy, and the system operates and feels different than safari or camino. i am writing this on FF2 and having trouble with
little things even while i type.

i think alot of the attraction of FF is the hype. i know everybody raves about the extensions and such, but i wonder how many actually use them all.

[LilBambi]

I actually am quite happy with Firefox 2.0.0.3 on the Mac. I also use Safari and Opera.

I like them all for different reasons.

I will likely install Camino and I am sure I will like that as well. Particularly because of it's consistent 'feel' on the Mac.

Since I came to the Mac from Windows and Linux (both of which I still also use), I have always used various alternative browsers. Ever since Firefox was Phoenix.

I don't use many extensions but the ones I use I do not wish to be without. So I would imagine that Firefox will continue to be my first choice.

The thing I like about Firefox (and Mozilla's Thunderbird email client) and Opera is that they are totally cross platform. No matter whether I am on the Mac, in Windows or Linux, my browser and my bookmarks and extensions are there.