Why does Safari suck so much?

[kevs]

I stick with Safari over Firefox because
1) I'm so used to the interface
2) I like backing up bookmarks with Safari Bookmark exporter, which there is no good equivilant of in Firefox
3) has organic autofill with Firefox does not.

still, every month, some fiasco with page that Firefox displays perfectly.

Anyone have any better insight into this than me? thanks!

[Millwood]

Is your question video related?

[kevs]

ONly when watching and posting videos on the web.

[lordsmurf]

Most Mac users seem to be using Firefox, at least all the ones I know.

[usually_quiet]

kevs, what Millwood is telling you is that your question may get a more useful reply if moved to the Computer forum.

[kevs]

that's for PC folks no?

[thecoalman]

First a disclaimer :P :Not a Mac user so I really have no idea of the comparison between the Mac version of FF and the Windows version.

Anyhow FF is the most standards compliant/widely used browser for the Windows platform, note that I'm not saying it is the most standards compliant but a combination of the two. Many webmasters will build their pages and test first in FF, if it works correctly in FF then it should work in most other browsers. If it doesn't they adjust or hack the code from there to fix any bugs, at least most try. Also be aware that the pages that don't appear correctly may actually be the fault of the person that coded them, incorrect markup can have varying affects in different browsers. Some browser will interpret invalid code such as missing tags and still work correctly and not in others.

Every browser has it quirks and bugs and no two will display all pages exactly the same unless you use a very basic layout, it's even entirely possible for there to be a difference between the Windows and Mac version of FF. Since Safari is relatively low on the food chain you can expect to see some pages that won't display correctly.

[SERBIAN]

Safari works just fine...Make sure you have all the required browser plugins to play varous video formats on web..As thecoalman nicely put most often page has not been coded properly and not tested at all before puttin it online...

[dcsos]

Safari is less compliant than either
Camino or Firefox
Try this test:
yesterday I was on the national advertising site for Verizon Fios service.
The link at the bottom of the page (a disclaimer) wasn't clickable only in safari.
The Mac browser architects have dropped the ball!

[londor]

yesterday I was on the national advertising site for Verizon Fios service.
The link at the bottom of the page (a disclaimer) wasn't clickable only in safari.

It works perfectly in Safari so I do not know what you are talking about.

[dcsos]

javascript:display_disclaimer();

showed up fine today when I surfed over there.. but I agree with the forum topic initiatior and was just trying to show a concrete example of problems I've experienced only in Safari.
Unable to duplicate that error today, but I know I've encountered pages where my camino browser even functions better than SAFARI

[kevs]

thanks for feedback guys

[live4ever]

Check out the newest WebKit builds which give you Safari's interface but a vastly updated rendering engine.

http://webkit.org/

[kevs]

thanks live
I went to link, can you put in laymans terms what this means, it's over my head a bit

[Cyrax9]

Apple built OS X with Safari in mind as the browser much the way Microsoft builds Windows with IE in mind. That being said, it's sad when Apple's video trailers play better on FireFox than they do on Safari. It's sad when my 2003 PowerMac G4 running OS X 10.2.8 runs everything from text to YouTube far better than Safari does. It's extremely sad when Safari crashes every five minutes rendering it useless, and it's just plain pathetic when to set up broadband internet access via a hotel I had to accidently order more time than I wanted too (this just kept me from having to do it again the next day,) because Safari was the only Mac compatible browser (pre-FireFox) at the time to use set up services via OS X. In truth, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Apple keeps bundling this disaster into its OS rather than cutting it off like a 3.5" Floppy drive, nor can I justify having to constantly tell my machine to load new program through FireFox rather than Safari (on a PC it's FireFox rather than IE, but the problem remains nonetheless.)

I would only watch video through FireFox, I don't care that Safari is 2X faster than IE 7 or some odd speed faster than FireFox, I care that my browser functions! When I upgrade to OS X 10.5 this October, I will again have to reconfigure my entire machine to ignore Safari.

My Mac Mini running OS X 10.4.8 runs a much more stable Safari, but it's still a fairly non-functional browser -- especially for video. The UI is disgusting and lacks any sense of a layout to me, and I'm quite fond of Apple products, so this is really an insult when I see something this poorly designed with Apple's name attached to it being supported.

If you ask me Safari is no better than IE 7. It has tabs, wow (note the extreme sarcasm,) FireFox had tabs from day one! It's the fastest browser (according to Apple anyway,) because it can't load anything, has no plug-ins (more on that in a second,) and can't do anything beyond basic website lookup.

Note that I said it has no real plug-ins. This is your problem more often than not -- video requires plug-ins! Why Apple, the company that's released the iPod, iPhone and AppleTV, and developed Final Cut Studio 2 doesn't get this is beyond me, and makes me wonder what genius let Safari run the way it does for another release of OS X. The one thing I thought they'd have immediately fixed with the announcement of OS X 10.5 was the poor web browser known as Safari.

It gets worse though: If you haven't been following, Apple just unleashed a Safari beta on the Windows world. The problem? It sucks -- just like IE sucks, just like Safari under OS X sucks since it's non-functional half the time, and like every other Windows app, it's bloated. Instead of porting Final Cut which would've made much more sense (especially after Adobe ported Premiere Pro to the Mac and Avid is already cross-platform,) or Apple's Mail client which has some perks, or even a program like iMovie or iDVD to compete with Windows Movie Maker in the "cheap pack-in software" department, they ported the one piece of Apple code that's laughably unstable and not even used by most Mac owners! Why? Simple, the idea is to get more developers for the iPhone since "If it works on Safari, it'll work on the iPhone," by releasing it on Windows. The problem is the world doesn't need another web browser, and we sure don't need another lousy web browser like Safari on a platform plagued by lousy web browsers.

As stated, FireFox is the de facto standard for Web Browsing, and that plays videos just fine, even on my old PowerBook. Safari is the IE 7 of the Mac world, it's a poorly coded browser designed to be packed into an OS so people can get online and get a "real" browser. It's a bad piece of code and even die-hard Apple fans acknowledge this. Go with FireFox, you'll be much happier, and remember it's open-source, maybe you can find someone to code some plug-ins to give it the features of Safari. The best way I can put it is this: Apple is not in the browser industry, even if they think they are; Microsoft is not in the browser industry even if they think they are. Mozilla is in the browser industry, any company can design a web browser, only a company specializing in web design can design a good browser.

I do believe this would be better off in the computers forum (although it does fall under Mac video since Kev's problem is related to Mac video,) but as a Mac user myself who switched from a PC and ran IE prior to FireFox on his Mac because Safari was a mess from day one, I can't understand why anyone is running this program willingly. If I could make FireFox route all of Safari through it and delete the Safari browser I would. Nothing useful has ever come out of it for me, and it's no better than IE 7, in fact, it might actually be worse. I'm really ashamed to see Apple tout this as a quality product, it's below their abilities, and it's not worth running if you can avoid it. If there's some piece of proprietary code requiring Safari, that's understandable, but for day to day use, FireFox beats Safari again and again, and Apple's bench tests don't mean anything to me if the browser only functions 75% of the time at best.

I like Apple, I really do. I like most Apple software, I think Safari is a laughable idea though that should be replaced with bundled copies of FireFox, and I think Microsoft should concede here as well and that OS manufactures should stop trying to create browsers as well since they do a poor job of it.

That's just my $0.02 -- if Safari was on par with other Mac Apps I'd run it, but it's not -- plain and simple.

[SERBIAN]

Buddy, what are you talking about? Safari works just fine...From your post people can conclude that its just a piece of crap like most of the PC apps are..And please dont "insult" FCP by comparing it with Adobe products or old mastadont like Avid...

Go and use firefox or any other browser of your choice, but please dont post comments like above cause they are simply not true...

Also..You can delete Safari easy..Just put in Trash and empty..And you dont have to "configure" your system to use another browser...Select .html, .htm or anything you want to open in browser of your choice, use Get Info and select the desired browser for openin those files...Do once and forget about it...Then, there is still huge memory leaks in Firefox on Mac that has not been fixed yet...It is a good browser but coded much worse than you aware of...Safari also uses open source engine like Firefox /which is the most web compliant, but, sadly, 90% of web devs does not follow the simple rules/...And finally interent browsin is diff. thing for everyone...Tellin that internet browser "sucks" cause its "ugly" and dont work on your Mac like you want...well its a bit silly...

[kevs]

thanks Cyrax, very informative post.
I actually, believe it or not, am still sticking with safari because I still like the interface more that Firefox , and firefox does not have an organic (non plug in) autofill and I use that as much as anything.
I also use Safari Bookmark exporter, which there is no good equivilant for Firefox.
Still, once a month, I do have to use Firefox for your reasons stated.
I would think now that it will be windows compatible, that developers would get it as stable as firefox, no?

[FulciLives]

thanks Cyrax, very informative post.
I actually, believe it or not, am still sticking with safari because I still like the interface more that Firefox , and firefox does not have an organic (non plug in) autofill and I use that as much as anything.
I also use Safari Bookmark exporter, which there is no good equivilant for Firefox.
Still, once a month, I do have to use Firefox for your reasons stated.
I would think now that it will be windows compatible, that developers would get it as stable as firefox, no?

Windows doesn't need nor want another browser. It already comes with one that sucks now (IE7) and already has one that is better and now the standard (FireForx).

There is no need for Safari and just because it is here doesn't mean people will pay it any attention.

In this day and age of multiple computer platforms (Windows, MAC, Linux) you need one browser that works in all of them ... oh wait ... it's here already!

FireFox 8)

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Cyrax9]

Hmm... is there a potential problem with my Mac? I know it's running 10.2.8 but every time I open Safari the program randomly quits on me after no longer than five minutes, in fact it's the primary reason I wouldn't touch it early on. I had similar issues with my brother's PowerMac G4, but it might be the age of OS X 10.2.8 -- I never thought of it that way, and most Mac users I know despise Safari for the same reason, now you have me wondering if it's just my copy or earlier copies.

thanks Cyrax, very informative post.
I actually, believe it or not, am still sticking with safari because I still like the interface more that Firefox , and firefox does not have an organic (non plug in) autofill and I use that as much as anything.
I also use Safari Bookmark exporter, which there is no good equivilant for Firefox.
Still, once a month, I do have to use Firefox for your reasons stated.
I would think now that it will be windows compatible, that developers would get it as stable as firefox, no?

Well you mentioned one thing I like and one thing I never use since I consider it a security threat. Autofill is one of the first things I disable on any browser or program that uses it since I don't like programs handing out my information. Pain in the behind for me to type everything in when I need too? Yes, but it's better than losing my ID to a piece of malware of having some hacker browser-jack me and autofill a bunch of forms in my name. I understand why people like it though, and I know plenty who use it. I also know people who won't touch it such as myself.

As for bookmark exporter, if it's the way I remember it and it exports your bookmarks as an HTML file, you can do that through FireFox too. If it's something else I'd have to look into it. I know how to export bookmarks from FireFox and IE because I exported all of my IE bookmarks prior to importing them into FireFox, and I exported all of my FireFox Bookmarks for a school assignment during a "required elective" that wasn't very useful on web page design and computer literacy. (I learned everything that was in that course during a computer camp as a child in the summer and much more... it was the highest Information Science & Technology elective offered though.) To export bookmarks through FireFox you have to open the "Bookmarks Manager" by clicking on "Organize Bookmarks" under the bookmarks tab, and then clicking "File" and "Export" with the Bookmarks Manager open.

As far as the stability issue goes, which is what drove me away from Safari, I thought that Apple would want to make it as stable as possible when trying to dethrone Microsoft and IE prior to FireFox. I think that once FireFox caught on as the de facto Linux/Windows Browser, Apple really just said "let them handle OS X as well" since it was stable, not Windows, and let Apple's R&D guys work on more important programs besides another web browser which seem to be a dime a dozen and are released daily with fly-by-nights disappearing as quickly as they arrive. Safari is to OS X what IE is to Windows, it's a pack-in browser to make people feel like they got one "extra" program with their OS when in reality it's there for the sake of being there, good or not, no OS would ship without a browser in this day and age, and I think that Apple is, or at least was, treating Safari that way.

John "Fulcilives" Coleman makes a very valid point though when he says, and I quote:

"Windows doesn't need nor want another browser. It already comes with one that sucks now (IE7) and already has one that is better and now the standard (FireForx[sic]).

There is no need for Safari and just because it is here doesn't mean people will pay it any attention.

In this day and age of multiple computer platforms (Windows, MAC, Linux) you need one browser that works in all of them ... oh wait ... it's here already!

FireFox 8) "

Windows doesn't need another browser, it has too many already, and as noted, it comes with that travesty labeled IE7, and has access to FireFox. There's also Oprah which some people use with FireFox, Netscape which is a joke, and whatever fly-by-night happens to land on that OS.

Safari is on a PC, but I don't see PC users rushing to switch to it, just as WinAMP users didn't rush to iTunes for their music library -- they used it as a glorified "conveyor belt" for their iPods, nothing more and nothing less. And John's remark that one browser that runs Win/Lin/Mac is the must is 100% true, and that's FireFox. Could Apple put Safari out for Linux? Sure, but they'd really need to fix the problems it has right now first.

The only reason it's on the PC is because Jobs wants to make sure that 9% of the cell-phone market willing to shell out $600 for "The God Machine," as the iPhone is now being called, will have plenty of Apps ready for both Windows and OS X users from Win/Mac developers. This is great in theory since anything that runs in Safari will run on the iPhone which is essentially "OS X in a phone" for lack of a better term, but when you realize that the iPhone is only available to AT&T (Cingular) customers, and that most of the USA uses Verizon Wireless, and then T-Mobile, this is a somewhat idiotic move since the largest wireless telecommunications provider can't even sell the iPhone!

Will the above scenario change? Sure, when AT&T's exclusivity agreement runs out Apple would be foolish to renew it, but for now they're stuck with AT&T unless Federal law intervenes and says that all Cell providers have to support all phones on the same system the same way that the courts made AT&T wire the entire nation for phone service.

What makes Safari on the PC such a mess though is that it's no better than any Windows-only app, and like iTunes on the PC, it's not optimized for anything, and it's bloated to the point where it feels like any Windows app, and there's no advantage to using it. Safari is a beta, but what's iTunes' excuse? The point of Safari and iTunes on the Mac is that they aren't memory hogs, they run well, iTunes does the job of WinAMP on the PC, and Safari is like IE 7 in the sense that it provides the OS with a browser (Viruses included are another story entirely though.) However on a PC, iTunes is "just another music player," and a pretty lousy one at that, while Safari is "just another browser," and one people don't even care about. If the iPhone was more readily accessible, and if Safari had a major advantage over FireFox for PC users, there might be a market for it, but as it stands, it's "just another program." If on the other hand, Apple released something like Final Cut Pro for the PC, people would be lining up to purchase a copy of it.

In truth, even if the programs were bloatware because Windows is bloatware, they wouldn't be as bad as they are now if Apple optimized their ports of popular Mac Programs. Quicktime Pro seems to be the exception, but I see no reason why iTunes shouldn't run on a PC the way it runs on a Mac, especially since it had to be rewritten for the PC anyway, and the same is true of Safari.

In truth, I wish Apple spent time fixing or removing Safari and replacing it with something more stable for OS X 10.5 Leopard rather than slapping it on the Windows OS and making minor visual enhancements to the Mac version.

Safari is the least useful Apple application in the PC world, the new "Mail" is more useful with its note taking features, and iMovie is more useful to the Windows Movie Maker crowd, but Safari is "just another browser" in the Windows world the way IE for OS X was "just another PC program" on the Mac.

And as John also mentioned, when it comes to crappy browsers, Windows is in no danger of being dethroned for having the worst of the worst bundled with the OS.

It irks me that Safari is so buggy on my machine. I expect better from Apple after seeing everything else they've done.

Maybe this will lead to a more optimized Safari, or maybe FireFox will add Autofill and improve the bookmark exporter it has to counter Safari. Either way it's Win/Win for your situation sans interface. Personally, I have nothing against either interface, my gripe with Safari is that it crashes on me far too often for me to do anything with it, and that's inexcusable in my book. If Safari was stable, I'd probably use it half of the time and use FireFox the other half. Is FireFox perfect? Not at all, but it's the best there is right now. Could Safari be the next FireFox? Of course, but it would need to be Win/Lin/Mac and to be far more stable than it is.

I'm not against Mac software or Windows ports mind you. I'm against Mac software coded like most Windows software, and unoptimized ports that make Mac software on Windows run like total trash. The sad part? PC users should be demanding better, but they're taking what they get and loving it. If it's good enough, it convinces some of them to switch to a Mac, if it's bad enough, it convinces them never to touch another piece of Apple software again, and that's a problem. Imagine if Mac software on a PC ran as well as it did on a Mac -- do you think anyone would doubt the capabilities of OS X?

In truth Jobs needs to stop selling systems and start selling his OS. He himself says it's the software that makes Apple what it is. If that's the case, he should be selling OS X for PC users the same way he's invited Windows onto the Mac. Will I run Boot Camp on my Mac? I believe the phrase I'm looking for is "When hell freezes over." I hate WinXP and I won't touch VISTA -- I only used XP under duress in a classroom environment where OS X would've been far more suitable, but wasn't used because the professor was bias toward Windows.

Are all Apple apps great? No. Are all PC apps terrible? No. Sometimes a bad piece of code is just a bad piece of code, regardless of its OS, sometimes a good piece of code is solid even on the worst OS. I'd have loved a WinAMP port to OS X before I saw iTunes slowly mature, I'd have loved VirtualDub for OS X for simple video editing, and still wouldn't mind having it for some basic work in a bind. I'd love to see Final Cut ported to the PC. But that's just me.

I wish I could say that Safari would be improved but I don't think it will, at least not until the iPhone warrants Safari to shape up or risk a decrease in iPhone sales. And as far as the iPhone itself goes, while I'd admittedly shell out the $600 for one and finally break down and buy a cell phone (Yes, I admit it, it's the one piece of technology that I still refuse to use since I can't stand rude people with cell phones and don't want to become one,) if I thought it'd be useful in my everyday life, I can't justify that purchase right now. Likewise I'd want to be able to use T-Mobile as my provider since my girlfriend and my best friend are both on T-Mobile, my family uses Verizon, and while I'll gladly switch to FiOS when it's offered here this summer, I don't want to sign my soul away to Verizon for TV, Internet, Phone, and Cellular Phone technology as well. Just as I wouldn't want my TV to include the VCR and DVD player, and I wouldn't want my refrigerator to have a modem in it the way some do.

As soon as more people can access the iPhone and it takes off, Safari will need to function or the iPhone won't be worth $600 and Apple will lose money. Until then Safari is just another browser on Windows, and the iPhone is just an expensive Rolls-Royce phone, and on the Mac, Safari is the browser that comes with OS X. There's nothing that makes a Mac user say "I need this" barring special circumstances, such as when I could only order internet access from a hotel via Safari.

FireFox is another story, Windows users hated IE, Mac Users hated it just as much, and Safari was fairly unstable at times. Oprah was ad-supported for awhile and then open-source and Netscape was a joke run by AOL. FireFox came along -- open-source and all, coded for the three major OSes available, introduced tabbed browsing, and enhanced security features that were much needed. As a result IE was left behind by people looking for something better. When a browser that surpasses FireFox in every way possible is released, people will leave FireFox behind too, it could happen, it might not. IE could do a 180 and become the most secure browser rebuilt from the ground up one day -- so could Safari. But predicting the future is pointless, what matters is that until Safari has a need to exist, it won't get the attention that most other Mac Apps do since Apple sees it as an app that they need to bundle with OS X and can use with Apps that work well. If those apps become Safari-intensive, I think Apple will clean up their browser, or drop it and start using FireFox. But Safari is too well-known to OS X users for them to drop it, so maybe Apple will clean it up. I wish I could say for sure, but I can't. I don't work for Apple, as much as I would like too at times.

Kev, aside from my cousin whose a die-hard Mac fanatic, you're the only person I've ever heard say that their favorite browser is Safari. I have to admit, I admire that, if only for the fact that you're not riding the FireFox/IE bandwagon of popular browsers. I mean that as a good thing, maybe Apple will see that the code needs some work on Safari and do it rather than ignore it any longer.

[SERBIAN]

Im usin Safari too cause it works just fine for all my browsin needs - my bank accounts, some shopping, forums like this, few blogs and news sites...And I have latest Netscape on hdd too for one site only which makes troubles to Safari /not because of Safari but because its poorly coded/ and that is cdcovers.cc..Also they stated on that site that is best viewed by Firefox, so I have to comply if I want to use...

As for Safari on windows...I dont beleive it will gain much users, but I dont think thats the point...It was ported for win devs which would like to test their iPhone apps without buying the Mac for that and at least now web devs can test their sites before deployin in Safari to make sure it will be compatibile...Great majority of win users still uses IE /80%/ although I agree that firefox is way better option for them.

[kevs]

thanks Cyrax! Well I'm always on the fence ready to jump to Firefox, so we'll see what happens, but I hope your words don't just stay here, I hope your forward them to Apple, please!

[KeepItSimple]

Safari works fine for me.

[kevs]

Another wierd thing. Firefox does not seem to have favicons. little thing, but love those logos, maybe there is a preference to have them?

[buttzilla]

Try opera for mac. Opera is the best browser out there. Where do you think firefox copied everything from.

[lordsmurf]

Firefox did not copy Opera that I know it. It's Mozilla-based, which is what Netscape was based on at one point in time.

[FulciLives]

Firefox did not copy Opera that I know it. It's Mozilla-based, which is what Netscape was based on at one point in time.

The first web browser was called Mosiac and I thought when Netscape came along it was a "copy" of Mosiac but only better. So is Mosiac the same as Mozilla?

I still remember seeing Mosiac for the first time. I had had my fill of "gopher" at the time.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[buttzilla]

Firefox did not copy Opera that I know it. It's Mozilla-based, which is what Netscape was based on at one point in time.

I didn't mean that firefox is based on opera. I meant they copied all its features. Here check this out its the timelines of all the browsers out there.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg

[FulciLives]

Firefox did not copy Opera that I know it. It's Mozilla-based, which is what Netscape was based on at one point in time.

I didn't mean that firefox is based on opera. I meant they copied all its features. Here check this out its the timelines of all the browsers out there.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg

That was kewl ... a nice link

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dcsos]

Here check this out its the timelines of all the browsers out there.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg

Using safari, this link didn't work!
I hadda go here and find the chart by going roundabout
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser

[oldandinthe way]

Cynic's view of Safari:

Alpha Test version is OS/X
Beta Test version is Windows
Release version intended to be iPhone.

This is the only way Apple can get adequate testing on what is intended to be the key to the iPhone product.

Since I do not use it, and am unlikely to use it, I base my comments on the publicly posted experiences of others and my general experience.