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macfly · Oct 29, 2003, 09:21 AM

i have been wanting to be a mac only house for awhile, having a power book and a dell xp machine. i just bought a dual g5 and am loving it.the only bummer on the macs as i have found is the java. of course, like most, i do my online banking on the web. have always had problems with safari and citibank.wont remember my sign in info and some aspects of the site just dont work. also, some things like the instant messenger ap on sites like match.com dont launch.
yesterday i was hipped to netscape by one of these websites. lo and behold, everything works.WTF!!??? why cant safari do this as well? is it some kind of java issue and if so why is it that netscape manages to do it all? netscapes browser is clunky and slow but at least i have access to the things i need to do. i know jack about java so was hoping one of you guys on here who seem to know a lot could lend a helping hand as to explanations....
thanks

macfly · Oct 29, 2003, 11:03 AM

nobody?

cpac · Oct 29, 2003, 11:08 AM

clearly it's not a java issue.

Safari, especially compared to Netscape, is a very very young browser. On top of that, many sites are not standards-compliant, but instead write specifically for IE and Netscape, in which case it's not truly Safari's fault it doesn't work.

Regardless, rather than using Netscape, you should try one of the other Gecko-based browsers out there. They have less bloat than Netscape and are generally much faster while retaining the compatibility.

Two worth checking out are Camino & Phoenix.

macfly · Oct 29, 2003, 11:44 AM

thanks for the answer....so wouldnt that totally make it a java issue? i thought there were many versions of java and that some sites were writing in the microsoft java which doesnt run well, if at all, on the macs. so is netscape prgraming in the microsoft java...i know , im confused ....can someone clear this up in a throrough way?

kcm3 · Oct 29, 2003, 12:42 PM

I think you're confusing Java with JavaScript. While it's true that there are _some_ Java apps that potentially only work only with the MS Java plugin, more often than not, the problem is that they are written to work properly with IE's mangled version of JavaScript (or DHTML or CSS for that matter).

Earth Mk. II · Oct 29, 2003, 12:55 PM

Originally posted by macfly:
thanks for the answer....so wouldnt that totally make it a java issue? i thought there were many versions of java and that some sites were writing in the microsoft java which doesnt run well, if at all, on the macs. so is netscape prgraming in the microsoft java...i know , im confused ....can someone clear this up in a throrough way?

no, both Netscape (a.k.a. Mozilla), Safari, or any other browser on your system should be calling the same version of the JVM (Sun 1.4.1).

What may be happening is some JavaScript (really not related to Java at all) browser compatibility checking that throws everything that isn't IE or Netscape (Mozilla) out, or the JS is written for IE, which Netscape (Mozilla) is built to interpret correctly, but won't in Safari (it's less forgiving in that respect so the code may not run properly). - either way the applet will fail to load in Safari*, but will in Netscape (Mozilla).

WebSites should stick to W3C standards - especially business sites. Unfortunately, that's rare, so conflicts happen.

*If the applet loads, it should run just fine

macfly · Oct 29, 2003, 02:07 PM

thanks all. so i need to read up on java script. thought they were probably related...
so why is it that safari isnt made to be able to interpret the javascript as well as netscape? shouldnt it be able to do as well as netscape at something like this? its frustrating for friends who i am trying to get to switch from PCs as well because a lot are mainly using them for browsing and if safari cant tackle the simplest of things ( banking, trading- realtime streaming and applets that deal with order entry) they wont see the benefit of switching. it is kind of frustrating to have an awesome system in every other regard that cant do these things which are seemingly so small yet needed.

Arkham_c · Oct 29, 2003, 09:43 PM

Actually, Safari uses the 1.4.1 JVM, and all non-Apple browsers are using the 1.3.1 JVM. Apple apparently has not published the necessary APIs for third party browsers to support 1.4.1 yet.