Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

clebin · Oct 26, 2003, 10:02 PM

No release of the updated Safari for Jaguar so far... If it doesn't happen, it would be very bad.

If Apple wants to web developers to embrace Safari/KHTML, then it cannot restrict Safari releases to the very newest version of the OS. This is an OS that gets updated once a year!

Apple only commands 3% of the market as it is - why should developers take any notice of new Safari updates if only OS buyers get them? I wouldn't - I'd say 'use Mozilla'. Harsh, but it would be Apple's own fault that users have to pay for.

I'm hoping that when the fuss around Panther dies down, they will do the right thing. Otherwise, it is another example of Steve Jobs getting some things very right (ITMS) while fundamentally screwing up on others (Safari, Quicktime)

We shall see.....

gorickey · Oct 26, 2003, 10:06 PM

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt...10.html#004254

---------------------
Safari 1.1, Part 2
Posted at 04:12 PM

Responding to some of the trackbacks from the previous blog entry...

The first mentions a bug in 1.1, and the test page is found here. In Safari post-Panther, the rendering is actually different (but still broken). I'm not sure what the problem is at first glance, but I'll take a look.

The second trackback asks for complete navigation of bookmarks from the keyboard. Since that isn't part of WebCore, I can't comment. Several trackbacks also ask about Safari 1.1 on Jaguar. As I've mentioned in previous blog entries, I can't comment on future Safari releases.

I can whet your appetite with more WebCore stuff that we've implemented since Safari 1.1: small-caps support, fixes for first-letter and text-transform (the ugly doubling text effect is gone), fixes to first-line, and speed improvements to DHTML.
-------------------

Hmmm, makes me wonder if they will or not....they better! This version finally fixes the funky Outlook Webmail issues Safari v1.0 has...I have a whole school district waiting on this update because of this....

Big Mac · Oct 27, 2003, 04:43 AM

I'm wondering why we haven't seen an update in some time. I just encountered a really annoying bookmarks management bug. This is the one that happens after you select and move a group of bookmarks. For some reason Safari insists on selecting an equal number of the remaining bookmarks. It's as if the code forgets to kill the selection routine. It's quite bothersome because it makes you think the movement of the bookmarks you selected didn't work. But then you realize the bookmarks selected aren't the ones you had originally selected.

clebin · Oct 27, 2003, 09:40 PM

Individual bugs and rendering problems are one thing - but the real issue is that web developers are not going to work around problems when 10.1 users don't have Safari, 10.2 users have Safari 1.0, 10.3 users have Safari 1.1 and so on.

Microsoft are smart enough to update IE for all Windows users, Apple perhaps won't be. Yet Apple's share of the market isn't big enough to split the userbase into those have one version of WebCore and those who have another....

Chris

kcmac · Oct 27, 2003, 10:13 PM

Who knows what they will do but I am betting on a jag update.

Panther just came out. Bugs/feedback is coming in. Apple is working on 10.3.1. I would think that some things will hit software update fairly soon.

Have some faith peeps!

Art Vandelay · Oct 27, 2003, 11:29 PM

Originally posted by clebin:
Microsoft are smart enough to update IE for all Windows users, Apple perhaps won't be.

Microsoft is no longer doing this. They are only doing support releases for current versions of Windows just as they are only doing support releases for IE on Mac. If you want a new version of IE, you'll have to get a new version of Windows.

OptimusG4 · Oct 28, 2003, 12:12 AM

Dont give up hope yet, iPhoto 2 is still available for 10.1.5 users.

G-Force · Oct 28, 2003, 12:51 AM

Just go buy panther and quit complaining.

ryaxnb · Oct 28, 2003, 01:20 AM

Originally posted by G-Force:
Just go buy panther and quit complaining.

Real helpful to the developers. Not.

asxless · Oct 28, 2003, 02:20 AM

Welcome to the new world of "scorched earth" OS upgrades. OS vendors want to do anything they can to encourage you to jump on the OS upgrade treadmill and not look back. They know that you might notice that the previous version of the OS was doing every thing you actually needed to do pretty well.

Computer enthusiasts are the only ones who really need/want most of the "150 innovative new features" of Panther (or upgrades of any other current commercial OS). So OS vendors have to find other 'stuff' that average users need/want and link it to the OS upgrade. For example, browsers are a key tool for almost all computer users. Shockingly enough, both Apple and Microsoft are linking their proprietary browsers to their proprietary OS upgrades. That's one of the benefits of commercial OS vendors providing 'free' software. They can link upgrades to their 'free' software to upgrades to their OS with impunity. After all, users can't say they didn't get their money's worth.

FWIW Even if Apple provided Safari upgrades for Jaguar, the onus for web site compatibility would continue to be on Safari's developers. Anyone who expects main stream web sites to cater to the browser of choice for less than 3% of computer users probably still sends letters to the North Pole.

-- asxless in iLand

gorickey · Oct 28, 2003, 04:52 PM

Well, the download has been pulled from Apple's Safari site all together now...hmmm....could it be coming soon?!?

http://www.apple.com/safari

Busemann · Oct 28, 2003, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by gorickey:
Well, the download has been pulled from Apple's Safari site all together now...hmmm....could it be coming soon?!?

http://www.apple.com/safari

This must be it! I'd be surprised if Safari 85.5 is the last for jag as it has too many outstanding bugs thats already fixed in 1.1.

clebin · Oct 28, 2003, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by G-Force:
Just go buy panther and quit complaining.

I have. Either this is a wind-up, or I can only wonder where idiots like you crawl out from...

I can see asxless's point, but I don't necessarily agree. There are other apps you can use to justify the OS upgrade. 3% is still business and companies don't like to exclude Mac people if they can help it. If the browser is up to date, we're only talking about minor adjustments and it becomes justifiable. It's only when, say, people using a 1 year old OS are forced to use a less capable browser that the work becomes a waste of money. I hope this imply I send letters to the North Pole...

Anyway, let's hope that there's a reason why the Safari download was pulled.

Chris

asxless · Oct 28, 2003, 09:08 PM

Originally posted by clebin:
I can see asxless's point, but I don't necessarily agree. There are other apps you can use to justify the OS upgrade. 3% is still business and companies don't like to exclude Mac people if they can help it. If the browser is up to date, we're only talking about minor adjustments and it becomes justifiable. It's only when, say, people using a 1 year old OS are forced to use a less capable browser that the work becomes a waste of money. I hope this imply I send letters to the North Pole...

Anyway, let's hope that there's a reason why the Safari download was pulled.

Chris,

I generally agree with your points. Obviously Apple does use other apps to justify OS upgrades. Five of the twelve main bullets on the Panther page are Apple apps whose improvements are linked to OS upgrades -- iChatAV, Mail, Preview, Font Book, iDisk. Arguably, Expose and FileVault can be considered as 'applications'.

FWIW I was simply reminding folks that the world of OS upgrades has changed since the FEDs let Microsoft off the hook, allowing it to embed its browser into the OS. It is no coincidence that Apple is now embedding the guts (WebCore) of its proprietary browser (Safari) into OS X and emphasizes improvements to Mail etc. as one of the main bullets in its OS upgrade sales pitch. Web Browsers and Email clients are used by almost every computer user these days, making them far and away the best 'free' apps to use as 'hooks' for OS upgrades.

For clarification, my quip about the North Pole was meant to cause people to realize that Safari will always need to be scrupulously standards compliant. Because Safari will almost certainly be used by _fewer_ than 3% of computer users for the foreseeable future. But if Safari's developers make it scrupulously standards compliant, main stream web sites don't have to _cater to_ Safari. They simply have to produce standards compliant web sites _and_ not discriminate against Safari.

As you point out, if Apple doesn't provide the latest version of Safari to Jaguar users, main stream web site developers are faced with fragmentation of an already small Safari user base. This simply makes it easier to justify not supporting Safari unless it is masquerading as IE or Mozilla, etc.

FWIW I too hope that the absence of a download for V1.0 is a sign that v1.1 for Jag is 'in the wings'.

Lastly, if your letters to the North Pole are still producing good results, I'd keep on sending them

-- asxless in iLand

Millennium · Oct 28, 2003, 09:36 PM

Not all of Safari's improvements can be backported, unfortunately. In particular, transparency and text-shadow support (and box-shadow, if that is in there; I don't know) depend on the new transparency APIs in Panther. This was already noted several times on Hyatt's blog in the past, though they're now buried deep enough that they would be difficult to find.

However, Apple is under a legal obligation to release the source for the WebCore version used in Panther, even though they haven't done it just yet. Even if they do not release Safari 1.1 for Jaguar, some enterprising soul could then backport most of the WebCore improvements and release a patch. Similar techniques have been used in the past to update Safari with custom WebCores, so we know that this is possible.

nickm · Oct 29, 2003, 01:08 AM

Even if they do not release Safari 1.1 for Jaguar, some enterprising soul could then backport most of the WebCore improvements and release a patch.

Like say, the Omnigroup?

Seriously, I think it would be a very bad sign if 10.2 wasn't supported with the latest version of Safari, but I'm sure Omniweb 5 will run on 10.2.

G-Force · Oct 29, 2003, 01:42 AM

Originally posted by clebin:
I have. Either this is a wind-up, or I can only wonder where idiots like you crawl out from...

Actually it's neither. I came back from the bar and was trashed when I wrote that. Disregard please.

tdgrmsn · Oct 29, 2003, 02:45 AM

While web developers writing to different versions of browsers is a long-standing nightmare, from my experience it seems Webcore gets enough right that sites developing "clean" pages, validating pages, would not be faced with anything like the huge differences between earlier IE versions.

At least that's the idea with this whole standards thing. Hopefully it works out, or improves things in this way...

clebin · Oct 29, 2003, 03:16 PM

Originally posted by G-Force:
Actually it's neither. I came back from the bar and was trashed when I wrote that. Disregard please.

lol. No worries!

BTW, I haven't been disappointed on Christmas day yet asxless!

Seems like the Safari 1.0 download is back up, which is curious. Perhaps Apple pulled v1.1 for Jaguar at the last minute - who knows...

Chris

Ludovic Hirlimann · Oct 30, 2003, 03:57 AM

Originally posted by nickm:
Like say, the Omnigroup?

Seriously, I think it would be a very bad sign if 10.2 wasn't supported with the latest version of Safari, but I'm sure Omniweb 5 will run on 10.2.

As is Camino ...

nforcer · Oct 30, 2003, 09:09 AM

As Apple makes complex things easier for developers with each OS X version, it becomes harder and harder to keep feature parity for applications that can run on different versions of OS X (like Safari). Some people say "Apple wants to give you more incentive to upgrade" but that is not always the case, and I don't believe it is the case here.

Take for example, the font shadowing attributes Safari 1.1 renders in Panther (take a look at this thread if you don't know what I mean). Safari makes use of new text features introduced in Panther to supply font shadowing. If Apple wants to get this feature working in a new Safari version for Jaguar, it now has to expend considerable effort updating Jaguar's text system and then releasing an update for Jaguar (unlikely), or expend considerable effort reproducing this effect solely for Jaguar Safari users (not practical).

I suppose it's possible the new text stuff Apple has made could be very portable, so this feature could be easily possible for Jaguar users. I have not investigated anything yet, so I don't know (I doubt it). But in any case, as OS X becomes more integrated and developed, it will probably be rarer to see new versions of applications that use features from the new OS developed for an older OS. At best, you might get a back-ported version that works except for special features that take advantage of said feature in a new OS. At worst, you'll probably get nothing.

I realize that Safari is in somewhat a special situation, since it is a web browser and a standard-compliant version is important for all versions of Mac OS X. But there is only so much that is practically possible to keep identical between OS X versions and Safari releases. Users are simply going to have to have upgrade at some point if they want more features. I don't think that is unreasonable.

JLL · Oct 30, 2003, 09:24 AM

Originally posted by asxless:
FWIW I was simply reminding folks that the world of OS upgrades has changed since the FEDs let Microsoft off the hook, allowing it to embed its browser into the OS. It is no coincidence that Apple is now embedding the guts (WebCore) of its proprietary browser (Safari) into OS X

There is a big difference here - WebCore is just another Framework. IE's rendering engine is supposedly much more integrated in Windows (and sure will be in Longhorn).

The case wasn't about MS integrating IE - it was about MS not allowing other browsers to be there.

asxless · Oct 31, 2003, 12:48 AM

Originally posted by JLL:
There is a big difference here - WebCore is just another Framework. IE's rendering engine is supposedly much more integrated in Windows (and sure will be in Longhorn).

The case wasn't about MS integrating IE - it was about MS not allowing other browsers to be there.

FWIW I didn't mean to imply that "the case was about MS integrating IE". My point was that since the FEDs let Microsoft off the hook MS has been able to embed its browser into the OS without serious concern about further anti-trust action from the FEDs. And Apple is similarly unencumbered in its actions/plans for integrating WebCore into MacOS X whether that be by providing a Framework or other means. I'm not saying that Apple's actions w.r.t. WebCore/Safari are 'bad'. I'm simply saying that Apple's actions are not dramatically dissimilar to the actions of Microsoft w.r.t. IE.

The bottom line is that all of the evidence to date indicates that both Apple and Microsoft are linking updates to their proprietary browsers to updates to their proprietary OSs and both companies are making key components of their browsers part of their respective OSs. The only real distinction I see is that Apple is providing WebCore as a Framework that allows companies like Omni to develop alternative OS X browsers based on the same rendering engine as Safari. This is no small distinction but then WebCore is itself based on Open Source Software.

-- asxless in iLand

nickm · Nov 3, 2003, 12:26 AM

Safari makes use of new text features introduced in Panther to supply font shadowing. If Apple wants to get this feature working in a new Safari version for Jaguar, it now has to expend considerable effort updating Jaguar's text system and then releasing an update for Jaguar (unlikely), or expend considerable effort reproducing this effect solely for Jaguar Safari users (not practical).

There is another option: just not have text shadowing work on 10.2. It really is that simple, and I think that 10.2 users would be willing to give up text shadowing in order to get all the other bug fixes with Safari 1.1.

There is no shame in Apple saying, "We support this product on 10.2, but features X, Y, and Z require 10.3" provided that those features actually are a result of OS capabilities that weren't available on 10.2.