OK, I finally got a Mac, what browsers do I need?

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Alan Silver - 18 May 2006 16:31 GMT

Hello,

I finally got around to buying a 2nd hand Mac, so I can test pages in
the Mac-only browsers. It has IE5.2, although that hangs up every time I
try to start it up, so I guess I won't be testing much in that!! I also
have Safari 1.0 (v85).

What other browsers do I need to install? I don't know what Mac people
tend to use. Also, does anyone still use IE on the Mac? Safari is only
available from OSX version 10.2 on, so it could be that there are people
on older versions that use it. I don't want to waste time trying to fix
a lousy browser that no-one uses, but will invest the time if it is
still used.

Any comments? TIA

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Alan Silver
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Andreas Prilop - 18 May 2006 16:39 GMT

> I finally got around to buying a 2nd hand Mac, so I can test pages in
> the Mac-only browsers.

Ask in <news:comp.infosystems.www.browsers.mac> and specify the version
of your operating system.

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Jim Royal - 19 May 2006 02:44 GMT

> Hello,
>
> I finally got around to buying a 2nd hand Mac, so I can test pages in
> the Mac-only browsers.
>
> What other browsers do I need to install?

The Mac browsers I test with are as follows:

Safari 2.0.3
Safari 1.3
Firefox 1.5.0.3
Firefox 1.0.7
Netscape 7.2
Mozilla 1.7.12
Internet Explorer 5.2.3

The bulk of the Mac visitors I see are using Safari 2 and Firefox 1.5.
Virtually no one is using IE 5.2, and I will likely drop support for it
shortly.

You may also want to add Opera to your list. There is also Camino and
iCab, but usage of these is also very very low.

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phil-news-nospam@ipal.net - 19 May 2006 06:25 GMT

| Safari 2.0.3
| Safari 1.3
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
| Virtually no one is using IE 5.2, and I will likely drop support for it
| shortly.

I've seen zero IE on Mac visiting linuxhomepage.com, unless it doesn't
have "macintosh" and "ie" in the user agent string.

| You may also want to add Opera to your list. There is also Camino and
| iCab, but usage of these is also very very low.

There's definitely some Opera, Camino, and iCab showing up.

Here's my user agent stats I ran yesterday. The first one is just a
selection from the second one that has "macintosh" (case insensitive)
in the string somewhere. Column 1 is the count of number of times
that user agent string was seen.

http://linuxhomepage.com/user-agent-stats-macintosh.txt
http://linuxhomepage.com/user-agent-stats.txt

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Alexander Clauss - 19 May 2006 12:50 GMT

> Here's my user agent stats I ran yesterday.

You know that especially the less used browsers browsers (like iCab) can
be configure to identify itself as any other browser (like Firefox,
Internet Explorer, Safari, etc), to be able to baypass most of the
"stupid" browser sniffers in the web. So these browser will even
increase the numbers of the major browsers and lower their own numbers
in the stats.

This is why those stats are not always very reliable.

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Alexander

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phil-news-nospam@ipal.net - 19 May 2006 22:23 GMT

|> Here's my user agent stats I ran yesterday.
|
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
|
| This is why those stats are not always very reliable.

Yes, that is true. Their loss for doing so.

I admit to doing some browser sniffers. But that certainly is not to
make the page play dead unless only a known browser is present. What
I do is try to got as close to standard as I can. Then I check the
user agent to apply addition special things for certain browsers known
to have problems. An unknown browser will just get as close to the
standard as I can default to.

A problem with Safari has been reported to me with me recently redesigned
http://linuxhomepage.com/ site. The old design works OK, and Firefox works
OK even for that user. I'm now trying to work out how to avoid issues with
Safari, but that's hard since I don't have one to run.

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Alan Silver - 22 May 2006 15:17 GMT

>> I finally got around to buying a 2nd hand Mac, so I can test pages in
>> the Mac-only browsers.
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>Safari 2.0.3
>Safari 1.3

OK four questions here...

1) Is there any point in testing for both? I have no idea what % of
people use either.

2) Is there any significant difference between them? Did 2.0.3 have any
major changes or bug fixes over 1.3?

3) Where did you find these? I looked on Apple's web site and could only
find 1.0 to download. As that is what came with OSX, I didn't bother.

4) Can you run more than one version of Safari on one machine? If not,
which do you recommend?

>Firefox 1.5.0.3
>Firefox 1.0.7

Ditto the question about the need to check in both. Also, do you know if
there are any differences between FF on Windows and Mac? I already check
FF on Windows, so if there's no difference, I might as well save some
time by not checking it on Mac.

>Netscape 7.2
>Mozilla 1.7.12

Hadn't though of these two. Ta.

>Internet Explorer 5.2.3

Bleah!! Got this one.

>The bulk of the Mac visitors I see are using Safari 2 and Firefox 1.5.
>Virtually no one is using IE 5.2, and I will likely drop support for it
>shortly.

I'm not putting any high priority on it, but as it's installed, I might
as well check it.

>You may also want to add Opera to your list.

Again, I check Opera on Windows, so is there any point in checking on
Mac as well?

> There is also Camino and
>iCab, but usage of these is also very very low.

Maybe worth looking into though. Any idea where I get them?

Thanks for the reply. Any further info appreciated.

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phil-news-nospam@ipal.net - 22 May 2006 18:45 GMT

|>> I finally got around to buying a 2nd hand Mac, so I can test pages in
|>> the Mac-only browsers.
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
| 1) Is there any point in testing for both? I have no idea what % of
| people use either.

You can see the stats for one of my pages. But due to the nature of
the site subject, it's not likely to be a representative proportion
for the general population:

http://linuxhomepage.com/user-agent-stats-macintosh.txt

That's one distinct user agent string per line, with the number of hits
for that user agent at the front of the line in decimal, sorted by order
of decreasing frequency. This is also a few years of accumulation, so
it will be slanted more to older browsers than recent stats alone would
show. Webalizer stats are also available for that site, but with only
a limited number of user agents visible.

| 2) Is there any significant difference between them? Did 2.0.3 have any
| major changes or bug fixes over 1.3?

Or does 2.0.3 require any hardware upgrades over 1.3 that some people
cannot afford? I don't know about the world of Macs, but I do know lots
of old PCs that would otherwise be scrapped are instead being donated
to needy people, many of whom can get cheap or free dialup access to the
net and may even be viewing your web pages some day. These old PCs are
limited in things like memory, run old or alternate OSes, and must run
older browsers in many cases because newer ones often can't make it on
the small memory available.

|>Firefox 1.5.0.3
|>Firefox 1.0.7
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
| FF on Windows, so if there's no difference, I might as well save some
| time by not checking it on Mac.

My guess is the differences will be mostly in the browser's user interface.
But some default presentations may differ, such as the style of input buttons,
sliders, and default font families and sizes.

I'd say it's worth installing and occaisionally making a "full check" of all
the browsers, but probably not worth routinely checking.

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Alan Silver - 22 May 2006 23:12 GMT

<snip>

>I'd say it's worth installing and occaisionally making a "full check"
>of all the browsers, but probably not worth routinely checking.

Thanks for the informative reply.

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Alan Silver
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Leonard Blaisdell - 23 May 2006 00:32 GMT

> OK four questions here...
>
> 1) Is there any point in testing for both? I have no idea what % of
> people use either.

I don't think so, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

> 2) Is there any significant difference between them? Did 2.0.3 have any
> major changes or bug fixes over 1.3?

I believe that the main difference between them is that 2.0.3 supports
RSS.

> 3) Where did you find these? I looked on Apple's web site and could only
> find 1.0 to download. As that is what came with OSX, I didn't bother.

The browser version you should use will come with your OSX version. For
instance, I use OSX 10.3 and cannot use Safari 2. I won't be able to
unless I upgrade to OSX 10.4.

> 4) Can you run more than one version of Safari on one machine? If not,
> which do you recommend?

I'd recommend Safari 2 providing you are running Tiger. I'm not.

iCab & Camino can be found at the following URLs. Camino is a Mozilla
engine port to the OSX interface. iCab is in a class by itself.

<http://www.caminobrowser.org/>
<http://www.icab.de/>

leo

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Alan Silver - 23 May 2006 14:44 GMT

<snip>

>> 3) Where did you find these? I looked on Apple's web site and could only
>> find 1.0 to download. As that is what came with OSX, I didn't bother.
>
>The browser version you should use will come with your OSX version. For
>instance, I use OSX 10.3 and cannot use Safari 2. I won't be able to
>unless I upgrade to OSX 10.4.

Ah, counts me out then as I'm using 10.2, so can't get a later version
of Safari.

<snip>

>iCab & Camino can be found at the following URLs. Camino is a Mozilla
>engine port to the OSX interface. iCab is in a class by itself.
>
><http://www.caminobrowser.org/>
><http://www.icab.de/>

Thanks for those.

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Henri Sivonen - 27 May 2006 12:37 GMT

> >Safari 2.0.3
> >Safari 1.3
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> 1) Is there any point in testing for both? I have no idea what % of
> people use either.

Most people use the latest one. Mac users in general are quick to update
their OS (and Safari as a side effect). However, after Mac OS X 10.3 the
pace of upgrading has slowed down quite a bit.

Anyway, you can pretty safely ignore Mac OS X 10.2 and anything before.

> 2) Is there any significant difference between them? Did 2.0.3 have any
> major changes or bug fixes over 1.3?

2.0.x has different image decoders. PNG gamma is b0rked in 1.x.
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/png-gamma/

> 3) Where did you find these? I looked on Apple's web site and could only
> find 1.0 to download. As that is what came with OSX, I didn't bother.

If you have Mac OS X 10.2, you should really upgrade to 10.4. Safari
2.0.x comes with it. Mac OS X 10.3 users are stuck with Safari 1.3.x.

> 4) Can you run more than one version of Safari on one machine? If not,
> which do you recommend?

The latest shipping version. (2.0.3 at the moment.)

You can also run the Safari development builds on Mac OS X 10.4 without
disturbing the shipping version.

> Also, do you know if
> there are any differences between FF on Windows and Mac?

The differences are mainly in the integration with platform widgets and
font rendering code. The layout engine itself is the same.

> >Netscape 7.2
> >Mozilla 1.7.12

Obsolete.

> >Internet Explorer 5.2.3

Even more obsolete.

> Again, I check Opera on Windows, so is there any point in checking on
> Mac as well?

Not really unless you use a language with a non-Western character
repertoire. It would make more sense to put the effort in testing with
Opera 9 beta.

> > There is also Camino and

Has the same engine as Firefox.

> >iCab, but usage of these is also very very low.
>
> Maybe worth looking into though. Any idea where I get them?

http://www.icab.de/

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Alan Silver - 29 May 2006 15:03 GMT

Henri,

Thanks for the reply. Looks like I'll have to think about upgrading the
OS to get the latest Safari.

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Alan Silver
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