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Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

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Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#41

Post by rbanffy »

zimbabwe wrote: post #25
mpk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Safari's available for Windows and the Mac. That means that 99% of computer users can use Safari." Firefox is available for Linux, OSX and Windows. It's open-source to boot and is available in different builds and brands for different systems. That means that 100% of developers can use Firefox, regardless of the OS they choose to run.

If I develop in a single OS, it doesn't matter to me where else my browser's available. So if I design things without using Linux, Safari's sufficient, and there's no disadvantage to my using it. Two browsers can each be good without one rendering the other entirely useless. Safari's development environment is in many ways better than Firefox's, so why not use it when you've got it (which is 99% of the time)?

I spend less than 99% of my time under either Windows and OSX. In fact, it's a pain to work in an environment without proper software management (and no, macports and Fink are not enough, at least not for me)

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#42

Post by rbanffy »

mpk wrote: post #23
zimbabwe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari's available for Windows and the Mac. That means that 99% of computer users can use Safari. Since when was "things are prettier" a bad thing? I do extensive Windows testing using browsers, and Safari's rendering engine is leagues ahead of everything else, its developments tools are more polished than Firebug and easier to figure out, and it's one of only two browsers that fully supports HTML 5. Firefox renders…

"Safari's available for Windows and the Mac. That means that 99% of computer users can use Safari." Firefox is available for Linux, OSX and Windows. It's open-source to boot and is available in different builds and brands for different systems. That means that 100% of developers can use Firefox, regardless of the OS they choose to run.

"Firefox is available for Linux, OSX and Windows"

It's also available under Solaris, AIX, *BSD, IRIX, HP-UX...

That makes it very close to 100% of the desktop and laptops around.

The only software I know runs on more platforms is Emacs, which I had on my WinCE-based IBM workpad z-50.

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#43

Post by boucher »

willwagner wrote: post #37
lpgauth wrote: post #17

My only complaint is that the dev tools gives colors in rgb instead of hex.

The RGB thing also drives me completely crazy to the point that I have started muttering obscenities under my breath like a mad man every time I see one.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to specify a color in hex.

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#45

Post by arohner »

ruddzw wrote: post #6

"Basically, if some HTML/CSS works on Safari, the chances are very high it will work on Firefox 2 and higher, and on IE 6 and higher (with minor tweaks)." I don't get it. A lot of the hardship that comes with web development is that stuff that works great in modern standards-based browsers like Safari doesn't work when you try to view it in IE. I can't count the number of times I've taken a webpage that I developed t…

I'm new to web development, and I keep asking this question but I've never heard and answer to it:

What's stopping us from making a tool that parses HTML/CSS and points out constructs that are known to be bad in certain browsers? Sort of like lint: "It looks like you're sending element foo inside element bar to IE6. This probably won't work right"

I personally don't have a windows box to test IE, and I'm not looking forward to the day when I'll have to test on IE. Surely there is a better solution than manually testing browsers?

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#46

Post by ned »

lanaer wrote: post #22
ruddzw wrote: post #6

"Basically, if some HTML/CSS works on Safari, the chances are very high it will work on Firefox 2 and higher, and on IE 6 and higher (with minor tweaks)." I don't get it. A lot of the hardship that comes with web development is that stuff that works great in modern standards-based browsers like Safari doesn't work when you try to view it in IE. I can't count the number of times I've taken a webpage that I developed t…

If you happen to like inline-block (which I do), you’ll break FF 2 fairly reliably, as well.

I've always used -moz-inline-block for FF2, and it has worked for me so far, although PPK warns that it's not always the case: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/display.html#inlineblock

But at this point in time, I'd drop FF2 support (pixel perfection) for most projects.

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#48

Post by costan »

jonbwhite wrote: post #36
halo wrote: post #13

I don't really find these arguments compelling. Using the Acid3 test in this context is misleading. Acid3 tests a random selection features to ensure they work corrrectly. In this case, Firefox 3.5 fails on 7 of the tests and 5 of these are due to SMIL (pretty much SVG animation) and SVG fonts. They are obscure features, and don't provide a compelling reason to choose Safari over Firefox, least of all for development…

Arguably, the only reason why OSX could be considered the only system that test via virtualization is that Apple makes it illegal to virtualize OSX in the first place.

I believe the license says you have to run OSX on Apple-labeled hardware. So as long as you use a Mac Pro / Macbook... :)

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#49

Post by GrandMasterBirt »

ahoyhere wrote: post #3
GrandMasterBirt wrote: post #2

Micro-Optimizations are bad? That is just a load of shit. If you can prove that Firefox's optimizations actually make incorrect results in any way, I am 100% behind whoever claims that micro optimizations are bad. However by firefox making them it means that I don't have to worry about the nitty gritty details about what order of instructions will perform better without changing the code. Or things like loop unrollin…

> However by firefox making them it means that I don't have to worry about the nitty gritty details about what order of instructions will perform better without changing the code Actually, Firefox benefits the most from tweaks like this, because its engine is so slow. For whatever reason. That's why I thought this post was interesting!

A good point. If the FF engine is so slow it needs this, then the engine needs help.

However I see no reason why you should not be able to indicate to firefox that for this page do not optimize the javascript, then vuala good debugging. The only catch is that the optimizations need to be proven to be correct in all cases.

Once we have Safari for Linux I will consider using it as the main browser...

Scratch that, once at work we officially support it ill consider it :)

Re: Why everyone should use Safari for rich web development

#50

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

boucher wrote: post #43
willwagner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RGB thing also drives me completely crazy to the point that I have started muttering obscenities under my breath like a mad man every time I see one.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to specify a color in hex.

Because that's the way CSS/HTML works?
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