SuperSite Blog

I get full-screen support in Safari using Saft 11.0.0. Works well.

I have never once used full screen browsing on any browser.

Just because a feature is possible on other browsers, doesn't mean it's a good feature.

Although, I do agree it should be available.

But to use full screen browsing as an example?! Please!

F Safari.

Long Live FireFox

"The World Fastest Browser". The RDF is bizzarro reality.

Always give me a chuckle especially seeing that Google made a webkit browser that was faster and more stable in its beta release vs what Apple could with it in 4 iterations. And the fact that they put their B-Team of dev's on the Chrome release for OSX.

Yeah, but at least we can all agree Safari sans shady updating is still more popular then Opera. :P

the only issue is full screen browsing?

If you look at Paul's blog - the most traffic (comments) are the ones that are talking about Apple. Why not rename this WinSuperAppleSite? Clearly the Apple posts are for the "Dvorak" effect.

Oh, that's right, I remember why it cannot be renamed..

So does this mean Microsoft should start publishing the number of PC's that successfully download the patches are pushed every month?   ;-)

yert

"Safari sans shady updating is still more popular then Opera."

I'm not sure but I think the Commodore 64 is still more popular than Opera.

"....including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows."

Wow, there's that many blackhats ready to rip Apple a new one?  Neeto!  :P

"Google made a webkit browser that was faster and more stable in its beta release vs what Apple could with it in 4 iterations"

And that's not saying much....(Chrome is garbage)

"Yeah, but at least we can all agree Safari sans shady updating is still more popular then Opera."

Not in the mobile space.

"New MacBook Pro Can Boot From an SD Card. (Duh. So Can PCs.)."

Booting from CF is better.  Especially considering you can build your own SSD pretty easily with dual CF cards:

www.startech.com/.../SAT2CF-SATA-to-Compact-Flash-SSD-Adapter.aspx

I personally love this one, but it's a bit pricey....definitely nice for sup'ing up your laptop though:

www.startech.com/.../2CF2SATAR-25in-SATA-or-USB-to-Dual-Compact-Flash-SSD-Adapter-with-RAID.aspx

"I'm not sure but I think the Commodore 64 is still more popular than Opera."

I think a kick in the head is more popular than Opera.

Er....

I think opera is more popular than Opera.

FYI:  That RAID mode 2xCF-to-SATA bay doesn't require any drivers.  Everything is handled automagically with the firmware.  You just toggle a switch for RAID0, RAID1, or JBOD support.

RAID0 is EXTREMELY fast with decent CF cards.  Even though Windows Vista is known to have troubles with the way SSD's work, it flies on this.  Windows 7 works even better though.

Sure beats the lame SD boot option in the MacBooks (where are the inexpensive SSD options for it?).

""Yeah, but at least we can all agree Safari sans shady updating is still more popular then Opera."

Not in the mobile space."

You got any stats on that?  My web logs would indicate otherwise.

@yert ... yeah, although it doesn't take much to be better than Opera... a 90-year-old that's never touched a computer before is a better web browser than Opera!

@beaker ... referring to anything relating to Apple as "Super" is a contradiction in terms, unless the word Super is followed by the words "Expensive" and/or "Retard Edition", since anyone who buys Apple is overpaying thus proving they're at least half brain dead.

@Paul ... yeah, I never really understood why people care about how many times something has been downloaded. I've downloaded literally several crap-loads of applications to test/try only to uninstall and delete within minutes of identifying them as junk.

Haven't Apple been in trouble before with pushing Safari onto people's computers through the Apple Software Update?

I've been using Safari 4 for 2 weeks now. I'm quite liking it and I'm thinking of using it as my permanent browser for the meantime. My reason for the choice has nothing to do with speed or anything (I don't really notice that much of a difference between browsers) because I much prefer the UI than of Chrome or Firefox. As for IE, I had to change from it because I was having problems with it so I thought it would be a good time try out some new browsers.

I recommend it  : )

Um, what about 100% ACID 3 compliance? Or that Apple comes up with different ideas like Web Clips and then we get the lame me-too "Slices" from IE. Or that Safari's javascript rendering engine beats them all.

crave.cnet.co.uk/.../0,39029471,49301219,00.htm

Features like full page history search (with cover flow interface) is pretty helpful too; IE has nothing like it. Here are 149 more: www.apple.com/.../features.html

Yes it doesn't have all the add-ons of Firefox but it's a heck of a lot better than IE.

And as for Apple pushing Safari (literally), wasn't it Microsoft who literally pushed out Netscape by bundling a free browser and giving it prominent space on the Windows desktop?

The Anti-Apple rant of the day !! Tada !

Actually 10% share of the web traffic is not so ridiculous for a browser... I would say that Opera is barely used...

I don't like it on Windoze because of its look but it's still the best browser on the Mac I think by how smooth and fast it is. Plus it's very expandable and customizable.

"As someone with three Macs at home, I couldn't help but notice that Apple pushed Safari 4 out as an automatic update to all of its users this week"

Of course they do, and I hope so. The browsers are still the gate for the malicious softs and phishing, so I'd rather have an updated one !!!!!!

But at least if you don't like it you can disable for ever this update. Try that in the windows updater for IE8...

@wlow3

Is your comment directed at me?

Paul never inflates, exaggerates, or engages in hyperbole. You can trust everything he writes, or reposts as the Gospel truth.

This is proven by the fact that he has never printed a strikethrough, redaction or retraction, even when he has been presented with "evidence" and "facts" that handily contradict him. Obviously the "truth" is a lie.

Rush Thurrott on the Winsupersite for FOX news.

Safari 4 is very fast, faster than the latest Firefox. I may switch back to Safari. I'll be testing it for a while, especially on my 1999 G4 in the basement, when I lift weights.

wlow, if you actually talk to everyday people, I think you may be surprised at how few people care about acid3 compliance.

Especially as it isn't actually standards based.

Once the draft standards in it are set in stone, THEN we can worry about what does or doesn't pass the ACID3 test.

And, of those 149 fatures, how many are NOT in other browsers?

At least we all still have something to fret over.

Back when Firefox 3 was released and Mozilla was shooting for a world record, Paul never questioned weather everyone who down loaded FF was going to actually use it beyond that day. But we all know what Paul is all about.

Yep, Safari 4 is even fast on my old 1999 G4 Tower. Pretty impressive!

בהודעה לעיתונות שפרסמה חברת אפל אתמול (12.06.09), היא מספרת כי בשלושת הימים שחלפו מאז שחרורה של הגרסה

@grannyville "Haven't Apple been in trouble before with pushing Safari onto people's computers through the Apple Software Update?"

Yes lots of crap about that one.  Even though when I was building out a new Windows 2003/SQL2005 server for our test lab today, I used windows update to get all of the latest updates and in the list was IE8.

Funny thing is I look at the URL bar and I see winsupersite????  I thought I was on the wrong site!

Safari even on Windows blows the doors off of IE8.  Just go to google maps, and drill down to your house (looking at the US map) with double clicks.  IE8 draws so slow.  Safari does it faster than I have even seen.

Ok off to search for some Windows/Microsoft news.

"Back when Firefox 3 was released and Mozilla was shooting for a world record, Paul never questioned weather everyone who down loaded FF was going to actually use it beyond that day. But we all know what Paul is all about."

You are so right......

community.winsupersite.com/.../mozilla-firefox-3-blows-its-world-record-goal-out-of-the-water-with-8-3-million-downloads-in-24-hours.aspx

"Congratulations, Mozilla!"

So even though the default for FireFox is to automatically download updates its Congrats to Mozilla???  Hypocrisy at its best!!!

Paul you should do something about your older posts...delete them maybe?? Because those posts are a big part of your severe case of FOOT IN MOUTH disease.  

So, does it come with free security software too?

@DRWAM  "I have not found Safari 4 beta any faster than anything else on a Mac, although I'm typing from my $399 Vista laptop. I won't put Safari on it [my cheapo lappy] since I don't even care to use it in a Mac. i Use FF on a Mac and IE 7 on my PC's. Just say no to Google!"

community.winsupersite.com/.../95349.aspx

Change of heart I see:)

Paul, any idea if these updates were pushed out to people with other Apple software (but not Safari) on their PC? I have had Safari pushed to me in the past even though I had only iTunes on the PC.

But the latest release is definitely faster than the beta, but I've been 'outted' by you Lindy. I stand humbly corrected. I'm typing on Safari 4 now. Dang it's fast, even on that 10 year old G4 tower running Leopard.

Sharkster, I have Quicktime on my XP PC and my $399 Vista laptop, but neither got the update/DL of Safari 4 [which is not installed on either]. I didn't even get a notification.

I am among the 11 million as well... but Apple didn't count how many of us uninstalled it after. I did so because I could not see any speed difference FF3.5 and Safari, for my regularly visited sites.

Apple should really rescind their claim on being the fastest browsers.

I'm not surprised that 6 million windows users opted to download the new Safari.  After all, IE is absolutely dog slow at Javascript.

And it gets 21/100 on Acid3.  What an embarrassment.

Why would anyone use such a SLOW and non-standards compliant browser?

Safari 4 is definitely faster than the latest Firefox on my new Mac Pro Tower and my old G4, both running Leopard. It's very noticeable.

"I have had Safari pushed to me in the past even though I had only iTunes on the PC."

The initial release of Safari as a update was in a version of Apple update, but after the outrage Apple backed off.  Even before they backed off there was a menu option in the update tool to not check for updates on stuff you had unchecked.  A simple case of RTFM.

"I have had Safari pushed to me in the past even though I had only iTunes on the PC."

I answered my own question. Apple still does it. What a sneaky way to reach the goal. Amazing. I finally logged in to my Vista system and opened iTunes, which was out of date. When I agreed to update it, it opened the Apple Software Update tool with iTunes and Safari 4 checked.

Nice!

"A simple case of RTFM."

Nope. A simple case of actually trying it out. This beats Google,  because everytime there's an iTunes update, Safari is checked by default for some reason. I DO NOT WANT SAFARI, APPLE.

The point is that Safari is used by people that have the intelligence, and desire, to want something better. So people that use it, Chrome or Firefox, they are smarter. It's that simple. On the other hand, a drone will simply take what crap they are given, in this case Internet Exploder and Windows, and put up with it. Why? Because they don't know any better. So they eat the crap they are dished out.

" That's another nice bit of obvious reporting that usually escapes the Apple-friendly media."

Don't confuse this and other blogs with reporting. That it ain't.

""Haven't Apple been in trouble before with pushing Safari onto people's computers through the Apple Software Update?""

This is exactly why Microsoft has been told to not put Windows Media Player and Internet Exploder in to the European versions of Windows. Because it's their way of pushing their inferior software on the masses. It's like Apple's Software Update but on a grander scale, and without any way to say No. Until now. Thank God for the EU. Keep Evil Microsoft in check.

cesjr

"I'm not surprised that 6 million windows users opted to download the new Safari"

Hmmm. Let's check the math...

There are 35 million Mac users according to Apple's numbers at the WWDC. Now remember that this was auto updated and it's the bundled browser (and we know from Opera that the bundled browser is an unbeatable competitor that always wins). 5 million of the Mac users updated their bundled copy of Safari to v4. And 30 million of them either actively turned down the auto update or didn't even use Safari in the first three days.

So, that's 5/35 or only 14% of all Mac users. Pretty bad acceptance for a free, pushed update to a bundled utility. 86% of all Mac users said "No thanks" to Safari 4.

But, hey, you and Apple are both so proud that 5M Windows users downloaded it. Maybe that's where the good numbers are. Using the 1,000M number of Windows users (and that's a conservative number that's likely closer to 1,100M by now but we'll cut Apple some slack since the rounding we're doing is only about 3x their total installed base) we get 5/1,000 or 0.5%. So 99.5% of Windows users said, "huh? why bother?"

Combining those two we get the BIG brag number. 11 million copies. Why that must be the number that will look good. Add the Mac and Windows users and throw in 9M Linux users just to be generous to them. That gives us 1,044M total PCs out there. 11/1,044. Why, that's an installed base of 1.05% .

So looking at the numbers we get:

Mac (pushed): 14%

Windows: 0.5%

All PCs: 1.05%

Yep. After doing the math, I'm not surprised either that 99.5% of Windows users said "No, Thanks!" to Safari 4. What I am surprised about is that Apple's bragging about it and that you were so innumerate that you bought it.

cesjr said in the last thread:

"And anything that helps MS (or its game offerings) hurts competitors.  So it does hurt them.  Is it a lot?  Hard to say.  But again MS would not do it unless it was effective.

Even if it didn't hurt competitors, it's not helpful to consumers.  It's more like confusing. "

If we replace MS with Apple and talk about their I'm a Mac ads, it basically says the same thing.  According to your reasoning, since Apple puts out these attack ads, and publicly attacks Vista and 7 in their keynote, is it not confusing to customers, and isn't it meant to hurt MS?

"I think opera is more popular than Opera."

Wae, you typically don't make me chuckle, but that was a very rare showing of genius.  Even lotsa would have to agree that was funny.

@mikegalos: "As a former Program Manager on the OneCare 1.0 team, it's really great to see the people who love the product."

Not many do: "The service [OneCare] was criticized for being unable to detect a significant number of threats, with one site ranking the service DEAD LAST among a comparison of 17 anti-virus services."

Re free Windows anti-virus: This will probably be headed for another anti-competitive lawsuit from the other anti-virus software makers. The EU may also ask for it to be excluded from Windows. By the looks of things, most things will be excluded from Windows EU. Not that you can do much with it as it is.

"New study shows iPhone users to be in a class by themselves

iPhone users are richer, younger, and perhaps even more productive at work than those who use competing smartphones, according to a new study released Friday."

Very true.

Pingback from  Taming the Wild Blue Ether  » Blog Archive   » Did Apple “Push” Safari 4 Out to Millions of Users? Not Really.

@robertsjoe

I take it that you're an Apple fan. What are you thoughts on Snow Leopard?

mikegalos@msn.com -

Do you know any of the guys on the IE team?  If so, please give them a call and ask them how it feels to make such a dog slow browser when it comes to javascript, just because MS doesn't like web standards

@ Waethorn

"I think opera is more popular than Opera."

Well, a good friend of mine is an opera singer, and regularly sings to full concert halls.

I reckon that the amount of people turning up to just one of his performances proves that opera is indeed more popular than Opera!

Oh, and on the subject of browsers, does anyone know why flash games run better in windows than they do in other OSs?

For example, the TG motocross series, I realised some time ago, runs really nice under windows, but on the same machine in the same broswer (firefox), it runs dog slow on either Linux, Unix or OSX.

Are these games optimised in any way for windows? I mean, it can't be the hardware, this was on the same laptop.

I never did try it on Safari on the Windows or OSX partitions.

"Apple basically pushed it out to everyone it possibly could, whether they wanted it or not."

The same thing MS does with IE. QED

I actually *chose* to run IE8. I am perfectly capable of downloading and running any browser I choose. I make my living as a web developer, so it's my business to have as many browsers on my machines as I can lay my hands on.

And yet I actively chose to run IE8. Why? Because as of this moment, it provides the best mix of speed and features.

Once you acknowledge that most of Firefox's extensions are worthless, you're left with a browser (at least in 3.0--I've only briefly evaluated 3.5 beta) that hogs memory like it's going out of style, takes forever to start up and is crash-happy. As the hacker's browser, it NEEDS extensions to make it halfway useful, and the extensions slow it down and make it hog even more memory. Blegh. I use Firefox as my primary testing browser, but not for day-to-day browsing.

Chrome and Safari on Windows are just crap. Sure they're fast, but it's like they warped back to 1998 to achieve those speed gains; they have none of the features I have come to depend on in a modern browser. Things like Delicious bookmark support, intelligent tab management, proper auto-fill, ad-blocking and lots of other things.

Opera is... well I'll just say I could never get comfortable with Opera, and leave it at that. It does things a little TOO differently.

So that left me with IE8. It's fast enough, compatible enough, highly stable and secure and supports all of the features I need from a browser. It doesn't excel at any one thing, but it does everything well enough, which makes it a perfect day-to-day browser. Unless, of course, you hate Microsoft, in which case it's the anti-christ. I mean, I used to be one of the biggest IE haters around, especially in the bad old days of IE6. But I am quite surprised at how comfortable I am using IE8 these days, and when I switch to other browsers (which I do regularly) I always find myself going back to IE8 after a few days.

IE8 may not be the fastest, or the most hacker-friendly, or the most standards compliant. But (to me, at least) it just *feels* right. So it's my default.

On my Mac, it's a similar situation with Safari (though I had to add Saft and DeliciousSafari to get the features I wanted.) I used to use Firefox and Flock, but the speed and stability of Safari combined with the features I needed from Saft and DeliciousSafari resulted in the perfect day-to-day browsing solution for me.

"I have real browsers that can, among other basic activities, work in full-screen mode. You know, unlike Safari."

Now what kind of an idiot feature is that? Why in the world would you want to browse full screen? No serious website looks as intended or gets easier to navigate and read when blown to the full screen size.

Firefox is a really nice browser with great and improving open type support. Safari also renders pages really quickly and beautifully, and the top sites wall is marvellous. Chrome looks very promising indeed. What else was there?

Oh yeah. Internet Explorer 8. It is the first usable version of IE, but the site compatibility list requirement to compensate for its predecessors' sad history of broken, random or missing support for standards coupled with stinking JavaScript performance do little to improve its position as the worst mainstream web browser.

The stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say was when someone at Microsoft proclaimed that they don't need to follow any standards because they *are* the standard. With professional web developers first making their sites and apps work on Firefox and Safari and after that applying fixes so they work on the different incarnations of IE (usually removing more complex styling and handicapping everything for IE) this is clearly not the case.

I've seen numerous great website designs get simplified and crippled just to make them compatible with IE. That's why it's fair to say IE is responsible for making web a far more uglier, worse place, dragging its feet years behind what it could already be.

Maybe IE9 will put an end to some of the grief left by IE8... But now it's probably going to be yet another three years before that happens. And the disaster that is IE6 will still be with us then.

Why? Because Microsoft don't push new versions of IE out as an automatic update to all of its users. And from this blog post I get a feeling that, in some confused people's minds, that would somehow be a bad thing. (Let's not even go into how MS fabricates the seemingly not-so-catastrophic Vista sales numbers while not publicizing the XP sales numbers.)

Internet is a great example on how monopolies can stall development.

It's one thing to push the update to people who have that software installed on their computers and another to push it to anyone who has any software from that company.

Microsoft pushed IE8 to people that had IE on their PCs. Apple is pushing Safari to people like me that have iTunes installed. Wait till the next time your iTunes requires software updates.

RJ, One Care found and deleted a Trojan that I installed myself, when McAfee, and AVG did not even detect it [Virtumonde] but was supposed to as per each web site claim. Also, I'm glad you posted that iPhone owners are young, since I own one and I'm not feeling so young these days. My 73 yr old partner and all the other docs would love to hear it too ;)

Gorath, I have found that Flash games are dependent on my hardware. They run as fast on my new Mac Pro Tower as my fastest PC. Not that my cheap vid card in my 3.2 GHz P4 rebuilt eMachine [ATI 9600 128MB PCI] runs them slow, compared to my custom build PC with a 3.4GHz P4 with an X800 ATI PRO 256 MB. They are even slower on my 10 yr old G4 tower AGP. Can't remember the vid card but I think it's an ATI 9000 PRO 64MB.

We don't have an argument, so let's bash IE instead, OK? We'll also bring up Vista sales figures and XBox 360 reliability if we get desperate. Yeah, let's do it.

"We don't have an argument, so let's bash IE instead, OK? We'll also bring up Vista sales figures and XBox 360 reliability if we get desperate. Yeah, let's do it."

We don't have an argument, so let's start trolling, OK?

Just bringing up the hypocricy of Paul's post. Any critique isn't automatically bashing if you don't like it.

pissant paul sure has turned up the nasty meter on safari from his quick take on June 8th.  back then he couldn't 'find anything wrong per se' [not that he let that fact keep him from slamming it as a terrible browser, but of course that's how he was always going to rate it].  But now he's shunning it as the worst thing since Lotus Notes.  I personally don't mind safari, I like the RSS layouts [especially when viewing Paul's site so I don't get his ads or have to click through the Microsoft advertising they do on his site...  which should tell you all you need to know about thurrott being a kept man].  

But hey, he 'wont go near it again' because it won't display full screen for him?  what a nutcase.  but hey, critics are supposed to be cynical aholes...  a fine tradition that paul carries forth.

"Because Microsoft don't push new versions of IE out as an automatic update to all of its users. "

Of course they don't.  The newer IE versions are "more" standards compliant (while still deliberately being not compliant).

To all:

If you want to get rid of Apple evilness, just uninstall Apple Software Update.  Both iTunes AND Quicktime will tell you if there's a new version on launch.

FYI:  If you install just the Quicktime package, and uncheck "Check for updates automatically", that IS NOT for Apple Software Update.  You should leave that checked.  Apple Software Update will STILL be installed, so you have to remove it after installing Quicktime.  Quicktime will tell you if there's a new update on launch, and will forward you to the download page to get the update.  Again, you'll have to remove the extra garbage (Apple Software Update) after installing the new version of Quicktime.

Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users. That means they do something like:

Write for IE 7

Do a "standards" pass on IE 8

Since "standards" are too vague to actually be interpreted the same way on any two browsers, do a pass on Firefox 3 on Windows

Then do a test pass and fix "standards" compliance interpretation changes on Safari on the Mac to get Mac users

If there's time, do a pass on the older, remaining browsers popular on their site like IE 6 and Firefox 2

If they have more time, do a compatibility test and tweak for the niche browsers like Safari/Windows, Chrome and Opera.

Then, if the site supports it, do a separate version for mobile browsers.

@Doc:

Flash stuff is almost completely dependent on your CPU.  The hardware acceleration that they do right now is pretty weak.  It's the equivalent of DirectDraw 2D video acceleration.  Video playback and scaling is the only thing that really benefits from it.  Complex animations with many sprites don't really benefit from that.  That type of acceleration will likely happen when they release the new version which supports acceleration with your GPU.

"Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users."

this is how - at least in the past - MS has been able to thwart web standards.  It's getting harder for them though.  They keep trying of course - see deliberately dog slow Javascript performance in IE8

I kinda figured that Wae, especially since my $399 Vista laptop with a Dual Core P4, but cheapo on board video, seems to play some of the flash games better than the above eMachine. Note that only some games are slow on the eMachines, but all are slow on the 10 yr old G4 Tower, which has an upgraded CPU to a1.25 GHz G4. Still, Safari is running much faster than FF on the Macs. It's against my nature to install Safari on Windows, so I can't comment on speed with Windows.

Also of note, IE 7 seems to do everything better on my PC's than does FF. So I'll just keep IE. I would like to upgrade to IE 8, but I'm afraid of GE Centricity having problems, and that these aging computers may not have the horsepower to run it well. What do ya think?

"Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users. That means they do something like:

Write for IE 7

Do a "standards" pass on IE 8"

Speaking as a "real commercial web developer," who is regularly in touch with many more "real commercial web developers" on a daily basis, I can attest that this is  pure hogwash.  I don't honestly know what  "Write for IE 7" means.

shark

"We don't have an argument, so let's bash IE instead, OK? We'll also bring up Vista sales figures [...] if we get desperate. "

The last thing they'll want to bring up to distract people from the lunacy of bragging about a less than 1% download rate is sales figures.

I mean, if you look at real numbers, they really look pathetic.

Hence the

"wow, we got 6M Windows downloads for our browser (but please don't notice that means way less than 1% and a lot of those were for compatibility testing by developers to see if we broke their sites)" and

"the OS X installed base grew from 25M to 75M (but ignore that most of that growth was in iPod sales and that it really means that no matter what we do or how we lie our computers still can't get even 4% of the market)"

that these guys not only brag about but defend.

Seriously, even Apple themselves aren't stupid enough to bash Vista on actual sales figures, after all, Windows Vista outsold the entire Mac OS X installed base in its first week of general availablity.

Webguy

As a real commercial web developer you really talk to lots of developers who develop first for browsers their site's users don't use?

Every real commercial site I know picks their targets based on current browser usage from their logs, writes for the browser most commonly used by their users and then tweaks for the remainder. If your friends do anything else I'd be amazed (as would their boss)

And, by far, the most popular browser on mainstream sites is IE 7, followed by IE 8, probably followed by IE 6 then Firefox followed by Safari/Mac and everybody else is noise you tweak for if you have the time.

"Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users. That means they do something like:

Write for IE 7

[...]"

I can confirm this is baloney. No professional web developer wants to restrict their user base to just over half of all visitors. The only way that makes any kind of a sense is to write to standards, then apply workarounds to broken browsers.

"Seriously, even Apple themselves aren't stupid enough to bash Vista on actual sales figures, after all, Windows Vista outsold the entire Mac OS X installed base in its first week of general availablity."

This doesn't really change the fact that Vista launch was a massive failure. This is relative, of course, but it is the fact. Vista sales are driven by hardware sales, businesses wait for Windows 7 or are sticking with XP, a lot of people downgrade to XP when buying new computers, and even computer salesmen at stores recommend you do. How could it have been any worse? And by all this I mean that Vista is probably a much better operating system than what the poor public perception of it suggests.

Mum

" No professional web developer wants to restrict their user base to just over half of all visitors. "

So, you're saying that they want to restrict their user base to UNDER half of all vistors?

Mum

"The only way that makes any kind of a sense is to write to standards, then apply workarounds to broken browsers."

Which would make sense if the "standards" were written well enough that everybody reading them interpreted them the same way or if the "standards" didn't contradict themselves. But that's not the case. And anybody who actually codes to multiple "standards compliant" browsers will tell you that.

Ask any web developer out there if they can get by with only two meta tags for browser compatibility (Standards and IE) or even 3 (Standards, IE6, IE7) and they'll tell you they have to tweak for every "standards" based browser because they all interpret the amazingly vaguely written "standards" differently.

Sorry to answer your troll with actual facts but some people might have read it and thought it made sense if they didn't understand how web standards really work.

mikegalos@msn.com

Nobody's talking about restricting anybody from anything.  I'm just saying that I don't "build to" a specific  model of browser.  Like I said, I don't really know what that means.  (Unless of course you're doing a web application that uses specific ActiveX controls that are only supported in Explorer, in which case, yes.  But I don't know of anyone actively doing that these days on public-facing sites.THAT would be restricting your user base.)

webguy,

If you are writing generic enough code you can absolute write a very good web page that will work with all the common browsers. At which point all the "we're more compliant" stuff is moot since you're not using the more esoteric stuff that causes the big interpretation errors.

Still, even with generic code there are some interpretation issues caused by philosophy. Where I've seen a difference is when a section of the "standard" is vague and doesn't specify what to do in a specific case.

What I've typically seen is:

Microsoft interprets the "standard" so that it works in as many cases as possible (the widest interpretation of the spec)  because that benefits the user.

Mozilla Foundation interprets it so that it works only in the narrowest case possible to pressure the site developer into writing code that fits the strictest interpretation of the spec.

A case can be made for either method. One's better for the user at the cost of not putting pressure on the "standard" , one's better for improving the quality of the "standards" at a cost to the user.

"So, you're saying that they want to restrict their user base to UNDER half of all vistors?"

No. I see you don't really understand how web development works. If you develop for IE7 you're in danger of effectively and irreversibly restricting your site to work in IE only, as then fixing to standards-compliant browsers is often impossible without a complete rewrite. No customer would want that (or should pay for shoddy work like that).

Then again, if you write your web apps to standards, which most of the time ensures they'll work in FF and Safari, you can then apply fixes to IE6's various bugs. This usually, if not always, makes it compatible with IE7 as well.

Writing exclusively for IE7 is absolutely idiotic, not to mention expensive.

"And, by far, the most popular browser on mainstream sites is IE 7, followed by IE 8, probably followed by IE 6 then Firefox followed by Safari/Mac and everybody else is noise you tweak for if you have the time."

IE8 share compared to previous versions is still relatively small unfortunately, mostly seems to be on par with Safari, according to the user data of some sites which I have an access to. IE6 is mostly below or at most on par with FF, although that seems to depend on the time of the year.

But that's what the situation is at the moment. Sites are developed for future use. If the current trend continues, IE will not be the most popular browser in a just two years.

"We don't have an argument, so let's start trolling, OK?"

I can't help it if robertsjoe trolls. Sorry, but I can't stop him.

"Sorry to answer your troll with actual facts but some people might have read it and thought it made sense if they didn't understand how web standards really work."

Wow, now you're calling me a troll. (What irony.) Please put the personal attacks aside and show where your facts are, as what I read seems to have nothing to do with actual web development.

@galos

""the OS X installed base grew from 25M to 75M (but ignore that most of that growth was in iPod sales and that it really means that no matter what we do or how we lie our computers still can't get even 4% of the market)"

In the previous thread I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. You might have simply made a mistake.. or Schiller's keynote might have been open to different interpretations. But this, Mike, is an out and out lie. Schller quite clearly and inequitably states that the iPhone and iTouch was responsible for tripling the number of OS X users. There is no doubt. No room for an other interpretation. He just... said it.

I thought that you liked to deal in facts? Yet here you are fabricating truths to push your own (slightly pathetic) anti-Apple agenda.

You lied Mike.

Deal with it.

SPiotr

25M (Old number)

75M (New number)

50M (Total growth in OS X licenses)

10M (New Mac OS X licenses)

40M (iPod and iPhone [iPhoneOS variant of OS X]  share of that growth)

80% of the growth was sales of iPods (iPhone and iPod Touch versions specifically).

I'd say that 80% is most. You'd say that's "an out and out lie"

Odd math you work with where either 20% is "most" or 20% = 80% and they're tied.

mikegalos@msn.com,

I have no interest in engaging in another cut-and-paste discussion about "standards."  I defer. You're 100% right.

WebGuy3000

" I defer. You're 100% right."

Well, that save some time.

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@galos

This is not about the numbers! You are NOT lying about the figures. It's about this:

"but ignore that most of that growth was in iPod sales"

They (Apple) did not ignore that.. They appeared to be reveling in that fact.

You are the one that invented the notion that Apple was trying to deceive with their OS usage figures.

"If you want to get rid of Apple evilness, just uninstall Apple Software Update.  Both iTunes AND Quicktime will tell you if there's a new version on launch."

Whether it's evilness or not, they are using their monopoly in the digital music player space to increase their web browser marketshare, while a gloating tech press cheers them on.

@Doc:

You should give IE8 a shot on a non-production computer.  If your GE Centricity is run from within your own intranet, it'll run in IE7 compatibility mode automatically, because Microsoft respects that intranet sites are usually some of the last to be updated.  That setting is set that way be default in the Compatibility View Settings in IE8.

You can also add sites to the Compatibility View whitelist.

Thanks Wae, maybe I'll grow a pair and give it a shot. It sounds like MS went through a lot of trouble to make users like me happy.

As I mentioned yesterday, Apple's PR team announced that Safari 4 had been downloaded 11 million times!!! just three days after the release. Even more exciting, they suggested, 6 million !!! of those downloads came from Windows users. I'm not the first

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