Safari Isn’t the Beauty That Apple Likes To Claim
Posted by: Corey on: March 9, 2007
I have a friend who has been, like many others, totally sucked into the world of marketing called Apple. I don’t have anything against Apple, and I actually own a Mac and quite like a lot of the stuff that it does, but I’m the last person to fall for a marketing gimmick.
Like we all know, Apple is king of ooo-aaaaah marketing. They come up with glorified terms like “Breakthrough Internet communications device” that means that the phone has a browser and wifi. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I wish more people would see through it in some cases. Like the case of Safari.
“The best browser in the world.” That’s what Apple likes to call Safari, and from a marketing point, they should. The problem, however, is that people Mac Fanboys all propagate that line throughout everything and they really believe it. I mean, why shouldn’t they?
Safari is great! It really is the best. I mean, it looks good. It has and RSS reader build in, even though it doesn’t work that great. It can read HTML, XHTML, XML and more! It can execute JavaScript! It works with Flash! Um, it has a build in search box that only searches Google. OH! It does TABS…if you go into the preferences and enable them, anyways. I almost forgot, it has it’s own rendering engine so that websites look more like Apple thinks they should. Eh…and it does JavaScript it’s own way too. Hmm…it doesn’t follow those silly CSS standards! It restyles input elements the way Apple thinks they should look! F5 doesn’t do that irritating “Refresh” thing! Tab won’t select links so I can’t accidentally use my keyboard to browse instead of the non-ergonomic mouse that causes carpel tunnel!
Seriously now. Safari is just not a very matured browser. It’s sort of like a beta version of Mozilla blended with IE5. Sure, it looks good, but it really lacks what so many other browsers include. You can’t really customize it like Firefox with extensions and user styles. It doesn’t offer support for all of the standards like Opera…nor is it as fast at executing Javascript. It doesn’t even offer the nifty shortcuts that Internet Explorer offers.
Honestly, it’s a pain in the ass. Especially if you’re a website designer. It gives us just one more browser to test code in, and usually we have to make changes and sacrifices to allow Safari’s retarded engine to display the page as intended.
3 Responses to "Safari Isn’t the Beauty That Apple Likes To Claim"
[...] become used to using in IE/FF, and use tons of my RAM main memory up. No one sums it up better than Dev Hints who notes that “Safari Isn’t the Beauty That Apple Likes To Claim.” It’s not [...]
June 19, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Mmm…this is coming from someone whose website is a complete mess. How typical.
Oh so I have to tell Safari to do what is expected of it? I’m all for AI, but I don’t think I should have to train a browser that the tab key should move focus to the next element. It’s been around for a while…it’s just Apple being stubborn about not liking selection rectangles appearing on their pretty little child that’s a moron.
Safari doesn’t have anything to manage cookies. Safari doesn’t let me write my own scripts to execute on websites that match an expression. Safari doesn’t let me modify global styles through a CSS stylesheet. Safari doesn’t give me the ability to resize my browser window to specific dimensions for testing websites. Safari doesn’t let me outline specific elements for debugging HTML. Safari doesn’t let me swap between different sets of cookies. Safari doesn’t let me see my AdSense earnings updated all day and night. Safari doesn’t show me the time a website took to load. Safari doesn’t let me snap a screenshot of the entire website. Safari doesn’t update itself. I could go on all day.
Safari doesn’t let me use a lot of standard JavaScript. In fact, until Safari 3, WebKit/AppleWebKit would screw up all over the place on Google Docs. The way Safari handles various padding and margin situations with float is incorrect, also (Safari 2, I’m not sure of 3).
Safari has tabs, but they’re not enabled by default. IE 7 has tabs, and they actually work with the keyboard (ctrl+tab) unlike Safari’s.
You say you’ve used Firefox and Opera and Safari is better. Since better is relative to your usage, I’m assuming you’re just another brat that can’t stand to have something look a little bit off so that it is functional…like handles on the doors of cars. Sure, safari looks nice and clean, but all that “clutter” has immense functionality.
PS: Safari has “plug-ins” instead of extensions. Apparently you’re another amateur that doesn’t realize exactly how his browser works.
June 19, 2007 at 8:49 am
Safari works better with CSS than Firefox. Two words: inline-block.
Tab doesn’t select links because you haven’t told it to. Right now, I just went down the whole page, link by link.
If you don’t like the mouse, get a new one. Mine cost me £5, and it works just fine.
Website design is easy as hell in Safari. I think you might be confused with IE, here.
It does have tabs. You wanna find those in Internet Explorer?
It doesn’t have extensions. Good. Now, I don’t have to waste my time searching for an added extra that does something Firefox probably should have done in the first place.
You need to actually use the damn thing. I’ve gone through Firefox, Camino, Opera, SeaMonkey, and OmniWeb, and Safari is still better.