Re: Porting web apps to Mozilla Mac -- guidance needed

Thank you much, Brion. You answered all the questions. Thanks :-)

"Brion Vibber" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> dw wrote:
> >     - What are some guidelines for our developers to follow to make Mac
> > users happy? We heard about not using ActiveX and avoiding client-side
> > VBScript.
>
> You should already be avoiding these things for compatibility with
> non-IE browsers on Windows.
>
> >     - On many sites, they have a minimum set of requirements to support
> > (usually browsers), with Netscape 4.7x and IE 4 being as low as they go.
How
> > about the Mac side? What are some minimum requirements for us to support
as
> > far as browsers are concerned, OS, hardware, etc.?
> >     - What OS and browser do most users have today on the Mac?
> >     - Is it a good idea to just develop for Mozilla, or make the sites
> > compatible with Safari as well? Is there a big difference?
>
> Mozilla behaves pretty much the same as it does on other platforms, so
> if you're already keeping Mozilla & Netscape 6/7 compatibility in mind
> you should concentrate your Mac-specific effort on Internet Explorer and
> Safari. (As always, fonts will *never* be exactly the same. Don't count
> on pixel-perfect sameness.)
>
> Safari goes to great effort to be standards compliant and compatible
> with both Mozilla and IE/Win, but things don't always match 100%. It's
> broadly similar to Konqueror on Linux/Unix as they share backend code
> (KHTML). Safari has shipped as the default browser on Macs in the last
> year-ish, but doesn't run on the old Mac OS. Older Macs won't have it
> and are more likely to be running Internet Explorer (or sometimes even
> Netscape 4.x).
>
> Internet Explorer on the Mac is *completely* unrelated to Internet
> Explorer on Windows; they have different capabilities and different bugs.
>
> If you're supporting Netscape 4.7x on Windows, you should at least
> support back to IE/Mac 5.x. (5.1 is the latest that runs on the old Mac
OS)
>
> >     - We're a state-"funded" university (with "funded" being somewhat of
a
> > joke); should we purchase a Mac for in-house testing, or are there tools
> > that can check compatibility -- like validation tools that can take a
page
> > and say if it will work/look okay on a Mac?
>
> I'd strongly recommend you get a real Mac to test with if you can.
> Automatic validation is unlikely to be possible as the issue is whether
> things work the way you intended, and the computer can't tell what you
> intended.
>
> List price for an eMac is US$799, you should be able to get a better
> deal as an educational institution.
>
> >     - What is a good Web site with info about Mac Web development
> > questions/requirements? We've found some sites on Google, but they're
about
> > general Web development as opposed to focusing on Mac development.
>
> A few Safari-specific snippets:
> http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari_faq.html
>
> General notes on browser compatibility with various (D)HTML, CSS, JS
> bits, including Mac browsers, are available at various sites including:
> http://www.quirksmode.org/
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)