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Dec 24, 09 - 12:05 pm Comment from: Ampar

"This is a war, and it's being fought in the browser."

And irony coming full circle isn't just a ferrous wheel.

Dec 24, 09 - 12:13 pm Comment from: Gregg Thurman

If they were using Firefox on their PC (very likely) then they probably loaded Firefox for the Mac when they switched.

Oh please Ampar!

That was a punny effort.




Happy Holidays!

title should read "...If so, Steve Jobs is partly to thank."

Steve Jobs should get a medal for helping rid the computer world of the internet Explorer abomination.

Internet Explorer is losing because it's a lousy browser. MS continues to ignore web standards while Firefox, Safari, Chrome and others embrace them. IE is slow and does not display many pages correctly unless programmers incorporate IE hacks to combat the bugs.

Of course, the popularity of Apple is chipping away at Windows sales and IE use as well.

I prefer ferris wheels, but they're probably not as ironic.

As a total n00bie, with an early generation iMac, I was having problems with erratic behavior of Navigator, . . . and maybe even a few other apps. This was at a time when IE was also bundled on these machines.

I was advised to root through my machine and trash anything with the Microsoft name attached. It took a couple of tries, but the problems cleared up.

I primarily use Safari, but Firefox next to it, on my Dock.

Dec 24, 09 - 12:23 pm Comment from: MacSmiley

MSFT bit off its own nose to spite its own face when it pulled the plug on Internet Explorer for Mac in 2003. As the Macintosh user base grows, IE isn't even an option for the thick-headed.

Dec 24, 09 - 12:23 pm Comment from: Bob

Wait a minute, are you sure it's not a rounding error?

Dec 24, 09 - 12:34 pm Comment from: Zuno the Clown

"We don't know precisely why IE is losing share, but Macs could be part of the problem."

IE losing share is a problem?
Talk about Stockholm Syndrome...

For my extended family members who are not ready to switch to a Mac, I at least tell them to drop IE in favor of Firefox - which I download, install, and explain how to use.

Peace.

Dec 24, 09 - 12:40 pm Comment from: Ampar

MSFT's challenge to Chrome is a super secret project, codename Rust.

Dec 24, 09 - 12:42 pm Comment from: qka

I prefer ferris wheels, but they're probably not as ironic.

But they're more iconic.

Dec 24, 09 - 01:02 pm Comment from: Big Als MBP

@ Ampar,

Ferrous Wheel?

Was that just a chemistry joke or did you really mean iron wheel?

Dec 24, 09 - 01:04 pm Comment from: MidWest Mac

The funny thing is that Microsoft's lack of development for IE on the Mac OS was probably at one time thought to be a nail in Apple's coffin.

Instead, it's part of a trend in slowly killing IE.

Here are two things that will do IE in:

1) People who are at all tech savvy use something else.
2) The general population is slowly but surely becoming more tech savvy.

Dec 24, 09 - 01:19 pm Comment from: m159

"Macs don't use IE."

I'm pretty sure they can. They used to.

Dec 24, 09 - 01:23 pm Comment from: DogGone

IE's share is now down to 56%. Soon it will be less than 50%.

FireFox is likely gaining share because it is faster and easier to use than IE. Have you ever tried looking at browser history on IE? It is buried in the most ridiculous place.

The other thing that annoys me about IE is the links to the M$ and Bing. I much prefer the simple Google search page.

This is a good example of competition improving the user experience. And it looks like the general public are wising up to the fact that there are better browsers around.

The one to watch is Chrome. Already at 5% share - it will become a dominant layer soon for PCs. Probably won't have much effect on the Mac platform.

don't understand honestly how you can utilize something else than safari 4 once you have used it.
the rest is lightyears behind...
or a way to understand is maybe that people ignore the existence of safari 4..maybe the same way that not everybody has upgrade to iphone/ipodtouch sotware 3+
interesting...

I agree. Firefox is much much better than IE and much better than Safari.

Dec 24, 09 - 01:35 pm Comment from: Ampar

"Was that just a chemistry joke or did you really mean iron wheel?"

The answer is yes. And decaying rib steak isn't just an oxide.

To quote the Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All?"

"Safari... isn't my primary choice. Firefox is, because it's both browser and platform... Safari doesn't dabble in plug-ins and extensions the way that Firefox does..."

So why did Google and Adobe choose WebKit as their "platform"?

IE was the very reason antivirus software has become nevessary. Windows is to blame, but it's IE that provides all the security holes, leading to the well known phrase "curse you, activeX"

also, I have a windows desktop for gaming (aside from my MacBook pro) and guess what? I use Safari!! Ballmers can suck my .... For as long as it takes!

Dec 24, 09 - 02:10 pm Comment from: Ampar

“I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people.”

- Jack Handey

Dec 24, 09 - 02:10 pm Comment from: DLMeyer

"...Safari doesn't dabble in plug-ins and extensions the way that Firefox does..." and why not? Is this another example of Job's infamous NEEED to control every aspect of his empire? Well, then, what of the iPhone and its multitude of apps? Oh, right, those are controlled as well. But not as tightly.
Safari certainly could benefit from some optional plug-ins, extensions, tool-bars and the like. Those I've used with Firefox have tended to exchange screen real-estate for functionality (or appearance) and this tended to be an acceptable exchange - or the addition became a subtraction.
I wonder if there is a way to convince His Steveness that it would be a Good Thing to pare Safari down a bit while simultaneously offering "extras".

Dec 24, 09 - 02:34 pm Comment from: pastrychef

How does winning the browser wars help any of these companies make money?

@ DLMeyer:

Uh there are plenty of other WebKit based browsers out there. Apple chooses to keep things as simple and consistent as possible for users. If that comes across to you as being "controlling" then that's what you get from it.

If you want a WebKit based browser with the ability to add extensions, go write your own. Apple does make the source code to the WebKit engine freely available for anyone to tinker with. As far as I'm concerned, Safari is perfect... a simple, clean interface with almost all window real estate dedicated to showing the content, which is most important.

And actually I use a Safari plug-in called Click2Flash, so I'm not sure where these people get their info from, but Safari does support plug-ins, which would make their argument and your rant a bit ignorant.

@ pastrychef:

It doesn't, except for Microsoft who continuously tries to tie web content to their Windows OS, thus holding their monopoly on the desktop.

The goal of Firefox and WebKit is to push the adoption standards, so that no one company can control content. This is why Flash, Silverlight and all other proprietary run times need to die as well. Slowly but surely, standards will be able to replace them. We already see what HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript can accomplish.

Actually, you can thank Jim Allchin for IE being Windows-only as Microsoft contemplated making IE work on other platforms beyond Windows (and sometimes Mac). But Jim Allchin talked Bill Gates into not doing that because that could hurt Windows and its monopolistic dominance.

One Fact Remains: IE was and still is worst browser on the market. It doesn't support web standards all that well and doesn't play with open technologies all that well either.

What the author fails to realize is that Safari is built on WebKit, which is a platform unto itself; although not using the same plug-in approach that Firefox is using. A lot of development has spouted up as a result of WebKit, including Google Chrome. It was a brilliant move on Apple's part.

I just wish that browser makers could agree on a common bookmark/favorites mechanism so people didn't feel locked into the browser that has their bookmarks in it. That's the biggest hurdle I see people having when switching browsers, despite the easy-import feature most browsers have.

@rescator

"don't understand honestly how you can utilize something else than safari 4 once you have used it. the rest is lightyears behind..."

I like Safari on my Mac as well, but I completely understand why so many users prefer Firefox...

First of all, Safari on Windows falls short of its performance on OSX. Frankly, it's a bit of a cow in Windows. The fact that iTunes for Windows is also sluggish means that the two provide a combined bad experience for Windows users who've installed them.

Second, Safari is not as extensible as Firefox, and this has become even more of an issue with the latest version which killed support for a lot of 3rd party plugins. I can see why Apple doesn't like extensions - they can ruin the browser's otherwise great performance and stability. But personally I find it very frustrating that there's currently no way to effectively block ads in Safari - something that I can easily do in Firefox.

Firefox is my preferred browser on Windows by far. Several attempts to switch to Firefox on the Mac, though, have brought me right back to Safari due to Firefox's slower startup and rendering performance, the lack of integration with OSX features like bookmark syncing, and its less streamlined interface.

If Apple were to re-open Safari to 3rd party plugins (or at least add an ad-blocking feature) and improve the performance of the Windows version, it might take some market share away from Firefox.

Dec 24, 09 - 05:20 pm Comment from: Chuck U Farley

When I hear someone talking about using Explorer, I just cringe. But these are the same people who are brainwashed into believing that as long as they have some crappy antivirus software on their Windows machine, they are safe. They all end up learning the hard way.

Dec 24, 09 - 05:33 pm Comment from: ken1w

> Blame it on Steve Jobs.

Please... blame it on Microsoft. First of all, if IE was better, it would not be losing share so fast. And the Vista disaster caused more Windows users to switch to FireFox (if they did not switch to Mac), just because Vista made Microsoft look clueless. And finally, before Apple released Safari and made it the default Mac browser, IE for Mac was the default browser on Macs; Microsoft could have continued to develop IE for Mac.

"And finally, before Apple released Safari and made it the default Mac browser, IE for Mac was the default browser on Macs; Microsoft could have continued to develop IE for Mac."

No, please. They do enough harm with Office for Mac.

I'm still using Netscape Navigator version 9 on my Macbook -- it works pretty well with all the Flash-heavy websites these days and streaming content from the television studio websites. The only website message that I have received thus far stating that my browser was unsupported was from MySpace, but I was just checking out someone's page, so no big deal.

Dec 24, 09 - 06:48 pm Comment from: Wade Smith

"I find it very frustrating that there's currently no way to effectively block ads in Safari"

Admittedly, the utilities that do so needed to be updated when 4 popped up, but SafariBlock and SafariAdBlock (and even PithHelmet) do a great job of eliminating ads- even on such notoriously ugly sites as, well, MDN. And Click2Flash works just real swell, too. And if you're especially geeky, just write your own CSS to define your own styles. I'm actually surprised there ain't more of those out there.

Safari does support plugins and extensions. The reason a lot of Safari extensions break after an update is because they are software hacks, not true Safari extensions. That being said, Safari's extension platform is not nearly as robust as Firefox's.

I have SafariBlock installed right now and it is completely ineffective in blocking any of the ads on this page.

The best ad blocker used to be Right-click Flash, and that doesn't work anymore either.

"The reason a lot of Safari extensions break after an update is because they are software hacks, not true Safari extensions. That being said, Safari's extension platform is not nearly as robust as Firefox's."

There must be some reason why out of all the devoted Mac fans out there nobody has come forward to replace these now broken "hacks".

Very frustrating to deal with all these obnoxious ads after growing accustomed to blocking all of them.

freediverx:
" have SafariBlock installed right now and it is completely ineffective in blocking any of the ads on this page."

"There must be some reason why out of all the devoted Mac fans out there nobody has come forward to replace these now broken 'hacks'."

Install ClickToFlash. It is a proper Safari Extension and it has worked for me from Safari 3.x up the current version without breaking. It blocks all Flash on all pages unless you click on the Flash movie, or add that page/domain to a whitelist.

"Install ClickToFlash. It is a proper Safari Extension and it has worked for me from Safari 3.x up the current version without breaking. It blocks all Flash on all pages unless you click on the Flash movie, or add that page/domain to a whitelist."

I appreciate the suggestion, but I preferred the functionality of right-click flash, which let me right-click to block any ads, and supported the use of wildcard characters to block all content from a particular domain...

ClickToFlash sounds like it will block all flash content unless I enable it for a specific page, which is the opposite of how I'd like it to work.

...also, does ClickToFlash do anything to block non-flash image ads?

@ freediverx – Why don't you give iCab a try? iCab uses the same web browsing engine as Safari (which means ClickToFlash works there, too), but it also implements a lot of very useful ad-blocking and annoyance-handling features that Safari doesn't.

@Gabriel
I appreciate the suggestion, but the whole point is to avoid replacing Safari. I like its interface, stability, performance, and OS integration features.

freediverx,
You might want to try glimmer blocker. It blocks ads (at the dns level) basted on whatever criteria (or wildcards) you can dream up. (It also come with a nice default set (of the most notorious domains) to get you rolling.)
This kind of thing (selective blocking based on domain criteria filtering) is much better accomplished on the local DNS level (like glimmer) because once established it works across all browsers, and because it is not a browser specific haxie or plug you can update your browser(s) without worry of incompatibilities with any future version updates (which both safari haxies and firefox plugins commonly suffer from)

Dec 25, 09 - 02:52 am Comment from: TheConfuzed1

@ Pastry Chef & Michael--

Browsers are bug money makers.

All modern browsers have built in search bars.

When you use that search bar, the browser maker is credited for the click-thru ad revenue.

Well tis the season to be merry and one should never discount the light within all humans, let me put a temporary Ampar fan hat and say "Duh" to all trying to punaciously encircle the iron man.

If is was indeed a iron pun he would have said ferric wheel. That way it would have been clear as crystal and hence would not need an explanation.

Then again a buddy of mine said that building things fool proof only allows more fools to be born.

Dec 25, 09 - 12:04 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

Blame Steve Jobs? Blame Microsoft for futilely attempting to kill open standards in favor of there proprietary crap. IE was 95% of the market in the early turn of the century. Web developers, and users are sick of the slow bloated crap MS has been delivering, so these trends are no surprise. I can make a page that will display exactly the same in Firefox, Safari, Opera but brakes horribly under IE. So if it louses market share, it can only be a good thing.

Dec 25, 09 - 12:05 pm Comment from: ElderNorm

@freediverx,
"First of all, Safari on Windows falls short of its performance on OSX. Frankly, it's a bit of a cow in Windows. The fact that iTunes for Windows is also sluggish means that the two provide a combined bad experience for Windows users who've installed them."
Just a thought here, but could it be that the reason that Safari might have problems on windows machines is............... because of Windows. ?????


One must remember the build in fear/thought process at MicroSloth..... We must control or at least make others look worse.

How many times have they changed windows .... just so some competitor would look bad. Stupid moves. Just stupid.

Just a thought,
en

PS, Merry Christmas.

Dec 25, 09 - 02:03 pm Comment from: disposableidentity

@pastrychef, Apple wins when the web is open. As long as you can choose the computer you prefer, a good number of people will choose the Mac. Microsoft thought by owning the web by pushing proprietary additions and quirks with IE they could prevent any other "computing platform" (which the web was becoming) from thretening their Windows monopoly.

Dec 25, 09 - 04:35 pm Comment from: Ampar

"Then again a buddy of mine said that building things fool proof only allows more fools to be born."

NICE !

And I'm not as young as I used to be but then again I never was.