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The funny thing is that the blocked browsers will work only on phishing sites if the real Pay Pal site actually blocks them.

How far does that actually improve security?

Apr 19, 08 - 04:54 pm Comment from: Ray

Well looks like all that alarmist PayPal trash talking that went on yesterday was a waste of everyone's time.

None the less....I still have to use more than one browser b/c Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible.

Just my $0.02

Making blocked browsers work only on phishing sites and not the real Pay Pal site improves security by letting the phishers empty the phishee's bank accounts, therefore having nothing left to steal.

pong: Making blocked browsers work only on phishing sites and not the real Pay Pal site improves security by letting the phishers empty the phishee's bank accounts, therefore having nothing left to steal.

That makes sense, of course!

Apr 19, 08 - 05:38 pm Comment from: qka

Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible.

No, Apple refuses to make Safari 100% Microsoft compatible. Many websites code for Internet Exploder, complete with Microsoft's non-compliant extensions that only work with Exploder.

Apr 19, 08 - 05:55 pm Comment from: Logan

Ray,

You are displaying your ignorance. Please stop. It's hurting you.
"Internet compatible" is a meaningless term you made up. So what percentage is Safari? 60%? 80%? You don't know because you made it up.

My guess is that you have one or two sites that you visit that don't support Safari. That is not Safari's fault, it's the fault of the developers who use proprietary, non-platform agnostic technology.

I am a web developer. If anything, Safari is more "internet compatible" (again, completely arbitrary phrase).

As qka said, it's MSIE that is the problem. They created their own proprietary "standards" and now every web developer has to cater to their "standards." Meanwhile, every other browser in the world follows a list of accepted, clearly defined rules for rendering web pages. Safari adheres to this list quite thoroughly. Even better than Firefox.

Apr 19, 08 - 06:21 pm Comment from: Jubei

@Ray

"None the less....I still have to use more than one browser b/c Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible."

Ahahaha..hahaha.hahaha... OMG.. Ray did you just crawl out from under a rock? LOL

Apr 19, 08 - 06:55 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

I invented Internet Compatibility.

-A.G.

Ray,

Are you trying to compete with Zune Tang for the absurd comedy title?

It seems to me everyone's missing the REAL surprise in the article --

"It seems we in the media are reading too much into this."

Is anyone else here surprised at some actual HONESTY and INTEGRITY in the tech journalism field? (From someone besides Daniel Eran, that is.)

I applaud you, Mr. Worthen.

especially financial sites: TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, Zecco, etc. all do NOT play nicely with Safari. I wish either Apple, or they, would get this straightened out!

Apr 19, 08 - 09:28 pm Comment from: Hm...

@ C1,

Careful - tick off AG and minions, and Nickelback will be virally inserted into your dreams...

I still can not get flash video working correctly on all of the sites I navigate. On some it works, on some it works on certain pages but not others. I've worked on this problem for hours to no avail... all I can figure is there's some legacy hiccup in my machine I can't reinstall over... it makes me sad – because it all works as advertised in Firefox. I can't explain it.

Apr 20, 08 - 03:42 am Comment from: Reality Check

Theoretical internet compatibility (ie. compliance with W3C standards) is somewhat irrelevant if the website you are trying to browse doesn't work in Safari but will work in every other browser out there. No matter how pure Safari's implementation, when you only have 5% of the browser market you should follow whatever standards are out there - proprietary or not - and not expect web developers to care about your compliance. Otherwise, it's the end user that suffers. Until Apple realises this then many Mac users will continue to need a second browser to access certain sites.

Being a Mac fan here, I think we should fend for ourselves here and protect ourselves as consumers. Just because someone can't access some web page because Apple won't accept adding extra code for getting MS code to work doesn't mean we should attack someone for getting terminology wrong. Very ignorant fan boy-esque of you all to play on that part while brushing incompatibility under the carpet.

Microsoft flung it's code on the net and there is no reversing that fact. These websites using such code will be around for a long time and as such Apple should make Safari compatible to allow us customers less hassle. Unless Microsoft is stopping Apple from doing so I don't see why they wouldn't. What helps Apple's customer base is satisfaction and it's obvious some people happen to feel the same as Ray.

I myself have not found much incompatibility on websites I've been encountering lately. I just bought a shiny new iMac 2 weeks ago and yet to find problems net-wise. It is such a good time now to buy a Mac I can say with joy! I wish we could compare brain activity of someone on a Mac and someone on a PC and see how stress levels compare in an average day. Do scientists have a machine that can measure happy?

Apr 20, 08 - 10:19 am Comment from: Logan

Oh that you guys' were web developers. When a websiteb is created, a web designer basically has to design it twice: once according to W3 standards, and then again to make it work with IE. This is a source of perpetual frustration for almost every web designer I know. It's not like IE can do everything a modern browser like Safari can do, it's just different code. It's like IE just doesn't do anything you'd expect it to, so you have to fix all the IE bugs in your site using messy IE hacks or "conditional comments."

The corporate world had become entrenched in MS, which means all their cool-aid drinking MS designers/developers made things using MS-proprietary technology (which MS developed as a means of lock-in). But in the last 6 years the browser market has changed drastically. Now it's just taking a while for all the websites to catch up with web standards.

People should be writing the companies who's websites are bit Safari compatible and asking them for Safari compatibility. That's the problem that needs to be addressed.

If Safari were to add compatibility for MS' buggy and messy behavior, it would completely defeat the purpose of even developing a modern browser. And it would only perpetuate the problem. MSIE is the definition of archaic buggy browsers.

Apr 20, 08 - 10:23 am Comment from: Logan

correction:
paragraph three, line one: "bit" = "not"

Reality Check needs to look up the definition of proprietary. Microsoft is doing proprietary things with IE specifically to lock out competing browsers like Safari. Licensing those technologies from MS wouldn't do any good because MS would simply create more of them that Apple (and others) would also need to license. It's a vicious circle that would only benefit MS! Other browser makers would have increased costs and effectively remain locked out of many sites, while MS would make more money! Users would be locked in to IE because the alternatives would disappear.

"It seems we in the media are reading too much into this."

No... it sounds like PayPal backtracking.

Mr. Worthen spoke to PayPal... AFTER PayPal made their original statement and received a lot of negative online commentary regarding the overall stupidity of their plan.

Apr 20, 08 - 12:10 pm Comment from: Cubert

Just more subtle FUD.

Apr 20, 08 - 12:45 pm Comment from: blucaso

Not Nickelback!!! Anything but that! ARGGGGGGG!!!*!*!*&!!

I know all about Internet Compatibility!!!

Um I still hate paypal and refuse to use it.

"Today I use mainly Safari because it uses CSS best and above all for the typography. Even Firefox can learn from Safari's typography. Why is it that so few programs handle text well? Why is typography so lousy on the screen?" - World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau

Robert Cailiau said that about Safari 2 back in August 2007.

Safari 3 is the most W3 compliant browser there is. If web developers cannot create web sites that work correctly on Safari, then they are not doing a very good job. It is as simple as that.

Whenever I develop web sites, I have to put code in to make adjustments for the different browsers. I am sick of it. I have to run Safari, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, and Internet Explorer, and double check that the site works on each one.

What is worse is that developers still insist on creating web sites that use ActiveX and are more IE compliant than they are W3 compliant.

Correction, he may have been referring to Safari 3. I thought 3 had not been released yet. 3 was released in June, so he could have been talking about either one. Regardless, the point is still valid.

Apr 20, 08 - 04:16 pm Comment from: AlanAudio

@Logan People should be writing the companies who's websites are bit Safari compatible and asking them for Safari compatibility.

You're almost right, but not quite right.

What I do is to contact the company who own the web site and request that they make their site standards compliant, because then it will work on any browser running on any device. These days, people access the internet using an increasing variety of methods, the days of being able to assume that 98% of the hits will be from Windows PCs running IE have long gone.

In order to concentrate the mind of the site owner, I always mention their biggest rival and explain how their site works flawlessly. Never address this sort of query to the web team, they won't care. Instead direct it to the sales dept or senior management, they're the ones who will worry that they're losing sales to their rivals as a result of the web authors being incompetent and they are also the ones who employ the web authors.

What some of you don't understand is that the whole intent of having the internet was for it to be platform agonistic. So that information could freely go from one computer to the next, with out worrying about compatibility.

As a web developer I refuse to use proprietary MS technology. But I have to hack my pages so that they also work with IE.

But guess what. Microsoft has learned the error of it's ways and they are back peddling to conform with real web standards. The problem that they face is that now, since they created the problem, they also need to include a sub layer of compatibility on their browser to insure they don't break half the internet.

Even IE 7 has this somewhat implemented. The problem is that it makes the browser slower since it has to determine what the code is and how to interpret it. Word has it that IE 8 will be even worse because it will have two such sub-layers to deal with. Did you all think IE was slow because Microsoft purposely coded it this way?

So, if what MS stated is true, this compatibility problem will only be fixed when "bad" MS proprietary code is depreciated and faced out. Microsoft let the cat out of the bag, and even they will pay the price, with slow bloated browser support.

Leave Ray alone.

Apr 20, 08 - 11:42 pm Comment from: Logan

"...request that they make their site standards compliant..."
AlanAudio, yes, of course, you're right. That's what I meant in the end. Thanks for clarifying.

Zune Tang, brevity is the soul of wit. Brilliant.

Apr 21, 08 - 01:42 am Comment from: Zeke

eTrade works just fine with Safari. Any financial or other company that codes their web pages for IE only, using .NET or other MS proprietary tool gets none of my business, and receives a letter from me to that effect.

@skinner, and zeke:

Zeke is correct. E*Trade works with Safari, and based on conversations I've had over the years with their reps, it's very much on purpose.

E*Trade welcomes Mac users. Their online tools are Java-based. If you want to vote with your wallet go with E*Trade. No Windows-only BS from them!

Apr 21, 08 - 09:40 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

"Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible.
No, Apple refuses to make Safari 100% Microsoft compatible. Many websites code for Internet Exploder, complete with Microsoft's non-compliant extensions that only work with Exploder."

This point is made several times among these posts and this is really the bottom line. What I wonder is, do we expect Apple to just pony-up to what Microsoft has "flung" onto the internet, or do we expect someone somewhere to adhere to already established, and better, universal, non-MS, compliant standards? And I'm asking this as an honest question. If FireFox and other's would stop bending toward MS it would help to solve this universal problem clearly created by MS. Think how much farther along the internet would be for the end-user by now if MS wasn't constantly and forever mucking it up.

Even as I'm writing this post I'm simultaneously listening to a Mac user in the other room moaning about the fact that the media content that he created on his Mac and posted to the internet is not functioning correctly for IE users, and how he never had this problem with Windows and IE. See the point? The artificial "standard" is viewed as normal because everybody just takes it for granted that as long as their online product is IE compliant, then they're ok. It has got to stop - really. Go out of your way to stop making your online products IE compliant, and once and for all, make it crystal clear to MS that you are going to abide by real universal standards and not MS standards.

Personally, my gut reaction to the title of the article is to send an email to PayPal and say, "Can you say class-action-lawsuit..." But that's just me - Or is it?

I am one of the unfortunate soulds that occasionally has to step into the world of Windows via Parallels. And when I make the occasional visit to Windows hell, I use Safari as my default browser.

It works beautifully (or as beautifully as anything can) in Windows.

I have just one thing to say on the subject of Browser Conformity

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/
Safari is one of the few browsers that pass the acid test 2

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid3/
Safari does not yet pass the acid test 3, it's getting closer and it's much closer then IE 6&7;which for the record even fails acid test 2.

Apr 21, 08 - 10:47 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@Petra,

Exactly. Safari needs to finish getting there, but that should not be synonymous with IE Compliance - 'cause it's not. IE is not compliant. Neither is MS.

"Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible". NO, Apple CAN'T make it 100% internet compatible because it is only a web browser.

Apr 21, 08 - 01:09 pm Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@AlanAudio says, "... the days of being able to assume that 98% of the hits will be from Windows PCs running IE have long gone."

Really? Because that's exactly the assumption that got this discussion going. Even our Mac using web team assumes that they have to be IE compliant - internet standards be damned. Oh I want to believe what your saying, but the power to change this miasma is at the site-developer level, and I all I see is everyone, and I mean everyone, scrambling to make their sites work with IE - and occasionally FireFox.

Apr 21, 08 - 01:31 pm Comment from: donnie

Too, late. Already dropped PayPal. Their loss, not mine.

Apr 21, 08 - 02:47 pm Comment from: Demon

All Browsers need, no, MUST be Web Standards Compliant.
Websites should be coded to Web Standard if it's not then the developer has things that need to be fixed.
I would encourage all web developers to go to http://www.webstandards.org/ and learn about web standards.

Webkit has been fixed to be Acid Test 3 compliant and Opera has said that they've completed fixes to make the Opera Browser Acid Test 3 compliant. So, the Opera Browsers and Webkit based Browsers (Safari, Konqueror, OmniWeb and Camino) should all be Acid Test 3 complaint before the end of the year.