Hi

So I finally got hold of an Mac myself after doing some eBay sniping. An Mac Mini. I can finally test my websites on a Mac without borrowing friends Mac's or using internett snapshot services that feeds you back an static image of the site.

 

What I'm interested in is what browsers for Mac is relevant to test for. That excludes any browsers availible also on PC and any browser that uses the Gecko engine unless they are for some reason rendering differently on the Mac.

 

From what I've gathered it's mainly Safari and Shiira? Both of them got their own engine, right?

And I'm aware of IE:mac, but is that browsers really relevant? If anyone at all uses it anymore, what kind of users is it?

 

So what Mac exclusive browsers do you find important to test against?

 

Is there any Linux browsers out there as well? That doesn't use the Gecko engine that is.

hmm.. read a little more into Shiira. Found out that apperently it uses that same engine as Safari.

How similar is the webkit and KHTML engines?

 

Is there really just a handful of rendering engines out there?

Well done on getting a mac they rock

 

My advice would be to develop EVERYTHING in a standard compliant browser ( safari is good although the form styles are a bit annoying, or firefox), try not to use hacks, make sure your code validates.

Then check everything in IE (I know it can't hurts) amend or create a separate style sheet if necessary and use conditional so that IE get its own Stylesheet.

Once you've done that you're site should works cross browser... following standards is what matters. Browsers you mentioned are good and will not break your site, bad code will

 

My opinion, hope this helps

 

Oli

I use firefox on my mac.

I use firefox on my mac.

So do I! Firefox rocks but safari is really really cool and clever too!

 

Have you tryed flock? If you use flickr, it is BRILLIANT I've also downloaded the last version of shiira to have a play with and it is pretty cool too... FF still is my favourite tho

 

Don't you just love you're mac

 

Oli

oh i do. i do i do i doooo woooo. (Kenan and Kel oh yeh lol)

 

 

yeh firefox is my favorite.

 

 

i only use safari to check my coding.

I've pretty much got the approach you recommended.

I use Firefox initially when I design, because it's the browser I use myself and it's pretty good at standards.

I then test for Opera 9 and IE7 which seem to play along nicely most of the time.

Then I add conditional comments to add IE5-6 tweaks.

Then I test in Opera 7.5 and 8, Firefox 1 and 1.5 and check if there's any major issues there and makes tweaks accordingly.

 

I'm starting to get a feeling that getting that Mac wasn't strickly nessesary to test websites. But hwy, I like new toys. And I can use it as a computer which guests can play around on when they are visiting.

 

(though, not to get too much off topic, but I need to get hold of another mouse than that "Mighty Mouse". Apple do nice designs, but they've never got the mouse right. Makes my hand twitch into a claw position just by looking at it. "Cripple Mouse" is what I call it.)

Firefox 2

 

Safari

 

Opera

 

and occasionally IE 5.2 (which I think was that final version???)

 

As for "importance" probably Firefox and Safari, followed by Opera and finally IE

Firefox 2

 

Safari

 

Opera

 

and occasionally IE 5.2 (which I think was that final version???)

 

As for "importance" probably Firefox and Safari, followed by Opera and finally IE

Firefox and Opera doesn't render any differently from a PC when run on a Mac do they?

 

What I'm looking for is the browsers that are exclusivly different from the ones on PC.

Well technically they all run differently because they are on a different OS. lol

yes, but they all render alike? Not like IE:PC and IE:Mac which is practicly two different programs.

i run

 

Safari

Opera

Firefox

 

then using virtual machine on my mac i run windows explorer 6 and 7

I noticed an deviance in Opera 9 when I ran it on Linux.

 

A block element that was set to overflow: hidden; by default and to overflow: visible; on :hover makes scrollbars appear on :hover on the Linux version.

 

It does seem like there might be worth testing the same browser on different OS's just in case.

Seeing as they're different OS's, just in case there are inconsistencies, it's worth having one browser per layout engine .

 

For instance, that means it's not worth using Firefox if you use Camino (same engine).......so I have:

 

Gecko Mozilla - choose between Firefox/Camino/Flock/SeaMonkey/Netscape

WebCore - choose between Safari/OmniWeb/Shiira

Tasman - Internet Explorer 5 mac

iCab - iCab (<-- worth it because it's free, has a unique engine, but most importantly has a GREAT built in validator)

Presto - Opera

 

 

That's 5 browsers on my mac . This leaves the most popular engine, Trident (I.E 6 and I.E 7 win) left exclusively for your windows machine.

iCab.... I've not heard of that one before. I got the rest covered. (Even Lynx, partly)

It's actually quite slow (I think it extensively uses a Javascript based engine), but the built in validator is the reason I use it.

 

Funnily enough, I hadn't heard of it until recently, but now that I do use it occasionally, I'm seeing more and more references to it on the net...