It is frustrating, but the problem here is poor site design. This is probably one of many websites which were originally designed and tested only for Internet Explorer by inept coders, or it has been patched up over time based on really old code. Even then, the problems with the menu are likely poor JavaScript or CSS.
The problem with the weather site seems to be that the site is coded by someone using Microsoft's toolset and off the shelf components yet they have little knowldege to hand code CSS or HTML or Javascript and quite frankly don't seem to care about it either. They're one step up from designing websites in Word.
The menu they use comes from http://www.asp.net/CSSAdapters/Menu.aspx and works in Safari just fine there as is. The problem stems from the 'designers' then cramming that perfectly reasonable and even well written component into their site with little regard for the rest of the design. I'd look for where it breaks but it's a freaking mess.
I can duplicate your Macworld.com mainpage issue when I use a text size that is one above normal, but this doesn't carry over to the benchmarks page.
I can break the Macworld layout by changing font size in either Safari or Firefox. The problem is the layout is using pixel sized containers and not allowing for text flow or overflow. eg. the top navigation bar text is 130px wide which at normal fonts sizes means two lines of text. Increase it just one size in Safari, and two in Firefox (since it doesn't render fonts the Apple way) and it splits onto three lines of text forcing the navigation menu below to move.
This isn't a Safari bug, it's a designer getting it wrong, not thinking that people change font sizes. To be somewhat charitable to Macworld, they do say it's still a BETA version of the site although they have said that for a while.
edit: furthermore they use pixel spacing for line-heights so lines of text overlap. Nice design spoiled by poor attention to details.
Until last week's site redesign, WSI's Intellicast was a mess. I'd had it out with them several times, and it was not a Safari issue, it was an issue of coding for IE6.
Now it seems to work, especially after one last tweak late in the week.
The menus are a bit twitchy as you need to move across vertically thin secondaries, but given the ads they need to put up, it's better than before. You don't have to scroll to see actual content.
For more on the mess MS has made of rendering, and the brilliant plan to "fix" it, see this:
Though small, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for widespread compliance. MS announced yesterday that compliance mode will be enabled by default on IE8.
PS: MS states that IE8 will be Acid2 compliant, while WebKit, and Safari, have not passed Acid2 on refresh for several months.
I gave up on Safari, and, at least temporarily, switched to Firefox Beta 3. I haven't yet found a perfect browser, but up until recently Safari on the whole seemed to suit my needs best. However, Safari's autofill and Keychain support is seriously bugged on both my step father and my machines. Sometimes both work, and sometimes they don't.
Take for instance a popular education Site: Blackboard. Safari refuses to remember or even ask if I want to remember the user name and password. Firefox remembers this information no problem.
Yep, I really miss the stability of Safari 2. I hope they really fix the constant crashing issue when opening multiple tabs.
Ummm...I think you might want to check your system. I've been running Safari 3 since November of 2007 religiously and it hasn't crashed once. I find Safari 3 to be remarkably stable. Whether I have one tab or multiple tabs open, Safari 3 with the Saft plugin, SafariBlock and inquisitor rocks!
I gave up on Safari, and, at least temporarily, switched to Firefox Beta 3. I haven't yet found a perfect browser, but up until recently Safari on the whole seemed to suit my needs best. However, Safari's autofill and Keychain support is seriously bugged on both my step father and my machines. Sometimes both work, and sometimes they don't.
Take for instance a popular education Site: Blackboard. Safari refuses to remember or even ask if I want to remember the user name and password. Firefox remembers this information no problem.
Ive had issues with Keychain, even outside of Safari, with Leopard. Even after a clean install the problem persists, but only after I sync with .Mac.
The one thing I wish Safari would add, but probably never will, is the ability to Restore Session after a crash like Firefox does. Not that Safari crashes or hangs often. In fact, It's my most stable browser, but the option would be nice.
PS: I'd also like Apple to add anti-phishing. I'm starting to become weary of disgraced Nigerian princes.
Apple this month continues to plug away on a small but significant update to its fledgeling Safari web browser, most recently making improvements to the application's handling of web forms and faulty Javascripts.
Safari fledgeling? Its at version 3. That's no longer a fledgeling. It a full blown bird.
I have a problem with RSS feeds. It's broken. Even though I have Safari set to check for new articles every 30 minutes, it doesn't. And if by some chance it does identify new articles and displays a number, lets say 5, it doesn't mean that that site only has five new articles. It could be more. That wouldn't be so bad, but when I select that site to display these 5 articles there may be 30 more. So what does Safari do, it displays the first 5 articles, resets the number to 0, displays the remaining 30 articles and displays the number 30. There is no way short of quitting and restarting Safari to zero out that number. After all the site no longer has 30 new articles to give me.
I have a problem with RSS feeds. It's broken. Even though I have Safari set to check for new articles every 30 minutes, it doesn't. And if by some chance it does identify new articles and displays a number, lets say 5, it doesn't mean that that site only has five new articles. It could be more. That wouldn't be so bad, but when I select that site to display these 5 articles there may be 30 more. So what does Safari do, it displays the first 5 articles, resets the number to 0, displays the remaining 30 articles and displays the number 30. There is no way short of quitting and restarting Safari to zero out that number. After all the site no longer has 30 new articles to give me.
Have you tried using Mail's RSS reader or a 3rd party app.I prefer RSS Menu but Mail comes in as a close second, only because I don't have to access Mail to see my feeds.
Have you tried using Mail's RSS reader or a 3rd party app.I prefer RSS Menu but Mail comes in as a close second, only because I don't have to access Mail to see my feeds.
I don't like the idea of using Mail to read RSS feeds either. To me that would be just adding to the Spam bucket that Mail already is for me.* Besides I use RSS as a quick way to pursue web sites such as AppleInsider. If I see an article that catches my interest I will click on the title and go to the actual article and read it as it was actually posted. Why would I use Mail as a gateway for Safari anyway? -- Third party apps? I'll have to investigate. But dammit, RSS was working just fine in the previous version.
* I just moved from Entourage to Mail with my recent update to Leopard. I still haven't gotten my rules and Spam filter set up. I don't need the complication of RSS at this time.
Third party apps? I'll have to investigate. But dammit, RSS was working just fine in the previous version.
I personally like RSS Menu. The simple menu bar icon telling me how many unrad articles and tehn telling me how many many unread articles from each source are available is the fastest, most efficient method I know of.
The software has been quirly in the past, but I don't recall a single client side issue for a good year. It's free.
As someone already mentioned, the site's broken because you have your font size increased. Try resetting it with View-->Make Text Normal Size.
If I increase the font size in Firefox it starts to break also. Some sites are designed to scale up the fonts well, clearly Macworld is not.
To check if you're running a custom stylesheet, go to Preferences-->Advanced-->Style sheet:
No, that's not the problem. You think I didn't first try that?
The line spacing changes, but the font size remains the same, except for body type. That's where part of the problem is coming from. The other problem of the column width being hidden under the side frame has nothing at all to do with type. Somehow, the column width isn't being seen.
The font scaling problem does NOT happen in Firefox. I don't know where you get that idea from.
I can break the Macworld layout by changing font size in either Safari or Firefox. The problem is the layout is using pixel sized containers and not allowing for text flow or overflow. eg. the top navigation bar text is 130px wide which at normal fonts sizes means two lines of text. Increase it just one size in Safari, and two in Firefox (since it doesn't render fonts the Apple way) and it splits onto three lines of text forcing the navigation menu below to move.
This isn't a Safari bug, it's a designer getting it wrong, not thinking that people change font sizes. To be somewhat charitable to Macworld, they do say it's still a BETA version of the site although they have said that for a while.
edit: furthermore they use pixel spacing for line-heights so lines of text overlap. Nice design spoiled by poor attention to details.
It's not the same thing in Firefox. The box boundaries change improperly, but that isn't nearly as bad as the fonts themselves moving. And the columns display properly.
I tested the speed of browsers in loading pages and I say that Firefox and Safari renders page about the same time (usually one win another by a few seconds). IE on the other hand is the slowest but ironically, Google search shows that IE is the fastest to generate search result (usually around 0.0X second) where as Safari and Firefox took 0.XX second.
I found it very ironic that IE generate Google result faster then Firefox and Safari although if you compare the page load side by side, its obvious IE generate page slower.
Font scaling is handled differently by different browsers and there aren't really any universally applied standards that go about telling browser makers how to do it. The problem here seems to be the container in which Macworld stores the links to the right of 'More Products'. It has probably been floated with CSS but doesn't have a static width. When Safari tries to increase the font size the container grows too big and therefor no longer fits in the small space given. It wraps down to the line below but conflicts with the topics container, which appears to have been placed with fixed positioning (a bad idea when combined with relatively positioned elements).
The fault here lies in the hands of Macword's site designers. A web designer needs to understand a few things about text scalability and can take some basic steps to make sure their CSS will not break when the font size is increased (even if it means scooting content down and wrapping the second menu down to the next line -- an easy task if they stuck with relative positioning).
This is something that should be brought to their attention. It can probably be fixed by making a few minor edits to their style sheet.
(And you would think Safari would be a major testing concern of theirs...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by wheelhot
I tested the speed of browsers in loading pages and I say that Firefox and Safari renders page about the same time (usually one win another by a few seconds). IE on the other hand is the slowest but ironically, Google search shows that IE is the fastest to generate search result (usually around 0.0X second) where as Safari and Firefox took 0.XX second.
Make sure you are measuring pages based on when the rendering finishes. It doesn't help if a browser tosses content on the screen early if it only has to go back and redraw it a few times because elements later in the page didn't fit with the browser's width assumptions. This is the flaw of a very common 'speed hack' people apply to Firefox. They reduce the page rendering wait time to 0 which causes content to spring up immediately (making it feel fast) but it actually slows everything down due to reloads.
Check Webkit Nightly if you haven't already done so already. It is faster even on sites which use no JavaScript.
I haven't seen 3.1 yet (where can I get it?) but I hope they added buttons to open a new page and a new tab, instead of having to use the drop down file menu or keystrokes.
I haven't seen 3.1 yet (where can I get it?) but I hope they added buttons to open a new page and a new tab, instead of having to use the drop down file menu or keystrokes.
You have to be an Apple ADC member. The good news is that it's free to signup. Then go to the downloads section. There are no new tab or new page buttons, but you can use the keyboard shorts which are are faster: Command+T and Command+N. There is a new option to double-click on the Tab bar create a new tab, so you can think of that as a really long button.
You have to be an Apple ADC member. The good news is that it's free to signup. Then go to the downloads section. There are no new tab or new page buttons, but you can use the keyboard shorts which are are faster: Command+T and Command+N. There is a new option to double-click on the Tab bar create a new tab, so you can think of that as a really long button.
Font scaling is handled differently by different browsers and there aren't really any universally applied standards that go about telling browser makers how to do it. The problem here seems to be the container in which Macworld stores the links to the right of 'More Products'. It has probably been floated with CSS but doesn't have a static width. When Safari tries to increase the font size the container grows too big and therefor no longer fits in the small space given. It wraps down to the line below but conflicts with the topics container, which appears to have been placed with fixed positioning (a bad idea when combined with relatively positioned elements).
The fault here lies in the hands of Macword's site designers. A web designer needs to understand a few things about text scalability and can take some basic steps to make sure their CSS will not break when the font size is increased (even if it means scooting content down and wrapping the second menu down to the next line -- an easy task if they stuck with relative positioning).
This is something that should be brought to their attention. It can probably be fixed by making a few minor edits to their style sheet.
(And you would think Safari would be a major testing concern of theirs...)
]
You are correct in what you're saying about this. The problem is that the browser should be able to detect these problems, and push the rest of the page down to accommodate them.
I've brought these problems to Macworlds' attention several times, but no fix has been forthcoming.
The bigger problem in my mind is the column with error in Safari, which seems to not addressed by most people here. Fonts are something that can be resolved by changing sizes, but nothing can be done about the hidden right side of the column. That's much more serious, as information is hidden, and can't be retrieved.
Comments
I think you're screwed.
Dang, best go jump off a cliff then...
I'm using Safari 3.0.4, in OS X 10.5.2, with an Intel iMac, and I've had literally none of the problems listed in this thread.
As recently as a month ago, I was using Safari 3.0.4, in OS X 10.4.11, on a G4 tower, and I had ALL of them, all of the time.
On the new machine with Leopard, Safari is by far the fastest, most stable browser around. On the old one with Tiger it was a nightmare.
...no, wait, hold off on that...
It is frustrating, but the problem here is poor site design. This is probably one of many websites which were originally designed and tested only for Internet Explorer by inept coders, or it has been patched up over time based on really old code. Even then, the problems with the menu are likely poor JavaScript or CSS.
The problem with the weather site seems to be that the site is coded by someone using Microsoft's toolset and off the shelf components yet they have little knowldege to hand code CSS or HTML or Javascript and quite frankly don't seem to care about it either. They're one step up from designing websites in Word.
The menu they use comes from http://www.asp.net/CSSAdapters/Menu.aspx and works in Safari just fine there as is. The problem stems from the 'designers' then cramming that perfectly reasonable and even well written component into their site with little regard for the rest of the design. I'd look for where it breaks but it's a freaking mess.
I can duplicate your Macworld.com mainpage issue when I use a text size that is one above normal, but this doesn't carry over to the benchmarks page.
I can break the Macworld layout by changing font size in either Safari or Firefox. The problem is the layout is using pixel sized containers and not allowing for text flow or overflow. eg. the top navigation bar text is 130px wide which at normal fonts sizes means two lines of text. Increase it just one size in Safari, and two in Firefox (since it doesn't render fonts the Apple way) and it splits onto three lines of text forcing the navigation menu below to move.
This isn't a Safari bug, it's a designer getting it wrong, not thinking that people change font sizes. To be somewhat charitable to Macworld, they do say it's still a BETA version of the site although they have said that for a while.
edit: furthermore they use pixel spacing for line-heights so lines of text overlap. Nice design spoiled by poor attention to details.
lntellicast weather
Until last week's site redesign, WSI's Intellicast was a mess. I'd had it out with them several times, and it was not a Safari issue, it was an issue of coding for IE6.
Now it seems to work, especially after one last tweak late in the week.
The menus are a bit twitchy as you need to move across vertically thin secondaries, but given the ads they need to put up, it's better than before. You don't have to scroll to see actual content.
For more on the mess MS has made of rendering, and the brilliant plan to "fix" it, see this:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/22/1837244
For more on the mess MS has made of rendering, and the brilliant plan to "fix" it, see this:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/22/1837244
Though small, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for widespread compliance. MS announced yesterday that compliance mode will be enabled by default on IE8.
PS: MS states that IE8 will be Acid2 compliant, while WebKit, and Safari, have not passed Acid2 on refresh for several months.
Take for instance a popular education Site: Blackboard. Safari refuses to remember or even ask if I want to remember the user name and password. Firefox remembers this information no problem.
Yep, I really miss the stability of Safari 2. I hope they really fix the constant crashing issue when opening multiple tabs.
Ummm...I think you might want to check your system. I've been running Safari 3 since November of 2007 religiously and it hasn't crashed once. I find Safari 3 to be remarkably stable. Whether I have one tab or multiple tabs open, Safari 3 with the Saft plugin, SafariBlock and inquisitor rocks!
I gave up on Safari, and, at least temporarily, switched to Firefox Beta 3. I haven't yet found a perfect browser, but up until recently Safari on the whole seemed to suit my needs best. However, Safari's autofill and Keychain support is seriously bugged on both my step father and my machines. Sometimes both work, and sometimes they don't.
Take for instance a popular education Site: Blackboard. Safari refuses to remember or even ask if I want to remember the user name and password. Firefox remembers this information no problem.
Ive had issues with Keychain, even outside of Safari, with Leopard. Even after a clean install the problem persists, but only after I sync with .Mac.
The one thing I wish Safari would add, but probably never will, is the ability to Restore Session after a crash like Firefox does. Not that Safari crashes or hangs often. In fact, It's my most stable browser, but the option would be nice.
PS: I'd also like Apple to add anti-phishing. I'm starting to become weary of disgraced Nigerian princes.
Apple this month continues to plug away on a small but significant update to its fledgeling Safari web browser, most recently making improvements to the application's handling of web forms and faulty Javascripts.
Safari fledgeling? Its at version 3. That's no longer a fledgeling. It a full blown bird.
I have a problem with RSS feeds. It's broken. Even though I have Safari set to check for new articles every 30 minutes, it doesn't. And if by some chance it does identify new articles and displays a number, lets say 5, it doesn't mean that that site only has five new articles. It could be more. That wouldn't be so bad, but when I select that site to display these 5 articles there may be 30 more. So what does Safari do, it displays the first 5 articles, resets the number to 0, displays the remaining 30 articles and displays the number 30. There is no way short of quitting and restarting Safari to zero out that number. After all the site no longer has 30 new articles to give me.
I have a problem with RSS feeds. It's broken. Even though I have Safari set to check for new articles every 30 minutes, it doesn't. And if by some chance it does identify new articles and displays a number, lets say 5, it doesn't mean that that site only has five new articles. It could be more. That wouldn't be so bad, but when I select that site to display these 5 articles there may be 30 more. So what does Safari do, it displays the first 5 articles, resets the number to 0, displays the remaining 30 articles and displays the number 30. There is no way short of quitting and restarting Safari to zero out that number. After all the site no longer has 30 new articles to give me.
Have you tried using Mail's RSS reader or a 3rd party app.I prefer RSS Menu but Mail comes in as a close second, only because I don't have to access Mail to see my feeds.
Have you tried using Mail's RSS reader or a 3rd party app.I prefer RSS Menu but Mail comes in as a close second, only because I don't have to access Mail to see my feeds.
I don't like the idea of using Mail to read RSS feeds either. To me that would be just adding to the Spam bucket that Mail already is for me.* Besides I use RSS as a quick way to pursue web sites such as AppleInsider. If I see an article that catches my interest I will click on the title and go to the actual article and read it as it was actually posted. Why would I use Mail as a gateway for Safari anyway? -- Third party apps? I'll have to investigate. But dammit, RSS was working just fine in the previous version.
* I just moved from Entourage to Mail with my recent update to Leopard. I still haven't gotten my rules and Spam filter set up. I don't need the complication of RSS at this time.
Third party apps? I'll have to investigate. But dammit, RSS was working just fine in the previous version.
I personally like RSS Menu. The simple menu bar icon telling me how many unrad articles and tehn telling me how many many unread articles from each source are available is the fastest, most efficient method I know of.
The software has been quirly in the past, but I don't recall a single client side issue for a good year. It's free.
As someone already mentioned, the site's broken because you have your font size increased. Try resetting it with View-->Make Text Normal Size.
If I increase the font size in Firefox it starts to break also. Some sites are designed to scale up the fonts well, clearly Macworld is not.
To check if you're running a custom stylesheet, go to Preferences-->Advanced-->Style sheet:
No, that's not the problem. You think I didn't first try that?
The line spacing changes, but the font size remains the same, except for body type. That's where part of the problem is coming from. The other problem of the column width being hidden under the side frame has nothing at all to do with type. Somehow, the column width isn't being seen.
The font scaling problem does NOT happen in Firefox. I don't know where you get that idea from.
I can break the Macworld layout by changing font size in either Safari or Firefox. The problem is the layout is using pixel sized containers and not allowing for text flow or overflow. eg. the top navigation bar text is 130px wide which at normal fonts sizes means two lines of text. Increase it just one size in Safari, and two in Firefox (since it doesn't render fonts the Apple way) and it splits onto three lines of text forcing the navigation menu below to move.
This isn't a Safari bug, it's a designer getting it wrong, not thinking that people change font sizes. To be somewhat charitable to Macworld, they do say it's still a BETA version of the site although they have said that for a while.
edit: furthermore they use pixel spacing for line-heights so lines of text overlap. Nice design spoiled by poor attention to details.
It's not the same thing in Firefox. The box boundaries change improperly, but that isn't nearly as bad as the fonts themselves moving. And the columns display properly.
I found it very ironic that IE generate Google result faster then Firefox and Safari although if you compare the page load side by side, its obvious IE generate page slower.
No, that's not the problem.
Font scaling is handled differently by different browsers and there aren't really any universally applied standards that go about telling browser makers how to do it. The problem here seems to be the container in which Macworld stores the links to the right of 'More Products'. It has probably been floated with CSS but doesn't have a static width. When Safari tries to increase the font size the container grows too big and therefor no longer fits in the small space given. It wraps down to the line below but conflicts with the topics container, which appears to have been placed with fixed positioning (a bad idea when combined with relatively positioned elements).
The fault here lies in the hands of Macword's site designers. A web designer needs to understand a few things about text scalability and can take some basic steps to make sure their CSS will not break when the font size is increased (even if it means scooting content down and wrapping the second menu down to the next line -- an easy task if they stuck with relative positioning).
This is something that should be brought to their attention. It can probably be fixed by making a few minor edits to their style sheet.
(And you would think Safari would be a major testing concern of theirs...)
I tested the speed of browsers in loading pages and I say that Firefox and Safari renders page about the same time (usually one win another by a few seconds). IE on the other hand is the slowest but ironically, Google search shows that IE is the fastest to generate search result (usually around 0.0X second) where as Safari and Firefox took 0.XX second.
Make sure you are measuring pages based on when the rendering finishes. It doesn't help if a browser tosses content on the screen early if it only has to go back and redraw it a few times because elements later in the page didn't fit with the browser's width assumptions. This is the flaw of a very common 'speed hack' people apply to Firefox. They reduce the page rendering wait time to 0 which causes content to spring up immediately (making it feel fast) but it actually slows everything down due to reloads.
Check Webkit Nightly if you haven't already done so already. It is faster even on sites which use no JavaScript.
I haven't seen 3.1 yet (where can I get it?) but I hope they added buttons to open a new page and a new tab, instead of having to use the drop down file menu or keystrokes.
You have to be an Apple ADC member. The good news is that it's free to signup. Then go to the downloads section. There are no new tab or new page buttons, but you can use the keyboard shorts which are are faster: Command+T and Command+N. There is a new option to double-click on the Tab bar create a new tab, so you can think of that as a really long button.
You have to be an Apple ADC member. The good news is that it's free to signup. Then go to the downloads section. There are no new tab or new page buttons, but you can use the keyboard shorts which are are faster: Command+T and Command+N. There is a new option to double-click on the Tab bar create a new tab, so you can think of that as a really long button.
Thank you for the information. double clicking on the toolbar sounds like a step forward to me.
Font scaling is handled differently by different browsers and there aren't really any universally applied standards that go about telling browser makers how to do it. The problem here seems to be the container in which Macworld stores the links to the right of 'More Products'. It has probably been floated with CSS but doesn't have a static width. When Safari tries to increase the font size the container grows too big and therefor no longer fits in the small space given. It wraps down to the line below but conflicts with the topics container, which appears to have been placed with fixed positioning (a bad idea when combined with relatively positioned elements).
The fault here lies in the hands of Macword's site designers. A web designer needs to understand a few things about text scalability and can take some basic steps to make sure their CSS will not break when the font size is increased (even if it means scooting content down and wrapping the second menu down to the next line -- an easy task if they stuck with relative positioning).
This is something that should be brought to their attention. It can probably be fixed by making a few minor edits to their style sheet.
(And you would think Safari would be a major testing concern of theirs...)
]
You are correct in what you're saying about this. The problem is that the browser should be able to detect these problems, and push the rest of the page down to accommodate them.
I've brought these problems to Macworlds' attention several times, but no fix has been forthcoming.
The bigger problem in my mind is the column with error in Safari, which seems to not addressed by most people here. Fonts are something that can be resolved by changing sizes, but nothing can be done about the hidden right side of the column. That's much more serious, as information is hidden, and can't be retrieved.