Browser Testing in Progress: Report on Safari

January 14, 2008

After two weeks, I have to say I was a little sad to leave Safari this morning and start using Opera. I was just starting to get used to it. I could do ALMOST anything in Safari that I do on a regular basis with Firefox. I loved the loading speed! I also like the slick look. I do feel like I need to report on the problems I did have, though:

• The Visual Editor in Wordpress DID NOT work in Safari. I spent WAY too much time troubleshooting that one. On one forum, I saw a recommendation for installing the plug-in FCKEditor for Wordpress and using it as a visual editor instead of the one Wordpress uses as the default visual editor, TinyMCE by Moxiecode. I had all kinds of problems installing the plug-in (not Safari’s fault) and when I finally did get it right where Wordpress recognized it on the plug-in page and I activated it, nothing changed. I had to turn of the visual editor on my user account in Wordpress and even when FCKEditor showed up as an activated plug-in, the only choice I had was the code editor. I finally gave up and just used it. From all the stuff I found on the ‘net, TinyMCE doesn’t support Safari so that’s why it didn’t work right when I had it activated. The biggest challenge I had was finding out which software supported which software. Were my problems because Wordpress didn’t support Safari, or Safari didn’t support Wordpress?
• Once I got the hang of it, I did OK with downloading files with Safari. I’m used to clicking “download” and getting a window that asks me if I want to open or save the file. In Safari’s case, I had to identify a download location in preferences and when I clicked on download, that’s where the file went! The problem with that is that I download e-mail attachments and files from the ‘net all the time into different locations. I always have that choice. With Safari, I had to remember to right-click Download and “save the linked file as” to choose a location other than the default download location. Of course, once I downloaded the file into the default location, I could open it from there so that wasn’t a problem other than having to either save it into a different location once I opened it, which created duplicate downloads in different locations or remembering to go back and move it from the default location to the location where I wanted it in the first place.

I really did enjoy being able to drag a corner of any form text box and make it bigger (thanks, Allison). I used that feature a lot. I have to tell you, though, I’m typing this post in Opera 7.5 BETA and guess what….I have the same feature! It looks like Allison uncovered a feature that’s cross-browser, at least it works like that in Safari AND Opera.

I guess my final test result on Safari is….it works great for some things but not so great for others. I know, that’s so wishy-washy, but what this whole process has taught me so far is that you will adjust to whatever browser you choose. If you’re like most people and just use one, you’ll figure out how to do what you need to do, even it it’s not the most convenient way to do it. I spent 99.9% of my time using Safari, but there were a few times when I had to switch to Firefox to be able to use the Flash based interface I have to use to edit a client site. If it was a simple page, I didn’t have any problem changing the HTML coding but there were some pages where I really needed to use the visual editor in the interface to make changes.

I’d really love to hear from your Safari users . I only used it for two weeks and that’s not nearly enough time to discover all the features. I’d love to hear about your favorite Safari features and Safari experiences in general, good and bad.

Next browser testing post will be on using Opera 8.5 BETA. I can tell you already that my biggest challenge so far has been that Opera isn’t one of the browsers that Gmail supports and I practically LIVE in Gmail on a daily basis. I can still use it, but I have to use the stripped down HTML version. Oh, well….more on that next week!

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