On 13/01/2008, at 3:51 PM, Peter Mount wrote:
Hi
I'm tossing up whether to buy a Mac or to save my money and buy a
new PC and just have Linux and Windows on it. I've read that Safari
for Windows will help Web Developers without a Mac be able to
develop for that.
Is there a difference between Mac versions of browsers like Firefox
and Safari or can I safely develop in non Mac versions and expect my
web sites to behave the same on the Mac?
Currently my main OS is Kubuntu but I'll soon be trialling Red Hat
Desktop 5 Multi OS.
From my experience, Konqueror and Safari render pages identically. In
addition, now that Safari is available on Windows; you could take a
look at virtualisation which would allow you to run Windows from
within your KDE/Qt environment (Check out VirtualBox).
Besides that, there is virtually no difference between browsers that
are available on Windows, OS X and Linux. Essentially, each browser
utilises a rendering engine of which there are four popular types.
They are Trident (IE), Gecko (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino), KHTML/Webkit
(Konqueror, Safari, Shiira) and Preseto (Opera). However, bugs
sometime creep in to platform specific versions of these
implementations.
On 14/01/2008, at 11:42 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
Now fire up Safari and Camino side-by-side, and notice how both
browsers display form elements the way that the user expects - nice
and shiny, rounded blue - easy to tell apart from the occasional
"You are infected" etc pop-ups with an image of a Windows button.
This is because the form elements come from the OS, not from the
browser.
This has been the usual behaviour of KHTML/Webkit based browsers until
recently.
I've noticed that in Safari 3.0 on OS X Leopard, it's possible to
apply style attributes to form elements; specifically the submit input
type.
With respect to form elements, I believe you will find that what the
proper Mac browsers do is perfectly 'legal'. What is more, Windows
users don't generally appreciate it when form elements are styled so
strongly that they are no longer recognisable, which is why so many
usability (and I don't mean accessibility) guru's advice is: don't
do it.
Agreed, there's a great article on Berea 465 which clearly
demonstrates the inconsistencies of styling form elements across
various platforms. It can become confusing for users who are
comfortable (and familiar) with their OS widgets.
You can find the article at the following URL:
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200701/styling_form_controls_with_css_revisited/
Cheers,
Tate
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