Troubleshooting Safari 1.0: ShareBuilder; Owners of incompatible sites explain; the ActiveX factor

ShareBuilder suddenly incompatible MacFixIt reader Cain Hoy writes "Today I went to check my online account at Sharebuilder.com and discovered that my Safari v1.0 and Camino v0.7 browsers are no longer supported. Yesterday they both worked fine. When I try logging in I get the message 'ShareBulder supports Netscape 6.0 or higher."

It appears that the ShareBuilder site still technically works with Safari, as clicking on the "Can I use other browsers?'" or the "Do I have to update?" or the "Why do I need a new version?" links they imply that you can continue to use an "unsupported browser" but it may not work correctly. The problem is that when you click on the login link you're taken back to the unsupported browser window and hence can't log in.

Changing the user agent to a Netscape version via the debug menu (which can be invoked with the terminal command "defaults write com.apple. Safari Include Debug Menu 1" while Safari is not running) in Safari can help in some instances.

Owners of incompatible sites explain Customer support representatives at Safari-incompatible outlet "ESD Public Services" offer an explanation for the absence of support for Apple's browsers, echoed by a number of other site owners:

"We regret that currently, ESD public services run on Microsoft Windows platforms. For other operating platforms such as Mac OS, browsing function is supported but some of the transactional type of ESD services may not be function properly at this stage due to the inherit limitations of the browsers on this platform. For example, ESD applications require the running of Java applet in order to provide client authentication and end-to-end encryption facilities. It relies on the important features of Java Virtual Machine, such as Live Connect for exchanging data between JavaScript and Java and its support of cryptographic tools. However, this is not supported on Mac OS. Therefore it is necessary to check user?s computer configuration before allowing user to enter the application."

LiveConnect is a technology which lets plug-ins communicate with each other. LiveConnect was part of Netscape 4, but was not carried into any version beyond that.

"MacFixIt reader Frank Kolodziej writes "Internet Explorer on the PC doesn't have LiveConnect specifically, but ActiveX accomplishes the same thing. No Mac version of Internet Explorer has ever supported ActiveX or LiveConnect. Safari does not support LiveConnect or ActiveX, either. And that's why enabling Safari's debug menu and setting it to masquerade as Internet Explorer/PC doesn't help: it's missing functionality, it's not that it's being picked on.

"This is why so many sites don't work on the Mac, or, if they do, that they specifically require Netscape 4. Not because the developers are jerks, but because it isn't possible otherwise."

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