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Web developers smarten up with Safari support: sites listed as incompatible sometimes actually are

Web developers smarten up with Safari support: sites listed as incompatible sometimes actually are

CNET staff
3 min read

As we've covered in the past, many Web sites unnecessarily block out Safari users, refusing to function for any browser other than Internet Explorer even though Safari has all of the required capability.

One prime example is PlaceWare's Live Meeting - an entity now owned by Microsoft.

MacFixIt reader David McKnight reports that when attempting to use the Web software with Safari, the following error message is delivered:

"There are one or more problems preventing you from entering the meeting.  Please correct the problem(s) below, then click here to try again. There are connection problems preventing you from using PlaceWare. Your browser is Java-enabled, but something else between you and the PlaceWare server, probably a proxy or firewall, is preventing you from fetching Java applications on the web. (It may be preventing you from fetching "jar" files.) If you have an alternate way to connect to the Internet, you should try it.

"To take advantage of the full functionality of your meeting, you may want to address the following issue(s): You can run PlaceWare on your Platform, but some configuration changes could improve your experience. PlaceWare requires Mac OS-X or later. You are using Netscape Communicator 5 . If you encounter any problems using this browser with PlaceWare, please try using Internet Explorer 5.1 or later.

McKnight later found that he could access all of the Live Meeting functionality by switching the user agent (accessible through the Safari debug menu) to Internet Explorer, proving that while Safari is fully capable of working with Live Meeting, the browser is needlessly blocked from access.

As has been the case with other such flaws, McKnight followed up with the company's support department and got something done. The PlaceWare team sent him this reply:

"We contacted our engineering department and it appears that in the future they will be adding Safari as a certified browser for using on a Mac. At the moment some of the error reporting is inaccurate and will stay that way since we have recently come out with a new version of PlaceWare?s software called Live Meeting 5.0. This version being out our engineering department is no longer updating the version you were testing on (4.3) and that version will be phased out as of the beginning of the year. I hope this helps. At the moment the stated versions of Netscape that were stated earlier are the best to use on a Mac running OS 8 or 9 and IE 5.x is the best for Mac OS X."

As McKnight points out, the distinction between Internet Explorer and Safari when it comes to pure Java applications is ridiculous: "Internet Explorer uses the JVM (java virtual machine) that comes with the Mac rather than one built into the browser. If that is the only requirement, then blocking the Safari user agent makes even less sense. Since in IE there is no availability of Active-X controls or anything else found on the PC side of the equation, I can think of no other reason why a natively compatible Java used in any OS X browser would not function properly. That being the case, it should take all of about five minutes to certify browsers that use the OS X JVM."

The moral of the story is that concerned Mac users should follow up with Web developers when presented with a "Internet Explorer-only" or "Safari not compatible" message. In many cases it is ignorance, rather than real lack of functionality from Safari that causes these problems.

Resources

  • PlaceWare
  • Safari debug menu
  • More from Late-Breakers