Macs and IE

Customer complaint

[dodger]

I've had a customer complain that they cant get my site with a Mac using IE
Does anyone know the figures for these things, anyone using Macs? Do you optomize for Macs anymore?
Any help appreciated.

[stef25]

if you use dreamweaver mx it can do a compatibility check for you. you can set yourself which browser you want to be compatible for, including all mac versions ...

try and find out the stats on who still uses what, set your prefs in dw and then like that you will be able to anticipate any problems and make adjustments

i think accomodating for mac is more important than say NS4 ...

[Birdman]

Depending on your audience, it can be very important to support Mac. One site I work on has a large Mac base and I added some snazzy jscrip to a heavily used form to tidy it up.

Boy was that a mistake!

[opacons]

Further to Dodger's initial question, the development/staging server version of his site does not exhibit the same problems. The only difference between the two servers is the version of IIS that is running - 5.1 on the dev server and 6 on the production server.

[tedster]

My heaviest Mac use website runs over 8% Mac and 3/4 of them run IE

i think accomodating for mac is more important than say NS4 ...

A statement I've made several times around here. If you've never considered Mac support, you will most likely feel quite embarrased when you see your website on a mac.

One saving grace, most Mac users I know maintain 3 or 4 browser just out of self defense against the PC-heavy web. They are usually a browser-savvy bunch compared to the average PC user.

[tedster]

5.1 on the dev server and 6 on the production server.

Woah, now that's an eye opener. Is this possibly a server configuration problem, rather than IIS getting worse with a more recent version?

[Krapulator]

Mac users are generally a lot louder in their criticism than most web users when it comes to not being catered for...

[peter andreas]

We have a mac running ie as well as a PC. We have found that it may look great on a pc but the mac is very finicky. If there is one missing end tag (</a> 's do it most) the whole thing can fall apart. In a way its a good checker and helps you get good code I suppose

[ShootinBlanks]

I don't think I'd refer to a missing </a> tag as a "minor" problem...

just my .02

[PatrickDeese]

i believe that IE 5.0 for mac had some sort of bug where it would never stop trying to download the fav.ico file if the site didn't offer one, and the user could never get past the home page - the browser would lock.

I had a client with the same problem - i made them install the bug fix and at the same time made a favorites icon.

[peter andreas]

sorry meant to say missing </p>, </B> 's do it too, yes its pretty obvious if you miss the </a>! even on a PC running ie.

[BlobFisk]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, opacons!

This certainly would be very interesting if it were to do with differences in IIS versions between the dev and production server. Although, I'm more inclined to think it a coding compatability issue.

Have you seen instances of support issues on browsers between IIS versions?

[opacons]

>>Have you seen instances of support issues on browsers between IIS versions?

Can't say that I have although I know of one IIS flag that defaults to on in IIS 5.1 and off in IIS 6. It would be natural to assume that there are probably others.

FWIW, Netscape 7.1 and Safari 1.2 render the pages correctly. IE 5.1 under OS9 and IE 5.2 under OSX both exhibit the same problem.

[MatthewHSE]

I had always been under the impression that supporting Mac IE 5 was about the same thing as supporting PC IE 6 in Strict mode. So I'd considered my pages okay - maybe it's time to reconsider, though. Perhaps I need to try to get my hands on a Mac and look at my site!

[ergophobe]

MathewHSE,

I just did a page that validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict, looks fine in IE6, Firefox, Opera 7 and... quite askew in Safari. I haven't been able to see it in IE for Mac so it doesn't exactly adress you question.

Depending on your audience, it can be very important to support Mac.

If you're dealing with academia at all, expect a lot of Macs. I don't mean schools, I mean hard-core science labs. I know of research labs with 20 Macs, three PCs and a *nix server or two.

Tom

[tedster]

validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict, looks fine in IE6, Firefox, Opera 7 and... quite askew in Safari.

I'm in a similar struggle right now with two sites. I'm about to revert to transitional mark-up and quirks mode if I don't de-bug soon.