testing on a Mac

will emulation work?

[JakeFrederick]

Does anyone know if Mac emulation on a PC is sufficient for accurately testing sites? I don't really have access to a Mac, and didn't think it was that important until I looked at my site on one today and found the navigation links don't work! (If someone who has a Mac wanted to check my site, which is in my profile, and let me know why they think this is that would be nice) If emulation will work is there a reccomended emulator?

[EliteWeb]

Im using IE on the Macintosh, I can not click on the navigation however if i tab from the address bar down it highlights the link and i can hit enter :)

[txbakers]

I didn't know there were such things as Mac emulators!

I just bought a used IMac so I wouldn't have to guess at the MAC layouts.

BTW - Netscape for the MAC, even 6.2 make a horrendous mess of everything. I've had to offer completely alternate pages if the user is using Netscape on a Mac. What a pain.

[mivox]

I've had to offer completely alternate pages if the user is using Netscape on a Mac. What a pain.

Completely separate pages? Why? What are you using anything besides vanilla HTML? The only time I've seen NN/Mac really make a total hash of something is if I was trying to use some fancy-pants DHTML effects, CSS text formatting (hint: don't use <p> tags inside a form if you're tyring to use CSS text formatting on the form content) or there was a missing closing table tag (</td>, </tr> or </table>).

Most "mystery overlap" CSS positioning problems in NN/Mac can be solved by using one or two carefully placed <br> tags...

On most javascript download sites, they will specifically list which browsers & platforms each script works on. If you stick to those with NN/Mac compatibility, you shouldn't have any major problems.

Personally, I've always had more problems with NN/Windows.

[txbakers]

This is a form that needs to print directly from the browser window. On Windows the form is formatted to 750 pixels wide, and all the spacing in the tables is correct. On the Mac, only with Netscape, I had to resize the tables to 700 pixels wide to print correctly.

I'm using basic CSS for text formatting only - no positioning.

I thought it was very odd too.

First off, with Netscape 6 on the Mac you can't hide the headers and footers. That might make a difference. But even on 4.7 (where you could hide the h&f!) you can't set the margins.

There really is no fancy scripting going on in these forms, just ASP generated content inside very vanilla HTML tables.

I wanted it to print directly from the browser so it had to be vanilla.

[mivox]

I'm using basic CSS for text formatting only

I know Netscape has horrible problems with CSS text formatting within <form> tags... From what I've seen, NN/Mac will throw out all the CSS formatting the minute you put a <p> tag anywhere in the <form></form> area. When I replaced all my <p> tags with <br><br> instead, the text formatting returned to normal.

But I don't know that it would help with the actual form field width...

BTW... back on the original question here: Does anyone know of a Mac emulator for Windows machines? I know there's SoftWindows and VirtualPC for Mac, but I didn't know the emulation game went the other way too...

[txbakers]

I think there might have been a Mac emulator for Windows at one time, but Bill Gates had the developer transferred to Uganda where he now counts bananas for the local banana industry.

[jatar_k]

emulating a mac doesn't work, the PC still controls everything. Virtual PC for Mac works very well as an emulator the other way but I have still run into discrepencies with that as well. The only sure fire way to know is to test it on the real thing to be 100% sure.

I wish for the life of me I could remember the name of the Mac emulator I had.

<added>
I hear Uganda is lovely this time of year
</added>

[Brett_Tabke]

Just make sure that the last test you make with the page is getting a A+ from the w3c validator. If it passed that test, then it's entirely up to the browser to get it right.

[adev]

Here at work I have a Mac and a PC. My Mac has IE5, NS4.7, and NS6. My PC has Opera 5, IE5, NS4.7, and NS6.

My advice: Find a real mac, load it with browsers. Test on/with everything you can find.

[JakeFrederick]

I have found a few PC mac emulators after searching the web a bit. Fusion looks like the best bet, I used to use it when I had an Amiga and it worked pretty well (although the Amiga used 68k and PPC processors like Macs). The PC version only supports 68k emulation though, does anyone know if the current Mac browsers will run on this, or are they PPC only?

[mivox]

A+ from the w3c validator. If it passed that test, then it's entirely up to the browser to get it right.

Make sure it gets the A+ and THEN make sure it still looks good in all the major browsers. No design client on earth is going to swallow, "It's your browser's fault," as an excuse for a non-functioning page, nor will most potential customers who visit the site.

It's perfectly doable to create validating code that is cross browser/platform compatible, and the #1 cause of serious cross platform problems I've found are people who don't bother to make sure their javascript is cross platform compatible.

Also, if it doesn't work cross platform, you can also be guaranteed the page is completely unusable to anyone surfing with javascript off.

[JakeFrederick]

Could someone with a Mac test the site again to see if it works now?