While the new text boxes for river editing work very nicely on a PC using IE 7.0,
they do not work so well on an Apple mac using safari. The text boxes are only about 3 lines tall making proof reading very difficult. One must also go back to adding HTML code as you type.

Safari can also be run on a WInTel machine, and it has the same problem when used there.

I have opened a 'ticket' #537 for concerns with the Safari browser and the edit pages.

In the meantime, for editing on the Mac, you can download Firefox which works fine.

pmartzen Wrote:
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> In the meantime, for editing on the Mac, you can
> download Firefox which works fine.



No thanks.
Don't want firefox, or tabs.

I know that (or at least I hope that) the intent was to provide a helpful suggestion of a possible temporary 'work-around' solution to the current problem, while the more appropriate overall long-term solution is being sought and implemented. I don't really think that it was intended (nor should it ever be considered a viable response) to tell our users what software/browser they should be using.

Quite frankly, I'll completely agree with the sentiment expressed in the prior post. . . I have tried Firefox . . . I do NOT see what the whole hubbub is about it (for the average user). I do understand that it is supposed to have a multitude of advantages for developer/programmers. I understand that there are lots of 'add-ons' to 'personalize' the browser. I also understand that it supposedly supports all the latest standards which IE (and some others?) do not. But, the sucker just seems to crap out, lock up, and generally cause problems on my computer. Who needs that! Similarly, when I had a problem with the river edit page loading painfully slowly (even on a half-fast semi-cable access) I was told I might want to try Safari since it is reputed to somehow be a much faster browser. However, I encountered the loss of the WYSIWYG editor and the tiny (3-4 line) HTML-only text entry box as mentioned. Again, who needs that!

Fact is, there is not another website which causes problems with my current system. Admittedly, there is not another website which I am trying to edit and make contributions to, so that is perhaps not a valid comparison. However, if AW is trying to be as inclusive as possible, to have as many people as possible contribute to the database, to get as much information from and to the users, . . ., I think the response has to be "We're working on it . . . be patient . . . and in the meantime, you might try this . . ." Or (more appropriately) such changes as these (the whole WYSIWYG change-over from the old radio-button selected TEXT/HTML text-box) need to be better 'beta-tested' across various platforms and browsers before going 'live'. I really intend to provide constructive criticism here and NOT to slam anyone. It just seems like these problems could/should have been foreseen or uncovered and avoided (by the development team), rather than having to be dealt with after the fact (by the StreamTeam)! Being blind-sided by the changes, being rendered less effective and less efficient by the changes, and then being told to reconfigure their computer to accommodate the changes.

These are all things which have already and will contintue to alienate good dedicated StreamTeamMembers we rely upon.

I remembered that Rob hates Firefox but I had forgotten that Brad hates it also. Won't suggest it again even as a temporary work around. I agree that the website should work with all the standard browsers. People should not have to give up the ones they prefer in order to use the AW site.

As far as criticism of the "development team", remember that it is a part time "development person" and that the rest of us are the only testers he has. He is only implementing stuff that we and cybercommittee have suggested.

The best way we can contribute is to describe our experiences, suggestions, and problems as clearly, concisely, and as step by step, as possible.

Well, I don't mean to say that I "hate" Firefox or Safari. I only mean to suggest that when I tried them, they caused my computer to lock up or casued stuff which works under IE6.0 to no longer work. I do not know if the problem is with Firefox and Safari or with the programming of the AW pages, or with my computer system, but I'm saying the combination becomes a non-workable 'solution'.

For various reasons some features on the website won't be exactly identical between browsers because of the differences that the browser manufacturers have taken on adopting more advanced features. As of a couple months ago Safari didn't support rich text editing in the browser. They've changed that with the Safari 3 release. So, there is a version of that rich text editor which works under Safari which I've yet to integrate.

I intend to integrate it after evaluating how I can make the river editor load faster. Probably, through a preview of what HTML I have for the given field and place an edit button somewhere underneath that HTML to allow editing it.

I don't specifically exclude IE, in fact all edit interfaces should support IE 7 and greater. All general interfaces (that is interfaces exposed to the public and non-administrators which excludes the StreamTeam) should work equally well with Internet Explorer seven and six. Internet Explorer has come a long way since the version 6 which had no facility for controlling the minimum browser width and made boxes scroll off the screen if they are too big.


The statement that I will make about the browser situation is that I personally use Firefox and what I develop for Firefox almost always works on Safari and Opera unmodified. Internet Explorer always takes an additional five to six hours to work on because the Internet Explorer development team took a six-year break between Internet Explorer six and seven and became lax on their bug fixing. As a result, pages tend to be slower and the browser tends to crash more under Internet Explorer. 65% of our users are on an Internet Explorer platform. That number is down from 90% from only a couple years ago. There are rumors that Microsoft is scrapping the current rendering engine and replacing it with a more standards compliant rendering engine a year from now. I hope that means that my job will be easier and I can spend less time fighting bugs in Internet Explorer and more time putting better features in the website. If you see criticism of Internet Explorer here, it's probably some reflection of that sentiment. But all interfaces should work under Internet Explorer 7 that work under Firefox.