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Safari and .gov Websites: Support Improving

by , 4:45 PM EDT, April 28th, 2008

There was a time when Safari didn't work well with many tax payer supported government Websites. Today, the situation is much better according to Chris Maxcer.

The problem has been particularly galling for Mac users of Safari who pay their taxes too but sometimes haven't ben able to access government produced Websites "optimized" for MSIE.

"Shouldn't government sites be open to all browsers?" Mr. Maxcer asked. "Aren't sites supposed to be built on basic Web standards? Hasn't there been plenty of time to iron out these standards? Sure, Safari usage is only hovering around 4 to 6 percent of all browser use range, but clearly Apple [Mac] OS X and Safari is a viable Microsoft alternative worthy of support, is it not?"

The concern started erupting in 2005 when Mac users discovered they couldn't access FEMA's site for post Katrina support.

In time, Safari development by Apple has gotten better and companies that develop Websites are taking the Mac more seriously. Even FEMA says it now supports Safari. Even so, the long process of testing various browsers remains a difficult one. Some developers don't even have access to older machines for testing that people out on the Internet are using, for example, IE6 -- which still has a third of the browser market.

"Safari overall has certainly improved in the last couple of years, and the emphasis Apple has placed on Safari is really showing in the product," said Ken Hamric, a founder of CrossBrowserTesting.com. "For developers, one area I believe could use improvement is the Javascript testing tools available for Safari -- after getting spoiled by tools such as Firebug and YSlow for Firefox, you come to expect really great debugging tools."

While the issue has always remained cross-platform standards and resources allocated to a browser that has a very small market share, today, the Mac platform's tremendous growth has moved it from a small minority to a force to contend with. That will lead to a lot better experience for Mac users with Banks and the government in the future.

Observer Comments

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View Name:Guest
Mon Apr 28, 2008 6:00 pm Subject: One State gov't learned 'complaince' the hard way

I used to work for a state government department, and that department was all Mac, including their webservers. Our website was the only website that was 'complaint' with Federal and State Laws, as all other departments used Windows.

Well, I blew the legal whistle, and very loud at that, especially since 2 of the most significant departments' websites crash/burned in Safari (at the time).

Politicians didn't like it. Not one bit. Neither did the Windows-based IT head honchos of the other 23 state departments.
Employment dismissal 'warnings' (from higher-ups in other depts) came my way in monthly state-level IT mtgs. To me, these were illegal threats, based on both Federal and State whistle-blower laws. I grabbed as many legal whistles as could fit in my legal mouth and blew all the harder: Our state websites ARE NOT technologically compliant based on our own state and also federal laws. 75% of all documents available to taxpayers were in MSWord, Excel or MSPowerPoint, a 'private company-based application' which (at the time) had no publicly available free version to enable the tax-paying public to access the document(s).

So, what happened?
1) For the 17+ years the smaller dept. used Mac, not a single virus or significant data loss (workstation or server) occurred. Within 2 months of 'going Windows', 2 users lost all their data.

2) One of the 2 significant depts 'merged' with my dept, of which the larger dept. ditched all the Macs to 'incorporate' their platform choice. They assigned me a windows-based job that they knew I did not have experience to perform. They then 'released' me from employ because I could not perform assigned duties.

3) Sued the State, the Dept, and my bigger dept. managers in local, state and federal court for violating Whistle-Blower laws. Settled out of court within months: For a simple bit of money, a boat-load of open and very public apologies (sent to all 24 state department heads to open an H.R. file in my name and insert it), total physical and virtual purge of my H.R. records with all the bad stuff, and an entry into the H.R. file of each manager, from my immediate up to the head department gal, qualifying their malicious intent to illegally dismiss me.

4) That bigger department then 'unmerged' with the smaller dept. a few years later (IMHO it was more like a much sought divorce by the smaller dept), yet the smaller dept. now has Windows.

Total taxpayer cost to ''convert' to windows (or, 'ditch' the Macs):
$7.25 million state and federal taxpayer dollars.

Sorry, can't reveal which state or person(s) were involved due to out of court settlements, and I 100% trust MacObserver will protect the identity of the (IP address) source of this posting.

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View Name:Guest
Tue Apr 29, 2008 10:47 am Subject: Government FINALLY trying to catch up

View Name:Guest
Tue Apr 29, 2008 10:49 am Subject: Government FINALLY trying to catch up

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