[cosmo-dev] Safari 2
Mikeal Rogers
mikeal at osafoundation.org
Tue Nov 13 12:33:33 PST 2007
I'd like to remind people of a couple things.
1) We still haven't added Safari 3 to the supported list.
To my knowledge, we have never officially supported Safari 3 and I
don't remember seeing email the list about adding it to the supported
browser list. I don't know why we think we have enough resources to
support two versions of Safari, we don't.
The proposal that should be on the table is whether to _add_ support
for Safari 3 or to swap support for Safari 2 with Safari 3.
I will advocate strongly against adding another supported browser --
we're already very short on resources and have extremely short release
cycles.
Basically all of QA and development jumped the gun and upgraded to
Leopard without thinking this through -- I was one of the first
offenders. But that doesn't mean we just automatically add a new
supported browser.
2) Safari hasn't had 1st class support in Cosmo since before Preview.
We didn't even support Safari in the initial Preview launch and when
we're triaging bugs we don't let Safari issues hold up a release like
we do with Firefox and IE6/7 issues.
3) Our Leopard user base seems to be very high.
We're still waiting on solid browser numbers but if you remember from
last week our iCal3 usage is already higher than MozillaCal (Lighting
and Sunbird combined).
Remember that before Leopard was released our Safari numbers in
general were lower than any other browser. Now we're considering
increasing the work load to continue supporting less than that number
since the support is now split between 2 versions.
4) We think, with good reason, that continued support for Safari 3
will be easier than Safari 2
There is a good case for swapping support for Safari 2 with Safari 3.
They've fixed a lot of bugs and added some nice debugging features,
many of the hacks we have to write and hoops we have to jump through
are less of a problem in Safari 3. In the long run I'm confident that
our support for Safari 3 will be painless enough that we might be able
to get it back up to 1st class status.
We're trying hard to get to 1.0 and need to think ahead. The user base
now for Safari 2 is light and ill supported in Cosmo as is. That user
base will get supplanted with Safari 3 almost entirely before we hit
1.0 and will still represent the smallest number of Cosmo users
compared to other supported browsers.
-Mikeal
On Nov 13, 2007, at November 13, 200711:52 AM, Jeremy Epstein wrote:
> -1 to dropping safari 2.0--
>
> Safari 2 is stable and capable enough to be the "IE-6 of mac
> browsers".
> Also (at least for me) it doesn't/didn't automatically upgrade to
> 3.0 (I'm not on leopard) and have no immediate plans to upgrade my OS.
>
> I would hold off eliminating support until safari 2.0 drops below
> 40% of the active installed base.
>
> YOu guys are not developing enterprise software where you can
> request specific versions (to an extent). furthermore, if
> "compatible with safari 2" means "compatible with safari 3" I'd
> stick with it for as long as possible.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 13, 2007, at 11:41 AM, Bobby Rullo wrote:
>
>> -0 to dropping Safari 2.0 right now.
>> +1 to waiting a bit (like a couple of months)
>>
>> I don't think it's a great idea to drop support of an OS's default
>> browser mere weeks after the new version has been released.
>> Believe me, I hate Safari 2 quirks as much as anyone else, but I
>> don't want to turn anyone off from Hub adoption.
>>
>> There is a way to test multiple versions of Safari in one OS X -
>> check out:
>>
>> http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/
>>
>> Bobby
>>
>> On Nov 12, 2007, at 10:14 PM, Aparna Kadakia wrote:
>>
>>> +1 for going with option #1
>>> Getting Hub statistics might help make a case for it.
>>>
>>> On Nov 12, 2007, at 7:02 PM, Matthew Eernisse wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think we should seriously consider option 1 -- discontinuing
>>>> support for Safari 2. To validate this idea, would it be
>>>> possible to find out the number of Hub users are actually still
>>>> using it?
>>>>
>>>> Whatever we do, I think we should only be supporting one version
>>>> at a time.
>>>>
>>>> If we do go that route, it's worth noting that I'm in the
>>>> opposite boat -- my creaky old G4 will not run Leopard. I would
>>>> need something to run it on.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Matthew
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Travis Vachon wrote:
>>>>> Hi folks
>>>>> With the release of Leopard many of us (developers and qa) are
>>>>> currently unable to test Safari 2. I'm not totally sure what the
>>>>> best solution to this is. Ideally we could install Safari 2
>>>>> alongside 3 and continue testing happily, but so far the search
>>>>> for easy ways to do this has been fruitless.
>>>>> I'd like to use this thread to consider a number of possible
>>>>> ways we can handle this. Off the top of my head:
>>>>> 1) Discontinue support for Safari 2.
>>>>> 2) Provide a semi-public instance of Tiger for testing and set
>>>>> appropriate parties up with access.
>>>>> 3) Invest some cycles figuring out a way to run both Safari 2
>>>>> and 3 on Leopard.
>>>>> 4) ??
>>>>> For what it's worth I think we should seriously consider 1) in
>>>>> the next few months. In my mind Safari's browser share doesn't
>>>>> justify supporting old versions in the same way we support IE 6.
>>>>> That said, if a Tiger release of Safari 3 is in the works it
>>>>> might be good to wait for that.
>>>>> In the mean time I'm not sure which of 2 or 3 I find more
>>>>> appealing. Both seem like a non-trivial amount of pain, but 3
>>>>> seems like a potential goose chase.
>>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>> -Travis
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> cosmo-dev mailing list
>>>>> cosmo-dev at lists.osafoundation.org
>>>>> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/cosmo-dev
>>>>
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