“I have been among the developers and observers who have praised Yahoo for the technical strength of their recently launched User Interface Library. In my tests for the Ajax/DHTML Scorecard project in March, Yahoo’s library was a clear ‘A’ in its cross-browser credentials, and I was very impressed with Yahoo’s development team, which published clear and exacting browser standards for their library. According to Yahoo’s own Graded Browser Support table, Safari is an A-graded browser, meaning it achieves the highest level of support possible with the Yahoo interface library,” Leland Scott writes for Musings from Mars. “Clearly, the thought that went into this table is impressive, and the authors conclude the explanation that precedes the table itself with an appropriate quote from Tim Berners-Lee on the importance of cross-browser support.”
“Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.” – Tim Berners-Lee
“It is therefore highly disappointing and disillusioning to discover tonight that Yahoo has released a preview of its new, Ajax-enabled home page with support only for Internet Explorer 6.0 and Firefox 1.5. The only logic one can use to justify such a move is based on a totally PC-centric viewpoint, which argues that only Windows users are worth troubling with, since they comprise the vast majority of potential viewers. But this is precisely the viewpoint that must cease if Web 2.0 is to become the fertile melting ground for truly cross-platform interdependence that it wants to be. It’s simply not the viewpoint of any company that really cares about Berners-Lee’s vision or about the millions of users on platforms other than the virus- and malware-riddled mess that is Microsoft Windows today,” Scott writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Based on our site stats, quite a strong sample of Mac users, Safari is used by the large majority of Mac users today. It is the strong number three browser on all the Web after IE and Firefox – despite being a Mac-only browser. Yahoo, and any other company that does a poor job of supporting everyone, is a disappointment, and we Mac users – a group proven to have above average discretionary income and the willingness to spend it (at least on quality products and services) – should remember companies that fail to include all users. We will remember.
We respect our customers above all else and never forget that they come to us by choice. We share a personal responsibility to maintain our customers’ loyalty and trust. We listen and respond to our customers and seek to exceed their expectations. – Yahoo! – What We Value
It’s not just Yahoo’s preview site that won’t work correctly; Yahoo games and other services frequently don’t work or work well on anything but Windows Internet Explorer. It’s been like this for years. It takes virtually no extra effort to code a site to work for all users when that is one of your goals at the outset. Those companies that ignore us should be ignored by us until they wise up and include all users. Do the right and smart thing, Yahoo. Please use Yahoo’s simple web contact form to request that they make their services fully available to all here: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/support/contacts/ideas.html
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Bob
What’s a user-agent and how do you do it? Does this allow you to open pages in Safari that would not otherwise work?
Don’t bother!
Yahoo is just catering to Microsoft hoping for a eventual buyout because Google has gotten so strong.
Yahoo has turned over Chinese democratic internet users to the communist China government.
Just forget Yahoo, they are evil.
Yahoo is going to be getting a lot of e-MAIL TODAY!
I’M PERSONALLY SICK AND TIRED OF THERE LACK OF SUPPORT FOR OSX (10.4) TIGER AND FORWARD – AND THEN THERE’S THEIR LONG TAGS ONE HAS TO DEAL WITH EVERYDAY (I.E @SBCGLOBAL.NET) AND WE MOST LIKLY ARE FACEING A NAME CHANGE SOMETIME SOON – SUCH AS AT&TGLOBAL;.NET…!
I’M STARTING TO SPOP FOR A NEW DIRECTION – ANY IDEALS DOE HOME AND BUSINESS?
I visited Yahoo for the first time in years last night. It’ll probably be years before I visit it again (assuming it’s still around).
I struggle to get my stupid little personal page showing up properly in both Mozilla and IE and it ticks me off that a huge company like Yahoo! can’t afford the same courtesy.
Dennis:
Are you joking? Yahoo Maps is no where NEAR as cool or intuitive as Google Maps. No satellite view, no hybrid view. You can’t even grab and drag the map. Lame.
Yahoo, who are they?
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Once Apple added Google search to Safari I had no need to visit Yahoo which up to then always came to mind to do my searches with. Of course that’s no excuse if they choose to ignore a large segment of the interenet population.
MDN: “Kind”: Apple kind of brought it on themselves so to speak.
Email to Yahoo today:
Dear Sirs,
(I gave them my .Mac email address for return mail… I id’d my Yahoo address at the beginning of my email, just to remind them of a little competition… I pay for .Mac. I don’t pay for Yahoo’s “premium” services.)
“I have been advised that Yahoo has marginalized the Mac community again by not supporting the A-rated Safari browser.
This is ridiculous, and it must change. That Yahoo does not support the world’s most standards-compliant browser is unacceptable.
You are alienating millions of Mac users, most of whom use Safari as their main browser by choice. Most of us do not like Firefox for it’s Windows-like interface.
Mac users statistically have higher IQs and more purchasing clout than the average PC user.
Remember, you have stiff competition from Google. You can not afford to Ignore millions of very astute customers.
Ignore us at your peril, Yahoo, because we are a growing component of the Internet community.
Regards,
Melanie “MacSmiley”
Ya-Google!
Yahoo!’s New Look Not For Safari’s Eyes
we have a pic of the error page for those not using Safari.
The funny thing is that Safari handles the Yahoo! Beta Preview page perfectly… if you set the Safari’s User Agent to “Windows MSIE 6.0” in the debug menu… which means that Safari is perfectly capable of handling what Yahoo! is throwing at us EXCEPT for their test to see what browser is being used.
“The funny thing is that Safari handles the Yahoo! Beta Preview page perfectly… if you set the Safari’s User Agent to “Windows MSIE 6.0″ in the debug menu… which means that Safari is perfectly capable of handling what Yahoo! is throwing at us EXCEPT for their test to see what browser is being used.”
This is exactly what bothers me about some websites. They tell you your browser won’t work BEFORE they even try. Every time some POS site uses Javascript to tell me to update my browser and it works under debug, I always send an email.
This is TOTALLY irresponsible and just plain laziness. Or intentional.
“fertile melting ground”
I lost a good pair of shoes walking through that. The smell was almost unbearable.
“Why does Yahoo exclude Mac Safari users?”
Because they can?
MacSmiley:
More than likely, your message would be taken more seriously if you had written it is grammatically correct English.
” Most of us do not like Firefox for it’s Windows-like interface. “
iMacazine is the dumbest name for a site EVAR.
Now watch, someone will say it’s a fine name, and it will be posted from Mr. iMacazine himself.
MacSmiley I think your letter was arrogant and will make people are yahoo less willing to support mac users. Thanks for perpetuating the steretype that all mac users are elitists who want everything catered to them, and for speaking for my reasons for not using firefox. You truly represent us all.
Changing gears, I agree with the people on here saying “Yahoo? They’re still around?” I hear about them in the news but I don’t use a single one of their services. Their site is too busy and complicated. I view yahoo in the same way that I view AOL. A great tool for bringing the masses into the internet, but its time has past. When I see someone with a yahoo or aol account, I immediately think “what a noob” or “that’s cute” when the person is a 70 year old lady which is honestly the only yahoo account that I’ve written to in the past 3 years.
Maybe I’m missing something but yahoo seems totally irrelevent to me. Cringely listed it among the 4 most important companies shaping the internet right now, but I don’t see it. The other three were MS, Intel, and Google. I hope MS, yahoo, and intel die, leaving an apple/google/IBM complex to rule over technology.
“I never use Yahoo’s site. Ajax this!
It states it’s a PREVIEW VERSION. Nothing to cry about until it is officially released. THEN see if it works. And BTW, AJAX is the (current)future of Web design. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), is redefining what a web “page” can be. In fact it’s killing the idea of a “page” altogether. What AJAX is doing is creating Web “pages” that are more like APPLICATIONS than a “flat” page. Google Maps is a good example.
Quite ironic that Jay protests against MacSmiley “perpetuating the steretype that all mac users are elitists who want everything catered to them” then turns around and says ‘When I see someone with a yahoo or aol account, I immediately think “what a noob” or “that’s cute”‘.
Way to go, Jay. Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype that all mac users are elitists. You truly represent us all.
I dropped my Yahoo account a few months ago after I realized that Yahoo only cares about Windows users. I was a Yahoo user (and advocate at one time) for years.
It’s all Google for me now
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And Mac users are a profitable demographic to advertise to.
Yahoo is just shooting themselves in the foot.
Safari(and Konqueror) suck, why is anyone using it?
>Mac users statistically have higher IQs and more purchasing clout than the average PC user.
Yahoo doesn’t care. It can make more money out of the masses with less purchasing clout and less internet savvy. Yahoo’s support for Macs has always sucked.
Ampar says:
“Why does Yahoo exclude Mac Safari users?”
Because they can?
No. Because they’re assholes.
Any mac user that is familiar with Yahoo knows you get second class citizenship treatment from them. Yahoo Messenger anybody?
Who uses Safari? Why haven’t you switched to something a little less archaic yet?