Numerous MacDailyNews readers report that web sites for “The Gap,” “Banana Republic,” and “Old Navy” and no longer work with the latest version of Apple’s Safari browser. The sites attempt to reload seemingly endlessly with no content being displayed.
Gap, Inc. sites affected:
http://www.gap.com/
http://www.bananarepublic.com/
http://www.oldnavy.com/
Contact info:
– (800) GAP-STYLE
– (888) BR-STYLE
– (800) OLD-NAVY
Of interest, former Gap CEO Millard Drexler (now Chairman and CEO of J. Crew) currently serves on Apple’s Board of Directors and Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to sit on Gap’s Board of Directors.
[UPDATE: 10:44am ET: Added Board of Directors historical information.]
hmmmmmmm. Luckily I shop for clothes at Sam’s Club.
Are Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy all part of the same corporate family?
It sounds like a system wide Web site update has caused the problem.
Yep..All Same Corporate Family
works fine on FIREFOX….on my funky PC (forced to use @ work)
don’t work in firefox either.
…Yeah but it works in IE so who cares. (in your best 10y/o voice)
– I love that line.
Switch the User Agent to Windows IE 6 and it works fine. Crappy work around though.
Always have Firefox ready when Safari fails you
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Isn’t the CEO of the GAP et al also a board member at Apple? There’s some relationship between Apple and GAP et al.
I just called Old Navy and they were very apologetic and pointed me to Firefox. At least they did not try to tell me to use Windows. The woman with whom I spoke said that they were aware of the problem and that they were working on a fix to be implemented soon.
firefox loads all of ’em ok. this is not the first time i have seen safari handle things badly, which is why ff is now my default browser.
and as for the connection between apple and gap, didn’t gap just run a promotion “try on a pair of jeans and get free music from itunes” ?
MW:years as in “the browser debate is set to run for…”
They broke down in the latest version of Opera as well.
Don’t forget when e-mailing them to point out that they are also violating accessibility laws. http://www.anybrowser.org/ has some good form letters, and http://www.w3.org/ has developed some age old standards for building proper webpages that these guys should follow, and anyone else should follow to avoid the problem of not being able to be browsed by specific web browsers.
works fine with Netscape
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internet explorer works…LOL
Of course, the real twist to this story is that Steve Jobs used to be on the board of Gap Inc., and Mickey Dressler, one of Apple’s board members, is a former CEO of Gap Inc. I guess when some people stop playing, they want to take the ball home…
Looks like they did the update while I was fact-checking. That will teach me.
Omniweb has the same problem unless you set it to spoof as a recent browser like Netscape 7.2 or IE 6.0 in which case it loads but the page layout isn’t quite right. That’s why I like Omniweb, if a site doesn’t work many times there’s a way to change the settings so it will.
“Internet explorer works…”
No it doesn’t, at least not on a Mac. I tried it out of morbid curiosity (how did IE even get installed on this computer?), and received the following error message:
“We’re sorry, but we do not support the version of the browser you are using. Our site works best with the following browsers…
Mac users
Netscape 7 and above
Mozilla (including Firefox) 1.0 and above”
Yeah that’s the ticket…support a couple of obscurist hobbyist browsers on the Mac, but not the official web browser that’s built into the Mac. Yes yes, I know, every card-carrying Mac geek has at least three copies of FireFox installed on their system, but the other 99 percent of the user base uses Safari…
So now how am I going to go about looking like everyone else? Don’t tell me I have to go to the mall.
Good thing I just ordered a year’s supply of khakis.
i sent ’em the results of the w3c validator for each web site. nice output shows several errors and similar errors (tho not identical) for each site.
The Doctype for Gap.com is XHTML 1.0 Strict though the page does not validate.
can’t find an answer anywhere else – so I’ll ask here…
many folks use firefox as their default… I love the way Safari works, tabs,etc. I would use firefox if I could import my bookmarks, en masse, to firefox – but can’t seem to find out how…
any help : ^)
Not the solution, but yes, Debug>User Agent>Windows MSIE 6.0 works.
Safari 2.0.1 has been flaky in general. Hopefully, 10.4.3 will eliminate what seem like bugs (mostly random crashing).
Wow.
Banana Republic’s still around? I haven’t seen one of those in ages.
The culprit seems to be the “.do” extension which represents a JAVA applet trying to be served on all three sites. Considering the very problematic JAVA updates Apple sent out a couple of weeks ago, it appears that Apple has some work to do on their JAVA implementation.
It’s browser detection gone horribly wrong. Switch Safari user agent to MSIE 6.0 and you’ll get in. Just stupid development.
but no emails.
Remember NOT to disguise your browser–don’t make sites think it’s IE or you’re helping IE!
“Safari 2.0.1 has been flaky in general. “
Hmm, hasn’t been flaky at all for me. Not a single unexpected during this version. Have you considered the possibility that it’s just your system in particular?
“Have you considered the possibility that it’s just your system in particular?”
Of course!
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I’ve been using Opera lately. Quite speedy and no hang-ups, IMNSHPE.
Dumb move on some ones part – probably a lazy newbie in IT that doesn’t know anything but the MS he learned in trade school. A few phone calls between Apple and The Gap with a lot of teasing should clear the SNAFU up pretty fast.
Safari breaks on any number of sites. DON’T YOU WEIRDOS START SENDING E-MAIL TO ANYONE EXCEPT APPLE IF THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR YOU. Those websites work just fine under Firexfox, Camino, and (ugh) Explorer. This is clearly a Safari issue.
I emailed bananarepublic around amonth ago. they consider this an “enhanced shopping experience”. back then the images wouldn’t line up right, but at least the page would load. Now its a load of cr@p that won’t show at all. Firefox is fine.
“Thank you for your e-mail. Currently, we are working diligently to
upgrade our online systems in an effort to provide you an enhanced
shopping experience. As a result, you may experience a delayed response
to your e-mail. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may
cause, and appreciate your patience. Your customer service inquiry is
very important to us, and we will respond to your e-mail soon.”
D9 – Nope, the .do extension does NOT represent a Java applet. They’re using Struts as their development framework (which is Java, but server-side), which uses .do as the default extension.
I can just see the solid code:
function browserCheck()
{
browserCheckPassed = false;
browser = getBrowserType();
while (browserCheckPassed == false)
{
reloadPage();
if (browser == ‘IE’)
browserCheckPassed = true;
else if (browser == ‘firefox’)
browserCheckPassed = true;
}
}
Darn.
Now where am I to shop online for my trendy clothes at overly-inflated prices?
I can’t find the DEBUG Menu option. Where is it?
There is a never ending supply of incompetent web developers who think the word web browser and IE Windows are interchangeable.
Vote with your wallet.
Only Mac Fags shop at the Gap, BR, and Old Navy…
Duh
I guess K-Mart and Walmart are more your speed huh, PC boi?
Here’s the actual javascript browser checking file:
http://www.gap.com/js/common/layouts/en/clientSniffer.js
Pretty convoluted.
I see that they got their browser sniffer from here:
http://www.webreference.com/tools/browser/javascript.html
which claims Safari compatibility, so maybe the problem is not in the browser sniffer after all.
Wil, here you go-
(How to Enable the Safari debug menu)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030110063041629
No, More like Abercrombie & Fitch, Bachrach, Kenneth Cole New York and gucci…
but hey, stay smug, Willy.
Ha, if you really shopped at those places regularly, you wouldn’t have waste time for a comment at all. Anytime someone types “Mac Fag”, they usually are so PC-centric that they have their nose up Bill Gate’s ass.
But hey, I bet you bought an iPod nonetheless, huh?
Well, here’s what I did.
I opened Banana Republic and then minimized the window.
It’s my own little DOS attack. We get enough people to do it, maybe they’ll fix it…
Peter — awesome.
No, No iPod (Creative Zen)
I do have a G5 Though
Machine Name:Power Mac G5
Machine Model:PowerMac7,3
CPU Type:PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs:2
CPU Speed:2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):512 KB
Memory:2 GB
Bus Speed:1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version:5.1.8f7
You know what you can eat. Although, Im mostly PC Centric, I know Macs Better than anyone else in this lousy forum…I come here for laughs, and thats exactly what I got…
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You’re quite the laugh yourself.
In other words, yes, I have my nose up Bill Gate’s ass.
HEY! I just tried setting the User Agent in the Safari Debug menu to pretend it was Window MSIE 6.0 and all the sites loaded fine (well the formatting was a little wocky on Banana Republic with a large gap at the top but all the content was there farther down the page and the other two seemed dot on).
So it is not that it is impossible for Safari to render, it is THEIR sites that are intentionally blowing off Safari!!!! This is so bogus.
MW: Able. As in Safari is ABLE to render the sites!
To those of you saying this is a Safari problem, do some more research first. This site is also completely broken in Opera, and it gives an incompatability error message if you try to use Internet Explorer for Mac.
Why you’d be more willing to believe that the fault lies with Apple than that is lies with team of web developers for a clothing company is beyond me.
All internet problems in OS X derive from Safari.
Can Camino switch user agents? ANyone know? Even by typing some commands in the terminal?
“cb” Get Safari Bookmark Exporter here: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19266
Works great and supports a ton of browsers other than Firefox.
As far as the insulting comments about those who shop at A&F, Gap, BR, Kenneth Cole
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If you don’t like the stores, don’t shop there, no one is forcing you to. There’s no need to insult those who do.
Bill Palmer you dumbass. Where’s your headless iMac?
Camino can change user agents if you install the handy CamiOptions preference add-on. Very nice. Pipelining is nice, too (also available in FF, of course).
Here is an idea,
Let’s all hit these sites at a prearranged time and just leave a page of our safari browser open. It seems to me that this might cause enough of a server drain on them to want to fix it.
Dan
I use a G4-optimised nightly build of Camino 1.0 beta 2….and the sites seem to work alright.
$curl http://www.oldnavy.com/
…
An error (302 Moved Temporarily) has occured in response to this request.
…
On another note, browser sniffers are bad design on so many levels. These web developers are clearly hacks…I lol in your general direction…
This is my response to all the links mentioned;
Micro$elfish
It’s a good thing your web sight isn’t Apple Safari friendly !!!! It’s a sure thing NOBODY in this household will buy your crappy wares.
Thanks for nothing,
Sylvain