I'm trying to figure out some layout issues with Safari Mobile 3.1.1. – I want to know whether or not I can view sites with the SDK before I commit to installing it on my Mac.
My other dumb question is… does changing the user-agent string used by desktop Safari have any affect on how it renders CSS? I understood that the UA string just announces which browser version is behind the request.
I've never had a problem with either of those two things.
The UserAgent string isn't intrinsic to the version of the WebKit library, I don't think -- you can install a webkit build alongside the OS Safari and it'll work fine:
http://nightly.webkit.org/
... if you embed a UIWebView in your app, you can use whatever UserAgent string you like (see this question).
Related
I'm using SVG sprite and referencing fragment identifiers in it for CSS background image. The CSS code looks like this: background: url(sprite.svg#icon-1);.
It works on Firefox/Win7, Google Chrome/Win7, IE11/Win7, IE10/Win8, Firefox/Android 4.4.2, and Google Chrome/Android 4.4.2. However, it does not work on iOS 9.3.4.
Here is a demonstration on Plunker. (And here is a shorter url for easier accesses for mobile devices: goo.gl/P9xG4E)
Is it possible to get iOS working with this method?
== Update ==On Android 4.4.2, unlike Firefox and Google Chrome, the built-in Android browser does not support the feature.
Can I Use tells us that this is not supported on Safari (Mac or iOS).
Also note that it wasn't supported on Android browser up to 4.4.4, which are still quite common, and some other browsers have limitations.
I found a polyfill which fixes WebKit browsers' this issue. And it works for me.
Please check its demonstration for implementation.
Similar to disabling JavaScript in browsers, is there a way to disable support for various CSS3 properties in Firefox or Chrome to quickly confirm a page is rendering OK if support for certain properties isn't there? I know it's only a presentation layer, but I'm just hoping there's a more efficient way to test against this without using old browsers, especially if Modernizr is being utilised.
A project called deCSS3 manages to disable a large majority of CSS3 properties through the use of a bookmarklet that overrides and neutralises their usage with !important rules.
A recent addition to the project is "Modernizr class toggling" for an added level of testing when Modernizr is utilised.
Even if there were a way to do so, would it help? Each browser has its own quirks, so there is no guarantee that e.g.:
Firefox - CSS3 = Older Browser
CSS3 isn't a set of additions to CSS2, it replaces CSS2. The backgrounds and borders module in CSS3 includes border and background as well as border-radius and box-shadow. If you 'turn off' CSS3 you turn off all CSS, and even if you could disable the new stuff Tom's answer is correct - that wouldn't leave you testing anything that actually exists in the real world.
If you need a way to "turn off CSS3" then I don't think you're thinking about/implementing progressive enhancement/graceful degradation properly. You should be starting with non-CSS3 stuff, then enhancing your site with it. When you build the non-CSS3 foundation and test it in your target browsers, then adding CSS3 shouldn't change anything (browsers ignore styles they don't recognize). If you sandbox your CSS3 in its own stylesheet, then you can tell old versions of IE to completely ignore it (or, if you're using stuff that's only partially supported in IE9, can tell all versions of IE to ignore it) to save a download.
That said, CSS is handled by the core rendering engine, so in order to view a page without CSS3, you have to view it in a browser that doesn't support CSS3. It sucks, it means you have to have several browsers, and even virtual machines (or physical machines) to test very well, but such is the state of web development, unfortunately. Theoretically, you should be testing in several browsers, anyway, and already know that IE6-8 have their own quirks that don't even relate to CSS3, and should already be set up to test them (so, therefore, if you need to test old versions of other browsers, you can install them in your IE test environment).
There's a useful add-on for Firefox called "User Agent Switcher" which allows you to bump your browser rendering down to an older version of IE (the iPhone rendering is also pretty useful). That should help you double check.
I'm working on a project with a designer and he insisted on using some specific font for titles and various elements in the page. So we're using a font kit to embed with #font-face.
It's working perfectly on PC (Firefox, IE 7 and 8, Chrome, Safari) but on Mac OS (Safari and Firefox) the fonts are not vertically aligned the same way. After looking on the Web, I didn't find any solution for this except "there always been differences between browsers and platforms, live with it".
I know that fonts are never rendered exactly the same across platforms, but this time it's not something like the font looks more bold or something like that. The font looks as if it's baseline is completely different between Windows and Mac OS X. On Mac OS, the font, at a size of 16px is 3px higher than on PC.
So I'm looking for a backup solution : is there a way to create a CSS specifically for Mac OS users? I do not want to target only Safari because Safari PC is ok, and Firefox Mac is not ok.
Or if you have a solution to fix the baseline difference that does not require a specific CSS file, I'd be happy to hear it.
Thanks!
I'm afraid that browser/os sniffing is your only option. CSS itself has no knowledge of OS nor do i have ever heard of a css hack that targets osx specifically.
This is the easiest way for me to detect OSX and add the OSX class to the document body so you can override css styles for OSX specifically.
if(navigator.platform.match('Mac') !== null) {
document.body.setAttribute('class', 'OSX');
}
Same as #ChrisR answer this is the easiest way for me to detect MAC and add the MAC class to the document body so you can override css styles for MAC specifically.
Additionally this keeps the current Body Class and just ADDS Mac on to it
if(navigator.platform.match('Mac') !== null) {
document.body.setAttribute('class', document.body.className +' MAC');
}
If setting an explicit line-height doesn't fix the problem, you can serve different stylesheets to each browser using your backend and detecting the OS in your application (via the user agent). You can also do something in JS doing the same thing, but there will likely be a FOUC while JS loads the relevant styles.
There's an easier way. http://rafael.adm.br/css_browser_selector/
It detects the browser and os and allows you to specify classes specific to it.
If you want close-to-perfect and painless, you're going to have to use the common fonts or fonts from an online service such as Google's free font library or one of the for-pay font libraries. These fonts have been designed and tested to work on the web.
Experimenting and including fonts for the user's browser to download and try to display correctly is fine, but won't be perfect and won't be painless. Also, be very careful with licensing restrictions - make sure the fonts your designer wants to use are properly licensed for use on the client's website.
If you have to do browser sniffing and serve multiple stylesheets, at this point I'd say your design is broken and needs to be revised. Show https://fonts.google.com to your designer and see if he likes any of those - they work cross-platform in all modern browsers and some are very slick. EDIT: Oh, and they're free to use without worries of licensing.
I can use FireFox and FireBug, in a pane, I can open a .css file, in real time, as I make edits, I can see those edits reflected in FireFox. This is a very handy and valuable feature.
Without starting a debate over browsers, I would love to be able to do the same thing in Safari. My far too small display on this laptop aside, real time development of css helps me move things along at a very nice pace.
While I am near certain any input manager for Safari would not officially be supported, I am OK with that. I have been playing around with the "Web Inspector", but as far as I can tell, this will not fit the bill for my needs.
Are you doing this on a Mac? You can give CSSEdit a try. It's not free, but has a built in webkit preview
Get the latest version of webkit, it has a much more powerful version of Web Inspector which you can use side by side with the latest Safari (two browsers open) to debug Safari.
Which version of Safari are you using? I'd recommend getting Safari 4 Public Beta, which has a brand new Web Inspector that allows you to edit the DOM real-time (I'm not sure whether you can actually edit a CSS file with it, however).
Steve
You could try installing FirebugLite.
I've got a website that I've just uploaded onto the interwebs, and it's displaying differently using Firefox 3.0.1 on Ubuntu and WinXP.
Two things I've noticed on Ubuntu:
The favicon is missing
The background color isn't displaying (it's set in the stylesheet)
What have I done wrong? The CSS file is being fetched under Ubuntu, so why isn't it applying all of the stylesheet, just the bits it likes? And why isn't the favicon displaying? Are they the same problem?
The answer on the background color: invalid HTML. But I'd love for someone to explain why it works under Windows and not Ubuntu.
The answer on favicon: previously, there was no favicon. The browser cached the lack of favicon. Clear the Firefox cache, and all is well.
I would first suggesting getting you html and css code validated. If there are any errors in your markup, these can cause errors in the rendering.
CSS Validator
HTML Validator
I've also run into differences between FF3 on WinXP and FF3 on OS X (mostly with CSS positioning). The CSS and HTML both validated properly, but I was never able to figure out why there was this difference. I would think that the rendering engine would be the same, but apparently there are at least a few subtle differences.
I agree.. there are subtle differences between the two operating systems. Part of this is just font sizes and how line height and letter spacing is determined. So much of page flow is based on these whitespace elements interact with other page elements.
i believe this is a font issue and a browser / OS issue.
we know that different firefox versions are dependent on the OS - there are some firefox extensions available for Linux, some firefox extensions for windows are available.
it's the font I guess.
Try to download mtts core fonts (microsoft true type ) which includes all the windows fonts so that firefox can display the fonts you specified in the css.
also you could check that you use fonts which are available on both platforms. Otherwise, I suggest rechecking and revalidating your code.
The other issue could be the screen resolution. It might be okay in windows with your high resolution but not with the low resolution ubuntu version.
Almost too obvious to say, but are they both "Firefox 3.01"? One isn't, for instance, Firefox 3.01 revision 3 update 6 service pack 9 and the other, well, you get the picture.
Even if they were both the very latest Firefox for that platform, doesn't mean they're exactly the same thing.
To see what's different, enter about:config in the address bar in Firefox in both Linux and Windows, press Enter, and compare the output
Ubuntu (I believe) apply their own patches to Firefox, so maybe this cause. Having said that, I thought that the patches were only for minor, GUI-type changes.