I've installed Safari for Windows (v3.0.2) to test my website. When I tested my site (www.icdmeister.com/site/) it consistently crashes Safari. I haven't tested it yet on Safari/Mac. No similar problems in other browsers.

Three Q's:

1. Can one or two people verify that the site crashes for them on Safari for Windows and let me know?
2. Anything to do to fix this?
3. Should I care? (ie. does anyone use Safari for Windows and is testing on Safari for Windows an adequate proxy for appearance/function on Safari/Mac which is what pretty much all Safari users would be using)

Thanks,

Andrew

Hey dude,

I know you're not overly big on validation, but this may well explain the problem. The more errors you have, the more likely a browser is to crash.

It didn't do it on Safari/Win for me (v. 3.0.3) but then again, my machine generally doesn't crash unless I forget to end a loop.

The one thing I can think of besides the validation that might cause it is the Flash menu. Flash does have a tendency to run heavy at times.

Dude,

Thanks for the tips. It's not that I'm not big on validation. The thing is that this is the first I'm hearing about validation and most of the jibberjabber on that validation page looks like nothing I've ever seen before. I'd be more likely to successfully compose my page in French (and me no speaka de francaise) than comply with all those rules. But I also don't want some kludgy page that puts up diamonds instead of discs and crashes when someone uses Safari. I guess it might be a good idea for me to take a step back and learn more about XHTML and validation. I'll go check out the w3school tutorial. Any other suggestion for a good place to learn more about this?

Andrew

Besides here? I can't think of anywhere off the top of my head.

And yes, the W3 validator does come off as unintelligible at the best of times. It also "triple/quadruple reports" a lot of errors. The best thing you can do is to solve as many of the things as you can and ask about the rest. A lot of them are relatively simple things (e.g. /> at the end of meta tags instead of >, & instead of &). You solve those TYPES of things, and a lot of the other supposed errors disappear.

I did some reading yesterday about XML and the differences between HTML and XHTML. Interesting (and powerful) stuff which is all new to me. I think I'll dig in a bit and play with this. I'll let you all know if it resolves the Safari crashing question.

As an aside, my wife tested my website in Safari/Mac and it seems to work without a hitch. Probably not worth too many sleepless nights to capture the one or two users who are actually using Safari for Windows. But still, the goal of having clean code is a worthy one worth pursuing both for its own sake and to prevent as-yet-unidentified problems from popping up in the future.

Andrew

That pretty well sums up my thoughts on the subject, Andrew.

The other thing with Safari/Win is that most people who would have it would likely be developers and not actual users as such. Safari "users" (as in end users) would tend to be Mac users.

Thanks again for the great input.

A.