Filed under: Internet Tools, Open Source
Zimbra offers Safari 3 support
I'm not ashamed to admit that I love Safari. Unfortunately, not all web developers are hip to it, especially when it comes to Ajax-based web apps. In fact, I'd have trouble naming very many web-based, "WYSIWYG" editors, let alone full collaboration suites, that work well with Safari. That's why I was pleased to hear that the Leopard-loving folks at Zimbra, the open source messaging and collaboration suite, have announced expanded support for Mac users, including Safari compatibility. To the best of my knowledge (and according to their press release), this makes them the first major collaboration suite to support Safari.
In addition to Safari support, Zimbra has also added support for CalDav, allowing iCal 3 to sync and share calendars through its server. And for the mobile set, they've added a mobile HTML client that makes the suite iPhone compatible. With the preexisting Zimbra Connector for iSync, Zimbra users can sync their email, address books and calendars to their iPhone.
You can catch Zimbra at Macworld in booth W-4348. Zimbra is available for free as the ZCS 5.0 Open Source Edition. They also offer a Network Edition with commercial support, educational discounts available. And for the curious, you can demo the suite online at their website.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jonathan Wise said 8:46AM on 1-18-2008
Cool news about Zimbra, but I was thinking about Safari the other day, and I realised I was thinking the same thing when it came out: why? Especially Safari for Windows...
FireFox comes along with good standards support, tabbed browsing AND a plug-in architecture. Then Apple comes along and says "hey! I have a browser too! and it doesn't even have as many features as FireFox" and everyone says "ooh, its from Apple, it must be good!"
But the thing is, its not good. There's almost nothing in the way of plug-ins compared to FireFox, and it offers no advantage over any other browser. Why do people bother using or coding for Safari? Its just one more "if" statement you have to write...
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Brett Terpstra said 8:56AM on 1-18-2008
While I do find the lack of plugins available annoying, and it's frustrating to me that webkit browsers are stubbornly incompatible with gecko browsers, Safari 3 is the fastest browser on the market. It also has the best integration with other OS X apps, far superior AppleScript support and it's way easier on the eyes than Firefox.
That said, I still find myself running both Safari and Firefox (to my frustration), at least until plugin development for Safari catches up.
mentalsticks said 9:06AM on 1-18-2008
@Brett: AFAIK, Opera is still the fastest browser around. Trouble is, it's so very un-Applelike that even I don't use it, and I'm a rabid fan.
and @Jonathan Wise: to me, the fact that Safari is so basic and has so few plugins available is not a bad thing. I for one like my browser as basic as possible, and frankly I've never found the basic Firefox browser to my liking.
I'm not saying that firefox sucks, coz for many people it seems to be perfect. It just doesn't work for me.
Ben said 9:06AM on 1-18-2008
I love FF, and really miss the extensions, but on my iMac it's just dog slow. Launching and page loading seem to take forever compared to Safari, and for me speed beats plugins every time.
If FF could get Safari speeds and keep the extendability I'd switch back to it in a heartbeat.
Luigi193 said 9:05AM on 1-18-2008
We run one AJAX app for our business, which is an uploader script called filechucker (uploader with status bar) and when you upload with Safari, you get a popup window for the upload bar, because safari can't handle it in one window (the uploading and status bar) but it works just fine in IE and FF...
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mmonquito said 9:54AM on 1-18-2008
I love Safari too. I find Firefox on Mac completely frustrating, no matter how many versions I try. While this is nice, I'm hoping it inspires others. Because what I am really hoping for is Wordpress to support Safari with their web-based editor. I don't mind not having WYSIWYG, in fact in the case of WP, it's annoying, but would it kill them to make the "code" view recognize carriage returns as break tags? Every other blogging software seems to do at least that in Safari. I hate having to use Firefox just for post editing, and far prefer WP to any other blogging system. Does everyone have this problem or am I missing something?
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Jonathan Wise said 10:47AM on 1-18-2008
Nope, I have the same problem. And while I'll agree that Safari is quick and pretty (at least on a Mac) I think they're hurting the web more than they're helping -- expressly because of things like this.
It's hard enough writing a good AJAX app that supports both the craptastic IE AND FireFox. I don't fault the WP guys for not wanting to write another whole block of code for Safari... it just doesn't offer any killer features that make it worth the effort.
I'm a hard-core Mac fanboy, but FF (with a select few and worthwhile extensions) + WP are how I blog, until someone comes up with something better...
Hunter said 12:21PM on 1-18-2008
No (good) WYSIWYG editor has supported Safari up until now because Safari has not had the necessary hooks in the browser to enable WYSIWYG editing. However, this support has just come out with Safari 3. Not everything due to is out of malice to Apple or Macs. I'm sure lots of web developers are are plenty hip, but just couldn't support Safari because Apple didn't provide the necessary tools!
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FoundInTheFlood said 4:58PM on 1-18-2008
The absolutely biggest shame is that the WORDPRESS WYSIWYG Editor doesn't work with Safari and destroys the whole text in your articles.
I mean wordpress is nothing "underground", the guys who are responsible for the webkit could have fixed this months ago, it's a shame that i have to use a different browser just to be able to get text shown as i typed it :/
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nakedmac said 5:51PM on 1-18-2008
They may be "Leopard loving" but not enough so to make the server run on Mac OS X 10.5. The ZCS 5.0.1 server currently only support 10.4 on the back end. It also no longer supports PowerPC hardware and is Intel only. Finding a good Intel 10.4 system to run ZCS 5 on these days is getting tough.
http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21441
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xflip said 8:48PM on 1-19-2008
We're running Zimbra 5.0.1 and I personally use Safari most of the time. Works fine so far and the Zimbra UI is really snappy. Feels nearly like using a local app.
The only thing I'm missing recently is the '@'-sign. Can't type it in Zimbra with Safari since we've upgraded from the release candidates. Hope they'll fix it soon.
When choosing a browser I basically look at three aspects: website-compatibility, performance and look-and-feel.
Both Safari and Firefox do a good job at rendering actual sites and AFAIK both are passing the ACID2-Test. So that's a tie.
Performance: Safari lightning fast. Startup times and page rendering is extremely fast. Contrary to Firefox under OSX. Firefox takes ages to load and page rendering is quite slow, too. Don't know what they did wrong under OSX, but the Windows-Version is way faster.
Look-and-feel: Firefox's UI looks like an ugly, badly ported windows app. Once again: I love the firefox UI on windows, but it did't fit on OSX. Safari - obviously - fits perfectly. But I don't think that I would use it under Windows, as I disdained iTunes for it's strange and uncommon look-and-feel.
Safari is often criticized for its lack of plugins. But do you need plugins per se or do you want to accomplish something. Personally I don't like advertising very much and Safari isn't good at blocking ads by itself, so I installed Safari Ad Block. The google search bar is neat, but I wanted to have access to additional search engines and live preview, so I installed Inquisitor. That's it.
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