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Safari 3 allows styled form controls

by Robert Palmer May 8th 2008 at 12:30PM

This was included in WebKit builds beginning several years ago, apparently, but is something I recently stumbled upon. Historically, Safari has been pretty insistent on making sure web page form fields (like drop-down menus and buttons) retain the Aqua look-and-feel. Web designers, on the other hand, have gotten used to choosing colors and font sizes for those controls, so they fit in with their site's design.

Hopefully everyone can now be happy: Safari 3 allows web designers to style form controls with CSS. The results are pictured: instead of a glossy, Aqua-like control, Safari displays a matte-finish control in the color and size of your choosing. You can even apply background images to form controls. If you don't apply styles to your controls, then Safari retains the Aqua look.

This shouldn't require any changes to code that's already written for other browsers: Safari 3 should pick right up on the formatting, and display it as the designer intended. It does, however, open up WebKit-specific CSS to your form controls.



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This was included in WebKit builds beginning several years ago, apparently, but is something I recently stumbled upon. Historically, Safari...
 

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smoke_tetsu

Personally, I find those styled controls in the latest versions of safari to be ugly.. especially since they aren't even smooth. I wish Apple hadn't done that.

May 08 2008 at 11:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rhywun

This is another reason - among many others - I think the web is an awful application platform, and trying to turn it into one has been a huge mistake. It's hard enough to get people to figure out how to use your software when one button looks like every other button. Now you have to teach people how to recognize *what's* a button on top of how to actually use your application. The only explanation I can come up with for this situation is that designers must get a sadistic glee watching their testers click on random bits of the page trying to figure out how to use it.

May 08 2008 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hawkman

Have actually been considering repressing this with a user stylesheet. It seems like a great idea, until you discover that 90% of the designers who use this have atrocious taste... :)

May 08 2008 at 2:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Hawkman's comment
Reefdog

Agreed. So much. Nonstandard form controls bother the tar out of me. Of course, if I used IE, I probably wouldn't mind...

May 08 2008 at 3:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joshua Ochs

Amen. I have friends who run a professional web design company (who do quite excellent, tasteful work actually), and when they complained about Safari's using native controls, I looked at them like they were from Mars. They want everything on the page to look like their design; I want my browser to look like it's part of my computer and OS.

May 08 2008 at 3:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

@ Robert Palmer,

If you want to keep up to date on the changes made to WebKit you can checkout their blog. Lots of goodies coming soon to Safari.

• http://webkit.org/blog/

May 08 2008 at 1:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Micheal J

A good example of this when Safari 3.0 came out was that buttons on Flickr (for posting a comment and such) appeared the same as they would in Firefox instead of the Aqua style button.

May 08 2008 at 12:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fritz Laurel

Two words: simply irresistible.

May 08 2008 at 12:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Fritz Laurel's comment
Robert Palmer

That's what this thread is for: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/06/youre-gonna-have-to-face-it/

Get it alllll out of your system. :)

May 08 2008 at 12:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fritz Laurel

"Have mercy!"

Sorry, I have a "hard head." I know, I know, it's "disturbing behavior." "Your mother should have told you" "it could happen to you." "I didn't mean to turn you on."

"Keep in touch"

p.s. I was going to reply in the other thread, but I thought those 2 words fit better here. Thanks for letting me do this. Okay, I'm done now. :D

May 08 2008 at 4:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
steve

Safari can do that since 3.0 in October 2007 ;-)

May 08 2008 at 12:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to steve's comment
Robert Palmer

I figured it wasn't something totally brand new, but found very little documentation about it online. Thought it could help someone searching in the future (as I was, a month or so ago).

May 08 2008 at 12:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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