[Using Sakai] [Building Sakai] Support for additional browsers

Thu Mar 31 06:41:58 PDT 2011

All,

Just a note from Virginia Tech, or at least from the OSP side of our shop.  I know we've seen random errors in uploading to resources with Safari, but honestly most of our non-Firefox issues are related more to the templates we create (and have to update continuously) rather than the tools and interface themselves.  I think we follow a very similar separation as Adam described, leaning more toward the PC-centric browsers but with a significant number of Mac-centric and non-centric browsers growing in use all the time.  I know everyone in this office has shifted to Chrome, and everything seems to work there.

Marc

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Marc Zaldivar, Ph.D.
Director, ePortfolio Initiatives
Learning Technologies
2210 Torgersen Hall
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
marcz at vt.edu<mailto:marcz at vt.edu>
540-231-8994

On Mar 31, 2011, at 6:54 AM, Adam Marshall wrote:

The figures are even more interesting in Eurp: Firefox and MSIE are about equal on 35% and chrome is 3rd placed with (I think) 15%. There was a nice chart in this month’s PC Pro but I couldn’t find it n the web anywhere.

Out of interest, what are the issues with Safari? Are they listed anywhere?

adam

From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org<mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org> [mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Mathieu Plourde
Sent: 30 March 2011 19:59
To: Sakai Dev List; Sakai User List
Cc: Nancy O'Laughlin; Karen M. Kral
Subject: [Building Sakai] Support for additional browsers

Dear fellow Sakaigers,

The use of Mac computers on our campus has grown dramatically over the last few years, and as a result many faculty and students would like to be able to use the Safari browser when using Sakai. The popularity of all iOS devices which rely on Safari also makes a case for making Sakai compatible with Sakai. Many features do work successfully in Sakai on this browser, but unfortunately there are several instances where unexpected behavior can occur and so we are compelled to warn our users, and request that Safari not be used with Sakai.

Similarly, Chrome has recently been rated as the third most used browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. Since Chrome, Safari, and many mobile device browsers are based on the Webkit engine, once we make one of them compliant, we may find that it is relatively easy to make Sakai work with others. [1]

This is not the first time that such a call to action has circulated on-list, but we believe that it is time to rethink our Firefox-centric approach, not only for Sakai OAE, but for the 2.x branches as well.

Any thoughts or progress on these fronts?

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201003-201103

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Mathieu Plourde, MBA
Project Leader, LMS/Instructional Designer
IT-Client Support & Services
mathieu at udel.edu<mailto:mathieu at udel.edu>
Office: 302-831-4060

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