I wonder if something has changed in Safari. The WSJ sent me an email saying I had to update my credit card because the account was coming up for renewal. I tried several times to log on to my user account (using Safari) and it failed every time (error messages about invalid addresses). So, I tried Chrome, and got in without any issues. (Though, of course, my credit card was still valid and up-to-date.) I have used the WSJ customer support site in Safari many times before without any problems. This is something new.
The other strange thing is that the NYT emails I get (via Apple Mail) arrive empty. This problem has existed for several days. I contacted NYT customer service who told me this was a known problem and the were working to fit it. This morning the emails were blank again.
It seems to me that companies donât test their websites and email for Apple compatibility (or maybe Apple changes something without telling anyone) - in many respects we seem to be second-class (computer) citizens.
I received a few blank NYTimes newsletter emails over the weekend. However, I was able to open them in IOS email. I tapped the 'View in browser â link, which opened a copy in Safari. I was then able to see the iPhone Safari page on my Mac via Handoff. I opened that window and was then off to the races.
Iâve had the same problem with some NYT emails. And Iâve had similar problems wiith other companies.
The common behavior is that I load an email and all that appears is the subject line. But if I leave Apple mail with that email selected it will load (usually before a minute has elapsed. When I get one of these âblankâ emails, all the email following it are also blank. Once one of them loads all the missing ones load. As I said, it takes 30 to 60 seconds.
Except:
Some NYT emails never load. I can ID these emails by checking an email that was sent after the NYT and find that it has loaded properly. From the past couple of weekâs experience I know that these NYT emails will never load in Apple Mail. Whatâs really weird is that I have had a chain of emails from NYT and the first two never load but the following emails eventually load.
I archive my NYTimes emails, so I looked at one that didnât load on my Macs this past weekend. Sure enough, it still doesnât load. Of course, as I said, IOS Mail seemed to be a lot more forgiving and loaded the email. Since it offered the possibility of opening it in a web browser, I could open it there, and then use that URL to open it on the Mac. I used the continuity process but could have also created an iCloud bookmark or a tab group and then opened it on a Mac.
I have to believe that itâs the former. Appleâs WebKit folks make new versions widely available about a year in advance with Safari Technology Preview available primarily for website developers to test and adapt to new features. It is also easy to sign up for Safari beta releases a few months in advance of their release.
Donât forget, you have any of the âstealthâ options turned on (e.g. hide my IP address). I find the stealth options seem to only work on Safari and can screw up some forms.
I donât think most companies test their web sites at all. If it works for the developer and his favorite browser, that may be enough for it to go live. Until they find a bug extreme enough to embarrass them into fixing it.
Last month, when I filed my taxes with TurboTax Online, I couldnât log in using Firefox. It would ask for my login credentials, then make me jump through a 2FA hoop, and then immediately looped back to the login page. And the site is still doing that today - over a month later. And itâs not due to my use of ad blockers and Firefox privacy protection, because disabling them doesnât fix the problem.
The site works fine with Safari.
Why would a high profile site like TurboTax not work with a browser as popular as Firefox? Only because they donât care enough to want to bother fixing their bugs.
I ran into something similar with Zillow a few months back: Firefox doesnât work; Safari does. (This is with no login; just casually visiting the website.)
I do a lot of following up on links to medical institutions and FDA and with those also Safari â despite working consistently for decades â has simply gotten progressively unreliable, with varying errors.
And I have had the same experience that alternate browsers work on the exact same links.
I do not have any idea of why this has happened.
I am not a fan of Chrome. I have switch to Microsoft Edge and had no problems.
Only suggestion â do NOT accept the new Bing interface in order to get ârewardsâ â it takes over what you see and I expect that ârewardsâ includes tracking (and possibly info sharing) that is as bad as that seen with Chrome.
The other clean browser is Brave â again, just donât get into their similar program named âsupport Braveâ.
The only loss from leaving Safari Iâve seen is that you donât have macOS Keychain.
But most of the good password managers have extensions that support Edge (because it is built with open source components and supports extensions built for Chrome).
A general comment: when posting about problems with Safari, it is very helpful to mention the version of Safari that is being used.
For example, Iâve noticed that in recent weeks, several websites suddenly stopped working well with the Mojave version of Safari (14.1.2), but continue to work reasonably well with more recent versions of Safari or with alternative browsers. WSJ.com seems particularly broken on Mojave, though it has glitches with more recent versions. Most likely, the affected websites are using a common third party development framework that dropped support for older versions of Safari Webkit, and they updated their frameworks around the same time.
I have Version 16.4 (18615.1.26.11.22) of Safari. Over the past couple of weeks I have seen more and more problems - today it couldnât log into the WSJ Customer Service site - giving me a network error message. Chrome got in without any problems. Woot (the Amazon discount site) doesnât work well with Safari - it opens pages with everything zoomed to 200-300 percent. Chrome works fine. Someone in this thread has suggested that Private Relay (which I have turned on) might be a problem. I have to try turning that off to see if it makes a difference. Safari still works with financial websites and other news sites, so this is some weird interaction between the way Safari works and how (some) websites are designed - and, oddly - it isnât consistent. I got into the WSJ Customer site with Safari yesterday without problems; today it doesnât work.
If a whole bunch of sites suddenly stop working at once, then it is likely that they are using a common open source component for their web app(s), and that component is what is no longer compatible with Safari 14.
Doesnât help solve your problem, but it may help you understand the cause.
The network error message is interesting. I have seen a few cases where recent versions of Safari reach a point where they wonât open new pages without quitting and restarting the app, but I donât know if that is in any way related. Another thing worth looking at is whether you have any Safari Extensions or other customizations installed that might be interfering with particular sites.
Iâm likely in a minority, but when I need a Chromium based browser, I use Vivaldi. It has more options in itâs Prefs than any other browser! Lots of stuff that would normally require editing the about:config page in Firefox, or the chrome:// pages in Chrome. No worries about Google, Microsoft or âsupport Braveâ!
I also took a look at Vivaldi. It doesnât have any way to import Safari bookmarks, as far as I can tell, so it is a non-starter for me. I use Chrome so seldom I donât feel the privacy risks are large - and I have every option set to reduce data leakage.
When Safari doesnât meet my needs, Iâve been using Firefox or Brave.
Brave is a privacy-focused browser based on the open-source Chromium sibling of Chrome. Brave gets updated whenever Chrome gets updated. (Maybe a day or two later, but quickly.) Brave is full-featured, e.g., accepts 1Password and other plug-ins.
I was the OP on this thread. Here is an update on the Safari problems I was having. I mentioned that I failed to get into the WSJ Customer Center with an error message. Here is the message:
Safari canât open the Page. The error is: "The operation couldnât be completed. (kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork error 303.)
This is caused by Private Relay. I paused Private Relay and had no trouble getting into the WSJ site. Now, seeing as this only happens on this Web Site, my guess is that the WSJ is doing something funky trying to track users.