Web Browsers

[Gert]

The DictionaryForMIDs Web App heavily uses 'HTML5' features and pushes the web browsers to their limits. Here is how well the web browsers support the advanced HTML features that are required by the Web App:

Apple Safari (tested with iOS 9.3.1)
Runs nicely.


Mozilla Firefox 5
Runs nicely.
But has a bug in the handling of the application caches, as follows:
1. a user uses any dictionary, say, dictionary 'EngGer (IDP)'; everything works fine for the first dictionary
2. a user uses any other dictionary, say, dictionary 'EngFra (IDP)' -> an error message is thrown
This bug was reported to the Firefox team: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676051. Hope they will fix it soon.

Workaround 1: do not allow to store the Web App offline (Firefox will ask you if you want to store it offline). Of course, then you will always need to be online when you use the DictionaryForMIDs Web App.
Workaround 2: delete the application cache before you use the second dictionary (look in the settings for advanced -> web sites in offline mode; there delete dictionarymid.sourceforge.net)


Firefox OS
Tested in the Firefox OS simulator: works fine. Well, I guess the Firefox problem that is described above may also apply here (did not yet test that).


Google Chrome 18 (PC and Android)
Google Chrome was the first browser to run the DictionaryForMIDs WebApp without known problems. And with amazing speed, also for Android.
Plus, since version 16 the also the infamous 5 MB limit of WebKit is gone and Chrome installs huge dictionaries without problems.


WebKit based browsers (Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Android browser, Samsung Dolfin, most other mobile browsers)
The WebKit developers explained that WebKit does not yet have a handling for the size of the 'Application Cache'; temporarily the size of WebKit's Application Cache is hardcoded [Gert: I believe the limit 5 MB]. For that reason, big dictionaries such as the huge CEDICT will not work as an offline dictionary. Hope that this gets fixed in WebKit very soon.

Also, older WebKit versions have the same problem as Firefox when using a second dictionary (see above for Firefox). Workaround is to delete the application cache before using a second dictionary.
Note: For Chrome this bug was fixed with version 12 of Chrome (see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=68479).

Further: for a few dictionaries the message "Invalid UTF8 sequence" may show up. This seems to be a problem with handling the UTF-8 BOM (actually, this not a bug in the WebKit implementation). I implemented a solution for this problem with XMLHttpRequest.responseBlob. But as of today it seems that XMLHttpRequest.responseBlob is not yet implemented in the available WebKit browsers.



Microsoft Internet Explorer 9
Lacks vital support for HTML5. Not capable to run the DictionaryForMIDs.


Opera 12.13
Runs nicely (see http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/forum/index.php?topic=276.msg1949#msg1949).


If you should have any additional information on the web browsers, please make a posting in our forum! Thanks!

Edit 01.02.2013 by Stefan1200: Updated Opera test