Safari in Yosemite - I hate it, is it me or the application

By ray h, 28 November, 2014

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I updated to the latest versions of Yosemite and Safari and I find it a significant step backwards. While arrow key navigation is useful. I am encountering other problems that significantly outweigh the benefits.
The biggest and most annoying problem is that when browsing sites and activating a link and then using the back command (command left bracket) the page to which I return is essentially unreadable. VO reads things like "text" or some other form of incomprehensible information. Sometimes, but not nearly always, turning VO off and back on with cmd-f5 will solve it.
Another problem is that on many pages (like articles on NFB Newsline) the entire story shows up as a single paragraph, so reading through an article and pausing between paragraphs doesn't work.
Also as I type this and try to go back and edit, the letters are sometimes echoed more than once and it is far more work to determine cursor location for editing.
I hope these are all my problems and this wonderful forum has solutions, if not and it's the new applications, my discouragement with Apple is growing. As others have noted on this site, iTunes is far more difficult to navigate and use with VoiceOver and I think the same of Safari.

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Comments

By mehgcap on Friday, November 28, 2014 - 02:38

I've definitely seen the editing problems, where punctuation level isn't honored and things repeat. However, I haven't seen VO fail to read pages after going "back", and I'm not sure what might be causing that on your machine.

As to reading text, that works the same as always. So, if things are showing up differently, I can only say that the website you're using must have altered something. If the page has its content set up in paragraphs, VO will see each one, otherwise it will se the whole block at once, as you said. Using the arrow keys should make that far easier to navigate than it was before, though.

By Shaun on Friday, November 28, 2014 - 02:38

Hi, Yes, I've noticed the same VO issues. Sometimes when navigating by headings, voice over will only say "Heading Text".. Also, sometimes VoiceOver will still be reading the page you just came back from instead of the page you are on or be reading a previous tab you were on instead of the current one.
Voiceover seems pretty buggy in Yosemite.

By Usman on Friday, November 28, 2014 - 02:38

Hi,
the safari bug going back page existed under Mavericks as well. From what I noticed, it also exists on Safari for IOS. I'm putting this out there for people to realize it is not because of yosemite.
Moreover, I haven't encountered any other VO bugs mentioned above. the only VO bug I noticed are VO announcing new line while using the shift key, and announced text being typed despite having my screen echo set to off.

By Mani on Friday, November 28, 2014 - 02:38

Hello all:
I am finding the same issues as Shaun did earlier. A refresh of the page after going back, seems to resolve the issue. Other issues I find
a) When I do a VO + U on a page like the main page of AppleVis, and walk through the headers using the arrow keys and then then hit VO+space twice, to go to the particular page pointed to by the link, it stays on the same page and I have to repeat the commands to get to the new page. .
b) Till Mavericks,I could mouse left-click on a text anywhere on the screen and the VO cursor would appear around the element or the surrounding element and then I can start navigating from that point. This handy feature just disappeared.
I did not find these issues with Mavericks.

Thanks,
'mani

By Bryan Jones on Friday, November 28, 2014 - 02:38

Regarding the issues encountered when attempting to navigate back to the previous page in Safari, a number of us have experienced this under Mavericks & Yosemite and some discussion can be found in the following AppleVis discussion thread: http://www.applevis.com/forum/os-x-mac-app-discussion/bug-safari-71

If you haven't already done so, please email accessibility@apple.com to let them know the issues you are experiencing. In particular, if you mention the problems experienced when attempting to navigate back to the previous page, you can ask them to reference ticket number 474443, which is the number they referenced during my correspondence.

By Pinzz on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - 02:38

I installed Yosemite on my MacBook Pro,MacBook Air and 2 IPhones and now having problem with Safari stalling at 25% load progress point in webpage download at a fairly high frequency. YOSEMITE REALLY SUCKS -- need to now figure out how to the MAVERICKS installed.

Meanwhile, I have another MacBook Pro - 11 Yr. old and 6 yr. old Safari and it is rock solid reliable and on average it's 3 times faster in loading (when compared to YOSEMITE when it's working that is). As a result, I had to download anothe r browser and as you would expect, I am not having these problems with anothe r browser.

Avoid YOSEMITE is you care an ounce about have a reliable Safari browser.

Thanks for wasting my time Apple -- now I got the hours/hours of trying to reload 4 devices with MAVERICKS.

I believe the issue has to do with using Safari via a Wi-Fi connection as when I turn on Wi-Fi on the Iphone's the problem seems to be resolved. Unfortunately it's not an easy option to disable Wi-Fi on the MacBook Pro's/Air as it wouldn't be much fun to connect up with an ethernet cable. It's not the Wi-Fi connection itself as it happens on all Routers in multiple locations and the 11 yr. old MB running 6 yr old Safari doesn't have the same problem.

By Justin on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - 02:38

I'm running 10.10.2 on a mid 2012 MBP with 8GB of ram, and an I7 processor, quad core by the way. I have personally had none of the safari loading issues, however the bug with appleVis page back navigation exists, it's no big deal, just reload the page and your back to working. The issue with loading the page at 25%, thats very interesting, as I haven't encountered this ever on a mac or an iPhone. No real huge bugs on my end of things here.

By Justin on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - 02:38

I'm running 10.10.2 on a mid 2012 MBP with 8GB of ram, and an I7 processor, quad core by the way. I have personally had none of the safari loading issues, however the bug with appleVis page back navigation exists, it's no big deal, just reload the page and your back to working. The issue with loading the page at 25%, thats very interesting, as I haven't encountered this ever on a mac or an iPhone. No real huge bugs on my end of things here.

By Ekaj on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - 02:38

For the most part these issues aren't happening to me either. I am running OS X 10.10.2 on my MacBook Air from mid-2013, with Safari version 8.0.3 . I just switched to Word echo and it's working just fine. In addition, the bug with characters being echoed and/or double-speaking when navigating with the arrow keys has been squashed. I am still experiencing the issue with the command to go back a page in Safari, but I can live with this bug as well. It's not a show-stopper. Refreshing the page with Command-R works fine. Safari is also loading faster on my end, despite my Internet connection being a bit screwy here and there.