# Safari utf8 fix - why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [December 3, 2005, 12:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393 "2005-12-03T12:05:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ij.list)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2005, 12:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393/1 "2005-12-03T12:05:24Z")
Hello! Could somebody direct me to the explanation of Safari UTF8 fix in browser\_filters plugin, namely WHY we need that? For what version of Safari etc… There is a mention of a Safari bug on the wiki, but nothing specific, and google tells me nothing, and plugin code is silent, too… I ask because I am working on an app which sometimes returns some JavaScript code in xmlhttprequest response and this Safari fix breaks the strings inside the code. This application also uses form\_remote with Ajax helpers, and I had no problem with various strange characters before the fix (MacOSX 10.4.3, Safari 2.0.2). I know for sure, because these characters are now encoded and break my javascript code, but not results of my forms (without plugin both work OK). Does an application need this fix if users are guaranteed to run latest Safari? izidor ---
**Author:** ![ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ij.list)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 4:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393/2 "2005-12-04T04:44:20Z")
On 3-dec-2005, at 11:34, Izidor J. wrote: > Hello! > > Could somebody direct me to the explanation of Safari UTF8 fix in > browser\_filters plugin, namely WHY we need that? For what version > of Safari etc… > I think it’s for versions of Safari older than 2.0, and what it does > is it replaces all the “higher” characters (above ASCII range) that > are UTF-8 chars into their decimal entity equivalents (थ) I assume the JS parser in Safari barks on those, but I need to make some tests to verify it. I think the problem sums up to the fact that older versions of Safari always assume AJAX responses to be ISO-encoded UNLESS they contain an xml prolog with charset in it. However, inserting an XML prolog most likely make Safari try to parse it accordingly. I also had problems with this on Firefox (albeit of different kind) - the thing is XMLHTTPRequest looks to be _meant_ to transport, well, XML, and browsers look for the prolog. So there are a few fixes to try, I think: 1. try to exclude all script tags from the entity encoding 2. try to wrap the response into a bogus XML container or perpend a prolog to it (that’s what I was doing recently instead of reencoding the response): response.body =’\’ + response.body 3. and of course test thoroughly on Panther > no problem with various strange characters before the fix (MacOSX > 10.4.3, Safari 2.0.2). I know for sure, because these characters > are now encoded and break my javascript code, but not results of my > forms (without plugin both work OK). > > Does an application need this fix if users are guaranteed to run > latest Safari? I think it doesn’t, but not that many users will install Tiger (which is the only way to get to Safari 2). ---
**Author:** ![ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ij.list)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 10:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393/3 "2005-12-04T22:47:07Z")
On 4-dec-2005, at 20:45, Izidor J. wrote: > quite obvious result, but I did the testing anyway). > > If you can guarantee that your Apple users have latest Panther or > greater (or Safari 1.3 or greater), than you do not need this fix… > > Or you can add checking into fix-code: besides string ‘AppleWebKit’ > check also the AppleWebKit version number according to \ [developer.apple.com/internet/safari/uamatrix.html](http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/uamatrix.html)\>. Thanks Izidor, this seems a lovely research! I wonder what is a better fix for the problem for the old Safari’s though - prepend the prolog or convert all into entities. Can you test these two approaches if you have access to a Panther box somewhere? – Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov me at julik.nl ---
**Author:** ![ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ij.list)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 5:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393/4 "2005-12-04T05:00:30Z")
On 3-dec-2005, at 11:34, Izidor J. wrote: Yes I forgot to mention that the bug itself is that Safari 1.x ignored the charset directive embedded in the header of the response recieved via AJAX. – Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov me at julik.nl ---
**Author:** ![ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ij.list)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 8:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393/5 "2005-12-04T20:48:23Z")
On Dec 4, 2005, at 4:41 AM, Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov wrote: > Yes I forgot to mention that the bug itself is that Safari 1.x > ignored the charset directive embedded in the header of the > response recieved via AJAX. Thank you for the answers. They really helped to start and focus my research. And this is what I found through testing: Safari 2.0 and 1.3 both behave correctly (since they share the same WebKit, it seems like quite obvious result, but I did the testing anyway). This means that Apple users with Mac OS X 10.3.9 or greater are not affected by this bug, because Safari was upgraded to 1.3 in Mac OS X 10.3.9. But if you have Mac OS X 10.3.8 with default Safari, which is 1.2.4, or smaller, this bug still bites you (verified for 10.3.8 with Safari 1.2.4, probably holds for lesser versions, too). So users with latest Panther and Tiger upgrades are OK, Jaguar and previous are not. If you can guarantee that your Apple users have latest Panther or greater (or Safari 1.3 or greater), than you do not need this fix… Or you can add checking into fix-code: besides string ‘AppleWebKit’ check also the AppleWebKit version number according to \. izidor ---
**Author:** ![ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@ij.list](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ij.list)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2005, 10:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/safari-utf8-fix-why/49393/6 "2005-12-05T10:31:42Z")
On Dec 4, 2005, at 10:44 PM, Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov wrote: > Thanks Izidor, this seems a lovely research! I wonder what is a > better fix for the problem for the old Safari’s though - prepend > the prolog or convert all into entities. Can you test these two > approaches if you have access to a Panther box somewhere? Well, for the test to be meaningful, you need to find the lowest version of Safari that works (or, the highest that doesn’t work) with a given fix. Since I only have access to Mac OS X 10.3.8, the result would not be useful, because what about 10.3.0 or 10.2 users ? I think that the convert-to-entities fix is good solution. If somebody sends pure JavaScript code in responseText and then eval()'s that (that’s what I do), then you just need to exclude the after\_filter for that particular method (or make sure your javascript code is ascii only). izidor