Update: iWeb 2.0.4 fixes this issue!

Wow! I certainly didn’t expect this to get picked up like it did - hopefully this will prod Apple into releasing a 2.0.4 to fix this properly. First, credit should go to:

1. •Daniel Furrer, who submitted the original HeaderControls and DetailView patches to Firefox’s bugzilla entry.
   

2. •Daryl Grunau, who provided the Comments patch in his blog.
   

All I did was wrap it up in an AppleScript and put it on MacUpdate. :-)

In short - if you want your iWeb sites to work in Firefox 3, then download this simple script to patch iWeb, and republish your site. This patch should fix:

1. •Photo album pages
   

2. •Photo slideshow pages
   

3. •Blog comments (version 1.3 and later)
   

Common issues:

1. •You may need to make a change to the affected pages (anything will do), or iWeb won’t upload new versions of them. This is especially important for users of .Mac (now MobileMe), as it only publishes changed pages. For photo pages, add a new picture, and for other pages add some new text. Save, undo the changes, and save again.
   

2. •Pages created in iWeb 1.x must be modified for this patch to work; otherwise they will continue to publish using the iWeb 1.x format and files, rather than the patched iWeb 2.0.3 files (thanks to Daryl Grunau for noticing this!).
   

3. •Some people have reported that the patch may not work if you have objects on the page with shadows added by iWeb. Try removing the shadows and republishing.
   

Firefox 3 is great, except for one thing...

So Firefox 3 has been unleashed on the world, and it packs a lot of good stuff - improved rendering, improved add-on management, better bookmark management, the “AwesomeBar”, and a new theme (okay, maybe not everything is quite as good).

One major problem, however, is that sites created in iWeb 2 (such as this one) are broken in Firefox 3. At least, the photo galleries are, and for a lot of us, that’s the most important thing to share.

Why did this happen?

So who is at fault, Firefox or Apple? Interestingly, neither. The problem originates in a common Javascript library called Prototype, which is used by many sites - including iWeb-generated ones. In a nutshell, they implemented a draft standard, and extended it in non-standard ways. When that standard was implemented in Firefox 3 their custom version was overridden, and thus sites using Prototype broke. Including every iWeb site out there.

Apple dodged this by allowing JavaScript to override native methods in Safari 3.1. A bit of a hack, but a good one to implement, at least in the short term. Firefox sees this as an evangelism issue - I think that’s a bit too idealistic. Most people will simply see that Firefox 3 breaks on a large number of sites, whereas every other browser works.

The Fix

In the meantime, there is a fairly simple fix, but it does require that every iWeb site be updated (and until Apple fixes it, that everyone hack their copy of iWeb in this fashion). Or, you can download this simple script which does the same thing, all point-and-click. Once iWeb is patched, any future sites published will be “fixed”.

Reference Links

Some sites that have mentioned this (that I know of):

Apple Discussions (from whence this all came about)

Terribly Poetic (who supplied the comments.js patch)

Ars Technica

Daring Fireball

TUAW

And just to summarize the background on the whole issue (originally reported to the Firefox team on 7/31/2007):

Firefox bug 390411 - Prototype.js

Firefox bug 405903 - iWeb (with the patched *.js files)

Prototype commentary