Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| reply to KoolMoe
Re: Great
said by KoolMoe  :
Or...
maybe if all designers made all their pages standards compliant so almost every site on the net wouldn't render correctly in IE - perhaps MS would finally be forced to get their act together and abide by the standards?
Having a standards compliant site and having it work in IE aren't mutually exclusive. I'm working on a redesign right now of my company's site and I'm making it fully XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS compliant. There are a few quirks that have to be addressed here and there to accommodate IE, and I need to use JavaScript where I wouldn't need to with FireFox, but that doesn't mean that my site won't be compliant.
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TheMadSwede
Premium
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Holland, MI
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| reply to KoolMoe
said by KoolMoe :
Or...
maybe if all designers made all their pages standards compliant so almost every site on the net wouldn't render correctly in IE - perhaps MS would finally be forced to get their act together and abide by the standards?
Are you serious? Would your business be willing to have a (at best) weird or (at worst) non-functional site for a few weeks just to make a point?
I think things like mortgages and food are a bit more important than sticking it to Microsoft.
--
Bipartisan politics has become a tallest midget contest. |
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Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| reply to Combat Chuck
said by Combat Chuck :
Here's the deal:
-from my experience IE will render pertty much everything, compliant or non-compliant
-"compliant" browsers( by which I mean non-ie because many of the "compliant" browsers aren't actually fully compliant) render varing levels of non-compliant code.
The problem is that IE doesn't support a lot of code that is standard. For example, according to standards, any element can utilize the hover pseudo-class. This can allow you to create roll over effects without the use of any JavaScript. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer only supports :hover on links. This means that developers have to resort to JavaScript to support IE.
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justin
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| reply to Combat Chuck
IE has a number of outright html rendering bugs - where it does the wrong thing with the right html. the workarounds have been there for so long that people forget they are workarounds and assume that is just the way it should be.
as for browsers that try to do the right thing with bad html, yes, sure, but I'd prefer the browser made it clear that it was guessing. That isn't "vomit", that is promoting standards compliance. IE places equal emphasis on bad code as good code - to IE, there are just two (or more) ways to do the same thing.
html has to be unusually broken now to cause opera or firefox to not display anything useful vs IE displaying a good page. The list of sites that are unusable without IE are down to a vanishingly small percentage. |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
| reply to KoolMoe
said by KoolMoe :
Or...
maybe if all designers made all their pages standards compliant so almost every site on the net wouldn't render correctly in IE - perhaps MS would finally be forced to get their act together and abide by the standards?
Here's the deal:
-from my experience IE will render pertty much everything, compliant or non-compliant
-"compliant" browsers( by which I mean non-ie because many of the "compliant" browsers aren't actually fully compliant) render varing levels of non-compliant code.
I've been asking for about a year now, why is a browser that vomits when digesting non-compliant code better than one that handles it seamlessly? I'll answer for you it's not. And I guarantee that the things that IE does not comply to would be added fairly quickly if webmasters started using them.
IE does not write non-compliant html; webmasters do. Lets place the blame where it is due.
--
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nixen
Rockin' the Boxen
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| reply to Jason Levine
said by Jason Levine :
Of course, once they gained dominance, Microsoft made the exact same mistake that Netscape made: They all but stopped improving IE. So while the standards shifted, IE didn't keep up and is now out of date. Of course, it's still more standards compliant than Netscape 4.
Yeah, but at least NS4 had roaming profile support. That's been an open RFE since like 2000. It's never gotten solved since noone could agree how to reimplement it into the new Mozilla code.
-tom
--
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Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| reply to nixen
said by nixen :
IE, on the other hand, simply DOESN'T, or at least, doesn't conform to updated standards.
I think that's the best point. IE 6 hasn't been updated in too long. When IE 6 was first released, it was the most standards compliant browser around. The major alternative was Netscape 4 which supported virtually no CSS.
IE 6 rightfully gained market share while Netscape first tried to develop a new version, then scrapped it to start over, then got buried in coding for the next few years. For all intents and purposes, Netscape let their browser languish while Microsoft took off. (Yes, there's also the issue of bundling, but IE5 and IE6 were vastly superior to Netscape's offering at the time.)
Of course, once they gained dominance, Microsoft made the exact same mistake that Netscape made: They all but stopped improving IE. So while the standards shifted, IE didn't keep up and is now out of date. Of course, it's still more standards compliant than Netscape 4.
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KoolMoe
Aw Man
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| reply to TheMadSwede
Or...
maybe if all designers made all their pages standards compliant so almost every site on the net wouldn't render correctly in IE - perhaps MS would finally be forced to get their act together and abide by the standards?
Sure, lots of folks would be mad for a few weeks, but I suspect most would finally switch to a complaint browser once enough sites replied to their rants with 'use a complaint browser'.
Boy, that would scare MS poopless...
KM
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Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| reply to nil
said by nil :
Anyway back on topic, I think you'll be hard pressed to find a browser that offends more than IE when it comes to following standards.
Netscape 4. 
Or did you mean recently released browsers? 'Course, if you did, that would eliminate IE also.
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TheMadSwede
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| reply to nil
said by nil :
said by TheMadSwede :
er...nice er...but er...why er...do er...browsers er...not all er...follow er...standards.
er.
That's cute.
Anyway back on topic, I think you'll be hard pressed to find a browser that offends more than IE when it comes to following standards.
Thanks.
If you think I'm claiming that IE is compliant, I'm not. But I am saying that browser compliance doesn't mean a lick to users; they want their browser to work. The more browsers the users use, the more browsers we need to develop for -- that is, until all browsers only comply with uniform standards.
Since all browsers don't comply with uniform standards, it's a pain in the rear.
Anyhow, I must not have done a good job of 'splaining myself, but my complaint is against browsers that don't comply, all the while recognizing that the #1 browser that people use does not comply, but still must be developed for because it's the #1 browser that people use.
Whether or not IE is compliant is irrelevant. People use it, you have to consider it.
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ariez
join:2004-01-09
00000 | reply to sporkme
didn't know that. used 4.79 for years (as primary browser) and still do at times but as a secondary |
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nil
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| reply to TheMadSwede
said by TheMadSwede :
er...nice er...but er...why er...do er...browsers er...not all er...follow er...standards.
er.
That's cute.
Anyway back on topic, I think you'll be hard pressed to find a browser that offends more than IE when it comes to following standards.
--
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sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
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| reply to ariez
said by ariez :
what was wrong with netscape 4?
Really, really crappy CSS support. As in, feed it something that is to spec and the browser crashes.
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nixen
Rockin' the Boxen
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| reply to TheMadSwede
said by TheMadSwede :
I guess my point is that I'd LOVE to develop on pure standards like CSS2, etc. etc.; however, if even 50% of the browsers aren't compliant, then my work magically doubles.
Currently, about 91% of the browsers aren't compliant.
-tom
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justin
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| reply to TheMadSwede
if the point of the article is that IE is losing its market share, and your point is that standards non-compliant browsers are a PITA, then you should be happy because one of the biggest contributers to standards-ignorance is sliding down the market share scale. |
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TheMadSwede
Premium
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Holland, MI
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| reply to justin
said by justin :
Anyway the point is practically moot.
I thought one of the points of the article was that perhaps it's becoming un-moot. Which is why I'm whining like a big baby about this.
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justin
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| reply to TheMadSwede
said by TheMadSwede :
There's no point in writing to standards that browsers ignore.
The biggest offender has been IE. They should set the example, not show others how to dodge standards.
Anyway the point is practically moot. IE has hardly changed a jot in 5 years! having achieved what it thought was a stranglehold, and bundled the browser into the OS, microsoft simply stopped advancing its features. So as the world becoming insecure due to extreme homo-geniality, we also got hardly any improvements, because microsoft had other fish to fry with its free cash. |
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TheMadSwede
Premium
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·Charter Pipeline
| reply to nixen
I guess my point is that I'd LOVE to develop on pure standards like CSS2, etc. etc.; however, if even 50% of the browsers aren't compliant, then my work magically doubles.
There's no point in writing to standards that browsers ignore.
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Bipartisan politics has become a tallest midget contest. |
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ariez
join:2004-01-09
00000
| reply to Jason Levine
said by Jason Levine :
It's not like there's a sudden resurgence of Netscape 4. *shudder*
what was wrong with netscape 4? |
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nixen
Rockin' the Boxen
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| reply to TheMadSwede
said by TheMadSwede :
Just what web developers need. More browser fragmentation.
I wish these companies would just stick to standards, regardless of the branding of the browser.
bah.
You know, that might actually be a valid point....
If it weren't for the fact that browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc. strive to be standards compliant. That is to say, so long as you code to established standards, your pages will render the same in any given browser.
IE, on the other hand, simply DOESN'T, or at least, doesn't conform to updated standards. And, the things that it doesn't support, tend to make developing basic content more time consuming (read expensive) and more restricted to just that browser. If anything, IE is the source of fragmentation at this point (shocking, eh?).
-tom
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