Browser Compatibility
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What is the single most time consuming problem developers of websites face? Well for most I would say it is not creating the backend database, scripting ASP to perfection or getting your product search engine to work well. It is browser compatibility. Advice on this subject ranges from "create two sites, one for IE, one for Netscape" through to "screw Netscape, their users can go and download IE". Both of those "solutions" are simply not feasible in a business world. Creating two sites is one hell of a mission (what happens when the client decides to change one small thing which is on every page? double the time required because you effectively have two sites) and ignoring Netscape users (while a wonderful idea!) is not good business sense. So you ask "get to the point moron!" and I say: We need a compatibility forum where bugs are posted and fixes found. I personally can list over a hundred fixes for common Netscape/IE issues which we spent long hours figuring out.:-D regards, Paul Watson Cape Town, South Africa e: paulmwatson@email.com w: vergen.org
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What is the single most time consuming problem developers of websites face? Well for most I would say it is not creating the backend database, scripting ASP to perfection or getting your product search engine to work well. It is browser compatibility. Advice on this subject ranges from "create two sites, one for IE, one for Netscape" through to "screw Netscape, their users can go and download IE". Both of those "solutions" are simply not feasible in a business world. Creating two sites is one hell of a mission (what happens when the client decides to change one small thing which is on every page? double the time required because you effectively have two sites) and ignoring Netscape users (while a wonderful idea!) is not good business sense. So you ask "get to the point moron!" and I say: We need a compatibility forum where bugs are posted and fixes found. I personally can list over a hundred fixes for common Netscape/IE issues which we spent long hours figuring out.:-D regards, Paul Watson Cape Town, South Africa e: paulmwatson@email.com w: vergen.org
I agree, but you seem to be forgetting that there are actually more than two browsers! What about users of Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla, Links, ...
Of course either "create two sites" and "make everybody use MSIE" aren't valid solutions (Linux, BSD or Unix users can't use MSIE anyway), but making sites compatible only with MSIE and Netscape isn't really any improvement. A properly designed WWW site should be accessible with _any_ browser.
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I agree, but you seem to be forgetting that there are actually more than two browsers! What about users of Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla, Links, ...
Of course either "create two sites" and "make everybody use MSIE" aren't valid solutions (Linux, BSD or Unix users can't use MSIE anyway), but making sites compatible only with MSIE and Netscape isn't really any improvement. A properly designed WWW site should be accessible with _any_ browser.
Yes, you are totally correct. Of course in a perfect world all browsers would stick to standards and we would not have the problem in the first place. To be truthful, and probably annoy more than a few coders on this forum, I have to disregard those other browsers mainly because their market share simply is not large enough to make business sense. The cost of making a site work on all those other browsers far over-shoots the revenue that can be brought in from them. Users of Konqueror, Links etc will simply have to make do with some alignment issues, font size problems and javascript bugs. One thing I find interesting is how can Opera -a relatively small company is it not- trounce Netscape when it comes to standards? Microsoft may be big, bad and ugly but one cannot deny that their browser is in most respects better than the competition. So do you feel that a forum on compatibility is a good idea? ;P regards, Paul Watson Cape Town, South Africa e: paulmwatson@email.com w: vergen.org
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Yes, you are totally correct. Of course in a perfect world all browsers would stick to standards and we would not have the problem in the first place. To be truthful, and probably annoy more than a few coders on this forum, I have to disregard those other browsers mainly because their market share simply is not large enough to make business sense. The cost of making a site work on all those other browsers far over-shoots the revenue that can be brought in from them. Users of Konqueror, Links etc will simply have to make do with some alignment issues, font size problems and javascript bugs. One thing I find interesting is how can Opera -a relatively small company is it not- trounce Netscape when it comes to standards? Microsoft may be big, bad and ugly but one cannot deny that their browser is in most respects better than the competition. So do you feel that a forum on compatibility is a good idea? ;P regards, Paul Watson Cape Town, South Africa e: paulmwatson@email.com w: vergen.org
I can live with some appearance issues when browsing with Konqueror, but sites that completely refuse entry because I'm not using either of the two major browsers really make me :mad:
Microsoft may be big, bad and ugly but one cannot deny that their browser is in most respects better than the competition
Standards compatibility isn't one of those respects where MSIE is better, see e.g. results of Ian Hickson's browser test suites
I think we need more than two people interested in compatibility to start a new forum:)
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I agree, but you seem to be forgetting that there are actually more than two browsers! What about users of Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla, Links, ...
Of course either "create two sites" and "make everybody use MSIE" aren't valid solutions (Linux, BSD or Unix users can't use MSIE anyway), but making sites compatible only with MSIE and Netscape isn't really any improvement. A properly designed WWW site should be accessible with _any_ browser.
There is, in fact, a version of IE for Unix. "A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one." - Senator Palpatine