The browser of choice

[R.Daugherty]

The browser of choice

I plan on being one of the millions of Firefox downloaders real soon now (I don't use IE or Firefox, I use Netscape which I'm happy with, but will need a new one to use AJAX). But still, IE actually tracked up a shade recently, Firefox has stalled out or stabilized at a bit under 10% of share, according to the news I read. In the past dot com boom sites shamelessly required IE exclusively. Why? Not because they didn't want to handle variances in HTML, Javascript, CSS rendering, but because they were using IE's ActiveX, that is in real life, a Windows program downloaded by the browser. So all this happy talk about great things being done with a browser was just blatant bs. So finally ActiveX was such a security monster that I don't see the "You must have IE 5 to see our web site" anymore. Maybe they assume it, maybe not, but MS has made major league security changes with 7, which is great, but I still don't want to see any "You must have IE". Or it will be "You must not want my business". I don't know much about IE, but whatever rollover is sounds like Javascript to me, so the way the talk is going here is code to IE's HTML, Javascript, CSS nuances, which is almost back to the days of coding to their ActiveX. There's also Opera and the engine in Konquerer and Safari, so it's not just Firefox, but however ill defined there's something out there that a browser should work to, and it isn't whatever MS happens to be doing today, plus or minus a security patch or two. rd

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Now firstly I am not criticising MS, IE6 was once the technological leader. However, MS acknowledges that IE has bugs and is fixing those bugs for IE7. My point is that developers sometimes don't understand anything other than IE, and so exclude a part of the market. Nor am I criticising developers who make an informed decision, that they want to use a feature exclusive to IE and their market will not be affected, or the non-IE market share is not worth chasing. But, I am sure most people in this discussion would agree that excluding part of you market through lack of knowledge is not a good plan. I would also expect most people here to agree that telling a user to work with a bug just because every one else does, is not a way forward. A case in point is going to a page in IE7 beta or Firefox, as I have done, and be told to upgrade to IE5.5 or Netscape! Going back to the original complaint, that rollovers and other simple features didn't work in Firefox, well they do. Developers need to understand the issues of multiple browsers so that they can maximise the market share. The site I used to develop made a lot of money from every percentage point increase in users. I am sure we all like that :-)

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Ralph said: "So finally ActiveX was such a security monster that I don't see the "You must have IE 5 to see our web site" anymore." Well, yes and no. If you use ADP or ADI for time card software internally (to replace expensive time clocks) as thousands of companies do then you must use IE as these applications are ASP driven. Many of the largest companies in the world use these packages for their employee time clocks. There are many other examples of ASP driven software and that's probably why Firefox will never become mainstream in corporate America. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

zzypt said: "Going back to the original complaint, that rollovers and other simple features didn't work in Firefox, well they do. Developers need to understand the issues of multiple browsers so that they can maximise the market share. " That's all fine in the "theoretical world." But we don't live in that world where every site is developed for multiple browsers. Believe me, I'd be very happy using Firefox, if it worked properly. And that last phrase is the key. To me, the definition of "worked properly" is when I go to a site and I can see the data that I need to see and the pages are rendered in a way that is readable. I really couldn't care less what the developer of the web site did. If many of the sites I attend work fine in IE but not if Firefox then guess what browser I'm going to use. The really scary part is that had I not visited some of these sites recently with IE and known how they should work I'd never know that I was missing something. I'd only think that the site was just sparse or acting a little strangely. This is not a religion with me, I'll use what tool works best. In fact, I really miss the huge available list of plugins that I had added to Firefox to make my life easier. It's just a shame that it's still a "work in progress." Using Firefox is equivalent to using Califoronia Software's product to replace your iSeries. Yes it can do most of the things you want but it doesn't have it all. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

And, in fact, we use Mochasoft's TN5250 ASP product for emulation internally and it only works in IE. "Chuck Ackerman" wrote in message news:607A362096E10C343B5400281994B593@in.WebX.Wawy ahGHajS... > Ralph said: "So finally ActiveX was such a security monster that I don't > see the "You must have IE 5 to see our web site" anymore." > > Well, yes and no. If you use ADP or ADI for time card software internally > (to replace expensive time clocks) as thousands of companies do then you > must use IE as these applications are ASP driven. Many of the largest > companies in the world use these packages for their employee time clocks. > > There are many other examples of ASP driven software and that's probably > why Firefox will never become mainstream in corporate America. > > chuck > Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. >

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Chuck, I agree, sort of. My view is, I prefer Firefox and I wonder why companies don't think my money is good enough for them. Actually I don't worry that much, I just move on. If I am confronted by a stubborn page that I must negotiate then I run IE, if I can find a Windows machine. So just as I make a choice, so does a business, I choose Firefox, they choose to ignore me, I can live with that :-)

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

zzypt, I don't think the companies aren't regarding your money. I think they are making assumptions. For example, we had a new web page for one of our ecommerce sites. Everything looked fine. We had nice "dropdown" menus that showed extra options when you hovered over a menu item at the top. Looked great. I tried it in Firefox and the dropdown boxes had a transparent background instead of a solid one making them hard to read. They also had strange graphic characters instead of bullet points on the menu. There was nothing strange about how these menus were created, but the programmers had to reprogram them not using as nice of menus to make it work properly in FF. It's unfortunate, but that's the extra amount of work and resources required to support a product that doesn't perform as the world expects it to. It reminds me of the early days of PC clones when you went out on a limb buying a clone because some of your applications didn't work. How was this solved? Did the applications change? No, the clone makers got better at getting BIOSes that were identical. That's how this will end up. Firefox will get better at emulating what IE does and then they'll gain more acceptance. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "zzypt" wrote in message news:6b34235a.20@WebX.WawyahGHajS... > Chuck, > I agree, sort of. My view is, I prefer Firefox and I wonder why companies > don't think my money is good enough for them. Actually I don't worry that > much, I just move on. If I am confronted by a stubborn page that I must > negotiate then I run IE, if I can find a Windows machine. So just as I > make a choice, so does a business, I choose Firefox, they choose to ignore > me, I can live with that :-)

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Hi, In IMHO the way to develop pages is to do it to standards, checking it in a modern browser like FF, Safari etc. then add the known fixes for IE. I say this because IE is less compliant with standards than the newer browsers, but IE7 will fix many of the known bugs. Now I know some think that web standards are a bit "take it or leave it", but let me play out a scenario for you. If you are supplying an XML file to a number of customers who all say they agree to a schema, then when you send the file your customers say it doesn't work. You find out it is because your customers don't comply to the schema after all but instead work to a variation that IBM used 5 years ago. Now you know IBM are going to start using the correct schema soon, but in the mean time you have a choice to make. Do you suppply an XML file that works to the schema and to the "old rules"? Now in web terms, more people will move to a standard browser when IE7 arrives, so developers need to understand if their site works with that, because it will dominate the market soon and a lot of IE only sites will fail on IE7. As I said before, I have already seen a message telling me to upgrade IE7 beta to IE 5.5!

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

zzypt said: "I say this because IE is less compliant with standards than the newer browsers," In the world of business, the dominant player sets the standards, not a committee of beaurocrats in Switzerland. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Chuck Ackerman wrote: > I've been using Firefox for about 2 weeks and eventually had to give > it up. Yes, I loved those tabs, kept everything neat. Yes, I felt > safer. But, dang it, it simply didn't render many pages properly. > It didn't handle CSS very well and some pages were completely > unreadable. Almost a 180 from our experiences. Almost 2 years ago I made the edict that everyone was to switch to FF and to use IE only if the website demanded it. Noone has complained nor expressed a desire to go back to IE. Bill

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Bill, As you can see by my earlier posts we found that some things were simply just missing. Unfortunately we only knew it was missing because we saw the information when in IE. That jives with your users not complaining since they don't even know when a site has things they can't see. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "Bill" wrote in message news:1CE5A166ED5F733CE912ABA47579D817@in.WebX.Wawy ahGHajS... > Chuck Ackerman wrote: >> I've been using Firefox for about 2 weeks and eventually had to give >> it up. Yes, I loved those tabs, kept everything neat. Yes, I felt >> safer. But, dang it, it simply didn't render many pages properly. >> It didn't handle CSS very well and some pages were completely >> unreadable. > > Almost a 180 from our experiences. Almost 2 years ago I made the edict > that everyone was to switch to FF and to use IE only if the website > demanded it. Noone has complained nor expressed a desire to go back to > IE. > > Bill > >

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Chuck Ackerman wrote: > As you can see by my earlier posts we found that some things were > simply just missing. Unfortunately we only knew it was missing > because we saw the information when in IE. That jives with your > users not complaining since they don't even know when a site has > things they can't see. Can you give me an example of a website where FF is missing information? I'd really like to check it out. Bill

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

I did in my original post. www.excelsystems.com There's a dark blue bar just below the BCD logo that has 3 areas: Application Development, Business Intelligence, and Utilities. In I.E. when you hover over any one of those words a sub-menu appears in the grey bar below them. In Firefox, when I hover over them nothing appears in the grey bar below those words. Since Firefox broke the integrity of the site I have not trust that it can render a site properly. In fact, Firefox didn't notify me that it couldn't do the job, it just ignored the things it couldn't do. I can't trust a product that does that. Why Firefox doesn't do it doesn't matter. I just want the site to work. I don't want to hear that Excelsystems is using some "off the wall" bug that only I.E. renders properly. The guys at Excelsystems are too smart for that. I believe that Mozilla has an immature product. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "Bill" wrote in message newsE622F8DEC169FB8F7B15BF8251842AE@in.WebX.WawyahGHaj S... > Chuck Ackerman wrote: >> As you can see by my earlier posts we found that some things were >> simply just missing. Unfortunately we only knew it was missing >> because we saw the information when in IE. That jives with your >> users not complaining since they don't even know when a site has >> things they can't see. > > Can you give me an example of a website where FF is missing information? > I'd really like to check it out. > > Bill > >

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

Chuck is correct that IE6 is the defacto standard, but MS themselves describe it as buggy. It is for a business to decide which browsers to support and Chuck is right that IE6 is the place to start, but the bugs are known and can be accomodated. There are many pages which don't render correctly in IE6, but do in FF and will in IE7. In the case of Excel Systems the menus don't appear due to a Javascript that tries to detect the browser but then gives the wrong style to FF thinking it is the old Netscape browser. Microsoft have issued guidelines on browser detection to accommodate the older versions of IE, so that developers can allow for it's bugs, although it comes with this warning: "If you must detect the browsers that view your Web sites, follow effective practices: plan for future browser releases, convert values appropriately, and design code to fail gracefully. Doing so will reduce the long-term maintenance of your site and help ensure that your site functions properly when viewed with newer versions of Internet Explorer and other browsers.". http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/a...rdetection.asp Another quote from Microsoft (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...css_compat.asp) "Many of the issues around CSS parsing and display present in Internet Explorer 6 are well documented on sites such as www.quirksmode.org and www.positioniseverything.net. In the case of CSS used for IE, we believe we are making the right decision by fixing bugs present in IE6 under strict mode even when this results in a change in rendering for pages. "

[Guest.Visitor]

The browser of choice

zzypt, You make arguments explaining how to properly design a web page for multiple browsers. That's good advice. My argument is this: It's clear that web sites don't design properly for multiple browsers. As a consumer it's pretty simple I want to see the pages rendered properly. Firefox doesn't do it as well as IE 7. The choice is obvious, at least to me. This isn't a religion. It's practical. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "zzypt" wrote in message news:6b34235a.28@WebX.WawyahGHajS... > Chuck is correct that IE6 is the defacto standard, but MS themselves > describe it as buggy. It is for a business to decide which browsers to > support and Chuck is right that IE6 is the place to start, but the bugs > are known and can be accomodated. There are many pages which don't render > correctly in IE6, but do in FF and will in IE7. > > In the case of Excel Systems the menus don't appear due to a Javascript > that tries to detect the browser but then gives the wrong style to FF > thinking it is the old Netscape browser. Microsoft have issued guidelines > on browser detection to accommodate the older versions of IE, so that > developers can allow for it's bugs, although it comes with this warning: > "If you must detect the browsers that view your Web sites, follow > effective practices: plan for future browser releases, convert values > appropriately, and design code to fail gracefully. Doing so will reduce > the long-term maintenance of your site and help ensure that your site > functions properly when viewed with newer versions of Internet Explorer > and other browsers.". > <http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/a...rdetection.asp> > > Another quote from Microsoft > (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...css_compat.asp) > "Many of the issues around CSS parsing and display present in Internet > Explorer 6 are well documented on sites such as www.quirksmode.org and > www.positioniseverything.net. > In the case of CSS used for IE, we believe we are making the right > decision by fixing bugs present in IE6 under strict mode even when this > results in a change in rendering for pages. "