Firefox is not ready for primetime

[Aaron]

Nope, can't be true. All you have to do is go to a site that renders
badly in Opera, look at the tags, run IE to see what it does, and
duplicate the behavior in Opera. Time-consuming, yes, but the Opera
people could do this and handle the tags the same way. There can't be
thousands of non-standard renderings in IE or nobody's site would work
in Opera and Mozilla. It's probably no more than a couple dozen tags.

As you pointed out it's very time consuming and much more difficult than
you sugguest . I suspect you underestimate the subtle possible
interactions among the various elements in a website. You are after all
trying to play a game in which you don't have the rules and that is a
very difficult game to play. Say you notice that the table on a webpage
overflows slightly to the left. What exactly causes it? Could it be the
css? Maybe the various attributes in the <table> tag itself? How can you
be sure? You would have to run several "experiments" using IE to
disprove several hyptohesises, much like in scientific tests.

And at the end of it, you would never be sure if you are doing exactly
the same as MSIE. What you have is a couple of websites that render
exactly the same way, but you will never be sure if you really got the
right rules, or if you just got lucky with these sites you are testing.

And just look at the site the original poster was complaining about .How in
the world would you anticipate that even with such an error, the site would
render "correctly"?

In other words, you do a lot of work, and at the end of it you are not
sure if it really does "better".

And whenever MS updates it's browser, you have to do the same nonsense
all over again, surely you see it's absurd? You are expecting the people
at Opera to not only continue development of their own browser, but also
to keep up with the whims of MS.

 

[J44xm]

["Richard Steven Hack"; Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:52:46 GMT]

Trying to convince Web designers to code to standards instead of IE
when IE controls 95% of the market and does not render standard tags
properly is a hopeless lost cause.

How sad. Thanks!

 

[J44xm]

["Richard Steven Hack"; Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:52:46 GMT]

Trying to convince Web designers to code to standards instead of IE
when IE controls 95% of the market and does not render standard tags
properly is a hopeless lost cause.

You make excellent points, and I'm more confused than ever which browser I
should use. I've been using Firefox for a couple of weeks now, and I'm
getting it working pretty well. IE went against the rules of the game, and
I dislike that; but like you said, if 95% of the market essentially caters
to IE, maybe I'd just be better off using _it_. (With MyIE2, it can be
quite pleasant.) Firefox is safer, but I've got IE pretty well under
control.

But I imagine webmasters examining the data on about browser access to
their site, and I hate to show up as the vigilante IE than the by-the-
rules Firefox.

Sigh ... Is IE, with Windows, practically invincible?

 

[James A. Smith]

Use whatever works for you best.

But as my stats say over 90% of visitors are using IE 5 & 6 ,
6% spiders and everything else 4%.
When I have to choose from making it work with IE or Firefox guess
which I choose first?

Standards are great but mean little when not used some 90% of the time.

--
James A. Smith
http://www.jastek.net
To reply add "nospam" to the subject to bypass my spam filters.

["Richard Steven Hack"; Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:52:46 GMT]

Trying to convince Web designers to code to standards instead of IE
when IE controls 95% of the market and does not render standard tags
properly is a hopeless lost cause.

You make excellent points, and I'm more confused than ever which browser I
should use. I've been using Firefox for a couple of weeks now, and I'm
getting it working pretty well. IE went against the rules of the game, and
I dislike that; but like you said, if 95% of the market essentially caters
to IE, maybe I'd just be better off using _it_. (With MyIE2, it can be
quite pleasant.) Firefox is safer, but I've got IE pretty well under
control.

But I imagine webmasters examining the data on about browser access to
their site, and I hate to show up as the vigilante IE than the by-the-
rules Firefox.

Sigh ... Is IE, with Windows, practically invincible?

 

[R. L.]

As you pointed out it's very time consuming and much more
difficult than you sugguest . I suspect you underestimate
the subtle possible interactions among the various elements
in a website. You are after all trying to play a game in
which you don't have the rules and that is a very difficult
game to play. Say you notice that the table on a webpage
overflows slightly to the left. What exactly causes it?
Could it be the css? Maybe the various attributes in the
<table> tag itself? How can you be sure? You would have to
run several "experiments" using IE to disprove several
hyptohesises, much like in scientific tests.

That is largely true, however, I think we are really not
*that* far from there when you look at what Proxomitron does
with more advance customizable filters such at JD filters. I
wonder if some of the "not working pages" can be tested with
something like Proxomitron and its filters to see if it can be
coded to successfully loaded in Firefox - it will then be the
"blueprints". It seems to me that some of the rendering codes
may have already been out there in the Proxomitron regime.





--
RL
Unofficial Adaware Updater (+other goodies)
http://home.earthlink.net/~ringomei/page2.html
********************************
Pricelessware:
http://www.pricelessware.org,
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org,

 

[J44xm]

["James A. Smith"; Mon, 09 Aug 2004 04:37:55 GMT]

But as my stats say over 90% of visitors are using IE 5 & 6 ,
6% spiders and everything else 4%.
When I have to choose from making it work with IE or Firefox guess
which I choose first?

But if everything is written standards-compliant anyway, won't everything
work equally? (I'm somewhat ignorant of the mechanics of standards, so
forgive me.)

Standards are great but mean little when not used some 90% of the time.

Is there way to have IE identify itself as another browser -- in this
case, as Firefox? Doubtful.

 

[R. L.]

But as my stats say over 90% of visitors are using IE 5 & 6
, 6% spiders and everything else 4%.
When I have to choose from making it work with IE or
Firefox guess which I choose first?

That is in fact, bad. In fact, I am a Firefox but I often
need to "pretend" to be an IExporer to go into some site
because they don't let you in. So, I just decided to set to
always telling all the site it is IE that is coming not a
Firefox. Your site state of IE will include many if not all
Firefoxers.



--
RL
My freeware here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ringomei/page2.html
*note: new UAUpdater is still being worked on.
********************************
Pricelessware:
http://www.pricelessware.org,
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org,

 

[James A. Smith]

In fact my stats say about 2% Firefox/Mozlia.

I am not saying that standards are bad in anyway.
It's just when you know almost all of the visits your getting are from
people using IE your going to code more for that then for the browser doing
it "right".

And while I lean more towards everything looking/working good in IE I do
test to make sure that firefox and others can see/use most pages. Even if
they don't look just the same as in IE.

But spoofing what you do use just helps IE more as many webmasters won't try
and make their site work with anything else if they never see the need on
their stats.

 

[Susan Bugher]

That is in fact, bad. In fact, I am a Firefox but I often
need to "pretend" to be an IExporer to go into some site
because they don't let you in. So, I just decided to set to
always telling all the site it is IE that is coming not a
Firefox. Your site state of IE will include many if not all
Firefoxers.

What's needed now is a way to tell them that as you leave. . .

You *thought* I was using IE but I was *really* using Firefox. nah nah
nah

Susan

 

[Aaron]

That is in fact, bad. In fact, I am a Firefox but I often
need to "pretend" to be an IExporer to go into some site
because they don't let you in.

I really hate such sites. Espically if the site actually works okay in
other browsers. Design for IE all you want, do you really need to go out
of your way to piss off users of other browsers by using a browser
sniffing script??

 

[Aaron]

["James A. Smith"; Mon, 09 Aug 2004 04:37:55 GMT]

But as my stats say over 90% of visitors are using IE 5 & 6 ,
6% spiders and everything else 4%.
When I have to choose from making it work with IE or Firefox guess
which I choose first?

But if everything is written standards-compliant anyway, won't
everything work equally? (I'm somewhat ignorant of the mechanics of
standards, so forgive me.)

Leaving aside the fact that most sites are not standards-compliant (and
many are so on *purpose* by experts!) , your statement is true only if
all browsers decide to play by the same rules.

A site might comply with the standards , eg it is well formed, has all
the right tags, attributes etc. But Internet explorer might choose to
display it in manner X, when the standards say to display it in manner Y.

So a site might be completely W3c validated (standards compliant), but it
might still look different because a certain browser decided to break the
rules and display it only their way. Of course the webmaster might think
that said browser will displaying it the right way, and diss all others.

Is there way to have IE identify itself as another browser -- in this
case, as Firefox? Doubtful.

Proxomitron can do that. Perhaps might be a good idea really, since IE is
a target of so many exploits. Nah, dumb idea.

 

[James A. Smith]

I never said I used any such script and in fact I do not.
I said my design is based on what works/looks good for IE as that is the
browser most view my site with.

 

[MLC]

Hi _James A. Smith_,

I never said I used any such script and in fact I do not.
I said my design is based on what works/looks good for IE as that is the
browser most view my site with.

If your design were standards-compliant ALL the browsers could view it well.

Actually, you're thinking in the opposite direction: my code can be bad,
because IE can render it, and over 90% of visitors are using IE.

 

[J44xm]

["James A. Smith"; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 03:26:10 GMT]

I am not saying that standards are bad in anyway. It's just when you
know almost all of the visits your getting are from people using IE
your going to code more for that then for the browser doing it
"right".

So are you implying that if you don't code for IE, that your site will
somehow display incorrectly in IE? Otherwise, why just code for IE and not
everyone?

 

[Shane]

I started using Firefox two weeks ago. I love its speed and it eliminates
pop-up ads better than any pop-up blocker I have tried. But Firefox is
clearly not compatible with a whole bunch of websites and that's a darn
shame. I am told that the problem is that Microsoft broke some of the
standard HTML rules and the websites that use these non-standard
Microsoft-only rules will not display properly with Firefox. Does that
means that Microsoft wins the game? Why can't the brilliant programmers at
Firefox work around this? Maybe someday Firefox will be a better browser
but right now it's just not reliable for surfing unknown websites. I will
keep it on my computer and use it as my first choice for regular websites
that I know are compatible. But for web-surfing I must sadly return to the
definitely inferior, but always compatible, Internet Explorer.

Rip, NYC

The resaon that some of these sites don't work with other browsers is
becuae they don't have to. With IE having such a lead in the browser
wars. But some satistics show that this is starting to change and that
IE is lossing some of its lead over other browsers. Most people who
really understand compuers will not use IE becuase for lack of a better
word it is shit. (sorry if anyone was affened by me swearing) I would
say you must keep using FireFox if you want this to change. As more and
more people realize how bad IE is they will switch and as they do so
will webmaster who create websites that are IE specific. But really
webmaster should be making sites compatable with as many browsers as
possable so that they get the most hits and visitors they can.

 

[Klein]

The resaon that some of these sites don't work with other browsers is

becuae they don't have to.

The few important sites (to me) that FireFox would not work with DO work
when User Agent Switcher plug in is installed. One was a really picky
banking site, and FireFox now works fine with it when I change to the MSIE
user agent.

 

[Aaron]

The few important sites (to me) that FireFox would not work with DO
work when User Agent Switcher plug in is installed. One was a really
picky banking site, and FireFox now works fine with it when I change
to the MSIE user agent.

Time to complain then. A site that works fine with just a useragent string
change would imply that the bank is actively blocking other browsers for no
good reason.Easy enough for them to fix also anyway.