ASP.NET in Firefox

[Guest]

I've been developing ASP.NET 1.1 application, testing it in IE 6.0 on my
development machine. Of course, everything looks normal in IE as it should.
Well, since it's going to be released to cross-browser user base, I wanted to
see what it would look like in Firefox... well I am terrified how badly
firefox renders practiclly all the pages to the point where app is unusable
in firefox. I am not even sure where/how to begin addressing these issues.

I should note that that the web app is pretty much straight forward HTML
with a stylesheet, of course I am using server side asp controls but those
should produce cross-browser html.
Did anyone have simillar issues with Firefox?, your thoughts?
Thanks.

 

[gerry]

sorry charlie , but the fact of the matter is that the problem is with ie
and not with firefox - you will most likely find the same issues with every
other current browser as well.
with any css / scripting ie is the last browser that you should be testing
with , not the first.
if you get things working in virtually any browser other than ie , it will
work in virtually all browsers other than ie.
then you need to look at the work arounds required for acceptable
performance in ie.
hopefully ie7 with remedy this situation and it will just be a matter of
time until ie pre-v7 fade away into the sunset.

 

[Damien]

Replying to a reply, since I can't see the original

sorry charlie , but the fact of the matter is that the problem is with ie
and not with firefox - you will most likely find the same issues with every
other current browser as well.
with any css / scripting ie is the last browser that you should be testing
with , not the first.
if you get things working in virtually any browser other than ie , it will
work in virtually all browsers other than ie.
then you need to look at the work arounds required for acceptable
performance in ie.
hopefully ie7 with remedy this situation and it will just be a matter of
time until ie pre-v7 fade away into the sunset.

First things first - this is ASP.NET 1.1, which out of the box does a
*shocking* job with browsers other than IE. The first question is, have
you updated your browsercaps? If not (or if you don't know what I'm
talking about), go to http://slingfive.com/pages/code/browserCaps/ and
read about what you need to do (also talks about the problem of reading
the information about browsercaps in machine.config)

Once that's in place, then you can start fixing the rest using
additional styles in your stylesheets.

Damien

 

[Guest]

I don't really care whose fault it is. I looked at the html source of 1
particular page that firefox completely messed up rendering, it's nothing
more than a couple of nested tables with styles dictating cell colors, border
width colors, etc. And firefox messed it up beyond recognition. Now I do find
it strange that firefox chokes a simple html like that.
I am not sure if it's worth time or effort messing with html and browser cap
files to support firefox.

 

[gerry]

have you tried this same page in netscape , opera , konquerer , safari ....
my guess is that you'll find as many problems with these browsers as well.
as soon as ie and css are involved most problems you run into can be linked
to ie.

setting up your browser caps does go a long way to sorting out these
problems.
not worth the time ? cut and paste from
http://slingfive.com/pages/code/browserCaps/browserCaps_spaces.txt , for
example, into your web.config - that's it - maybe, what, 2 minutes tops ?

can you post a link to the page in question so we can see what this 'simple
html' actually look like ?
you're problem could be juat a small css or html modification, bit it is
impossible to say based on 'looks good in ie but firefox completely messes
it up - what do I do' .

 

[Christopher Reed]

For 1.1, except for IE6, all other browsers are treated as downlevel
browsers, meaning that the HTML rendered in these browsers is based on HTML
3.2 instead of HTML 4.0. With HTML 3.2, there is no CSS support.

I believe that you can use the ClientTarget property for the Page class to
force a browser to be uplevel, thus supporting CSS. Look at the MSDN
documentation for this property.

 

[Patrice]

AFAIK Firefox is not handled correctly by the initial browser capabilities
file (likely considered as an old Mozilla browser). You should find an
updated file on Google that will be able to better handle Firefox.

 

[Danny Tuppeny]

sorry charlie , but the fact of the matter is that the problem is with ie
and not with firefox - you will most likely find the same issues with every
other current browser as well.

IE is very forgiving with crap code. How is that a problem? The problem
is with the code, not the only browser capable of rendering it! ;o)

 

[gerry]

well , that was my point, you can't target & test exclusively using ie. and
then expect everything to work in other browsers.

but on belligerent side : therein lies the problem with a forgiving browser
that gladly accepts crap code while at the same time either mangling or
completely ignoring standards compliant html/css that every other current
browser on the market handles just fine.
you have a choice - a browser that can handle garbage code while mishandling
good code or a browser that can handle good code while mishandling the
garbage.

personally I would rather have a browser handle the good, standards
compliant code and choke on the garbage than one that handle some of bad
code and chokes on a lot of the good code.

imagine a c++ compiler that forgivingly allowed relapses into vb - what a
mess that would be.
and of course then all other c++ compilers would then be considered inferior
by your reasoning because they generated syntax errors when encoutering the
vb code.

 

[Laurent Bugnion]

Hi,

well , that was my point, you can't target & test exclusively using ie. and
then expect everything to work in other browsers.

but on belligerent side : therein lies the problem with a forgiving browser
that gladly accepts crap code while at the same time either mangling or
completely ignoring standards compliant html/css that every other current
browser on the market handles just fine.

To be fair, IE6 is much, much better at accepting standard code than its
previous versions. It is now possible to write HTML, JavaScript and
(though it is more difficult) CSS code that will work in a standard way
without too big an expense. Before, it was almost impossible, or needed
at best object detection, at worst browser detection.

I agree totally with you, though, when you say that the fact that IE
accepts non-standard code is a shame and a problem.

<snip>

Laurent