• (cs) in reply to jallred

    I've used all (read: many) of the major browsers starting from Netscape and IE 2.0. I like Galeon the best of all, with IE 6 as my second favourite. IE 7 and Opera are next. Mozilla, Netscape and Konqueror are at the bottom. Firefox is somewhere in the middle. That's just me, though. I don't think that one browser is objectively better or worse than another (except for Safari, Konqueror and Netscape 4.0 - those are objectively crap). Browser fights are funny.

  • (cs)

    When's the W3c going to make an official CSS property to draw a border that looks like a window, regardless of what OS you're using. The only thing worse than websites that do that are websites that try to be a different OS from the one I'm using?

  • (cs) in reply to MX5Ringer
    MX5Ringer:
    Me 4,

    Although from the screen shot it looks like you are using Vista, so perhaps it's a Vista thing? (Heaven forbid!!)

    Actually, I think it's IE6 with JS debugging enabled. I get the message on XP.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Barfy

    IE is standards compliant. Microsoft's corporate standards... W3C standards are nothing more but recommendations. W3C does not own the web or have an official say in how it is run, they are a non-profit that gives suggestions to make it easier to use. But just because Microsoft chooses to follow their own standards instead of W3C's does not mean that they are not standards compliant... they just aren't W3C compliant.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Jojosh_the_Pi
    Jojosh_the_Pi:
    For some of you people participating in "browser wars", could you at least please not use information that's two years old?

    Yeah. Do it like the US gov and make up new facts yourself!

  • S|i(3_x (unregistered) in reply to Welbog
    Welbog:
    Gecces:
    Welbog:
    I'm running IE and I don't get that message as a popup like that. I guess it only applies to "shitty IE", whereas I have the regular one.
    If you're running IE, you're running "Shitty IE". There are no exceptions!
    Bah to you. IE is fine.

    IE is fine if you only surf. With it's lack of support for modern standards and numerous implementation problems, it SUCKS as a web development platform.

  • wkempf (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    IE *is* standards compliant. Microsoft's corporate standards... W3C standards are nothing more but recommendations. W3C does not own the web or have an official say in how it is run, they are a non-profit that gives suggestions to make it easier to use. But just because Microsoft chooses to follow their own standards instead of W3C's does not mean that they are not standards compliant... they just aren't W3C compliant.

    Sorry, but when someone says "standards compliant" they mean it implements, fully and as near to correctly as possible (i.e. all software has bugs), an open specification. Arguments that the W3C isn't an actual standards body, like the ISO or ECMA, are pointless. And arguing that IE follows "corporate standards" just shows either a great lack of understanding, or a devious attempt to subvert the known meaning of the statement.

    I like IE. But as a professional developer, I have to agree with others when they complain that IE is not standard. To some extent, this is a developer issue. End users could care less. But when IE causes huge amounts of developer man hours needing to be spent in making a site run under both IE and compliant browsers, there's an indirect impact on end users as well.

    I dislike people over inflating the importance of IE's lack of compliance, because in comparison to other popular browsers, IE is the better product (again, I can't comment on Opera, so I won't). But I also dislike people who are supposed to be professional developers who tell me I shouldn't be upset that MS is lagging so far behind the W3C.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    The culprits is simply: 
    onmouseout="shitty_IE_needs_this"

    Not surprisingly, this also flags errors in Firefox, although not, for whatever reason, in Opera.

    If IE really needed some JavaScript handler there, I'd think "void(0)" would have been a better choice.

    As written in the page, the onmouseout doesn't even use a syntactically legal function call. Wouldn't matter if the function was present or not.

    And for all you other people that keep doing this in board postings: DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE AN ARGUMENT ABOUT WHICH BROWSER IS BEST? WE UNDERSTAND YOU DON'T LIKE INTERNET EXPLORER! OKAY?

    --Zealots teach me nothing new. Learn it, love it, live it.

  • Matt (unregistered)

    Personally, I don't care what browser people use. However, I've been responsible for leading the development of a number of very large e-commerce websites in the last few years and I've noticed a significant paradigm shift from the higher ups. THEY now understand that it takes longer to develop for IE then port to the other browsers than the other way around.

    So now, development takes place on Firefox and Safari with rudimentary checks on IE to see if it basically looks OK. It may even go live with a few bugs on IE. It's purely cost/benefit - it's much cheaper to develop that way - not a particular browser preference. We've even got to the point where if there's a show stopper on IE, customer service are trained to talk customers through installing Firefox.

    I suspect that this kind of thinking (and this is a large multinational I'm talking about here) is what prompted Microsoft to release IE 7 - which is better standards wise, but still poor for developers (where's the JavaScript console and the CSS debugger?).

  • Frymaster (unregistered) in reply to Matt

    Am I the only person who finds that if they write validating XHTML code and don't make assumptions about the default values of style attributes their site works the same in all browsers?

  • (cs) in reply to Welbog
    Welbog:
    Anon:
    cory:
    The real WTF is why you bastards are using IE and your techies!? Come on do us web developers a favor and stop using that crap browser so it'll eventually fall off the face of the earth.
    Seriously. If you people think IE is "Fine" you need to quit your tech job.

    You should not be doing anything that affects other people if you are so inept as to accept IE.

    I love browser fights. I love them soooo much. Everybody wins browser fights (except Safari)!

    Corporations still dictate what browser most people use - since I would bet that a large amount of browsing is done at work.

    Poor Safari. I never even gave it a chance... I went straight to Firefox with my Mac.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to dh
    dh:
    When I attended MTU oh so many years ago, students were highly encouraged not to use any 'unprofessional' words or statements anywhere in the code or, even worse, in the input/output of the program. You could expect huge deductions in your grade if you did so. Even mild language or silliness was treated very seriously. That teaching left a heavy impression on me to this day. Examples like this irritate me more than they amuse me. Fortunately, I rarely encounter such things in the companies I have worked for.

    Whatever. Profanity in the code is generally a bad idea, especially in the outputs, but being unprofessional is fine - I put stuff like 'ZOMG HAXX!' in debug statements and it's fine - easy to grep and easy to remember. We're professionals, but the profession isn't undertaking.

  • WTFNamingException (unregistered) in reply to wkempf
    wkempf:
    ...But when IE causes huge amounts of developer man hours needing to be spent in making a site run under both IE and compliant browsers, there's an indirect impact on end users as well.

    I don't think any browser is 100% perfect. But this comment does make me laugh considering how the tables have turned. For years and years we wrote websites that just worked in IE, and had to spend countless man hours getting the bastard thing to work in Netscape. Funny how it's all switched round, but yet it's exactly the same problem we always had! People just program to Mozilla now because it's "standards compliant". It's not much of a standard if it's only one rendering engine that implements it is it?

    CAPTCHA: burned. So true.

  • WTFNamingException (unregistered) in reply to Frymaster
    Frymaster:
    Am I the only person who finds that if they write validating XHTML code and don't make assumptions about the default values of style attributes their site works the same in all browsers?

    I guess you're probably not. Just goes to show that the "wasted man hours" that used to be on Netscape, and now are apparently on IE ( I don't know, I let libraries generate it all for me nowadays ), really stem from programming to a browser in the first instance rather than a known compatibility point. Only difference is that now there's no excuse for those wasted man hours since XHTML strict pretty much just works if you get it right. If you get it right... if you get it right.... (fade to black)

  • andy (unregistered) in reply to Welbog

    What the hell are you talking about? I mean, I enjoy the billable hours IE has provided me as I fix layouts to work with its awful rendering engine... but it's not fine.

  • (cs) in reply to andy

    Man, you guys are funny. I've been making websites for years (albeit non-professional ones), and I've never had a problem with cross-browser compatibility between IE and Firefox, even with experimental Javascript-heavy pages. I have trouble with Opera and KHTML browsers (not really browsers at all, if you ask me), yeah, but IE and the Mozillas have always been friendly to me. I'm going to have to assume that one of us has been doing it wrong this whole time and, since I'm not experiencing the frustration you are, it seems that I'm the one doing it right.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to WTFNamingException
    WTFNamingException:
    I guess you're probably not. Just goes to show that the "wasted man hours" that used to be on Netscape, and now are apparently on IE

    Not quite. In the past you coded for IE and you were lucky if it worked in anything else. Nowadays you code to standards compliance and you'll find that it works flawlessly in Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino, Konqueror etc etc, but not in IE. So instead of fixing for a whole bunch of browsers (or not even bothering to support them at all), you now only have to fix for one. It's simple economics really in terms of devloper man hours vs total target audience.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Welbog
    Welbog:
    Man, you guys are funny. I've been making websites for years (albeit non-professional ones), and I've never had a problem with cross-browser compatibility between IE and Firefox, even with experimental Javascript-heavy pages.

    You've obviously never bothered with CSS then. That's what causes most of the pain with IE, not the JavaScript.

  • (cs) in reply to S|i(3_x
    S|i(3_x:
    IE is fine if you only surf. With it's lack of support for modern standards and numerous implementation problems, it SUCKS as a web development platform.
    You mean IE is fine if you only ever use it with a limited-user account. (Not that any browser is entirely free of hijackings, especially with 3rd party plugins.)
  • (cs) in reply to Matt
    Matt:
    Welbog:
    Man, you guys are funny. I've been making websites for years (albeit non-professional ones), and I've never had a problem with cross-browser compatibility between IE and Firefox, even with experimental Javascript-heavy pages.
    You've obviously never bothered with CSS then. That's what causes most of the pain with IE, not the JavaScript.
    I haven't had any trouble with CSS, either. Mostly the trouble I have is z-indexing issues in Opera (can't z-index IFrames in Opera - don't ask why I tried 'cause you don't want to know) and similar issues in Konqueror. If you're trying to line up tags perfectly using CSS then yeah, you're going to get compatibility issues, but how different can they possibly be? I know IE handles transparency in a weird way, but what else is that different? (I'm asking seriously because I admittedly haven't tried that many things with CSS - I mostly work with Javascript in my experimentation.)
  • wkempf (unregistered) in reply to WTFNamingException
    WTFNamingException:
    wkempf:
    ...But when IE causes huge amounts of developer man hours needing to be spent in making a site run under both IE and compliant browsers, there's an indirect impact on end users as well.

    I don't think any browser is 100% perfect. But this comment does make me laugh considering how the tables have turned. For years and years we wrote websites that just worked in IE, and had to spend countless man hours getting the bastard thing to work in Netscape. Funny how it's all switched round, but yet it's exactly the same problem we always had! People just program to Mozilla now because it's "standards compliant". It's not much of a standard if it's only one rendering engine that implements it is it?

    CAPTCHA: burned. So true.

    It's not the only rendering engine that implements it. In fact, IE is the only rendering engine that does so poorly in implementing it. And things have "switched around" despite IE still being the dominant browser in the market, but a VERY significant margin. Why? Because the features IE fails to implement turn out to be features that are very important to designing a nice looking web site that's not full of hacks that take significant man hours to implement and maintain. It's easier to code to the standards than to code to IE, even if you're willing to use the IE extensions. That's significant.

  • dz (unregistered)

    This is great as I am right now creating the separate style sheet for IE.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Welbog
    Welbog:
    I haven't had any trouble with CSS, either. Mostly the trouble I have is z-indexing issues in Opera (can't z-index IFrames in Opera - don't ask why I tried 'cause you don't want to know) and similar issues in Konqueror. If you're trying to line up tags perfectly using CSS then yeah, you're going to get compatibility issues, but how different can they possibly be? I know IE handles transparency in a weird way, but what else is that different? (I'm asking seriously because I admittedly haven't tried that many things with CSS - I mostly work with Javascript in my experimentation.)

    It depends what you're trying to do. If you're using CSS for all the layout as it's designed to be used (as in not using tables for column layouts), then you can get in real trouble. For example, go look at the source to Slashdot, or any other site with a pure CSS layout. Notice the special CSS file for IE? That will be there to work around the inconsistencies in it's rendering engine. All the sites I've been involved with have required something similar. However, Slashdot renders exactly the same for me in Firefox, Safari, Konqueror and Opera using the default stylesheet. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

  • martin (unregistered) in reply to gwenhwyfaer
    gwenhwyfaer:
    MX5Ringer:
    I stumbled across a var named 'titfor' I tracked down the programmer responsible for it and asked him "What's a titfor"

    And did he reply "about £45 an hour"?

    Or, better yet, "tat"?

  • Shinobu (unregistered)

    I love a large part of the comments are about "which browser is better", while what we have here is a workaround for a bug that causes an error in a webpage that works perfectly if you choose to ignore errors. In other words, it appears to be a faulty workaround for a bug that doesn't exist.

  • jayoh (unregistered)

    fuck ie

  • Boink (unregistered) in reply to MX5Ringer
    MX5Ringer:
    Although from the screen shot it looks like you are using Vista, so perhaps it's a Vista thing? (Heaven forbid!!)

    What I want to know is...

    Why does the main window have an XP theme, yet the modal dialog has the vista glass effect?

  • Jason (unregistered)

    It works, look on the bottom left, you will see a exclamation mark, click on that and click show error, it'll display the same error message :D

  • (cs) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:
    Not First:
    nickfitz:
    You don't need the "Enable JavaScript debugging" setting - you will be notified of the error, but in a different-looking dialog and without the option to debug, if you just enable the "Show a message for every scripting error" option.

    The Real WTF™ is that this had to be pointed out. Call yourselves techies? Sheesh!

    Sadly, I was thinking the same thing.

    Seriously... I vote for this thread to be one of tomorrow's posts...

  • (cs) in reply to WTFNamingException
    WTFNamingException:
    wkempf:
    ...But when IE causes huge amounts of developer man hours needing to be spent in making a site run under both IE and compliant browsers, there's an indirect impact on end users as well.

    I don't think any browser is 100% perfect. But this comment does make me laugh considering how the tables have turned. For years and years we wrote websites that just worked in IE, and had to spend countless man hours getting the bastard thing to work in Netscape. Funny how it's all switched round, but yet it's exactly the same problem we always had! People just program to Mozilla now because it's "standards compliant". It's not much of a standard if it's only one rendering engine that implements it is it?

    CAPTCHA: burned. So true.

    It's not the only rendering engine that implements them.

    And that's not even counting the various browsers using those engines.

  • Jonno (unregistered) in reply to Boink
    Boink:
    MX5Ringer:
    Although from the screen shot it looks like you are using Vista, so perhaps it's a Vista thing? (Heaven forbid!!)

    What I want to know is...

    Why does the main window have an XP theme, yet the modal dialog has the vista glass effect?

    I believe the website is trying to look like an XP app.

  • (cs) in reply to villa
    villa:
    The real WTF is that he's using Windows Vista. Make that shitty Windows Vista.

    Aw, I was plannign to post that.

  • (cs)

    It appears fixed. Someone renamed the function to 'workaround_for_IE_turn_off_debug_mode', but didn't actually make into a function call. sigh Maybe they'll get it next time...

  • (cs) in reply to Gecces
    Gecces:
    Welbog:
    I'm running IE and I don't get that message as a popup like that. I guess it only applies to "shitty IE", whereas I have the regular one.
    If you're running IE, you're running "Shitty IE". There are no exceptions!
    What do you recommend that I run instead? Shitty Firefox?
  • (cs)

    Even bigger WTF: The author's comment on the fact that this is "necessary":

    Vlasta (2007-05-15): For those seeing "shitty_IE_needs_this" (or workaround_for_IE_turn_off_debug_mode) - the error is intentional and IE does NOT work without it. Turn off javascript debugging (this is the default anyway) or use Firefox or Opera, they do not need this workaround. Do not send me emails reporting the "problem" (but do send me an email if you find a better workaround ;-)).

    ...Worse than Failure?

  • (cs) in reply to villa
    villa:
    The real WTF is that he's using Windows Vista. Make that shitty Windows Vista.

    Make that shitty drivers (Nvidia!), and noobs who can't figure out how to turn off UAC.

    ......

    Why does a web app attempt to look like an old operating system? Good question. On a related note, why did half of all programs from '95 to '98 look like Windows 3.11 applications? I believe it took people until the 21st century to get rid of the old style buttons and controls.

  • danodemano (unregistered)

    I get: "workaround_for_IE_turn_off_debug_mode" with IETab in Firefox. In IE, I don't get anything when I mouse over it.

    I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit so I don't know...

  • Jon (unregistered) in reply to Not First
    Not First:
    The Real WTF™ is that this had to be pointed out. Call yourselves techies? Sheesh!
    alt+0153 = ™ (With the num pad, and preferably with num lock on.)
  • ChrisLively (unregistered) in reply to WTFNamingException
    WTFNamingException:
    Frymaster:
    Am I the only person who finds that if they write validating XHTML code and don't make assumptions about the default values of style attributes their site works the same in all browsers?
    I guess you're probably not. Just goes to show that the "wasted man hours" that used to be on Netscape, and now are apparently on IE ( I don't know, I let libraries generate it all for me nowadays ), really stem from programming to a browser in the first instance rather than a known compatibility point. Only difference is that now there's no excuse for those wasted man hours since XHTML strict pretty much just works if you get it right. If you get it right... if you get it right.... (fade to black)

    If more so called web developers understood what the DOCTYPE declaration was and how to use it most of them wouldn't have a problem with IE 6 or 7's css support.

    It amazes me how many "hacks" exist to force IE support, when if they just picked a proper doctype the browser itself would figure out which underlying engine to use for rendering. And yes, Firefox AND IE both contain different rendering systems which are fired depending on the web pages doctype. If you take the time to understand this, then picking the right one to have your site render identically in both browsers is easy.

    Also, for those who think IE 7 is not a "developer's" browser download the DebugBar plugin for IE; it is fantastic.

  • Ralesk (unregistered) in reply to Frymaster
    Frymaster:
    Am I the only person who finds that if they write validating XHTML code and don't make assumptions about the default values of style attributes their site works the same in all browsers?

    Ho yes, same here. Valid XHTML 1.0 helps with IE6 a lot — it too has a quirks and a “standards” mode, and even things like 

    margin: auto;
    work, as long as you leave out the xml version stanza (weird bug, that!).

    So yeah. There are some things that are utterly horrible, but oh well. Can sorta live with it.

    And Konqueror is fine. Does an excellent job in rendering, and really few are the websites I would need Firefox for.

  • Brianary (unregistered) in reply to poochner
    poochner:
    Why would I pay for Opera when Firefox mostly works? Other than leaking memory like a sieve, I mean. After you get enough plugins to make it useful, anyway. But I have to figure out which ones those are ...

    So how much is Opera again?

    What memory leaks? Perhaps you think RAM is better left pristine and untouched rather than used for cache. You can remove the memory from your machine if this is the case.

    What exactly does Firefox not do natively that you want? I can't think of much that Opera does that requires a Firefox plugin: wand, gestures, and speed dial.

  • Brianary (unregistered) in reply to chrismcb
    chrismcb:
    Gecces:
    Welbog:
    I'm running IE and I don't get that message as a popup like that. I guess it only applies to "shitty IE", whereas I have the regular one.
    If you're running IE, you're running "Shitty IE". There are no exceptions!
    What do you recommend that I run instead? Shitty Firefox?

    IE is the shitty Firefox.

  • (cs)

    There are two functions in gaim: goddamICQ and goddamnICQ2

    --ben

    (I don't remember the exact footprint, there may be _'s)

  • Jon (unregistered)

    I once wrote a JS function that removes all child nodes from an HTML DOM node. Without thinking about it much, I called it "killChildren".

    Some other function names I've encountered include kill, die, explode, implode, rend and stuff.

  • (cs) in reply to Barfy
    Barfy:
    wkempf:
    Options are limited. I've not run Opera, mostly because of the cost (yeah, I know it was (is?) free for a while), but the other options are either IE based (lame) or Mozilla based. And I spent the last 3 years of my life working on Mozilla technology, and trust me, IE is a MUCH better choice. The Mozilla renderer might be more standards compliant, but that's about the only thing it has going for it, and as a consumer of web pages, I could give a crap less about that.
    What good is a *browser* if is not standards compliant?
    The problem is we have no standard for how a web page is to be rendered. The W3C tried and failed miserably. I don't know of anything else that has even been proposed.
  • (cs)

    Well I don't get it, at least not with that wording.

    Apparently he changed the value to "workaround_for_IE_turn_off_debug_mode", but didn't fix the problem. And if you read the comments, apparently its supposed to do this.

  • Reaper (unregistered) in reply to Jon
    Jon:
    I once wrote a JS function that removes all child nodes from an HTML DOM node. Without thinking about it much, I called it "killChildren".

    Some other function names I've encountered include kill, die, explode, implode, rend and stuff.

    Be glad that you don't deal with Unix forked processes; you'd have to reap your zombie children.

  • (cs) in reply to Reaper

    Bah - religious wars in computing is getting tiresome, ranging from browser to OS to .... whatever.

    Just use whatever you think is best and then marvel quietly in the fact that you are vastly superiour to everybody else. Hate the fact that you can never get a debate going anymore without some fanatics coming and pushing their own agenda constantly. Some like IE, some like FireFox, some like Opera ... live with it.

  • (cs)

    IE is my favorite browser still (and appears to be for the majority of visitors if you check site statistics) - IE 6 that is. However, independend of your choice, if you are a webdeveloper you need to use all kinds of browsers regularly to test what you developped so it works.

    Apparently the developer for the site in question reads this forum and has changed the name of the function to "workaround_for_IE_turn_off_debug_mode".. If he/she does read this, please show us and change it to "workaround_for_IE_turn_off_debug_mode_Hello_to_WTF" :D

    Coditor

  • Stewart (unregistered) in reply to Boink
    Boink:
    MX5Ringer:
    Although from the screen shot it looks like you are using Vista, so perhaps it's a Vista thing? (Heaven forbid!!)

    What I want to know is...

    Why does the main window have an XP theme, yet the modal dialog has the vista glass effect?

    Maximised windows in Vista don't have the glass effect.

    (unless you install the 3rd-party program which makes them, vistaGlazz i think its called)

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