Peter Machell wrote: > On 03/06/2007, at 8:41 PM, Oliver Frank wrote: > >> From previous discussions on this list, I understand that Firefox >> conforms to international standards for Web browsers but that >> Microsoft Internet Explorer does not. Is this still correct? > > No, it's just not that simple. MS claimed that IE7 is more standards > compliant than Firefox at it's release date, but the CSS "support" in IE > still means popular web pages should be coded twice. > > The simple truth is this: If you code a web site according to WC3 > standards, it will look just fine in Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, > Safari, Camino, Omniweb and yes, even Netscape, but to make it look good > in IE you need to code it again. > > Anyone coding a site that works only in IE today is just lazy. They code > it once and it works fine in everything but IE. Then, rather than make > it work in all browsers, they hack it to bits to force it to work in IE.
Partly correct. The CSS implementation in IE6 (and IE7 to a lesser degree) is idiosyncratic, and the DOM (domain object model) used by Javascript in IE is different to all else. It is almost always possible to find a combination of HTML and CSS which achieves the desired layout and that works in both Firefox (and all else) as well as IE. Some trial and error may be needed, but a single solution can be found. If not, then the page layout being attempted is too complex for its own good anyway. For the Javascript/DOM incompatibility, the solution is to use only functions in one or more Javascript libraries which abstract out these differences. There are many such open-sourced libraries to choose from. Thus, one does not have to code everything twice for IE and Firefox, but one does have to think it through, and bother to test on as many versions of as many types of browser as possible - to do otherwise is just lazy and sloppy. And use an open-source Javascript library which looks after the IE idiosyncrasies for you, don't re-invent that wheel. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
