Hi Dilwyn,
Right, are you wearing your flame-proof suit, Norman?
No! Should I be? I'm only ironing, nothing dangerous! ;-)
But IE9 does not work on Windows XP machines.
Indeed. Plus, I have IE8 running in an XP emulator and while the Beta
wouldn't display my web site properly, the production version can! Great
Joy!
Well, I use IE8 and Firefox 3.6.16 and there are plenty of websites I
visit from time to time which fail to display as intended on one browser
or the other (mainly IE8 I hasten to add, though not always by any means).
I have very few difficulties with Firefox 3.3.16 - the latest version 3.
Version 4 is available now, in Release Candidate mode.
I have just spent an hour or two trying to figure out why a page on a
site I maintain for a local craft association failed to display properly
on Firefox - a table got its columns a bit scrambled. I am not sure what
the problem was - I redid the page in a slightly different way and the
problem eventually went away, but I didn't keep a copy to examine why.
Using comment markers in table cells MAY have been the problem, but I am
not sure.
It's a shame you didn't keep a copy. Actually, I'm surprised you didn't.
Making changes to a "live" web site is dangerous. My stuff is backed up
daily and the Wiki software keeps "n" old versions - just in case.
My own web page doesn't display correctly using IE 6 and neither does
the Quanta web page.
I am surprised anything displays correctly in IE6!
Well, as a matter of fact, the amusing thing is, the applications we
have at work, written for browser use, are all written in such a way
that they h ave bugs built in to cope with the bugs in IE6.
Still, it used to be IE 5.5 and when we (the government) upgraded to IE
6.0, we have to get the vendors to build in different bugs to make the
system work with IE 6. Go figure!
Nothing works with Firefox at work. Or Opera etc. We haven't even begun
to think about trying Chrome!
It isn't just the Quanta home page that fails when using IE8 for me - I
have great difficulties with the Typo3 CMS when trying to edit the pages
via IE8. It is much easier (and seems to be faster, though that is
probably subjective) when using Firefox.
I suspect the problem is because the CMS uses an on screen editor to
generate content. That is working inside a web page itself and probably
using CSS. Hence, IE (whatever version) with its CSS problems, can't
work with the editor properly. Just a hunch - I obviously don't know.
While I would be the last person on this planet to stand up for
Micro$oft,
You only stand up just before you throw another PC running Windows out
the window! ;-)
> the plain home truth is that the majority of Windows users
still use Internet Explorer of one version or another, despite its
"faults".
As of two months ago, the most used browser in all of Europe was Firefox
3. See
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/firefox-3-0-is-europe-s-most-popular-browser-588938
- so unfortunately it seems as if all those Windows users are catching
on to quality products and no longer being spoon feed mush by Microsoft.
> To say that to your website visitors is laziness in many ways,
as you are failing to ensure your website works for the majority.
No, my website actually works for the majority. My site is based on a
product that produces Web Standard HTML and CSS. It's not my fault that
the people too lazy to get a proper browser (oops!) decide to stick with
a broken one. One that has butchered web standards and now, the cows
have come home to roost. (Cows? Roosting? Who's got the chickens then?)
Given that Firefox is the most used browser plus the fact that there are
other standards compliant browsers such as Opera, Chrome, Safari and so
on, even Konqueror on Linux is a better browser, standards wise, that
IE, then IE is in the huge minority.
However, using modern web page editing software often produces code
which is very hard or impossible to study and recode by hand, so this
tends to become unavoidable sometimes.
Yes, it may be difficult to recode by hand, but it is *standards
compliant*. Almsot nothing that M$ do is standrd. Even their version of
C++ is standards broken.
You do know, for example, that the web standard for email is plain text.
So why then do Microsoft set their email clients up with default that
send emails in bloody HTML. It takes masses more bandwidth and gives
what extra? A bold text here or a colour there? It's content that is
important - and that's why we have CSS, it separates the content from
the styling.
Every CMS out there creates, eventually, pure HTML and CSS - possibly a
bit of JavaScript etc. The end result is a page that is supposed to be
rendered in a standards compliant browser and as yet, although I'm
seeing a lot of blurb from M$ telling me that IE9 is finally standards
compliant, nothing out of M$ is fully up to the standards.
Of course, I suspect if you add up all the users of Firefox, Chrome,
Safari and any other alternative browsers you may well find that the sum
total of the others adds up to more than the number of IEs.
Given the above link, if you add up just the Firefoxes out there, IE is
in the minority - in Europe at least. The US will follow along as it
usually does.
> If all the other browsers all display the pages correctly, your
statement then
starts to be valid.
:-)
Rant over.
And a jolly good rant it was too. I enjoyed it. Cheers!
Still not wearing my flame proof suit though!
Cheers,
Norman.
--
Norman Dunbar
Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd
Registered address:
Thorpe House
61 Richardshaw Lane
Pudsey
West Yorkshire
United Kingdom
LS28 7EL
Company Number: 05132767
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