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FireFox vs IE
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:11 pm
by BootGod
Ok, so I'm trying to get the new version of the NES cart DB site online. For quite some time now, I've been using FireFox exclusively. I decided I better run it past IE7 to see how it works... I was expecting maybe a few rendering issues, but god damn! Rendering, CSS, JavaScript bugs out the ass!
I've spent all day trying to fix all the IE bugs, and I've gotten around about half of them. However, the site is essentially still crippled on IE7 and I'm pulling my hair out overcoming the rest of them. I've run my pages thru the W3C validator and fixed all problems that came up.
So anyways, I'm just curious how many people are still using IE and if I should hold things up any longer to get it working right with IE.
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:13 pm
by tepples
Windows Internet Explorer is still the two-thirds supermajority, and you'll be turning away a lot of contributors if you turn away IE 7 users. But IE 6 is so outdated that you can probably get away with pointing all IE 6 users to
End 6.
One thing you can do to improve rendering in IE is put it in standards mode. At the top of a document, before the <html> tag, add this code:
Without a DOCTYPE declaration, IE 6 and 7 go into "quirks mode", a CSS rendering model designed to mimic IE 5. Really.
And the public web still isn't ready for XHTML-over-the-wire. Sending it as application/xhtml+xml (the correct MIME type) results in a Save As on IE, and sending it as text/html has
its own problems.
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:18 pm
by Celius
I'm a Firefox user, though I do have to use IE for going to school online (it doesn't work with Firefox). Firefox isn't really "the bomb" or anything to me, though it does have tabbed browsing ("Ooo") which is a step up from IE. And it also asks me before downloading something (again, "ooo") so I don't end up going to some site automatically downloading "trojanporn.exe" or something stupid.
It would probably be a good idea to continue developing for both, though I kind of think Firefox is used more often than IE because of its non-suckitude.
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:24 pm
by tepples
Celius wrote:I'm a Firefox user, though I do have to use IE for going to school online (it doesn't work with Firefox).
If you had a Mac or a Linux box, would you have to run Windows in an emulator to go to that school? Does the school give you a deep academic discount on copies of Windows to run in VirtualBox?
Also try it in Opera. And if your computer is new enough, try it in a WebKit browser such as Chrome or Safari.
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:43 pm
by BootGod
tepples wrote:Windows Internet Explorer is still the two-thirds supermajority, and you'll be turning away a lot of contributors if you turn away IE 7 users. But IE 6 is so outdated that you can probably get away with pointing all IE 6 users to
End 6.
One thing you can do to improve rendering in IE is put it in standards mode. At the top of a document, before the <html> tag, add this code:
Without a DOCTYPE declaration, IE 6 and 7 go into "quirks mode", a CSS rendering model designed to mimic IE 5. Really.
And the public web still isn't ready for XHTML-over-the-wire. Sending it as application/xhtml+xml (the correct MIME type) results in a Save As on IE, and sending it as text/html has
its own problems.
The doctype I am using is:
Code: Select all
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
Do you think there is a mode that is better suited to me?
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:56 pm
by Celius
tepples wrote:Celius wrote:I'm a Firefox user, though I do have to use IE for going to school online (it doesn't work with Firefox).
If you had a Mac or a Linux box, would you have to run Windows in an emulator to go to that school? Does the school give you a deep academic discount on copies of Windows to run in VirtualBox?
I actually have no idea. I just tried to use it in Firefox and then it didn't work so I tried IE and it did. I don't know if it works in IE only, I just know it doesn't in Firefox.
I seem to recall having Windows was a requirement. But I don't really worry about that, since I have Windows XP, I can pretty much be safe knowing that most stuff will work for me.
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:57 pm
by tepples
Either DOCTYPE (the generic HTML one I suggested or the specific HTML 4.01 Transitional one you use) should work.
Apparently
quirksmode.org has plenty of resources for working around browser deficiencies.
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:10 pm
by BootGod
I see now that even with using the doctype tag I mentioned, both IE and FireFox were still rendering in quirks mode. Turns out I needed to add a "system identifier" as well, in my case "
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"
That immediately resolved a number of rendering issues in IE7!
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:32 pm
by tokumaru
Somehow I completely switched to Firefox over the past few years and haven't used IE for a long time. I still use it when I'm building pages though, but never for actual browsing. I just can't understand how it can be so slow! When you open a new tab the whole browser becomes unresponsive for a few seconds, and that's completely unacceptable. I open my tabs a bunch at a time, thanks. IE7 is as bad as Windows Vista, I don't know how anyone can accept that much unresponsiveness.
Sadly, like Celius said, there are still pages that only work with IE. The college I went to had a few internet applications that required IE. If you didn't have it, they'd just tell you to use one of their labs... That's just sad.
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 4:14 am
by Bregalad
The only good point of IE is that the slide scroller can change it's color, which is incredibly cool ! It even does in this BBS if I remember correctly. But to do that you have to use non-W3C compatible CSS scrips.
But I still use Firefox for a long while and I bet the vast majority of people that knows how to install a new programm on their computer does. I still have IE6 for when I have to brose a site which is IE only which is rare thanks god.
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 11:55 am
by Nessie
Bregalad wrote:The only good point of IE is that the slide scroller can change it's color, which is incredibly cool ! It even does in this BBS if I remember correctly. But to do that you have to use non-W3C compatible CSS scrips.
Seems to happen in Opera too
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:43 pm
by ironfist61
tokumaru wrote:
Sadly, like Celius said, there are still pages that only work with IE. The college I went to had a few internet applications that required IE. If you didn't have it, they'd just tell you to use one of their labs... That's just sad.
Is it SAM that requires it?
My school majorly uses Firefox. All I've used Since 2003. And before that I used whatever.
But yeah. One of the first things I do when I install winblows to a PC. I get rid Of IE and install firefox.
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:09 pm
by tokumaru
ironfist61 wrote:Is it SAM that requires it?
What the hell is SAM?
But yeah. One of the first things I do when I install winblows to a PC. I get rid Of IE and install firefox.
I'm like that too. I open IE just once, to download the latest version of Firefox. Then I download all the rest (drivers and other software) with it. If I downloaded Firefox before formatting, I guess I wouldn't have to use IE at all.
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:17 pm
by Celius
You can uninstall IE? I think I tried once and it wouldn't let me.
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:41 pm
by tokumaru
Celius wrote:You can uninstall IE? I think I tried once and it wouldn't let me.
Well, I don't uninstall it, I just don't touch it again. I believe Windows doesn't let you remove it, but I think it is possible to customize the installation CD to the point where it's possible to remove IE, WMP and other things you don't want because there are much better alternatives around. I can't remember the names of the softwares that allow you to edit the installation files, but there are 2 or 3 of them.