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Perhaps you don't remember, but IE 5 was LIGHTYEARS ahead of Netscape. There's a reason EVERYBODY dumped Netscape, and it wasn't just "it came with Windows", because at first, it didn't....

Yes I do, it was crap even then, compare its CSS support to Mozilla 5 (Netscape 6):

http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/table.html

IE has always been a pain, it was just less bad than Netscape 4 for a while.

I've recently done a load of cross-browser Web 2.0 stuff. Working on a Mac my primary platform is Safari which, as many will know, is one of a very limited number of browsers to pass the ACID test. It took me quite a while to get to grips with the idiosyncrasies of CSS itself (the specificity rules about which style will be used can be confusing and slightly counter-intuitive sometimes) but generally working with Safari was fine.

I checked and validated my HTML and CSS code against the W3C validation tools, and they all passed, which was nice. The next step was obviously to make sure that they rendered well inside IE and Firefox... This is where the pain began.

There are bugs and omissions in both IE and Firefox's CSS support. Quite how bad these failings will affect your page depends a very great deal on what HTML and CSS you are trying to use.

Personally I found it consistently easier to work around the failings of IE; I could get my new bits of HTML and CSS to work perfectly in IE with only minimal changes.

Whilst the reputation of Firefox is better, I consistently found it much harder to get my pages working properly. Trying to get items to display on the same line inside Firefox without getting forced below the preceding item can be incredibly tough, often requiring a custom work-around. In one case I found myself forced to throw away my (div using) code and re-write it using tables, since even after several hours of trying I couldn't get Firefox to render my page acceptably.

This seems like a good page that outlines the bugs in Mozilla/Firefox:
http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/mozilla.html

Unfortunately there's not always clearly documented work-arounds for these bugs...

Oh for the bright future when all the browsers properly support CSS... The life of a cross-browser web site producer would be less painful.

Not that IE is any better. But this link demostrates that Mozilla does not 100% support the standard.

They are still standards. But hey, I could easily say similar things about MathML - it is a very specialized standard. The same with SVG - it is hardly in use at all on "mainstream" sites. And so on. So Mozilla implements standards for specialized use, just like Opera does.

No. You are confusing "being made for a specialised use" with "being made for a specialised platform". WAP pages aren't meant to be read on desktop PCs, so Mozilla (which is fundamentally a desktop browser) doesn't support it or the related technologies. MathML is meant to be read on normal PCs, even if not everyone uses it everyday, so Mozilla supports it. A clearer comparison: nether Opera nor Mozilla support Microsoft CHM (made for a special platform) but both support Chinese Big5 text encoding (made for a specialised use).

In any case, SVG is most definitely not special-purpose in any way. If you know anything about it, you'll know that it's a very general standard for vector graphics and animation, similar in some ways to Macromedia Flash. It has potential applications on almost any Web site with graphics; just because it isn't in widespread use doesn't mean that it isn't general in design.

The other standard I was using as an example -- XSL/XSLT -- is also very much non-specialist. It is, for instance, of immense potential use on any site larger than a hundred pages, if only because it allows for infinitely better content management (among many other things).

Actually, Opera 7 also has "experimental" support for CSS3.

I didn't know this, my apologies. This is, indeed, a sign of very good CSS support, because it shows that the makers are willing to go beyond what they need to do to just claim ordinary standards-compliance (i.e. support existing recommendations), and are taking the extra effort to position themselves ready for big new standards. In overall standards support, though (particularly with the XML-based standards), Opera is still not at the forefront.

I would argue that Opera 3 is actually better than even MSIE 6 in some situations since it has a more correct implementation. MSIE can't even get its box model right.

Then you seem intent on backing an unwinnable position, unless you intend to go to such a fine level of detail as to be irrelevant. Yes, IE's implementation of CSS is more than a little bit dodgy, but it is of decent completeness with respect to both CSS1 and CSS2 (maybe 80% - 90%, but I'm guessing). Yes, there are points where IE gets stuff wrong but old Opera or Mozilla versions get it right, but as you pointed out earlier there are plenty of examples where Opera 7 gets it wrong and IE 4 or Mozilla 0.8 get it right.

I think Opera 3 had just about complete support for CSS1.

No, this is wrong again. Maybe you missed what I wrote: if you consult the link I gave you, or try using Opera 3 for yourself, you'll see that its support for CSS1 is much less than complete, with positioning and inline element properties (like borders) being the glaring examples. Selectors like :hover are also noticeably absent.

True, but there was no release considered to be of even alpha quality until some time in 2000. That was M13.

You are redefining your terms after a claim; this is called the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. You had claimed that Opera was supporting CSS years before Mozilla was, which is patently false. It doesn't matter that nobody knew about Mozilla or that the browser had bugs aplenty -- the point is, the support was there.

Also note that Mozilla was rewritten over four years, while Opera 7 was a complete rewrite of the browser core and GUI, and was done in about a year and a half.

Yes, I know, but

Yes, Mozilla might support more standards, but Opera can still claim to have very good standards support.

Then we are (in principle, at least) in agreement. I never said Opera had bad standards support overall, just that Mozilla's is better.

It supports SVG Tiny, XHTML Mobile Profile, WML (1.3 and 2.0), WAP CSS ...

Do note that these standards are intended for mobile phones and PDAs, a market that Opera is trying hard to get into but that Mozilla isn't really designed for. Certainly, it's a separate arena to the "normal" full-size PC browser world -- if nothing else, the standards are simpler.

... and is ready for CSS 2.1.

This illustrates my point nicely. CSS 2.1 is a revised edition of CSS 2 with only a few changes. By contrast, CSS3 introduces a number of very significant changes. Both are still in the Working Draft stage at the W3C. Mozilla is the only browser to have started implementing the changes of CSS3 -- which is an example of why its standards support, moreso than that of other browsers, can be considered to be very good.

As for CSS, Opera has supported CSS for years and years.

Yes, but the question is of how well. Opera 3 (for BeOS, at least -- the only copy I still have) doesn't even understand CSS positioning, which is easily one of the most widely used parts of CSS.

As for being able to "hold up to a lot of the competition even today": no, this is not correct. Certainly, Opera 3's CSS support is better than Netscape 4 and IE 3, but those browsers really sucked (although NS4 at least understood a little bit of positioning). Looking through charts of what it supports shows that it is nowhere near the quality of current-generation browsers.

And finally, note that the Mozilla project was started in April 1998, switched to the current codebase after a few months, and released their first builds later that year. Opera 3 was released sometime in the first half of 1998, IIRC. This is hardly "years before Mozilla was even thought about".

IE doesn't have that bug.

This is true, but it does have it's fair share of CSS bugs as well. It's a bit more than one bug.

This site does a fairly good job in describing a lot of the bugs that plague CSS rendering in browsers. And even if Mozilla has a far better track record than IE (and the bug count for Mozilla does decrease much faster than for IE), it is far from being perfect (yet ?).

The CSS and extensions that IE support are artificially important because of its huge market-share. Mozilla is a better browser for standards, and that is my only claim.

Have you tried developing standard CSS? Once you do, you will realize that Mozilla supports a lot more CSS than IE, and Mozilla is much more stable in its rendering. IE will often forget where it has drawn and can't keep a list in a straight line. Explain to me IE's bugs on this page (With the CSS bloated for IE) and this other page (roll over the links in the "recent posts" list) and notice how slow it is on the navbar. Mozilla doesn't have any of these problems.

Even looking at an outdated chart of CSS bugs, Mozilla is at least as good at CSS. Considering that development on IE is crawling compared to everything else, Mozilla has much better support. I actually think that Mozilla has the only sane CSS implementation of all the browsers.

Netscape 6 has the best support for CSS of any commercial browser (only Mozilla, the open version of Netscape, has fewer bugs)

On which planet? IE is no where near as standards complient as Mozilla, I find myself having to work around its bugs far more than Mozilla. At least Netscape 4's bugginess was easy to work around.

Rich in Style has a pretty good CSS bug roundup.

Take a look at http://richinstyle.com for a comparison of CSS implementations in various browsers.

Konqueror will soon come to a roadblock. Their HTML layout code it uses takes shortcuts that prevent them from implementing interesting things like DOM access to CSS, DOM animation, and even HTML 4.0. Let's take a short tour, of test cases that have been developed by the W3C, and some for testing Mozilla:

• Does Konq grok Basic CSS1 font properties? Not quite.
• Backgrounds on line boxes? No.
• Word spacing? No.
• FLoat and clear? Ack, dataloss!
• How is Konq's whitespace handling? Terrible!

• Does Konq understand Simple CSS borders?: No.
• Does Konq know how to Render styled tables? Not really.
• Does Konq have a robust CSS parser? Not by a long shot.
• Can Konq Style the HTML and body elements? No.
• What about Positioning the background image?. Eh, no.
• Z-index? Not.

Prefer some real-world sites? How about a site for HTML writers who are sick and tired of broken browsers like Konqueror? Here's something totally stupid, but cool. How about another goofy test that Konqueror butchers?

Mozilla has a large set of tests that it fails, too, but it is much smaller than Konqueror's. As a web monkey today, supporting Konqueror is in the same league as supporting Netscape 4.7. If Konqueror ever becomes standards-compliant, then it will be useful, but until then it will be just another on a large pile of browsers that are getting left behind by new, innovative content.

To the other reply, I'll add my recommendation of RichInStyle, featuring giant bug table, plus bug-demo and css test pages. He's working on mapping support in less mainstream browsers, like different Konqueror versions and W3C's Amaya, and has a decent cross-compatibility tutorial.

On the non-css side, the Anybrowser site has useful tips, and HTML with Style pushes structure first, then layout. For "what works in what" info, there's the results pages of Robin's HTML 4 Conformance Tests and Ian Hickson's Evil Test Suite.

PS. Your timetable looks fine in BeOS's NetPositive 2.2, except that without a body bgcolor, Net+ defaults to grey, and imho, the Windows-1252 charset declaration is unnecessary.

There are even bug lists with examples for each and every bug like this one. Other software developers can only dream of such detailed bug reports. The browser developers just don't regard them (or don't have time or have other priorities, whatever).

Is there a moderately objective site that explains what browsers are and aren't compliant with what? I've read all the assertions here that Mozilla is "the most standards compliant". I've read that IE 5 on the Mac is the most compliant. iCab and Konqueror are touted as compliant. I'd be interested in seeing a thorough review.

I don't think it specifically covers IE 5 on Mac or Konquereror, but I've always found Rich in Style to be a great resource for testing compliance and documenting the state of browsers.

Actually Netscape Mozilla is the most standards compliant browser there is.

Don't believe me?

Just compare http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/ie5.html with http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/mozilla.html

This article is a little harsh, considering Netscape open sourced its browser to make it compliant, it dumped its old rendering engine, and spent more time on standards than UI.

Actually Netscape Mozilla is the most standards compliant browser there is.

Don't believe me?

Just compare http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/ie5.html with http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/mozilla.html

This article is a little harsh, considering Netscape open sourced its browser to make it compliant, it dumped its old rendering engine, and spent more time on standards than UI.

anyway, in case anyone wants a more authoritative source for "Mozilla is the best at standards compliance", http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/table.ht ml is the place to go.

Netscape 6 PR1's CSS support blows Microsoft's away; in fact, it has the least number of bugs, and was claimed to have the best CSS support of all the browsers in an article right here on Slashdot. So, you're comment that IE's CSS is better than Netscape's "ever was" is just plain wrong.

And we all know that /. is completely unbiased and that everything you read here is 100% true :)

And I suppose RichInStyle is biased too...

Every release of Mozilla I've had so far has crashed on a semi-regular basis on either Linux or Windows.

Hmm...On this machine Mozilla has crashed twice in the past week. That's pretty good considering I'm using nightly builds which can fluctuate in quality by daft amounts.