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Apple Details CSS Bugs in Internet Explorer for Mac

Posted by pudge on from the we-prefer-to-call-them-misfeatures-thank-you-very-much dept.

Isbiten writes "An article at Apple Developer Connection discusses all the CSS bugs in Microsoft Internet Explorer, and compares IE to other browsers, including Mozilla." Wow, they sure do.

11 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. yay codebitch... by netsrek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Glad to see they got some of their data from CodeBitch's Mac Bug List.

    Her column is bloody excellent for browser discussion. Always informative and well researched.

    I could be wrong, but none of those bugs seemed to address the major problem I have with IE on Mac (apart from it being dog slow...), that weird bug where it doesn't render large slabs of a page at all unless you click on it or resize the window...
    unless that's a result of the overflowing/clipping bug...

    --

    i don't read slashdot anymore.
    1. Re:yay codebitch... by CodeBitch · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're all very kind, but I can confirm that I (CodeBitch) didn't write the article at Apple's site; Peter-Paul Koch did. I did compile the Bug Guide he refers to, and update it whenever a new CSS bug comes to light that can be narrowed down enough to diagnose. All contributions to these resources, suggestions and so forth are always gratefully received.

      --
      Cracking the whip on your naughty HTML since 2000
  2. Re:Use Chimera by netsrek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've actually found Mozilla to work on more sites than Chimera does at the moment...

    I like the look and idea of Chimera, but I read the Sydney Morning Herald online a fair bit, and it regularly crashes if you go to an article and then go back to the main page. Something to do with their annoying flash ads..

    plus I get to use the GoogleBar....

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    i don't read slashdot anymore.
  3. Hmmm..... by JohnKFisher · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now, correct me if I am wrong, cause, hey, I probably am, but does this not seem like just one more subtle insult from Apple to Microsoft? Well-deserved, I might add, but why all these recent jabs?

    The switch ads are the obvious, but I find this, and the fact that MS's recent fake switch ad made it to Apple's Hot News page quite interesting from a company that publically expressed all is well between them and MS.

    Besides, When you're trying to convince MS users that they can use Mac versions of programs they are used to, why point out serious flaws in one of the biggies??

    Unless, of course... you have something better you're planning to push.... (Which I'm not saying must be the oft-rumored iBrowse. Could just be Mozilla)

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    John Kenneth Fisher
    Table of malContents
    1. Re:Hmmm..... by netsrek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Now, correct me if I am wrong, cause, hey, I probably am, but does this not seem like just one more subtle insult from Apple to Microsoft? Well-deserved, I might add, but why all these recent jabs?


      I don't think so. There are some subtle digs, but generally it's a very honest article, it praises the good things and discusses the bad things.

      Stuff like this:
      "In general, the Mac version of Explorer is more strict in its standards compliance and supports more of the standards, while the Windows version supports more Microsoft proprietary styles and JScript methods"

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      i don't read slashdot anymore.
  4. Are these the worst CSS bugs? by yeti+(dn) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If so, then the Mac version of MSIE must have much better CSS support than MSIE on Windows.

    On Windows MSIE nothing works. Want to use visibillity: collapse? You get crap. Want to collapse borders? No way. Want to use someelement > * all-childs-of-someelement selection? MSIE doesn't bother to understand. Want to use [attiribue=...]? Oh Lord! What's this? And on top of that specifying font-family: sans-serif makes the silly thing to render empty squares in place of Unicode characters (though Unicode Arial is installed)

    My pages look exactly as specified in Gecko, fine in Konqueror, acceptably in Opera, ... but MSIE (on Win) renders only crap.

    --
    Life is the slowest way to death.
    1. Re:Are these the worst CSS bugs? by tim1724 · · Score: 5, Informative

      MSIE 5.x for Mac OS (classic and OS X) is well known for being the first browser with good CSS support. Mozilla is quite good now too (better in some ways) but has its own set of CSS bugs. I expect that Mozilla will have its CSS bugs fied before IE's CSS bugs are fixed...

      one of the most annoying things about IE5.x on Mac OS is that it doesn't provide any method of choosing a stylesheet. (Mozilla has a very handy View->Use Style menu for choosing which stylesheet to use when a page has multiple stylesheets.) There's a useful little javascript which you can put in your bookmarks toolbar to get around this, but it's annoying that there's no built-in GUI for it. (When testing changes to my CSS style sheets, I like to have the page link to both the old and new versions so I can swap back and forth.)

      --
      -- Tim Buchheim
    2. Re:Are these the worst CSS bugs? by tim1724 · · Score: 5, Informative

      no, that doesn't allow you to do what I want. That allows you to turn stylesheets on and off, and it allows you to set the user stylesheet.

      If a page provides multiple stylesheets (for example, wired.com's new design has different stylesheets which specify different font sizes) IE will use the default stylesheet and not give you any method of choosing another one.

      Mozilla, on the other hand, will list each of the stylesheets in the View->Use Style menu. (try it right now.. go to Wired.com in Mozilla and look at the View->Use Style menu. You can choose between four different stylesheets for that page.)

      To do the same thing in IE, you need to go to favelets.com and grab the "choose stylesheet" javascript.

      Another cool site which shows off the ability to have multiple stylesheets on the page is this page .. it's much more interesting than Wired's font size changes. :)

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      -- Tim Buchheim
  5. Re:if apple feels so strongly about it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They don't have to bundle Explorer anymore, the five-year agreement with MS is over. But Chimera is still in beta, OmniWeb is not finished, Mozilla is a bloated suite, Opera is not ready for prime time...

  6. Re:if apple feels so strongly about it... by hondo77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's called "constructive criticism". No need to take such a "love it or leave it" attitude. You can like something and still find fault with it.

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    I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
  7. The Backslash Hack is horrible advice by Slur · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple's article demonstrates a "hack" that allows you to target Mac versus Explorer browsers by escaping the asterisk in a closing comment tag. On Windows this causes the browser to "miss" the closing tag and process the css that follows. Needless to say this is a very bad piece of advice on every level. Do not use the so-called "backslash hack." Either Microsoft will fix this Explorer bug and break your code, or they'll *never* fix it because it's too widely depended-upon (like the Windows Registry, for example). Either way this article's author should know better.

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    -- thinkyhead software and media