Slashdot Mirror
Seeking a Browser Compatibility Reference?
Fr05t asks: "Gone are the days of being able to use the W3C specs for DHTML and Javascript as a solid reference for every browser. To make things worse I've been finding more and more I'm required to build richer web content that runs on all browsers. I've found many books that have a chapter on Browser Compatibility, but is there such a thing as a complete guide to the incompatibilities between IE, Netscape, and Opera? I'd even settle for a site dedicated to the documentation of the browser SNAFU."
This might be helpful...
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
Put as many widgets as you want in there, as long as it works in all browsers. There are lots of things that Opera and Netscape will slip up on, and things that IE also dives rendering. One thing that everyone has been (rightfully) bitching to MS about is PNG support. Come over here with a bunch of diffrent browsers and compaire results. Another thing I found to not work in IE is the top logo on this page. The first example you might want to stay away from because it'll make your site ugly if it fails, but the second one is fine. For people still looking, in Opera the top logo is fixed when scrolling like it should be, and in IE it moves. This kind of thing adds to the coolness of the site, but if you can't see it it's really no big problem.
I know that it seems impossible to design a website *without* purposefully working around browser inadequacies, but that's almost what we have to do.
As far as I'm aware, "browser compatibility tables" are artefacts of the past -- there's simply too many weird versions out there (and that's only considering Netscape 4!) to have a hope of covering it all. Besides, if we code around every single problem, we encourage users to stick with their current browsers for ever and ever, generally enshrining the errors for future posterity.
I have found that if you follow "generally accepted good coding practises", most modern browsers can take it. If they can't, the breakdown is not horrible -- not like the hacks of the 1990s that completely fly apart on Mozilla today.
If you perpetually correct for all of today's faults, you hold the web back. If you code for compliance with an eye out for any serious showstopping errors, you help the evolution continue... and that's something we really need.
Except for the fact that IE renders things different from version to version. So "just coding for IE" isn't as simple. Which version?
I code for IE and IE only now...
Why not code valid XHTML? It renders perfectly in IE, as well as any other modern browser.
Really what we need to is (I know I'll get killed for saying it) for all broswers to impliment DOM, CSS and javascript the way MS does.
No, we need idiot web designers to code valid XHTML. I do it, it's easy - in fact, it's entirely automated - I send everything through Tidy and it does all the work for me.