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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."
Lycos' webmonkey has a basic chart.
Instead, why not look for tutorials on generating content which can be read by most everything?
See http://www.webstandards.org/learn/ for a good start!
NCDesign has a good list for NN/IE at http://www.ncdesign.org/html/list.htm which will tell you, by tag and by attribute, which versions of those browsers have the support within them.
Sure, it is still amazing that there is no Browser fully conforming to HTML 4 or CSS 2, both being W3C recs for years, but to what kind of "standard" would Netscape 4 possibly conform?
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
And using document.all is unnecessarily wrong. This was a proprietary extension introduced by Microsoft. It does not comply with the standard way of referencing elements used in the Document Object Model (DOM) and should not be used except when programming backwards compatible code for Internet Explorer 4 (I think 5+ supports the correct DOM references). This is bad practice, and I think it's a good think that the mozilla developers decided to leave it out, or else it would promote breaking the correct hierarchical structure.
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Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
Except for the fact that IE renders things different from version to version. So "just coding for IE" isn't as simple. Which version?
MacEdition has a good writer who tirelessly flogs web standards. She has several guides to cross-browser CSS support at the bottom of the page.
O'Reilly's Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference does an excellent job of describing which browsers support various functions and each HTML tag.
Take the following facts:
1. MSIE 5 commands about 40% of the market.
2. MSIE 6 commands about 30% and rising.
3. Netscape 4 has about 5%.
4. Netscape 6 has about 5% and rising.
5. All of these browsers render things differently.
Next, take the following fact:
The more work you spend making your code compatible, the more time/money you burn.
Then consider this:
Why do you want to spend this money/time on making your site compatible? How much time/money are you will to spend?
In practice, I use the following rough formula:
Code for the Majority Browser, then the next one in market share, then the next one until you reach the "10% Horizon" or until you think you're spent enough money/time (whichever is sooner).
The lower the market share of the browser, the less point there is making your code compatible with that browser.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
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.
First off, the browser stats vary dramatically by site. The stats I've been seeing lately have IE 6 ahead of 5.x (probably due to sales of computers with XP, Windows Update, and the gentle nudging toward v6 because of its standards support).
If you code a page for the quirks of IE 5.x and tweak from there, you are coding for the past. It's quite clear that browsers are moving toward W3C standards support, not away from it. If you code toward the standards and tweak from there, you are much more likely to build a site that will stand the test of time and not break in newer browsers.
As for availablity, if you code for valid XHTML, CSS, and WAI (accessibility) guidelines, older clients tend to degrade gracefully. Using "tricks" like specifying media="all" in stylesheet link tags or using @import makes it easy to code to modern browsers but make the content available to older browsers (like Netscape 4).
XHTML+CSS with no tables and proper stylesheet declarations can make for beautiful sites that are both accessible to those with disabilities and browsers all the way back to Netscape 1.x.
It requires that you give up on making Netscape 4 and IE 4 pretty though. But it sounds like you've done that already.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.