Poor Netscape/Mozilla Support in .NET

An anonymous reader submits: "I use Microsoft's .NET Framework at my place of employment to create website applications for the general public. I have noticed a number of issues that can make web applications developed in .NET incompatible with Netscape and Mozilla." Read on below for his specific complaints; have you encountered the same incompatibilities, and can you suggest any workarounds?

"The most egregious issue I have run into is this bug in .NET framework, that can prevent posts (the facility for the web browser to send information to the server) in Netscape and Mozilla (all versions) because MS used Internet Explorer specific Javascript. Microsoft buried a mention of a hotfix addressing the bug shortly after the first Framework Service Pack. However, the latest Service Pack (SP2) came out several months later and it still does not contain the fix. The only way to obtain the hotfix is to contact Microsoft's paid support. ("In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem" -- from the knowledgebase article). Keeping the patch as a hotfix that is not freely downloadable ensures that hosting providers will not have it installed.

A Unicode encoding issue in .NET can cause all fonts to display as squares instead of letters in Netscape 4. I am not saying that MS has to support NS4. I think the decision of whether or not to support Netscape 4 should be up to the developer, not Microsoft. MS describes a workaround in the knowledgebase article. (Anecdotally) all other web development environments I have seen allow proper code to work in Netscape without a workaround.

Standards-compliant websites utilizing most web-development platforms usually work fine in Netscape and Mozilla, even if the developer did not to test or develop for Netscape and/or Mozilla. However, Microsoft's .NET Framework inserts code and encodings into web applications that categorically break these browsers."

Comments

Now I understand!

[orthogonal]

So this is how "vertical integration" works!

(By the way, I have inserted HTML code into this post such that anyone who has not added me to his "friends" list cannot reply to this post.)

(By the way, if you decide to add me to your "friends" list, HTML code will be added to all of your posts such that only I and my "friends" can read or respond to your posts.)

(Why? Because I believe in the Free Marketplace of Ideas, so long as all of those ideas are mine.)

Two explanations

[Lumpish Scholar]

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." --Robert Hanlon ("Hanlon's Razor")

"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run." --Microsoft Windows developers (circa early 1990s; quoted anecdotally)

Re:Two explanations

[the eric conspiracy]

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." --Robert Hanlon ("Hanlon's Razor")

Microsoft picked up Malice as a subsidiary when they acquired Evil a couple of years ago.

Too bad...

[mirabilos]

I just hit this page with MSIE (I usually browse
with Lynx, you know, but since I'm at a box with
IE at the moment...) and saw an ad for...

guess what...

Microsoft Visual Studio .net

Btw, did you ever notice .net in ROT13 is .argh?
There must be a hidden reason behind that *hint*

Re:Too bad...

[gakguk]

You ROT13 three chars and end up with 4 chars? God. We have 1/4 of the usenet generated by faulty encryption, what a mess.

Obligitory troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia...

You own Microsoft.

Re:Yes

[Randolpho]

Posted by grandparent:
fairly intercompatible

Posted by parent:
Intercompatiable? Which one of Dubaya's handlers let him out of his cage and onto the internet? (emphases mine)

I especially love it when people who get off on pointing out Bushisms do their own. Really makes my day. :)

P.S. The grandparent's spelling of "intercompatible" is the correct spelling. So is the usage of the word.