Making IE Standards Compliant

spin2cool writes "Dean Edwards has taken it upon himself to make Internet Explorer W3C compliant. How? Well, it isn't by patching the application, as you might suspect. He's created a stylesheet, dubbed 'IE7' that uses DHTML to load and parse style sheets into a form that IE can understand. Just include the style sheet in your HTML pages, and things should render correctly. The complexity of the CSS transformations is really amazing and shows off the power of this stuff."

Comments

Making IE Standards compliant?

[Zone-MR]

I'm sure IE 6.05.1 will feature a small modification which happens to cause this fix to stop working. ;)

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Outsider_99]

Its strange how that happens... isnt it?

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Openstandards.net]

I have found that the DoNotUseIE.patch file has upgraded it to 100% open standards compliance, and this cannot be overridden by any future version of IE or other Microsoft extensions.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[I confirm I'm not a]

My problem with this patch is its name - it was DoNotUseIE.phoenix, then DoNotUseIE.bird, now - apparently - its DoNotUseIE.patch. Enough already!

;)

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[nhorman]

So I'll ask the burning question here: How is creating a stylesheet to be included in individual web pages considered making IE standards compliant? Wouldn'the the article be more acurate if it read "modifying web site allows it to be rendered correctly in IE6?"

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most browsers has a user stylesheet that is used in addition to the one from the web. Doesn't MSIE do this?

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[crayz]

That's kinda like saying giving an American in Germany a German->English dictionary is actually a modification of the German language

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[PeeweeJD]

If you can just sniff and serve up IE a different style sheet to make your site render correct, who cares? No more hacking to make work arounds for IE. As long as you dont have to change the design of your site (except for a sniff for IE), who cares.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[I confirm I'm not a]

Just to clarify slightly - IE7 doesn't rely on serving up a different stylesheet, but an additional 'sheet. In other words, if you reference IE7 as your first 'sheet, existing stylesheets for compliant browsers will then render OK in IE.

If I've read it right you don't even need to sniff (well, at least not in the old-fasioned, java-script or server-side script sense): it's all done through CSS.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can apply stylesheets on the client side.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[imkonen]

I think the OP had a good point...the problem as I understand it isn't limited to IE users who can't view compliant web pages. It's also lazy web developpers who use a M$ products to produce a web page that only renders well in IE...complete with the "This page best viewed using Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher" to make it all okay.

So your analogy would be more accurate if you said "Here's a dictionary so you can read the signs around town. If you want to talk to a native, though, I recommend you continue shouting slowly in English."

It's not useless, but it's also not a complete solution to the fact that IE isn't standards compliant.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[cayenne8]

"f you can just sniff and serve up IE a different style sheet to make your site render correct, who cares?"

The trouble is...what if you don't have a windows computer to see how 'it looks' under IE? I can run just about any other browser under the sun on my development stations, all linux....except IE.

I'm still trying to figure how to run IE under wine...but, never have been able to do it with no windows partitions...

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[notque]

My problem with this patch is its name - it was DoNotUseIE.phoenix, then DoNotUseIE.bird, now - apparently - its DoNotUseIE.patch. Enough already!

I thought it was "DoNotUseIE.fox"

They've changed it again?!?!!

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[I confirm I'm not a]

Aye... must be getting ready for the 0.9 release ;)

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[jonadab]

> what if you don't have a windows computer to see how 'it looks' under IE?

Exchange screenshots with another webmaster who does use IE. I've got a couple
of people I trade screenshots with regularly. They like this arrangement,
because my screenshots show some edge cases that most people would miss.
I always take a series of shots showing scalability from 640x480 up through
at least 1280x1024, and I always show what the site looks like with and without
page colors turned on (and my system colors are medium-contrast light-on-dark,
which shows up stuff that gets missed if you use black-on-white). Also I tend
to take screenshots with about three different rendering engines (always Gecko,
plus usually Konqueror and one or more of Opera, W3, Links, Lynx). So my
approach shows up a lot of edge cases that more typical setups (black-text,
white-background, MSIE, 800x600, page colors enabled) won't see.

Yes, it's possible to design a web page that looks "right" under all of the
above settings. (By "right", I mean it looks like it was designed for those
settings.) Eye candy in the graphical browsers, without breaking the text
browsers; client-side scripts that automate things if scripts are enabled,
without breaking the site if scripts aren't enabled. Images that look good
(no jaggy edges) against either a light _or_ dark background. (This is
tricky if you have to support browsers with no proper alpha channel, but
it can be done; the trick is to set the background color when you save your
PNG images, so that non-alpha-channel browsers (*cough* MSIE) will antialias
against that color -- set that to the same color as the surrounding background
and you get to be Bob's nephew. Or use the MSIE PNG-alpha-channel hack, but
not all versions of MSIE support that, and it still leaves old versions of
Opera out in the cold.)

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[GreyPoopon]

Wouldn'the the article be more acurate if it read "modifying web site allows it to be rendered correctly in IE6?"

That's a pretty good question. But the beauty of this thing is that it allows web designers to use all W3C compliant techniques and then make them work correctly in IE6 without massive changes to their code. Just saying "modifying web site allows it to be rendered correctly in IE6" leaves people with the impression that they need to go through a re-coding project instead of just including a style sheet.

Maybe a better headline would be: "New standards compliancy stylesheet for IE6 clients eases cross-browser development for web developers." Or something like that.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Doctor Crumb]

Don't be so sure; I wouldn't be surprised to see a message saying, "this security update is incompatible with the following programs, please remove them: mozilla, firebird, opera, ..."

It's all part of the 'secure computing' initiative. The fewer vendors you are dealing with, the more secure it is, right?

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[GreyPoopon]

The trouble is...what if you don't have a windows computer to see how 'it looks' under IE?

This is an age-old problem for web developers. Good developers test their work in multiple browsers, and should also do a test in browsers a few versions back. This might mean keeping an extra box lying around that runs Windows, or using VMWARE or WINE to run Internet Explorer. People might flame me and say that any good developer KNOWS what the content will look like in different browsers and tries to produce a browser-agnostic design, but experience tells me that there's nothing like a quick test to find your mistakes.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are instructions on how to get IE to work in wine on linux here:
http://patrick.spacesurfer.com/ie_wine_install.htm l
They are a bit old but it worked for me.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[glens]

That was funny. Why use a browser that silently attempts to fix things such as missing tags? So far as I know, the only recent browser that still handles that situation correctly is Netscape Communicator 4.8

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[ragecgi]

I say the same thing about Safari all the time.

I've got almost all browsers on my Windows dev box, but that dang Safari just won't install??

It's almost like Apple just doesn't care.

Oh well, at least MS is TRYING to do something about the situation, rather than nothing at all..... ever:)

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[justMichael]

Get yourself a copy of Win4Lin it's what I used to use before I got my PowerBook.

In my opinion it runs better than Windows native, as long as you are OK with win 98.

You can even test multiple versions of IE this way as I recall with just symlinks to the different installs.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[The Snowman]

I have found that the DoNotUseIE.patch file has upgraded it to 100% open standards compliance, and this cannot be overridden by any future version of IE or other Microsoft extensions.

Microsoft lawyers will contact you shortly about your violation of the DMCA. Applying this patch violates their copyright. All your browser are belong to us!

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[DVDAshot]

Have you tried using CrossOver Office? I use it on my Linux box and am able to run IE with no problems. It is really just a fancy frontend to Wine, but it works great.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[RetroGeek]

Why use a browser that silently attempts to fix things such as missing </table> tags?

No good reason at all.

I think that IE started this, way back when, because MS was getting errors from their own generated pages. I guess it was easier to kludge the browser than to find out where in the generation process tags were not being closed.

All speculation of course.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[realkiwi]

>I'm still trying to figure how to run IE under wine...

Doh! And I thought I was thick... OK the ultimate howto:

rpm -ivh wine-version blah blah
rpm -ivh winetools-version blah blah

In winetools click on the install software button.

No windows partition everything is in ~/.wine/c/

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, don't be a bitch. Download a win98SE .iso from your favorite free sharing network and install it under win4lin or vmware. If this is your job, you might even consider getting the company to pay for it nice and legal.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

... a shame that Netscape 4 handled nothing else correctly.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Tackhead]

> I always take a series of shots showing scalability from 640x480 up through at least 1280x1024,

You're probably doing this, but many other sites (heh, usually IE-only sites) sure as heck aren't. What about 320x480, 400x600, 640x1024?

Not everybody browses with their web browser taking up the full window! Half a window, aligned portrait-style, is easier on the eyes because it requires less horizontal eye movement than "fullscreen". Horizontal scrolling is evil -- doubly so to users who go out of their way to minimize read-speed and comprehension-slowing horizontal eye movement by resizing their browsers to prevent it.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[elemental23]

The trouble is...what if you don't have a windows computer to see how 'it looks' under IE?

Well, you'd have that problem with or without this technique, wouldn't you? Testing in different browsers on different operating systems has always been a major inconvenience in the web designer/developer's life.

I've found that running OS X give me the most options next to keeping extra computers around. I have Virtual PC installed for testing sites in IE, and I can test Gecko and KHTML based browsers natively using Mozilla and Safari.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, moderators trying to improve user's karma

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where can I download this "Mozilla Firepatch?"

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have both a windows and a mac in the office to review the output, you have no business designing websites.

Linux of course doesn't count.

I always amazes me how much effort people will
put into sabotaging themselves.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[JimDabell]

Why use a browser that silently attempts to fix things such as missing tags?

What alternative do you offer to web developers who would like their websites to be rendered properly in the world's most commonly used web browser?

Testing in Internet Explorer for any commercial website is necessary. It does funny stuff like hide all the text for no reason.

So far as I know, the only recent browser that still handles that situation correctly is Netscape Communicator 4.8

Every browser handles a missing closing table tag in an HTML document correctly according to the specification. The specification doesn't require any particular error handling, so as soon as an error occurs, you have no business claiming that one rendering is correct and another one isn't.

If you look beyond the specification for a definition of "correctly", Postel's Law would seem to apply. Be conservative in what you send, and forgiving in what you recieve. In other words, in the event of an error that causes the document to not make sense, try and understand as much of it as possible. Clearly, from a common-sense perspective, it is Internet Explorer that handles the situation correctly rather than Netscape Communicator 4.8.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

crossover office (www.codeweavers.com) have an app based on wine (and they return lots to the community) which will allow you to run IE on linux....even if it is like spitting all over your new clean shiny shoes.

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[jonadab]

> You're probably doing this, but many other sites (heh, usually IE-only
> sites) sure as heck aren't. What about 320x480, 400x600, 640x1024?

If it works at 640x480 and 1600x1200, it'll work fine at 640x1024 also. The
less-than-600 widths are another matter. I am aware that there are people
who size windows to half the width of their screen, but I am also aware that
they have the capability to size them differently without causing a disruption
to their entire environment (only the browser is impacted, generally) if they
desire. I make some attempt to see what my pages look like at 320x200, but
at some point a multicolumn page just can't be crammed into that, and if the
user has to scroll horizontally to read the other column I generally am
willing to live with that if they've got their browser window sized to less
than 600 pixels across. Now, if a block of text is going wider than the
window so that they have to scroll horizontally as they read each line, then
I would consider that to be something I should look into fixing, down to
resolutions of about 320 across. If their browser is much narrower than
that, it's a pathological case and there's not much that can be done.

There are people out there who want all web pages to be designed for their
wristwatch systems that boast a black-and-white (not grayscale; 1-bit color
depth, if you can call that color depth) display with two-digit dimensions
in pixels, but I've got to draw the line somewhere. If they really need
to browse on a display like that, they should use a browser that discards
all the layout info from the page (probably all style info, actually) and
just extracts the bare information itself and hyperlinks.

My philosophy on color depths is similar; I try to pick colors that will be
*legible* down to 256-color mode, but I can't promise they page will look
*good* at anything less than 24-bit color. (Anyway, you can always do what
I (usually) do and discard the color information the page specifies in
favor of your own color preferences.)

Re:Making IE Standards compliant?

[(54)T-Dub]

From the FAQ

Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass.

Which category do you fall under?

All that's missing

[blirp]

All that's missing now, is a stylesheet that'll close all remaining security holes... :*)

Re:All that's missing

[fuzzix]

I wonder if it's possible to implement a DHTML hack for proper PNG support :)

Re:All that's missing

[scragz]

I wonder if it's possible to implement a DHTML hack for proper PNG support :)

Check here and here.

Re:All that's missing

[JimDabell]

I wonder if it's possible to implement a DHTML hack for proper PNG support :)

To a limited extent, yes.

Re:All that's missing

[xeaxes]

Actually, they probably could. You can get proper png support by using javascript, and in turn could possibly get it to work in a similar fashion.

Re:All that's missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, while it is possible with IE specific javascript to get IE to display a translucent PNG, you still can't use it as a background for part of a page at that point. Only in an tag which is annoying for people using PNGs to style aspects of the page. You can't make a semi-translucent block in IE yet, except by precisely positioning an beneath a transparent block.

Re:All that's missing

[strech]

There are countless implementations that try to fix IE's lack of PNG transparency support, using AlphaImageLoader in some form.

However, none of them fully work; I've tried pretty much all of them and none of them will work with CSS or Javascript rollovers.

Re:All that's missing

[TwinkieStix]

And for a real world example of PNG's use. See some of these sites:
Dredg
Autopilot Off

Re:All that's missing

[gnu-generation-one]

"All that's missing now, is a stylesheet that'll close all remaining security holes..."

You can make an ethernet adapter for that, which plugs in between your Windows machine and the network or cable modem. Simply take a standard CAT5 lead, cut it in half, and tape the ends shut. Then plug one half into the Windows computer, and the other half into the network.

Re:All that's missing

[_newwave_]

Yes, you can: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/pngopacity/

Re:All that's missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Drew modified youngpup's Sleight IE PNG hack since last July to work with CSS background-image, rather than the usual inline image.

Background Sleight

Kudos, but...

[Channard]

.. it's a sad state of affairs when a developer outside of Microsoft actually ends up doing something that MS should have done themselves. So they can say 'screw it' to standards and someone else does the finger-work.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is even a sadder state of affairs that they are a large enough company for this fix to matter, all things considered when it comes to customer service as a whole.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Phidoux]

Finger work? As in choose one?

Re:Kudos, but...

[MartinG]

Not really. It's perfectly natural to many of us for someone to change things to work in the way they want them to. It's a basic freedom that many of us try to protect.

What's unusual in this case is that closed proprietry software has been "changed" without access to the source.

It's not sad that someone other than Microsoft had to do it. It's sad that people other than Microsoft can't do such things a whole lot more.

(in reality, they can of course by not using closed source software, but for some it seems percieved convenience is more important than freedom, but I digress)

Re:Kudos, but...

[boer]

You know that's called community contribution. There's this thing called open source software which relies to this very same thing. Some like it hot.

Re:Kudos, but...

[kalidasa]

in reality, they can of course by not using closed source software, but for some it seems percieved convenience is more important than freedom, but I digress)

What this does is allow developers of standards-based sites, which they have under their own control, to provide a stopgap for users who don't understand the issue of standards and so haven't themselves chosen freedom. So your digression doesn't quite match the facts. As a developer, I can choose to make my site work in Mozilla and KHTML - and will - but I can't choose to force my audience to use them. With this, if it works as advertised, I can choose to follow standards and still provide some means for those who have, for whatever reasons, chosen to use a non-free browser to use my content.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's unusual in this case is that closed proprietry software has been "changed" without access to the source.

The software hasn't been changed. It's a stylesheet that has to be added to web pages. It's still up to the web developer to maintain compatibility.

Unless the user can apply this themselves to all web sites?

Re:Kudos, but...

[CeleronXL]

This being the open source loving community it is, I'm pretty surprised to see diappointment at people doing work for a piece of software that the actual developers themselves did not or could not do. This is very often the way things are done in the open source world. Sure, this browser is not open source by any means, but still...

Re:Kudos, but...

[DavidBartlett]

With this, if it works as advertised, I can choose to follow standards and still provide some means for those who have, for whatever reasons, chosen to use a non-free browser to use my content.
One of the main arguments for open source software is "open standards." If you are not making totally browser agnostic sites, with no consideration for what browser they may be using, then you are taking the position of Microsoft: "Let's commandeer the html standard so that ppl write for our browsers instead of according to standards!"

Re:Kudos, but...

[doj8]

> If you are not making totally browser agnostic sites,
> with no consideration for what browser they may be using,
> then you are taking the position of Microsoft: "Let's
> commandeer the html standard so that ppl write for our
> browsers instead of according to standards!"

Not right. You can build pages that conform to HTML standards which won't work right in IE due to defects in IE's handling of the HTML standards. This style sheet appears to work around those bugs in IE. Those same standards-compliant pages may well work (or not work) in Mozilla, etc. So, you aren't creating pages that only work in a specific browser, you are creating pages that are valid, standard HTML code - that won't work in IE. There's a difference.

Of course, you can also create pages like that that fail in other browsers. IE is the most prevalent and, arguably, visibly deficient of them.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Felinoid]

Not really. It's perfectly natural to many of us for someone to change things to work in the way they want them to.

Yes this is often done when the product is intended for controlled content
(content created by the same authors as the program itself)
Example the ID game engens.

But when the product is created for a standards base content (content from a source the authors don't control or have any say in) standards support is absolutly nessisary.

What most programmers do is create a "standards plus" system. They support the full standard and slip in some commands the author thinks should have been included in the first place.

This style sheet is needed becouse IE was designed as if for Microsoft controlled content.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know. They are the largest software company in the world, they have billions in the bank, and it takes one individual without access to the source to fix up some of the most glaring errors that have lain there untouched for over two years. Microsoft ought to be ashamed.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Daniel_Staal]

Good theory. Unfortunately, MS has made that very difficult. There are several basic CSS/HTML formating options that work differently under IE than the standard specifies; differently enough that if you were to use them the page would either work in IE or in standards-compliant browsers. (But not both.)

There are work arounds, using semi-legit CSS that fails in one browser or another and lets each browser see what it understands. But that is really just coding to the browser again, and occasionally breaks as groups upgrade their browsers. This promises a one-stop shop for all the main problems.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. You're as bad as RMS. The OP was saying that it's sad they can't even fix their own browser. What's so hard to understand about that? Answer: nothing.

But you just couldn't resist turning it into some sort of FREEDOM issue, and start issuing some bogus propaganda.

We will never be taken seriously if this kind of crap keeps happening. And what's really sad is that you got modded up for this stunt.

Re:Kudos, but...

[blackbear]

If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?

I suppose that the reason I'm not rich yet is because I wouldn't. Building software is usually time consuming and costly. Building good software is more so. I wonder that the OSS movement didn't gain popularity so much because of a desire to contribute, as out of a sense of frustration that there was very little good software available at any price.

The market dosen't reward good software because most users are so ignorant of what is good software that they just buy whatever is most shinny and pretty and expensive. The only alternative seems to be to write good software and give it away for free so that you don't have to sit in the Microsoft (and others) stench all day long. It's not just Microsoft, but they're the best example.

Re:Kudos, but...

[rynoski]

geting my site to work with khtml is as easy as getting it to work with IE4 mozilla is the most compliant, than maybe opera, but k is definately not kompliant (atleast not in the version i am using)

Re:Kudos, but...

[MartinG]

That's why the minor comment about freedom was in brackets and why I admitted it was a digression.
It seems your indignance is equalled only by your inability to understand the main point I was making, but I'm not going to make it again here.

And if my "propoganda" is bogus, explain what's bogus about it. "Bullshit. You're as bad as RMS" doesn't help me understand the error in my point.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Daytona955i]

Right... open source browsers conform to the W3C standards... M$ doesn't. What was your point again? The open source community isn't making up their own standards like M$ is.

My web page doesn't look right in IE... my link bar shows up over the main page. (using CSS). It conforms to the W3C standards and is fully CSS compliant. It works under Mac's IE, Safari, Mozilla, Galeon, FireFox... but not IE in Windows. So rather than spend time (especially when I can't test it) I tell people to download firefox.

Re:Kudos, but...

[roie_m]

I don't think you're seeing disappointment at people working on other developers' software, so much as that other developers not working on the software themselves. This, too, isn't a general thing, it's there because it's Microsoft, who definitely disbelieve in the OSS philosophy. Therefore, most of the disappointment I got from this thread was at the double standard posed by Microsoft. I doubt people were disappointed at the actual work done, as such (though I'm sure people were disappointed that it went against their political agendas).

Re:Kudos, but...

[g0at]

Microsoft ought to be ashamed.

Of course they oughtn't be ashamed. If having done so would have made them more cash, well then, yes. But clearly not.

(Yeah, I agree with you in principle, but the reality is that Microsoft's only goal is to make money. They are a corporation.)

-ben

Re:Kudos, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even sadder when lemmings mistake Recommendations for Standards.

Re:Kudos, but...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

...it takes one individual without access to the source to fix up some of the most glaring errors that have lain there untouched for over two years.

What you're forgetting here is that not following the "standard" doesn't necessarily make Microsoft wrong, or bad, or erroneous. It merely makes them non-compliant with the standard. Now hold on before everyone mods me down as some sort of crackbrained troll, and hear me out.

History is replete with all sorts of "standards" that were completely and totally ignored. In each case where the standard was bypassed, something else eventually became dominant and was eventually recognized as the de facto "standard." How, then, is this "proprietary" standard any less valid than the original "standard" standard?

The short answer is: it isn't, unless you give a great deal of weight to design by standards committee. If Microsoft's market share is ubiquitious enough to force 90% of the world's web pages to be written with that share in mind, they are now a standard whether anyone says they are or not. The argument could logically be made that the HTML specification is lacking, and ultimately it is the HTML spec that is non-standard. In the sheer number of desktops sporting IE versus any other browser, that logic would win the day.

Now, that being said, I'm all for standards compliance whenever and wherever possible. I do, however, acknowledge that many "standards" have been woefully inadequate in the past, and they were rightfully disregarded by the innovators of the field (remember Netscape and frames?). I'd prefer it if Microsoft would play by the rules, but reality says they are actually capable of making the rules by sheer market force.

Re:Kudos, but...

[owlstead]

I suppose that the reason I'm not rich yet is because I wouldn't. Building software is usually time consuming and costly. Building good software is more so. I wonder that the OSS movement didn't gain popularity so much because of a desire to contribute, as out of a sense of frustration that there was very little good software available at any price.

Wouldn't that be turning the table around? I mean, in the first place there was (pre) unix and the universities, which were pretty royal at giving software away. Then came the commercial software. But the open source software movement was always there.

Now the OS software movement seems to be growing. But I contribute that to the larger companies getting involved, as well as the growth of the internet. The distribution problem is over folks (sorry to all those guys still behind a modem). Share and enjoy :) The first one to let a mayor country use linux as standard wins a candy bar.

Re:Kudos, but...

[bar-agent]

If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?

Open source, anyone?

Re:Kudos, but...

[Herkum01]

If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?

In a competitive market customer service can count for alot. The fact that it could be fixed at all means MS was slacking with this. It might cost more to fix, but if the return on getting it fixed was selling to X more customers, the costs of fixing IE would be more than compensated for.

The fact that MS does not feel a need to fix this means that they would don't lose X customers for not fixing this and saving some money shows why monopolies are bad.

Re:Kudos, but...

[frank_adrian314159]

If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?

You would if you took pride in your work.

And, yes, it is probably one of the reasons you're not rich yet (another being luck).

Re:Kudos, but...

[haijak]

Yes this is somthing Microsoft should have done but didn't.

Some industrius emploies started the windows power tools in their spare time. Then Microsoft took the idea and ran with it. Making them an offical unsupported product.

I think it's strange no IE staff thought it would be a good idea to try the same with the IE's standards issues. Were they stopped by microsoft?
Or am I just a conspiracy theorist.

Re:Kudos, but...

[Grant_Watson]

Now, that being said, I'm all for standards compliance whenever and wherever possible. I do, however, acknowledge that many "standards" have been woefully inadequate in the past, and they were rightfully disregarded by the innovators of the field (remember Netscape and frames?).

You're presuming that the standard is ignored because the non-compliant software is implementing some non-standard innovations. When this is the case it's quite often a good thing, I'll agree.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is not replete with innovations that prevent standards-compliance; it's simply nonstandard. Microsoft didn't implement the standard because they didn't have to. There's really no other justification.

Re:Kudos, but...

[LFS.Morpheus]

With a line of PHP (or your preferred web scripting language) you could always change which style sheet to use based on the user agent, or even make your CSS sheet in PHP so you can do:

<? if ($ie): ?> // IE specific CSS
<? else: ?> // Standards compliant code
<? endif; ?>

and such.

Yeah it's a pain in the ass, and I prefer to code my site (above) by allowing things to deprecate in such a way that the site still works alright in IE; I also try to encourage my viewers to upgrade to something better. But obviously my home page is not a mission critical web site.

Re:Kudos, but...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is not replete with innovations that prevent standards-compliance; it's simply nonstandard. Microsoft didn't implement the standard because they didn't have to. There's really no other justification.

Very true. However, you put too much weight on the motivation of the standard-flouter. It's not justification that I'm talking about, I'm talking about reality and its effects.

Remember that back around 1996, Netscape decided to pre-empt the HTML standards body with the concept of frames. Microsoft haters flocked to Netscape in support, defending Netscape or at the very least remaining silent while Netscape told the standards body to go take a flying leap. Later, when Microsoft put CSS into IE, those same people screamed bloody murder. What I'm pointing out is the double standard.

Re:Kudos, but...

[blackbear]

This isn't meant to be adversarial, but you've given me an opportunity to expand on my original point. Besides, I rather enjoy intelectual debate.

My memory of that time was that there was plenty of free software, yes. But that it was often nearly unusable. The university software was always highly functional within its scope, but you were expected to modify it to make it actually work in any sort of easy way.

You and I may be capable of using a very complicated command line or shell script to string tools together for a task, but I find that I'm less inclined to do so when I need to get a report to a client immediately and must have processed data for the presentation.

The fact is that the free tools available at the time were usually superior to their commercial counterparts, but the level of knowledge required to use them was also.

As for the generally available free software it was usually unsupported and public domain. Often it was of such poor quality that it was unusable. Which brings me to my primary argument against your first point; Before RMS created the GPL you essentially had only two ways to make free software available. You could use a University license (if you worked for a University.) That would give the author some protection against his work being raided by someone who wanted to make a quick buck off of someone else's work. Or you could put it in the public domain and if it was good, be guaranteed that someone with the resources to publish it would make a bundle at your expense.

Without the GPL (and similar licenses) there would be no OSS movement to speak of. High quality free software requires a return on investment. That investment may be intangible, but it is very real.

as for your second point, I think that commercial enterprises have become involved because there is a market for software support and supporting good software is cheap. Since most companies don't know the difference between good and bad software they pay the same for support of either. Essentially Microsoft, and others, are encouraging OSS publishers to exist and make big money by charging a competitive rate for a less expensive product.

For the first time there is a financial incentive for the creation of quality software and its associated support. But without the incentive of copyright retention offered by open source licenses, authors would not produce it and we would be back in the bad old days of generally crappy free software with the occasional gem. Perhaps I have selective memory, but I think that the OSS movement is fairly recent and markedly different from just free (as in beer) software.

Re:Kudos, but...

[calica]

Perhaps it could be modified to include a link explaining that IE isn't standards compliant and providing a few alternatives. If even only 20% leave the link due to political or lazy/ignorant reasons, imagine the amount of mindshare that could be generated.

Re:Kudos, but...

[calica]

My first real experience with free software was with the Amiga. Most of it was Public doamin and the distribution was via Fred Fish discs listed in magazines. Certain authors started making a name for themselves. The commercial market was so small it was hard for the code to be commerialized. A good example was C compilers. (Matt) Dillions Intergrated C Environment or DICE was much better than either of the commercial compilers (Lattice and Aztec). Yeah a lot of PD soft was crap. But look at all the projects on sf or freshmeat. Ratio was about the same.

Re:Kudos, but...

[4of12]

most users are so ignorant of what is good software that they just buy whatever is most shinny and pretty and expensive.

Not just software, either.

Intelligent, educated, discriminating buyers are a minority in most marketplaces.

• Houses,
• automobiles,
• insurance,
• investments,
• computer hardware,
• medical services,
• legal services,
• political representation...

Useful stylesheets

[plams]

I think I'd personally be more interested in a stylesheet that redirects IE browsers to www.mozilla.org/ :) Or even better: crashes them.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

Crashing them... is that possible? Oh wait, you said IE... nevermind :P

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

not a stylesheet. but it will selectively crash visiting IE users :>

<object ID="dosIE-doe" CLASSID="CLSID:00022613-0000-0000-C000-00000000004 6" ></object>

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Dashing Leech]

Or even better: crashes them.

That doesn't require style sheets, just normal webpages.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

Or for something even more useful, how about one that keeps mozilla from crashing? (This is not meant completely as a troll - in the course a normal day I usually have to go to IE at least once to see pages that crash Mozilla)

Re:Useful stylesheets

[kauschovar]

I actually did something similar for a website I created. Using PHP, I searched for 'MSIE' in the USER_AGENT, and if found displayed an alternate HTML page which essentially said 'upgrade your browser n00blar' (I was young when I did this :P), and then listed all alternate web browsers I could think of, not just Mozilla.

Oh yeah, and at the bottom of the page it said 'Your browser will crash in 10 seconds' and of course it worked ;)

Re:Useful stylesheets

[davetrainer]

I think I'd personally be more interested in a stylesheet that . . . crashes them.

Your wait is over.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[next1]

are you using firefox?

that sounds more like ns 4.7 days.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Phidoux]

Yeah! Doez enyone no off a goot spel checing stile sheet?

Re:Useful stylesheets

[farlukar]

try this one

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Openstandards.net]

What sites do you go to? I've been using Mozilla on all my computers (Windows and Linux) for over a year now without problems except for a few sites I had to use for clients (time reporting and Outlook web mail). I complained to the time reporting company, which explicitly says it only supports IE, that one cannot report time from a Linux box.

Other than that, every other site I use works great in Mozilla, including banking sites and other sites that you'd think would be tempted to make the IE-only mistake.

What I don't miss is the pop-up I used to have to endure in IE when I disabled ActiveX, not to mention it's countless lack of features (tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc,...).

Re:Useful stylesheets

[kmarius]

These kinds of browser checks are the same reason why browsers like Opera needs to fake the User-Agent. This page of yours would also block Opera. Let people use whatever browser they want without blocking them.

This is what Opera 7.20 uses by default:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.20 [en]

Because it contains MSIE it fools a lot of scripts, like yours.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[galaxy300]

That's absolutely incredible. As predicted, it loads up in Firefox just fine, but utterly crashes IE the second it hits the page. I checked out the source and it looks pretty basic - does anyone know what it's doing to IE?

Re:Useful stylesheets

[tiger99]

But it is illegal, at least in the UK. Delibarately crashing another program is a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act.

The sad thing is that the law does not get applied to the biggest criminal of them all, the Convicted Monopolist.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you are thinking of Netscape 4.x

Re:Useful stylesheets

[nazh]

msie crashes because of the p:first-letter and the em in the first paragraph, (p)(em)text

it probably doesn't know how to handle this, maybe tries to applie the style to the em-tag or something, anyway it takes the easy way out and crashes ;)

One a side note, had that document been a proper xhtml1.1 document, which should have been sent as application/xhtml+xml not as text/html as it is. msie wouldn't have displayed it at all, giving you a download dialog when trying to load it. xhtml media types

Re:Useful stylesheets

[mokiejovis]

Are you using nightly builds or the stable distributions? The same thing happened to me when I was using the nightly builds regularly, but when I switched to stable distributions, it worked flawlessly.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[WWWWolf]

That would be silly, because it would be stooping to the IE's level.

If I ever see a web page that specifically excludes me because I use a Non-Supported Browser, or deliberately crashes my browser, I'm not going to listen to that web designer's plea of Using Another Browser. Instead, I go elsewhere.

But if I see a site promoting the author's favorite browser in a sensible, non-intrusive way, I'm not annoyed at all - still might not be interested to switch this very instant, but at least I'm not annoyed. =)

Didn't we learn anything from the last browser wars?

Re:Useful stylesheets

[bob670]

or just opening the program on occaission.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[afidel]

OWA from Exchange 2003 works wonderfully with Mozilla 1.6 despite what MS claims. The only feature that doesn't seem to work correctly is reminder notifications, I think they coded that as an optional ActiveX plugin or something. Also IE's lack of features can be easily worked around by downloading one of the hundreds of wrapper programs like Crazybrowser.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[ChristTrekker]

Can I feign ignorance? "Sorry, officer. I was just trying to use legitimate stylistic commands that render so nicely in Netscape/Opera/Safari/etc. I had no idea that Microsoft's browser was so buggy."

Re:Useful stylesheets

[dedalus2000]

are you running mozilla under windows 2000? I've had problems with firefox, firebird, Mozilla 1.6 and Netscape 7.1 on two diferent win2k machines.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[ab762]

The easiest way to do this is to code a standards-compliant page. IE will run in what is alleged to be standards-compliant mode, if it finds a valid DOCTYPE as the first line. It then leaks memory, formats badly, and crashes a lot.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Politburo]

Agree with other posters that Outlook Web will work on Mozilla/Firefox. I don't use any of the advanced features, but for checking/sending email I have had no problems.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[arkanes]

It's probably a bug in the way styles are generated to be passed to the typography engine. It's caused when you apply a margin to a p:first-letter pseudo-element, with a styled run of text after the margin. If you use a seperate span instead of the pseudo element, it works. Anyway, this wouldn't be a big deal if only MS accepted bug reports and fixed them :P

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Nspace13]

Well it is not a stylesheet but this will crash IE nicely. Anywhere in your page include this tag

<input type='crash' />

Seems kind of ironic.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[TwistedSquare]

My main annoying site that only likes IE is www.odeon.co.uk Click the first site, and then the next page will have nothing to click on in Mozilla, but in IE fancy clickable stuff will be present. I blame odeon but its an example of people designing for only IE...

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Lothsahn]

It doesn't crash in IE for me. What version of IE are you using, and under what windows?

Re:Useful stylesheets

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Browser ID sniffing is evil, not only does it lock out browsers the author does not know about, it will also require more work due to the necessity to update the code when (one hopes) when browser versions change/new browsers are released/etc.

I did maintenance work on an ecommerce site a few years ago, and of course it contained brain-damaged browser detection; not only did it sniff for a particular browser, they did stuff like this:

if(IE_VERSION == 4) { IE = true }
elseif(NS_VERSION == 4 ) { NS = true }
else { error('You need a version 4 browser!') }

Sigh..

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Aelfy]

If you haven't seen it, this site is an accessible-ised version of the Odeon website, made by a fellow sufferer. It's what the Odeon site should be like, although you can't book tickets through it.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

Crashes for me..

From IE About:

Version: 6.0.2800.1106.xpsp2.030422-1633

I'm not running XP SP2, however. Which is odd.. Just XP SP1 with all the latest Windows Updates on it.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[GreyPoopon]

But it is illegal, at least in the UK

I think getting a conviction would be pretty difficult if the offending code was standards-compliant. Around here, we call that an "unfixed bug."

Re:Useful stylesheets

[WNight]

I agree, Moz very rarely crashes. In fact, I used to never shut Mozilla down (until it died) and I'd upgrade it every time it was shut down. As in, I had 4+ week uptimes with Moz and there's always be another official release available. I'm not a light user. If I ever have less than ten tabs open it's because I'm just starting up. I usually sit around 30+ in three windows.

(And Mozilla never died on me in Windows, probably because XP always went first.)

Re:Useful stylesheets

[lims]

YeaH! try this tag in ie and see

Re:Useful stylesheets

[wthynot]

The solution I have used for our lame IE-only-Javascript time reporting system is CodeWeavers Crossover Office. I'd say download the trial version and give it a go. I installed IE6 on Linux using it just recently, and it worked like a charm (slightly slower than the real thing, but good enough to get my hours in). My oldie-but-good-enough Office 97 works with Crossover as well. It's not free, but it's easy. If you need a 100% free solution, you might try the latest build of Wine (since that's what Crossover is built on), but difficulty of installation will vary.

Re:Useful stylesheets

[classic66coupe]

awesome reply ! ! !

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

IE is so good at crashing, you just have to tell it to do it and it will.
Crash IE with a single INPUT tag

Re:Useful stylesheets

[galaxy300]

Running XP SP1 w/ IE 6 SP 1. Been using FireFox since it was Phoenix 0.2 and hardly ever fire up IE anymore, though...

Re:Useful stylesheets

[owlstead]

That last one is well is well known and seems to work. It is however not a style sheet crashing bug.

I could not get the style sheet bug to actually work (or not work, to be precise). Has anyone complete code to confirm this bug?

Re:Useful stylesheets

[Myopic]

i don't know. i went there in Sarafi and of course it didn't crash. so i fired up IE and it displayed the exact same page, no problem. 'cause it's Mac IE, i guess.

(tongue in cheek:) i guess that's further proof that all things are better on a mac.

PS back when i used Mozilla i can across a webpage that crashed Moz. the page was fine in all the other browsers, but Moz would just crash when it loaded the page. i never figured out why -- the html looked okay to me.

Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

This will probably get modded down - but this hack really does show the power of IE that you can deploy a script fix to browser problems.

And before people start attacking ie for saying that mozilla supports xyz css and ie6 doesn't - mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago. Most of these css3 features weren't even finalised as w3c guidelines when ie6 was released.

Great to see the css3 support though - removes the need for so hard-to-manage javascript hacks.

SharedID - Single Sign On for web applications

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Nadir]

Fact is that IE 6 doesn't even support CSS2 properly which became a W3C recommendation in 1998.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[minus9]

but this hack really does show the power of IE

The power of IE is that it's broken but it may be possible to fix it?

I have a powerful car for sale if you're interested.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[ender81b]

AFAIK there is no browser available that correctly renders CSS 2.0 -- the entire spec.

IIRC Moz and Opera do render all of CSS 1.0 correctly and nearly all of CSS 2.0 correctly. But doing some advanced things with CSS 2.0 (especially doing all formatting with it, instead of old table hacks) you really run into problems with both Moz and Opera.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does every post, which starts with the statement "This will probably get modded down", "Mod me down, but..." or similar get +5 Insightful? Reverse psychology, anyone? Mod me down, but that's the truth.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most of these css3 features weren't even finalised as w3c guidelines when ie6 was released."

Isn't this the real problem? Isn't this why all microsofts products uses uncompatible versions of the real standards? Microsoft are so big, that they dont have to update there software when the real standard gets released, and it endsup with one microsoft standard, and then the real standard.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[next1]

current project i'm working on i did all css layout (ie; no tables) and had opposite experience: same code was fine in moz / opera, needed completely different version for ie5 and ie6 due to various bugs in each.

now actually reverting to tables for a lot of the layout because of it.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[gusnz]

And what's more, it doesn't even fully support CSS1, which was released in 1996! Try the ComplexSpiral demo, which is a neat demo of the effects possible in Mozilla, Opera and Safari with the 'background-attachment:' CSS1 property, which IE supports only on the BODY tag. Also, let's add 'position: static' support onto our wishlist (for watermarks/menus on pages) and PNG alpha support, and a whole bevy of regular CSS rendering bugs that have remained unsolved for years. MS claims "full CSS1 compliance", but in reality they only support the reduced CSS1 core spec.

And to think it'll be a wait of several years before IE is updated with Longhorn... until then, writing pure CSS sites is going to remain a bug-whacking chore. Let's all be collectively glad that MS fought so hard for their "Freedom to Innovate" back in the anti-trust days ;).

P.S. redesign slashdot using modern web standards, editors!

Re:Shows the power of IE

[JimDabell]

AFAIK there is no browser available that correctly renders CSS 2.0 -- the entire spec.

You are right, which is why some of the more esoteric features have been removed from CSS 2 and CSS 2.1 is about to be released.

However this is a lot different to Internet Explorer 6's situation. There are massive amounts of CSS 2 that simply aren't implemented, such as a whole bunch of selectors and tables.

The next time you see somebody complaining that CSS layout is hard, remember that there's probably a way to do what they want in a few lines of CSS, but that part of CSS simply doesn't work in Internet Explorer (but does in Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, etc).

Re:Shows the power of IE

[mcbridematt]

Not even DOM2 properly, either.

When I was working on the basic parts of Jazilla's oh-so-alpha-quality DOM implementation last year, I noticed that I.E had a *very* wierd implementation of element.attributes.item(x)[1]. Say you had:

<p align="center">some text</p>

In Mozilla, calling item(0), would give you an Attr node for align (like it should). In IE you could get anything. IIRC when I tested I.E I got some M$ proprietary crap.

[1] excuse me if I got something wrong there. My mind is more fixed on XUL and CSS at the moment.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

I feel your pain!

I've had weirdness with different IE versions too, like where I have some content with images floated right; words okay in IE5 and IE6, but in IE5.5, the images cover the content. And don't forget that Mac IE is different again!

But I have found myself that using standards compliant code, and then JavaScript to fix "anomalies" is pretty good. Using CSS hacks always seems to be asking for problems to me, whereas with JS you can target specific browser versions.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[vgaphil]

this hack really does show the power of IE that you can deploy a script fix to browser problems.

Maybe 'the powerful IE developers' should fix this problem themselves.

Want a real fix? Go here

Re:Shows the power of IE

[BetterThanCaesar]

This will probably yield a fan-club and an annual parade in my name, but...

I guess you don't see the ones that really do get modded down, because they rest peacefully under your threshold.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Tweaker_Phreaker]

Even if other browsers don't fully support the latest standards, at least they're showing regular progress. IE's renderer hasn't been changed since IE 5.5 around 5 years ago. And even though it's claimed to be fully compliant with CSS 1.0, it has been proven to be otherwise.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[JimDabell]

Given that this is targeted at web developers, how would you propose the web developers get all their users to switch to another browser before visiting their websites?

Re:Shows the power of IE

[weave]

And before people start attacking ie for saying that mozilla supports xyz css and ie6 doesn't - mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago.

Remember when Microsoft was releasing and improving IE on a rapid basis? Let's see, when did Microsoft allegedly win the browser war? Oh, about two years ago. When did Microsoft stop innovating IE? Oh, about two years ago. Since then, Microsoft doesn't care cause they have the browser market locked up. Therefore we need to download stuff like this and google toolbars to add pop up blocking and all kind of other third party stuff to get IE up to some modern day level.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like you found a secruity hole, with a bit of work you should be able to crash the browser. A bit more work you should be able to upload a worm into the hosts computer. Few pointers, build test boxes for every ie+win version, write some simple scripting code to do a memory walk etc. In website use the useragent to decide which part of memory you want to call and what to upload based on what os/ie version.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[TrentC]

P.S. redesign slashdot [alistapart.com] using modern web standards, editors!

Funny you should mention that article, because in that same article you find:

Before you panic because I'm picking on Slashdot, let me inform you that I asked Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, the guru behind Slashdot, for permission to post this information, and he stated in his reply email:

Have fun. Feel free to submit patches back to us if you come up with anything useful. Slashdot's source code is open source and available at www.slashcode.com.

So did the people who did all that work submit those patches?

Jay (=

Re:Shows the power of IE

[noda132]

mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago.

You're right, that's another thing that's wrong with IE6: it's abandonware.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Rakshasa Taisab]

RTFA, the stylesheet goes on the webserver, not the webbrowser. IE still sucks as much as it did before, it's just that someone wrote a stylesheet that brings the CSS down to IE's level of suckage.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[tiger99]

Yes, and we all know why IE has been allowed to stagnate. It has served its illegal purpose of destroying the competition, therefore it is no longer of any interest to Sir Bill and his Convicted Monopoly. In short, there is no money to be made, ar additional Illegal Monopolistic advantage to be gained, in doing any more browser development. Sir Bill thinks he has won, but in a few years it will be recognised that this led directly to the downfall of Microsoft. Just wait and see....

It is such a mess of commingled code that it would be impossible to sort it out properly without a complete redesign of both IE and the bug-infested trash OS of which it has illegally become a part.

Commingling disparate software is one of the worst design practices known, it always results in a perpetual mess. Sir Bill's attempts to create a situation, in utter defiance of the courts, where the browser cannot be removed from the OS, is responsible for this situation.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[tiger99]

It shows very little about IE except that as a browser it is an obsolete, insecure and bug-infested piece of illegally commingled code, which is so entwined with the equally insecure and bug-infested OS that it can't be fixed.

It does however show a great degree of skill on the part of the programmer, in the use of the limited and corrupt subset of CSS which actually works on the obsolete browser, and a great deal of patience in finding and working around countless undocumented bugs and features, despite the obstruction and wilful obfuscation caused by the actions of the Criminal Monopolist.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[bobintetley]

But how do you know? You didn't see the ones that got modded down!

Re:Shows the power of IE

[nazh]

agreed, the problem isn't that it doesn't support all of the css2, it is that it doens't support the elementary stuff, like the diffrent selectors.

how often have had to adjust the markup, adding a bunch of extra classes, when i simply could have used a selector, like Child selectors and Adjacent sibling selectors.

just to show off what one can do with selectors, here is a example i made once chessboard styled table This works perfectly in mozilla, opera, and konq.
There is also some examples with :target a css3 selector if you go to the index of that page, but that is only supported by mozilla.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[gerddie]

So did the people who did all that work submit those patches?
Also in the article:

I now challenge the ALA community. We need a good web standards mechanic (or team of mechanics) to dig though Slashdot's engine, Slashcode, and make it web-standards-compliant. CmdrTaco has encouraged us to submit patches, and I know we can show the benefits! The challenge is there -- any takers?

Not yet it seems ...

Re:Shows the power of IE

[nazh]

just a little correction on my post, :target is not a selector it is a pseudo-class http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/#target-pseudo

Re:Shows the power of IE

[tootlemonde]

Some posters perceive a climate of hostility on Slashdot to certain ideas, particularly pro-Microsoft and pro-government-regulation ones.

Although these ideas may attract a disproportionate share of hostile reaction, the very fact that they generate so much reaction indicates that people are interested enough in the ideas to debate them. It suggests that a large number users are looking for an argument.

Passionate intensity is no measure of truth and is often a mask for uncertainty. However, it can be a measure of the importance of an idea or proposition. It indicates that something important may be at stake.

The benefit for more dispassionate readers is that they often learn more when conflicting ideas are forcefully presented than when everyone takes a measured approach.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[vgaphil]

Your missing my point...

Dean Edwards has taken it upon himself to make Internet Explorer W3C compliant

IE should already be W3C compliant, why does it become our problem when a browser doesn't follow standards?

how would you propose the web developers get all their users to switch to another browser before visiting their websites?

How's this? =D

function getFireFox(){
if(navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer"){
location = "http://mozilla.org/products/firefox/";
}
}

body onLoad="getFireFox();"

Re:Shows the power of IE

[JimDabell]

IE should already be W3C compliant, why does it become our problem when a browser doesn't follow standards?

Because it's used by the majority of the people on the Internet, and the people this "fix" is aimed at are the ones who are responsible for getting websites to work for everyone, not just those that use the developers' favourite browser.

Sure, it would be great if nobody used Internet Explorer, or if Microsoft fixed Internet Explorer, but that simply isn't the case, and pointing fingers at Microsoft won't solve the problem, whether it's their fault or not.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Microsoft stop innovating IE? Oh, about two years ago.

It was about two years ago that Bill Gates became their CTO. And it was also about two years ago that they implemented the new policy of not fixing any bugs in their development tools -- it's now paid upgrades only, no service packs.

I'm sure there's no correlation...

Re:Shows the power of IE

[jim_mcneely]

I've done several web projects recently, including my own web site, completely with web standards compliant CSS that works beautifully on IE6 and others. No tables, etc., just lists, divs, css object js and a stylesheet. It works great; you just have to test it on both (meaning, IE, and everything else). Here's the link if someone is curious to look at the resulting source code: www.newcenturydata.com

Re:Shows the power of IE

[thesolo]

this hack really does show the power of IE...ie6 was released 2+ years ago. Most of these css3 features weren't even finalised as w3c guidelines when ie6 was released.

I call BS on that. Even features which IE did implement, it couldn't get right. For example, IE's implementation of getElementById is extremely flawed. It also doesn't support lots of things, like the CSS Width property, properly. (IE treats width as min-width, and doesn't provide real width support.)

This isn't a testament to IE's scalability, hackability, or another ability you might come up with. It's just another reason why it's a piss-poor browser. We need additional code to make IE properly understand standards; that's atrocious.

Also, if you want to see how IE stacks up against a browser like Firefox, I have made a quick comparison between the two. Its a little old now, and it was using Firebird 0.7 (not Firefox), but it's still a valid comparison. IE 6 chokes horribly on CSS, plain & simple.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

2+ without any development more like. It's ugly, insecure, and doesn't support CSS correctly. Ditch ie for anything else (er... other that Opera on Mac which sucks too).

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Salsaman]

mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago

Which nicely proves the point - Microsoft browser software is stagnating, whilst all the true innovation is taking place outside that company.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Try looking at the X/HTML itself. IE gets confused by carriage returns in the code - leaves irritating gaps etc. Also there's a load of stuff out there about writing CSS for browsers that suck (IE on Mac / Win, Opera on Mac etc.). Try www.alistapart.com

Re:Shows the power of IE

[ottffssent]

Therefore we need to download stuff like this and google toolbars to add pop up blocking and all kind of other third party stuff to get IE up to some modern day level.

No you don't. Download one of Mozilla, Opera, Firefox, Safari, Amya, Galeon, Konquerer, OmniWeb, etc.

Really, the fact that IE can't be bothered to support an 8-year old standard (CSS1 came out in '96) is not my problem, and it shouldn't be yours either. If you're downloading all this extra crap, you're (badly) treating the symptoms, not the cause. There is no fix for IE without destroying Microsoft - it's an ideological problem, not a technical one. So abandon it and use something that works.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[MyHair]

s/stuff like this and google toolbars to add pop up blocking and all kind of other third party stuff to get IE up to some modern day level/Mozilla/

(Or Opera or Konqueror, if that's your thing. Or even Dillo.)

Re:Shows the power of IE

[hayds]

Thats just the problem - IE6 was released 2+ years ago.

Since it is lacking basic functionality in the form of CSS and other standard features, you would think that IE7 would have been released by now to rectify the situation. Not only has this nothappened, but apparently Microsoft plans no more IE releases until Longhorn.

The fact that software is outdated may be a reason why it doesnt have features x y and z, but it is no reason for a lack of updates, especially when said software is critical for everyday use and written by a company with billions of dollars in the bank.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[scrytch]

> This will probably get modded down - but this hack really does show the power of IE that you can deploy a script fix to browser problems.

What it shows is the power of DHTML behaviors. Microsoft has only ever used them for cutesy little hacks, but with them you can pretty much filter and transform selected elements into arbitrary HTML, including script elements. The closest thing mozilla has to this is XBL, which aside from being almost completely undocumented, is insanely difficult to write.

I understand the author of this hack has behaviors for mozilla ... I'd be very interested in seeing that once the slashdotting stops. Assuming he still has any bandwidth quota left.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[scrytch]

> Try the ComplexSpiral demo

It's interesting, but on firefox on a gigaherz machine, it crawls. Alpha blending is pretty, but damn slow -- web designers really need to avoid it for anything that moves and has to be re-composed frequently.

Funny thing, I'm looking at the CSS with the editcss sidebar for firefox, and I can't find where the translucency is defined. How's that work?

Re:Shows the power of IE

[raverbuzzy]

The problem with IE5 is that it uses the CSS1 method of calculating the size of the box model.

Explained in detail here

Don't forget to omit the xml prolog "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>" if you are using a xhtml doctype. It'll knock IE back into quirks rendering mode.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the ones that really do get modded down are below your threshold.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

IE isn't really "confused" by the carriage returns -- this is old legacy Mosaic behavior.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no alpha blending used in that demo. There are simply different background images all "attached" to the same point, so when you scroll, different parts of it are revealed. Clever trick.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[bonch]

IE's getting updated within the month with SP2, that will add pop-up blocking and more.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[bonch]

illegally commingled code

Does that mean Konquerer is illegally commingled code? If KDE somehow became the monopoly standard, would you be complaining about Konquerer or remain silent?

Just curious. I never got the whole "IE is integrated into Windows and that is somehow bad!" argument. I use Opera on Windows just fine.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[aWalrus]

Not even a good troll. Don't know why it got modded up. The IE7 thing is based on DHTML. That is a combination of Javascript (ECMAscript), (x)html and css. The css3 spec is not what is at stake here. It's CSS2. IE's support for Javascript, and particularly the DOM (Document Object Model) is severely lacking in comparison to other, more standards compliant browsers, and your whole post didn't make sense at all.

And *most of the stuff out there* has better DOM support, *even* browsers that were out before IE5.5/6

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Isofarro]

Funny thing, I'm looking at the CSS with the editcss sidebar for firefox, and I can't find where the translucency is defined. How's that work?

There's no translucency. There's basically two background images: one is the original image, and one is after the translucent effect is applied. The body of the document displays the original image as the background, and the content div shows the other image as the background. Because the starting point of both background images is defined as the top left corner of the page, it _looks_ to be a translucent effect because the two images line up perfectly (except in IE which gets it wrong).

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Y2]

It's interesting, but on firefox on a gigaherz machine, it crawls. Alpha blending is pretty, but damn slow -- web designers really need to avoid it for anything that moves and has to be re-composed frequently.

Which gigahertz machine? In Firefox - or Safari - on my 1.00 GHz powerbook, there is no perceptible slowing.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[setmajer]

And what's more, it doesn't even fully support CSS1, which was released in 1996!

...and for which Microsoft received a patent in 1999.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with IE5 is that it uses the CSS1 method of calculating the size of the box model.

No, it misinterprets the CSS1 box model. Read pages that you link to.

I usually find that it's easier to tell Mozilla and Opera to use IE's box model than to try to make IE use the CSS1/2 box model:

box-sizing: border-box; /* opera */
-moz-box-sizing: border-box; /* mozilla */

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's all about the trolls who post some inflamitory nonsense but tack on at the end, "This is a joke for all you humor impaired mods." As long as you say that you're given atleast a +3 funny.

Oh yeah, THIS POST IS FUNNY!!!

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean Konquerer is illegally commingled code?

No, because KDE doesn't have a monopoly, and Konqueror wasn't integrated to kill a competitor.

I never got the whole "IE is integrated into Windows and that is somehow bad!" argument.

Netscape was threatening Microsoft's desktop dominance with the potential of OS-independent applications run over the Internet. Microsoft threw a load of money it gained through its monopoly at developing Internet Explorer, gave it away to kill Netscape's profits, and integrated it so even those people who would choose Netscape on its own merits wouldn't bother as a web browser came with the OS. This crippled Netscape.

Basically, if Microsoft were allowed to act like that whenever they wanted to, nobody would have a chance at competing with Microsoft in any market space Microsoft chose to dominate. Having a monopoly isn't bad, technical changes aren't bad, but making technical changes at great expense to maintain your monpoly is bad.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[aWalrus]

DHTML is based on the interaction of Javascript with (x)html. It is not an invention of Microsoft, and most definitely, it's not exclusive to IE. Most other browsers have better support for the key parts of DHTML behavior (such as the Document Object Model).

Mozilla has much better support for this kind of thing, and more things can be done with it (and more consistently). XBL or XUL have nothing to do with this.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[scrytch]

DHTML is based on the interaction of Javascript with (x)html. It is not an invention of Microsoft, and most definitely, it's not exclusive to IE. Most other browsers have better support for the key parts of DHTML behavior (such as the Document Object Model).

I was referring specifically to Behaviors, which is a very specific addition to the DHTML object model. It's like CSS with javascript/vbscript. In fact, it is CSS with javascript/vbscript.

I imagine folks will be popping out of the woodwork next saying how wrong and evil and corrupting to our purity of our bodily fluids DHTML scripting is...

Re:Shows the power of IE

[aWalrus]

It's a bloody security liability, is what it is.

The behaviors that are not redundant (and could be implemented with standards compliant Javacript code) are downright dangerous and may expose more information than you'd like to malicious websites. There have been numerous exploits of this kind of stuff in the past.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not actually need an entirely different style sheet for IE browsers. You can easily have one style sheet that addresses the differences of Mozilla/Opera/IE.

You can, for instance, use hacks to feed specific values to IE only: Star HTML Selector Bug [Edwardson Tan]

There are numerous other such hacks available which exploit browser-specific bugs. There are ways to force IE into using the correct box-model, for instance, among many other things.

CSS Filters [Dithered.com] is just one place you will find information on such hacks. I prefer to use the CSS-Only hacks, but here are listed some methods incorporating Java Script as well.

Best of all, mostly all of the very useful CSS hacks validate :) In short, it's actually quite easy to have one style sheet work for multiple browsers, without having to do any sort of detection.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Myopic]

you're totally right. next time i get some mod points i'm'a go thru and mod down everyone who says that in their post. seriously. it's like "first post" for karma whores.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Lennie]

Actually, Mozilla is just as or even more powerfull, I have a few small hacks lying around that make Mozilla work more like IE (when needed).

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

A gigahertz what? Toaster? On my cheesy P3-1ghz it runs just fine, with no noticeble slowdown of any sort, aside from the initial image load (could be fixed with a bit of image pre-fetch jacascript I guess).

Re:Shows the power of IE

[Richard A Lake]

Opera 7.23 500mhz it runs eith no slowness

Re:Shows the power of IE

[next1]

i agree you can write *standards compliant* css that works in any browser.

the point of my post was that, due to bugs in the rendering of some css elements in ie5 and others in ie6, i am having to use different css code for different browsers in some cases.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[next1]

yeah the div/box model issue is the main issue with using all divs/no tables.

i saw that method but it was just too "hacky" for me, so i decided to have 1 main style sheet and then just include special bits for ie5/6.

however i'm now thinking even that is too much ongoing maintenance, hence why i'm (unfortunately) reverting to tables for the layout.

really wanted this to be my first all css *layout* site but in reality i think we need at least 1 more version of ie first.

Re:Shows the power of IE

[millette]

Your reply might be off-topic (this whole thread is...), I'd still give you mod points for being insightful if I could. Where are mod points when you need them!

Re:Shows the power of IE

[tiger99]

Konqueror has not been ruled to be illegally commingled in a court of law, and there is no reason for it to be. It can be freely removed from the OS, or not installed, whatever one chooses.

IE cannot be removed by any method provided by M$. True, you can now, AFAIK, uninstall it, which removes the icon from the desktop, and leaves 20MB or so of bloated, buggy and insecure code still loaded. They have delibarately put various vital system functions into some of the .dlls that belong to IE (very bad programming practice indeed) to ensure that as afr as possible it cannot be removed. That, and the illegal act, under monopoly law, of tying a browser to an OS, is shy it is illegal.

I am glad that you run Opera and like it, I mostly use Mozilla, but do use Opera for testing web pages and the occasional site taht doesn't seem to work properly. The sad fact is that when you are running Opera, or I am running Mozilla, the bloated and buggy IE is still consuming system resources.

All he has to do now

[maroberts]

Is ponder how to get over the Slashdotting of his site.

I'm sure the CSS is a work of technical art; seeing it would be even better.

Re:All he has to do now

[originalTMAN]

I think I could write a css script for that....

Re:All he has to do now

[Gabrill]

Umm . . . Sourceforge?

Re:All he has to do now

[oever]

What would be really useful, is if a large site like w3m, slashdot or, why not, microsoft (ok maybe not) would host this stylesheet. This has a number of advantages:
- stylesheet can be cached: no penalty on website size
- a central version with the latest stable release: less fuss for website maintainers

Re:All he has to do now

[Doctor O]

Actually sourceforge is a good idea. I would contribute to the project if it were on sf. If if works well even only for a few of the main points of constant frustration (box model and font sizes come to mind), it makes work bliss.

Re:The site seems down?

[Anonymous Coward]

A link to technical content was posted on Slashdot's front page. Do you really need a confirmation?

firefox

[selderrr]

I wish someone would release such a sheet for firefox : /. itself still doen't render correctly on FFox 0.8 under XPpro. As shown here, the left column tends to dribble into the article summary...

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Renders fine for me using FireFox 0.8 @ 1600x1200

Re:firefox

[Urkki]

I definitely second that!
Mod parent up!

Most annoying when it happens, which fortunately isn't all the time...

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. I myself do not have this problem. I'm running firefox 0.8 under windows 98se. I suppose one possible cause is I do not "log in" to slashdot - so I see "different html."

Re:firefox

[ideatrack]

But this is why FireFox still isn't onto release one. I also get problems on my XP box using some sites, especially forms; but there are also still sites that don't work correctly in any release.

IE has the usual MS philosophy in that if something doesn't comply with the way they've done it, who cares because everyone will change to their way of thinking. I agree with those who don't like that someone else has to clean up after MS but what else are you going to do? For better or worse it is, and will be for a while yet, what most non-techy people use.

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had it happen to me before, on this and various other sites. But it's an inconstant effect. Which is strange. I thought it might have had something to do with changing the font-size, but quick infomral testing argues not.

Re:firefox

[forged]

I'll second that. Mozilla has the same problems so it could be in all Gecko derivatives and not just in Fox.. Sometimes, amazingly, reloading the page makes the problem less obvious.

Re:firefox

[foolip]

Perhaps it's slashdot that needs to be made standards compliant! It would seem that someone doesn't want us to know how compliant it is.

It seems WDG had better luck getting through, but look at all those errors!

Re:firefox

[tunah]

Slashdot isn't valid HTML, so it doesn't _have_ a correct rendering ;-)

Re:firefox

[michich]

I'm seeing it quite often. This is bug #217527 in Bugzilla. When it happens, you can workaround it with CTRL+PLUS and CTRL+MINUS.

Re:firefox

[plugger]

Works fine for me at 1152x864 on XP Pro.

Re:firefox

[Basje]

This isn't a problem with FFox not being standards compliant, but a problem with the slashcode not being standard html. See the faq. Bugs have been filed already.

Re:firefox

[Katchina'404]

I've noticed the same problem these last days (I'd say only one or two weeks) using Mozilla 1.6 under Win XP. As others have said, it's not permanent. When it shows up, hitting refresh a couple of times "fixes" the problem.

Since I've been running Moz 1.6 for a while now, I'm thinking it may some slight change in the "slashcode".

Are people seeing this from other platforms than Win XP ?

Re:firefox

[michich]

Yes, I'm seeing this on Linux.

Re:firefox

[Xugumad]

Downloading the index page, then uploading it to the W3C validator throws an error about being unable to determine character encoding. Forcing character encoding to iso-8859-1 results in 371 errors!

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously got a shitty build, it works fine for me on /. the odd time I boot into windows and can't stay away... and it looks fine on Linux.

Re:firefox

[Imperator]

That's pretty sad, for /. to mess with their server settings to disable the w3 validator. Their HTML has been terribly broken for years. I don't understand what they do with all that money they have, because they sure haven't been improving the site very much. Makes me glad I don't subscribe and I block their ads.

Re:firefox

[michich]

It is a real Firefox bug. See bug #217527 in the Bugzilla. There are some minimal testcases, which are standards compliant and still exhibit this bug.

Re:firefox

[adamh]

Or try it without the www. as here

adam

Re:firefox

[/ASCII]

Check those errors a little more carefully. There are a whole bunch of errors about URIs of the type 'http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=2336&alloc_id=5672&sit e_id=1&request'. I'm too lazy to check if this is actually a valid to skip the pagename on an URI with a query, but I belive it is. But no matter what, each such URI generates about a dozen errors, which is bogus. Most of the other errors have to do with rendering hints like 'marginwidth' and 'bgcolor', which where not a part of the HTML 3.2 standard but are noncritical.

Re:firefox

[boffy_b]

I tried adding a trailing slash, worked once, then stopped. I tried taking out the "www." before "slashdot.org", worked a few times, then stopped. Looks like /. has its tinfoil hat firmly on against its users.

Re:firefox

[GORby_]

Maybe if you use the correct URL for W3C validation (which is the same you use to access this site) and not http://wwww.slashdot.org it would work (works over here anyway). The W3C validator isn't smart enough to automatically try alternatives if a user can't even enter the correct URL (and I'm thankful for that). Here's the Correct URL.

I have to agree... still a whole lot of errors though, which I certainly didn't expect for this site!

Re:firefox

[JimDabell]

There are a whole bunch of errors about URIs of the type 'http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=2336&alloc_id=5672&sit e_id=1&request'. I'm too lazy to check if this is actually a valid to skip the pagename on an URI with a query, but I belive it is. But no matter what, each such URI generates about a dozen errors, which is bogus.

No it isn't. The ampersand (&) is a special character in HTML, and needs to be encoded properly (as &amp;). If you don't do so, then you run the risk of having links break in browsers.

Re:firefox

[jrumney]

The ampersand (&) is a special character in HTML, and needs to be encoded properly (as &amp;). If you don't do so, then you run the risk of having links break in browsers.

Only if the browser itself is broken. The SGML definition of HTML 3.2 declares attributes as CDATA.

Re:firefox

[Wullis]

Perhaps it's slashdot that needs to be made standards compliant!

The magazine A List Apart has already redone Slashdot's design with web standards. Look here:

• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/
• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot2/

Re:firefox

[marvin_pa]

This is interesting: "Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards"

The author even adds a discussion on how much bandwidth would be saved.

Re:firefox

[JimDabell]

The SGML definition of HTML 3.2 declares attributes as CDATA.

Actually, it varies; not all attributes are defined in that way. If you limit your remark to the href attributes of <a> elements, the HTML 4.01 specification defines them to contain CDATA as well. However you are misinterpreting the meaning of CDATA - CDATA includes character entities.

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

But what's that big ugly image on the top..oh, riight... a banner ad. Haven't seen them in four years so I've just forgotten what they look like.

I use, of course, Privoxy (GPLd). (A big thank you to the developers!)

Re:firefox

[galaxy300]

I see it on Slashdot about once a day - usually I just hit refresh a few times and it goes away. Hopefully they'll get that one straightened out before v. 1.0

Re:firefox

[tookish]

The problem with those links has nothing to do with the page name being skipped -- it's the fact that the ampersands aren't encoded as "&"

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting the same thing occasionally with Firefox on Win2000 Pro.

Re:firefox

[Havokmon]

That's pretty sad, for /. to mess with their server settings to disable the w3 validator. Their HTML has been terribly broken for years. I don't understand what they do with all that money they have, because they sure haven't been improving the site very much. Makes me glad I don't subscribe and I block their ads.

hehehe Someone did that to me the other day. I was bitching about IE crashing when it tried to display JPEG's with EXIF information. He said you can start with the 66 errors in your HTML.

Umm yeah. ;) While IE image viewing is BROKEN, I really should concentrate on making sure all my image links have 'alt' tags :P

You guys are so silly! :)

Re:firefox

[sommere]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .slashdot.org%2F works fine though. You need a trailing /

Re:firefox

[jrumney]

However you are misinterpreting the meaning of CDATA - CDATA includes character entities.

I am not misinterpreting the meaning of CDATA, you are. "may include character entities" does not mean the same as "The ampersand (&) is a special character in HTML, and needs to be encoded properly (as &amp;)". Encoding is optional in a CDATA block.

Re:firefox

[jrumney]

The problem with those links has nothing to do with the page name being skipped -- it's the fact that the ampersands aren't encoded as "&"

They don't have to be. href attributes are defined as CDATA, where such encoding is optional.

Re:firefox

[the pickle]

The "unknown entity" errors aren't bogus; the unescaped ampersand character has NEVER been "legal" in URIs. User-agents have simply auto-escaped them for so long that not escaping them became standard practise.

Changing all those to &amp; is trivial, yes, but no less necessary for proper validation than an unclosed <b> tag.

p

Re:firefox

[JimDabell]

You are wrong. The HTML specification is very clear on the matter.

to use the URI "http://host/?x=1&y=2" as a linking URI, it must be written <A href="http://host/?x=1&#38;y=2"> or <A href="http://host/?x=1&amp;y=2">.

Re:firefox

[Random832]

...did you TRY it? clicking your link - 403 - entering in any of http://slashdot.org http://www.slashdot.org/ http://slashdot.org/ : 403 403 403 - your first hint should have been the fact that 403 is _not_ the normal response in this situation - 301 (if i remember correctly) is.

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, point it to slashdot.org instead of www.slashdot.org. That works fine.

Re:firefox

[CastrTroy]

I blame it on XP. Slashdot renders fine on FireFox 0.8 in Linux. Must be microsofts fault, detecting another browser, and purposely messing with it. :)

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, after reading that I realised it is only Mozilla 1.6 under XP that exhibit this problem: both Linux installations (Gentoo and Debian) on this machine render Slashdot without a problem, and Mozilla 1.6 running on Win2000 (on a different machine) looks fine too.
Very odd.

Re:firefox

[ibsteveog]

oh dear... foolip is spreading 'FUD' ;-)

Slashdot isn't blocking the validator - it's just that foolip's link is broken.

The link tells the w3 validator to have www.slashdot.org validated, but any good /.er knows that the site is actually just slashdot.org.

Here's a fixed link, which shows the w3 validating the site with no "permission denied" because of a bad site name.

Re:firefox

[Tumbleweed]

A lot of those errors would go away if Slashdot simply used the correct DOCTYPE for this code - HTML 4.01 Transitional. If you're gonna use the wrong DOCTYPE with your page, you shouldn't USE a DOCTYPE at all. But then, that's what I expect out of people who make a site of this type using *Perl* and *MySQL*. It may be the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, but it still looks like a hoopty. :)

Re:firefox

[Drantin]

And maybe if they'd applied those changes to slashcode it would be implemented, who knows... but no, they just created a mock-up...

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

You are technically correct, but this is one of those things that 99% of sites do incorrectly, which means no browser in the world will break with this behavior.

If you want to pick on slashdot's HTML, go after the horrid nested table layout, not the lack of &amp; in URIs.

Re:firefox

[Drantin]

although: Slashcode has a recent article on the subject...

Re:firefox

[scrytch]

The "unknown entity" errors aren't bogus; the unescaped ampersand character has NEVER been "legal" in URIs. User-agents have simply auto-escaped them for so long that not escaping them became standard practise.

Changing all those to &amp; is trivial, yes, but no less necessary for proper validation than an unclosed <b> tag

You are aware that the ampersand is what separates query parts in the CGI spec, and &amp; is a HTML entity, not a URL encoding? And that ampersand and semicolon are both considered equally "reserved" in the URI spec (CGI also allows for semicolon to separate args, which I personally prefer)

Last time I threw an RFC at someone, I ended up with egg on my face, but this one I'm rather confident with.

• The syntax of http://host/?query is perfectly allowed. The path is "/". "http://host?query" is not really allowed if I read my BNF correctly, but it's not very unambiguous.
  
• The query string syntax is totally undefined
  
• The one thing the HTTP URL spec is specific about is that escaped characters in the "reserved" and "unsafe" sets (ampersand and semicolon) could be considered syntactically different than unescaped. Whatever "different" means in this context, who knows. Could be, not must be, since it simply excludes them from the requirement of being equivalent. To wit:

  
  Characters other than those in the "reserved" and "unsafe" sets (see
  RFC 2396 [42]) are equivalent to their ""%" HEX HEX" encoding.

  
  
• HTTP URL's are woefully underspecified compared to, say, what a ASN.1 encoding would demand. For this reason, the robustness principle plays in.
  

Re:firefox

[JimDabell]

You are technically correct, but this is one of those things that 99% of sites do incorrectly, which means no browser in the world will break with this behavior.

I knew somebody would bring this up. Pedantism pays off when coding, it's not unwarranted criticism.

You state that "no browser in the world will break with this behaviour". It's already happened once with this exact error. This error was even more common in HTML documents a while ago, and then a version of Netscape came out that couldn't understand links that were broken in this way. The result was that anybody using Netscape (the most popular browser at the time) would have to deal with broken links if the author thought they could get away with these errors.

There are lots of examples where people think that error-handling or proprietary behaviour can be relied upon, and then a new version of a browser comes out that catches them out. It's such a simple thing to get right that it's just plain stupid to not do so.

Re:firefox

[scrytch]

Oh blah, nevermind, I realize now that that was about embedding URLs into HTML. I was under the impression that attributes (such as href) did not require such encoding, one of the reasons why the quotes around attribute values are more than a little strongly recommended? (and required in xml/xhtml). I won't pretend to know that spec enough to hazard a guess though.

Re:firefox

[elemental23]

Here's a fixed link, which shows the w3 validating the site with no "permission denied" because of a bad site name.

But following that link results in:

I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve < http://slashdot.org>:

403 Forbidden

Please make sure you have entered the URI correctly.

Nice one.

Re:firefox

[ibsteveog]

Well, that's odd. I can go to the w3 home page, enter http://slashdot.org, and it runs the validation fine. The link on the resulting page works for me once, maybe twice, and then it gives the 403 error.

Guess you have to go type http://slashdot.org into a box if you actually want to see the validation.

Or, someone with more time on their hands code look at the page source and see why the resulting link doesn't work but pressing the validate button makes it work...

Re:firefox

[owlstead]

I once saw a nice new frontend for /. which seemed to be fine. Nice real HTML and stuff. Where did it go? Why isn't it on the front page yet? Why don't I RTFM? Questions that need to be answered!

It's still better than the inquirer (www.inquirer.net) and way better than the register (www.theregister.co.uk) which doesn't even check their submissions for errors (missing end tag for instance, ugh) though.

Re:firefox

[Myopic]

yeah it's true. yo i love slashdot (duh) but there are weird bugs which make me wonder what the subscription money goes for. Sure, hosting is expensive. I understand. But why is it that when I try to change my threshhold from 3 to 2, the menu doesn't display the correct number of articles at each threshhold? It used to. That bug popped up when they switched to the new slashcode (remember that?) and I figured they'd fix it pretty quckly. Nope.

also, isn't it about time we let the threshholds go up to six or seven? i mean, if I only have time for a couple dozen comments, i go with threshhold five and even then i can only read some of the articles on the page.

yo i'm just sayin'. i do love slashdot.

Re:firefox

[berkut7]

Actually, Firefox uses the same Gecko(tm) rendering engine as Mozilla 1.6. The only difference between Mozilla Suite and Mozilla Firefox is that Firefox is stand-alone browser with a different user inferface and features. So, Firefox has not reached 1.0 yet, because of uncomplete features and UI, not because of the rendering engine.

Re:firefox

[GORby_]

As a matter of fact I did before posting (as I usually do), and I got a list of more than 100 errors. Now I do get a 403 forbidden too...
Apparently somebody changed something somewhere.

The post I was responding to contained a bad URL to start with, and that's why I tried with the correct URL for slashdot and got a correct result (well, correct result isn't probably the best word for a page with that many errors).
All that rests now is saving the file and then uploading to W3C for checking...

Re:firefox

[jesser]

Downloading the index page, then uploading it to the W3C validator throws an error about being unable to determine character encoding.

That's because Slashdot specifies the character encoding in an HTTP header, not in the HTML. When you save a page, you throw away HTTP headers.

Re:firefox

[The Wicked Priest]

One more reason to check the "Light" box under Preferences / Homepage. I first turned it on for my PocketPC, and now I use it all the time. No more columns at all.

They're going to completely rewrite IE?

[EmagGeek]

Wow... who woulda thunk it?

Re:They're going to completely rewrite IE?

[displaced80]

Offtopic? Oh, come on!

"who woulda thunk it?"

thunk -- code that performs a translation or conversion... like the stylesheet?

Okay... so I'm stretching definitions slightly. But I'll do anything for a pun.

Re:They're going to completely rewrite IE?

[EmagGeek]

At least SOMEBODY got it :)

from dictionary.com:

"3. A stubroutine, in an overlay programming environment,
that loads and jumps to the correct overlay."

Although I've never heard of a "stubroutine"

Google cache

[Underholdning]

Site is already slashdottet. Here's Google's cache of the document.
So - how are the plans going with implementing a slashdot cache?

Re:Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2F dean.edwards.name%2FIE7%2Fsrc%2F&sourceid=mozilla- search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf -8

The Google cache of the source code. Wow.

Re:Google cache

[nacturation]

I still don't know why Slashdot doesn't reference non-high bandwidth sites using the freecache service. All that needs to be done is prefix the URL with http://freecache.org/ and follow it with the full regular URL, eg:

http://freecache.org/http://www.slowsite.com/big _p ictures.html

It benefits the site owner by having reduced bandwidth costs and it also benefits Slashdot as we can read the articles.

Re:Google cache

[nautical9]

Unfortunately, some (most?) sites are dynamic in nature, especially concerning advertising. By using the freecache service, a static version of the page gets cached and the same ad would _may_ appear if the site owner is using his own advertising code and not some remote service like google or doubleclick, likely going against the wishes of the website. Or perhaps the content itself requires dynamic code to work properly.

Although this would be very useful for tiny sites like those hosted on cable connections, but it's hard to tell in advance which sites will be slashdotted.

And either way, the choice should really be up to the web site owner. I'm sure most would prefer that people see their content versus having their server crushed, but you never know until you ask.

Re:Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

And either way, the choice should really be up to the web site owner. I'm sure most would prefer that people see their content versus having their server crushed, but you never know until you ask.

Read the Slashdot FAQ. It explicitly states that the reason Taco et al. don't email to ask permission in these cases is because they don't want to delay "cool breaking news" for a few hours.

Seriously, the reason why this poor guy's server (in his kitchen, no less!) is a smoking crater is because the Slashdot editors didn't think we could wait a few hours to see this CSS hack.

Re:Google cache

[LetterJ]

Freecache isn't intended for files smaller than 5MB. The vast majority of Slashdottings are articles with a few 800x600 photos, which ends up under that limit.

Re:Google cache

[PhxBlue]

It benefits the site owner by having reduced bandwidth costs and it also benefits Slashdot as we can read the articles.

At least, for all 20 Slashdotters who do read the articles. . . :)

Re:Google cache

[scrytch]

Slashdot has no respect for people who pay for their bandwidth. I swear, if slashdot made me pay for that kind of bandwidth, I'd put up a redirect to tubgirl instead.

http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/slashhole.s ht ml

Anyone know where to find this slashhole hack? I suppose it's a simple referer filter, but I'm not familiar with how to install such a thing.

Re:Google cache

[Thuktun]

And either way, the choice should really be up to the web site owner. I'm sure most would prefer that people see their content versus having their server crushed, but you never know until you ask.

This sounds like something analagous to the Robot Exclusion Protocol. Perhaps a Slashdot Impact Avoidance Protocol? Allow the site maintainer to direct which resources should be cached to avoid massive bandwidth spikes by sites like Slashdot and which should not.

Re:Google cache

[ChaosDiscord]

I still don't know why Slashdot doesn't reference non-high bandwidth sites using the freecache service.

Perhaps because, to quote the site you linked to:

Please note that you cannot submit a whole site to FreeCache as in http://freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com/ This will not work as only index.html will be cached. You have to prefix every item that you want to have cached seperately.

So caching big_pictures.html as you suggest would cache the HTML (typically the small part) while leaving the "big pictures" that chew up bandwidth hosed from the poor original site.

It benefits the site owner by having reduced bandwidth costs...

What if the site owner is prepared to accept the bandwidth costs? Some "small sites" are perfectly able to take a Slashdotting while some large businesses have been taken down. There is no way to know short of prior arrangements with the web site. Now, should Slashdot contact sites that look small to check? That's an entirely different discussion. But providing a mirror without prior permission is presumptive and rude.

Re:Gone with only 3 comments

[Anonymous Coward]

on the root of the site (http://dean.edwards.name/) it says:
* This is my site
* for my personal use
* running on my machine
* in my kitchen!

jesus christ, someone create a mirror before his computer blows up from being slashdotted.

Mirror offer

[paulproteus]

If the author would like to email me at mirror@asheesh.org, I'd be happy to mirror this site. I have more than enough bandwidth to cover it.

-- Asheesh.

Id say

[222]

Judging by the loading lag, and eventual time out hes managed to make his webserver IIS compliant also ;)

IE part of the Longhorn

[SailfishMac]

The shear horror!!!


G5's Folding@home for Team Mac OS X #1971

Re:IE part of the Longhorn

[SailfishMac]

Guess this means the new Microsoft mail program will also be part of the Longhorn.

No WONDER Gates wants to charge for emails!


G5's Folding for Team Mac OS X #1971

Re:IE part of the Longhorn

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Stop replying to your own posts.
2. If you must reply to your own posts, learn how to use "Post Anonymously" so you don't look quite such an idiot.
3. Put your damn sig where it belongs instead of apending it to each and every post.

Re:IE part of the Longhorn

[SailfishMac]

Thanks for your advice, I'll do that. newbie.

Re:IE part of the Longhorn

[pclminion]

I'm now picturing a maniacal shepherd cackling as he clacks his sheep shears together.

I think you meant sheer horror :-)

Get firefox.

[MooKore 2004]

If you havent already yet, you should of switched from IE to Firefox. It is now my default browser on Windows, and on Windows XP it even puts it as the top Start menu item. It is fast, light, small download (6Mb), Tabbed Browsing, Popup blocking, Download manager, Cute icon and standards compliance are all good reasons to use it. So don't use an ugly hack to transform your pages for IE, put a firefox icon on your site.

So if you havent downloaded it yet, get it now!. Avalible for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and more!

Re:Get firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't use an ugly hack to transform your pages for IE, put a firefox icon on your site.

anyone who designs sites for a living unfortunately does not have that luxury; most big sites have ~90% visitors using ie.

i use firefox of course.

Re:Get firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for fuck's sake, it's "should have". Or maybe this way is better "then" the right way.

Re:Get firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for doing what I was thinking :-)

I don't usually whine about simple spelling errors, but switching entire words is... well, annoying when you read a text.

Re:Get firefox.

[hattig]

Since using Firefox (And I've used Firebird before, and Mozilla since before it had version numbers) I've experienced total interface hangups when using it. Despite this I'm still using it because everything else is just crap, but it is annoying to have to reboot the computer because the display and keyboard is dead (but audio keeps on working) a couple of times a week.

Also it still can't render Slashdot and other sites correctly, as content spills over other content when it shouldn't.

Re:Get firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, only suckers don't use firefox.

You own stock in Mozilla.org or something? Or are you just trolling?

http://slashdot.org/~MooKore%202004

Re:Get firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like some issues on your computer man... need more RAM?? I'd hate to see what running Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Autocad at the same time would do to you...

Re:Get firefox.

[hattig]

It's never been a problem before, and I have 512MB! I also frequently use Photoshop, Firefox, Word, Openoffice, WinAmp and other stuff at the same time.

But Firefox has got memory holes (at least on Windows) - you can see it eating up memory slowly but surely as you use it. After a few hours the software slows down, and Windows starts to page out non-essential stuff like itself to swap. it must be after this that things go scarily wrong.

Maybe it is time to get another 512MB stick though, make use of dual channel memory...

Re:Get firefox.

[thenightfly42]

There's a fix proposed for the GDI memory problem which messes up the interface; go to the following thread to get Mook's build, which incorporates this fix:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php? t=5959 3&sid=7b15c23111c67fd04cb6f42c489179c3

Re:Get firefox.

[NeoSkandranon]

I've read on mozillazine that if you minimize Fx, it's supposed to release most/all of its memory down to only a meg or two

Re:Get firefox.

[hattig]

Wow, it does (to 2MB, and then it immediately doubles). It then increases memory consumption at a rate of around 200KB a second consistently.

When maximised (with 4 tabs open) it starts off using 16MB, which climbs to 31MB steadily, and then stops increasing (but I'm only editing this text box, let me mess around a bit).

Re:Get firefox.

[packman]

Firfox is a small (6mb) download and opera is the gigantic bloatware of the full 3.2mb (no java), which includes a mailprogram, plus all the features you name there and even a lot more... Shame on them.

They even managed to make the user-interface more flexible and customizable without any form of plugins, just a bit of skinning, everything working straight out of the box, sensible shortcuts for really everything, and even something that closely resembles standard compliance (however that fails in maybe 0.5% of the cases).

It also includes by default numerous features which Firefox/Mozilla users thought were cool - so for these browsers, the plugin-hell was created. Do you still know what version of which plugin you have installed? Or where you can find the latest version of that plugin? I don't, and I don't like searching them after (another) reinstall of my windows box.

I am a power user, and Opera simply gives me what I want: an extremely powerfull userinterface with sensible defaults, but still easy to use for a newbie. The renderer now and then fails, but it has cool and handy options like page zooming, custom stylesheets, small screen rendering and much more.
Anyhow, it would be ideal to have the opera userinterface with the gecko renderer, but Opera isn't opensource, and a lot of people don't like that. I also would prefer to see it otherwise, but to me it makes sense. These people are in it for the money, they also have to eat, and the last few years, they managed to bring us the most innovative browser around.

What's the last cool new feature in mozilla that wasn't copied from somewhere else?
Honestly, I can't find any. Some people say that XUL is the thing I'm looking for then, well, it has some nice possibilities, but it's bloated, and has no place in a webbrowser imho. It is used for a "flexible" userinterface. Flexible? I can't even move my addressbar, buttons or tabbar around? Oh but you could install a plugin that does this for you... You call that flexible? Oh wait, maybe I have to open my favorite text editor and edit some XML source somewhere if I don't feel like downloading a plugin.

When I first heard of the Phoenix project, which later became Firebird, and which is now FireFox, I hoped for a completely XUL-less userinterface which did what I wanted... Boy, what was I dissapointed when I saw that they just created a stripdown of Mozilla.

For a low-profile user, it's great, but I don't understand how so many powerusers can bear using such an unflexible and limited userinterface. Are they blinded by OSS? Is it just that? It's not because it's not OSS that is can't be good.
Maybe do they love to switch between mouse/keyboard so often, they have tons of time to investigate and customize their browser... Well - I don't.

This is not meant as a flame on the mozilla project, the Gecko engine is one of the most powerfull around, but face it, the userinterface simply sucks. It's a simple IE on steroids, while opera simply is the steroids :)

Anyway - the original discussion was about webdesigning for IE - not about browsers :)

Re:Get firefox.

[kelnos]

Also it still can't render Slashdot and other sites correctly, as content spills over other content when it shouldn't.

the first half is actually due to some terribly atrocious html on /.'s part. as for other sites, i'd expect the same, but who's to say?

Nice

[foolip]

The site is /.ed, but from what I can make out from the front page, this is making IE CSS standards compliant. Does it also work some magic to make it compliant with HTML (or even better, XHTML) standards (which would be far more useful), or is that just impossible?

In any event, this may allow me to actually use some CSS 2, a standard that was published in May 1998 (almost 6 years ago!) and still isn't (fully) supported by the leading browser in the world...

Re:Nice

[Kumochisonan]

In any event, this may allow me to actually use some CSS 2, a standard that was published in May 1998 (almost 6 years ago!) and still isn't (fully) supported by the leading browser in the world...

I would prefer that you used the phrase 'most common' rather than leading. IE leads in no field of browser technology, unless you count the prolific distribution of malware and porn diallers as a 'feature'

Re:Nice

[tiger99]

I admire your optimism....

But sadly it will not make IE secure, or stable, and the range of features of CSS it supports will forever be limited, to what can be reimplemented in the bit of CSS that does actually work.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, even less from a piece of porcine excrement like IE.

Nevertheless this guy has made a very good attempt.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it also work some magic to make it compliant with HTML (or even better, XHTML) standards (which would be far more useful), or is that just impossible?

In theory, you could probably write an HTML/XML parser in JavaScript, create your own fudged scripty document tree, and spit out your very own errors when fed bad code.

In practice, it's virtually impossible.

more than enough bandwidth to cover it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...thems sound lik fightin' words :)

yehaw boys!!

Could not get to the server

[UltimaGuy]

I think the server has been slashdotted ;) Any how, I think that whatever you do to IE, it will still have a lot of holes, and will make people vulnerable by just using it. And this facility only is like a candy wrapper, as it cannot do anything to fix the bugs in the engine.

Fixed in nightlies

[Jack Zombie]

Use a Mozilla Firefox nightly build, the bug (217369, I think) that caused this problem is fixed in them.

More major changes since 0.8 here.

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[mrpuffypants]

"Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled."

Why's that?

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[eggz128]

A while ago, Slashdot posted a story that linked to a bugzilla entry.

bugzilla.mozilla.org was slashdotted which prevented anyone doing any work for a day or so.

Thats IIRC.

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[PhilHibbs]

So just un-tick the 'Send Referrer' box on the prefbar.

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[Anonymous Coward]

...or just copy the link and paste it into a new window.

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[spuke4000]

I clicked the 'More major changes since 0.8 here' link to see what was coming in the next version and saw something funny about it preventing users from 'accidentally' changing their wallpaper to porn they are downloading. On further investigation I found this tid-bit in Bugzilla:

------- Additional Comment #4 From Jesse Ruderman 2002-12-08 18:22 PST [reply] -------
I agree that there should be a confirmation dialog for Set as Wallpaper. The lack of a confirmation dialog makes the Set as Wallpaper feature less useful to me, because I keep accidentally blowing away my carefully chosen Phoenix Wallpaper.bmp when trying to save porn images.

This is just another case of the FireFox developers staying ahead of the curve. Well done boys. Well done.

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[MyHair]

So just un-tick the 'Send Referrer' box on the prefbar.

I would think open source developers would prefer you send reefer.

Re:Fixed in nightlies

[PhilHibbs]

Why?

MS releases patch to fix Security bug in IE

[peragrin]

MS released a patch today to fix a major Security Bug in IE today. MS offcials say that a malisious hacker, is destroying websites around the world, by making them compatible with other web browsers. We at MS can abolutely not have any competion, so we are funding a $1 billion reward to the person who finds this man and breaks his even hack. We would do it ourselves but all 80,000 of our developers are busy trying to get longhorn out by 2010.

Re:MS releases patch to fix Security bug in IE

[Anonymous Coward]

MS offcials say that a malisious hacker We at MS can abolutely not have any competion

Your spelling is abolutely delisious!

Re:MS releases patch to fix Security bug in IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, I'm pretty sad.

Re:MS releases patch to fix Security bug in IE

[Anonymous Coward]

*hug*

Alternate mass distribution mechanisms

[0x0d0a]

Alternate mass distribution mechanisms that will work for folks without a T3 at their disposal:

* Tarball the website, and hand out an ed2k url aimed at the hash of the tarball.

* Put it on Freenet.

* Post it to USENET.

Re:Alternate mass distribution mechanisms

[dezeal]

What about bittorrent?

Re:Alternate mass distribution mechanisms

[geoffspear]

* Burn it on CD, send multiple copies to every person in the world, lose lots of money, then buy a major media company.

No-one has a copy of the stylesheet??

[xxx_Birdman_xxx]

Sometimes to me /.-ing a site doesn't compute with me- So the server has had so many incoming requests its gone kaput, but in all those hits not one person has kept a copy of this stylesheet.. ??
It's just simple text!
Do people just blindly click on links just because they are posted?

Re:No-one has a copy of the stylesheet??

[mrpuffypants]

With everybody clicking on the link at roughly the same time the server suddently gets a rush of hits and, with each new httpd process, all of them slow down.

Even though the first guy to click the link may have been *first* that doesn't bean that the other 200,000 people won't prevent the server from sending the data.

Subscribing helps because you get the links before the swarms of non-registered lurkers and non-subscribers but, then again, it's not for everybody. Frankly I seee $5 every couple of months as a perfectly reasonable price to pay for what slashdot gives me back.

Misleading title : corrects CSS2 selectors only.

[androse]

The title of the news is misleading : this JS component only corrects some CSS 2 selectors that IE doesn't natively support.

So it doesn't really make IS standards compliant, it just extends some functionnality. It doesn't, for example, correct the box model of IE5.

So I'm afraid it doesn't spare us of using CSS hacks to filter out IE.

Re:MSIE is the standard

[next1]

that's right, and that's why all developers have the right to bitch about it and let off some steam, i myself having just spent the last 2 weeks developing 3 versions of a site design; firefox/opera (ie; standards compliant), ie5 and ie6.

at least in ie6 they've fixed that div padding and margin issue (where ms blatantly ignored w3c standards and made their own), but it's still annoying because now it means you have to do a version for ie5 and a version for ie6!

and ie6 ignores div heights, aaargh.. never ends!!

and unfortunately i can't add any comments on this actual article cos i still can't get to it!

Re:Sheeesh...slashdotted already.

[mirko]

Here's a cheap one...
Mind you, it might not fit your home.

Re:.name?

[plugger]

Go to www.ntk.net and look through the last few editions. They were running a challenge to register the silliest .name domains (such as no.name , so you can host www.the.man.with.no.name)

Re:.name?

[Anonymous Coward]

see www.nic.name. They came with .info .biz and a couple of others.

Dean Edwards

[amigoro]

I thought this was something about the democratic nominations, but then saw Kerry was missing.

Flippancy apart, I think using CSS to make IE7 W3C compliant is a really brilliant idea. However, the browser itself is a small part of the equations. Very few websites are W3C compliant. Vast majority of them are geared to a certain browser, depending on the whim and fancy of the designer.

For my part, I run my sites thru Anybrowser to make sure they will render on, well, as the name suggests, any browser.

Re:Dean Edwards

[geoffspear]

anybrowser.com is not w3c compliant, either.

Shows the power of Open Source

[fidros]

> mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was
> released 2+ years ago

So, you're saying that the problem is not IE but the broken proprietry way of building softwarwe that can't can release new versions in time to answer real customer needs?

I think I agree :-)

Gilad

Microsoft should hire him

[SlashMaster]

Anyone who cares this much about the company's product should be given serious consideration for employment.

Microsoft should hire him...

Re:Microsoft should hire him

[0x0d0a]

Microsoft has little benefit in ensuring that IE complies with standards -- as a matter of fact, now that they have over eighty percent marketshare, I would go so far as to say that it is to their benefit to have divergent behavior. Nobody cares about a bunch of web designers grumbling about a broken browser when the masses Just Want It To Look Right and blame the designer when it doesn't.

Wouldn't life be grand if Microsoft shipped the open source Mozilla as their default browser?

Re:Microsoft should hire him

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't wish him bad

Re:Microsoft should hire him

[l0wland]

"Microsoft should hire him..."

There's a greater possibility that Microsoft will pay him to STFU.

Re:Microsoft should hire him

[tiger99]

Yes, to be the first person in their Quality Control department, because he clearly can see what is not standards-compliant, unlike Sir Bill. Or maybe Chief Software Architect, because he has demonstrated a lot more ability in that direction than the present incompetent incumbent....

Of course, if Sir Bill were to clean his glasses more often, he might notice a few problems....

Re:Microsoft should hire him

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anyone who cares this much about the company's product should be given serious consideration for employment.
> Microsoft should hire him...

You've made the typical mistake of thinking that the current Microsoft is still a software company; it's not. Yes, it certainly started out that way, but nowadays it's strictly a stock-based company that incidentally sells software and services in order to maintain the stock price, and anything that detracts from the value of the stock is not done unless FORCED to do so by the marketplace.

Sharpton Kucinich

[Pixies]

Stated in a recent blog entry from Harlem that he would take this one step further, repealing the whole of Microsoft's embrace-and-extend inroads over the last decade as well as executing a 14-patch plan "...to get the GNU in and the US out."

Re:.name?

[Anonymous Coward]

like... 3 years ago?

Mirror made

[paulproteus]

I made this mirror based on the Google cache. It has the full source code, as well as the docs he wrote.

This is temporary, of course.

Re:Mirror made

[mrpuffypants]

Thank You

Re:Mirror made

[Anonymous Coward]

Guybrush Threepwood likes mare sex!

Re:Mirror made

[byolinux]

You are a legend, thank you.

Re:Mirror made

[Pieroxy]

Well, from a little testing, it may fix IE5.5 and IE6, but it breaks pretty bad IE5.0. I guess there is no perfect solution to this problem...

Re:Mirror made

[subtropolis]

Thanks tons. But you might want to check the *src* page - the behavior source isn't showing up entirely. In the meantime, anyone who wants to see it can just *view source*, of course ;-) Thanks again for the mirror.

Well folks, it's working already!

[Pflipp]

I open the page in my IE browser, and it says "The page cannot be displayed", as would be the expected reaction for this browser. Tonight I'll check on Mozilla at home, I'm sure it will render correctly then! :-)

I wish I could mod you...

[tolan-b]

Score:+1, Miaow!

IE IS the standard!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the de-facto standard. And de-facto standards matter more than de-jure standards.

Yes.

[tsanth]

Do people just blindly click on links just because they are posted?

Judging from the angry shouts and grumbles in lab when someone decides to mass-message a goatse link, I'd say the answer is yes.

His site

[loconet]

Well seems like the site is not Slashdot-Compliant :(

No wonder it's /.'ed...

[lortho]

Quoted from the main page of the site:

• This is my site
• for my personal use
• running on my machine
• in my kitchen!

I imagine his ISP's going to want to have a few words with him about bandwidth usage... ;)

Re:No wonder it's /.'ed...

[Pieroxy]

My ISP never has a word with me, even if my bandwidth it at least 50% busy most of the time. I gues you just have to choose a good ISP (If you can of course).

Microsoft can fix IE

[jonwil]

If what I have seen in the "file list" from the leaked MS code still holds true, all the HTML rendering, CSS, PNG and etc stuff is in DLLs that are totally seperate from the OS and could easily be updated independantly.

When Microsoft says "we cant fix xyz", it usually means "we cant fix xyz because it would cost us more (in money, programmer time etc) than we are going to gain (in sales, PR etc)"

Re:Microsoft can fix IE

[hattig]

It wouldn't be a quick and simple task but ... ... couldn't someone somehow port the rendering part of Mozilla/Firefox/Konqueror to Windows, in such a manner that they export the same interface as those DLLs, and hence simply replace the rendering component of IE with something decent?

Re:Microsoft can fix IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they bother doing such a thing?

People use Internet Explorer for one of three reasons:

1. They don't know any better. These people won't know to install the replacement DLLs.
2. They know there's better out there, but they don't have the time or inclination to find out what to do or do it. These people won't bother with the replacement DLLs.
3. They rely on proprietary IE-isms like HTAs or something for certain things. These people won't want to switch.

Given that anybody else wanting a Mozilla-like rendering would simply use Mozilla to begin with, I fail to see how this would be helpful.

Re:Microsoft can fix IE

[jonwil]

Doing exactly that is what the ReactOS and WINE teams are doing/need to do (i.e. making a wrapper around some HTML engine that can replace these dlls)

Another reason to look into this sort of thing is to completly document all functions and interfaces into the IE dlls (something M$ doesnt do)

MOD PARENT UP, SCORE +20 FULL ON TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, people, do a View Source for yourselves. Go on, I dare you. Slashdot's HTML is hideous just to look at and horribly out of standards compliance.

Re:MOD PARENT UP, SCORE +20 FULL ON TRUE

[Tumbleweed]

You know, the problem with rewriting the client-side code for Slashdot would be having to make it nice, compliant code that actually renders well in IE - because I bet a majority of Slashdot viewers are using IE. (seriously)

Fun, fun.

Re:MOD PARENT UP, SCORE +20 FULL ON TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true according to Taco and the others in the last IRC interview (I think it was something like 60% IE).

Source Code for IE7 htc

[EqualSlash]

via Google Cache : IE7.htc

Re:Source Code for IE7 htc

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe

} finally {
// have a beer
}};

Re:Source Code for IE7 htc

[timothyf]

That isn't the full source. I saw this before as it was making the rounds on web developer blogs-- the full source is much longer.

Unfortunately I didn't think to grab a copy before it got /.ed.

It's not just Slashdot, it's their advertisers too

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes when I'm trying to post a comment the advertising HTML Slashdot carries isn't standard which causes the screen not to render. It's hard to click on an Submit button when there isn't one on the screen. Slashdot's HTML is bad enough, and they don't even QA check their advertiser's HTML as well.

So what if they are 'noncritical'?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of IE extensions that are 'noncritical' yet Slashdotters will bitch about those. Why not bitch about Slashdot's noncritical extensions?

partial mirror

[daxim]

This is only the IE behavior itself. (27 kB)

Visit the containing directory to see a fix for IE's PNG rendering bug that also works on background PNG images.

Re:MSIE is the standard

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Just in case you haven't realised, IE5.5 is quite different to both IE5 and IE6. I myself tested a site once using IE5 and IE6 assuming that IE5.5 would be much the same as one of them... but oh no, its got its very own strangeness! And Mac IE is of course different again.

Add me to your list....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only windows could take advantage of Linux robust hardware autodetection and support, or it's printing, or it's ass-backwards management of users groups, and permissions.... Naw on second thought who wants that kind of window dressing, when I can have obscure formatting, which probably doesn't even look decent, render as intended.

Re:Add me to your list....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, yes, the mozilla site clearly says mozilla only runs in linux. You're so right.

Re:Add me to your list....

[afidel]

Autodetect of PCI devices has been working for ages, USB works fairly well as does Firewire. The best robust printing solution I have ever seen (Cisco Enterprise Print System) is based on Linux and open source projects. Linux also supports ACL's so if you really need em go ahead and use em. Any other questions?

Re:Add me to your list....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like my sound card. Next.

Oh well as long as there is an enterprise printing solution out there then linux IS ready for the desktop.

Re:Get firefox.(Get opera)

[koniosis]

I tried firefox and was no way near as impressed with the latest Opera Preview, its still under development but its very stable (crashed less than firefox anyway) and does just what you want without all the crap you dont. Check out the mouse gestures, they are beautiful (i know firefox has them). I don't know an Opera user that has gone back to any other browser after trying it (honestly)

Re:Get firefox.(Get opera)

[koniosis]

I tried firefox and was no way near as impressed with the latest Opera Preview /me searches for the edit button :( I mean: I tried firefox and was no way near as impressed with it as with the latest Opera Preview.

Wow!

[dizzl]

"An error occurred while loading http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/intro/: Connection to host dean.edwards.name is broken"

Seems to make Konqueror more IE compliant too!

Why did notobdy grab and torrent the file

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously the slashdot effect is one of the reasons that Bittorrent was originally developed.

If somebody had grabbed the files we could had a torrent mirror delivering the files in seconds.

Re:Why did notobdy grab and torrent the file

[gimho]

but then, someone would have to host the torrent file, which would probably be almost as large as the original text file. bittorrent was designed for releasing very large files (GB range), not for caching web content. my $.02

Re:Why did notobdy grab and torrent the file

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, create a 20 kb BitTorrent file for a 27kb style sheet. That's what we need.

Re:MSIE is the standard

[FireFury03]

Unfortunately if MS continues like it has done, the web will stagnate with no cool new features appearing. MS has made it clear they're not interested in making IE standards complient or adding any new enhancements. Since 95% of people use IE (and probably have no clue that there is anything other than IE available), if IE is never enhanced then web developers will forever be stuck in the trap of never being able to use any cool new features that IE doesn't currently support. Very few web developers will be happy adding features to their website that make it unusable for 95% of their visitors (although it seems that professional web developers have no problem with making their sites only work with IE).

What I'd love to see someone do at some point is re-skin FireFox to look like IE and then abuse one of IE's many security holes to replace IE with the reskinned FireFox on any machine that visits the website. :)

Re:MSIE is the standard

[next1]

great news, thanks!

This is a great idea

[seldolivaw]

The code itself at the moment is 27k, which is kinda hefty for most pages on initial load (though you'd only have to load it once per site). However, it includes loads of comments, which might slim it down to about half that if you stripped them out. And the savings in other code areas by not having to write double-code and browser-detection are probably worth it overall.

This would certainly make development a lot easier... I look forward to trying it out :-)

Re:This is a great idea

[dema]

I don't think removing comment from code makes anything "easier" (:

Re:This is a great idea

[Henry Stern]

If you are concerned about the source being too large, take a peek at mod_gzip.

Re:This is a great idea

[RdsArts]

You also don't have to load all of it. You could just load the parts you need for the tags you want.

And if a number of people used it, perhaps someone like Yahoo or Google would host it for coder good-will. ;) Heck, maybe even the W3C could host it. After all, it would be a step towards making the standards the... Standard.

On the other hand, I don't know if IE could do this, but would it be possible to make it so IE just used them as a default CSS sheet, and just store them locally? That would seem to be the optimal solution. Just put a 'update your browser' button somewhere on the site, and have them install it.

Re:This is a great idea

[stgermh]

Actually, you could remove the comments for the file you deploy to reduce filesize and keep the comments for your local copy. At least that's what I would do...

Mirror

[DeanEdwards22]

Can someone temporarily host my site? some of it is php4. is that ok? mail me at dean@edwards.name and cc 9jack9@msn.com. i can chat on the msn account if necessary. thanks. dean edwards

Re:Mirror

[frankm_slashdot]

ive got the space... and the bandwidth to kill... i hope. so if you want to talk on msn let me know.

Re:Mirror

[Tumbleweed]

Dude, I'm gonna guess you get a lot of hits on your site from people looking for Democratic candidate information. :)

Re:Misleading title : corrects CSS2 selectors only

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post is quite correct. This is basically a hack. A technically proficient, useful hack, but a hack nonetheless.

I believe (and I can't check as the site is down) that the effect of the stylesheet is to:
a) scan the stylesheets that come with the document and look for certian types of unsupported selectors
b) Replace those selectors with ones that IE does understand (i.e. copy the style rules to a new selector)
c) Scan through the html of the document and look for elements that matched the original (unsupported) selectors
d) Add a class attribute to the elements that should have matched the old selector that causes it to match the equivilent selector that IE does understand

e.g. an selector div > p will match p that is a child of div. IE doesn't understand child selectors, so given a rule:
div > p {font-family:"comic sans ms";}
the stylesheet will create a rule .uniquename {font-family:"comic sans ms";}
and given a piece of document that should match like:
<div>
<p>
Isn't IE great!
</p>
</div>
It will be replaced (in memory) by something like:
<div>
<p class="uniquename">
Isn't IE great!
</p>
</div>
This will allow the IE style engine to apply the correct formatting.

ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

you know microsoft: ignore the standards they don't like while pushing the half-assed replacement they come up with

i can see it now...

windows xp recomended update #5946468
css.net:
this update gives IE6 the ability to properly* display css using the .net framework (excessivly large, almost useless .net framework must be installed seperatly from this update)

*through emulation only, we're microsoft damnit! we don't bow down to anyone bitch!

Implementing CSS is HARD

[cascadingstylesheet]

AFAIK there is no browser available that correctly renders CSS 2.0 -- the entire spec.

You got that right. It really isn't so shocking that years elapse between the recommendations and implementations - it's one thing to just say that the browser shall do all these nifty things based on a simple stylesheet line of text, and quite another to make them do it.

Re:Implementing CSS is HARD

[JimDabell]

It really isn't so shocking that years elapse between the recommendations and implementations

The W3C have now changed policy so that in order to get to full Recommendation status, a specification has to have at least two independent implementations. If nobody can implement it, it gets kicked back a stage or two for reevaluation. This should help combat the "nice specs, shame about the real world" problem a little.

Will this...

[Paulrothrock]

Will this make IE support PNG?

Didn't think so.

Re:Will this...

[Anonymous Coward]

IE already supports PNG.
Partially.

Re:Will this...

[JabberWokky]

No, but this will.

Caveats: You must specify a class, height and width in the img tag. You really should be doing the latter two anyway, so adding a class="png" isn't all that bad.

--
Evan

IE

[ward.deb]

Why would I use Internet Explorer anyway? In my opinion everbody should use Firebird or Konqueror...=)

Re:IE

[Anonymous Coward]

> In my opinion everbody should use Firebird or Konqueror... =)

I'm sorry, but Firebird isn't a browser. Perhaps you meant FireFox?

Konqueror is part of KDE, which isn't available for Windows. Windows still has about 90%+ of the internet users, and nobody will switch OS simply to use another browser (especially when you consider most won't even download another browser)

And last, you forgot Opera in your wish-list. They may be commercial (oh no, run, it's not free!) but their browser sure kicks serious ass. Firefox is nice, but Opera is still superior (IMHO).

Re:IE

[forevermore]

I think the issue is rather that other people use IE because they don't know any better, and us web designers would like our sites to look good on their browsers, but not spend hours trying to make the tweaks necessary to make things look good and consistent in every browser type (ie, gecko, khtml/safari).

The fact is that most people use IE. My company caters heavily to linux-using customers, and we have a very low 80% IE usage showing in our web logs - most sites seem to indicate 90-95%. Take that with a grain of salt because of people who change their useragent, but not that big of a grain, most people don't bother.

Re:Get firefox.(Get opera)

[Anonymous Coward]

just so happens i downloaded the latest version opera today to do some testing, and i was very impressed also. it is *so* fast.

but while there's no question it's faster than firefox, it seems equal to me in every other aspect , and lacks things mozilla has like the ever increasing number of user developed skins and plugins (i didn't look much but they weren't apparent anyway).

i also don't like all the junk it puts on the left hand side by default (i know you could turn it off but it creates a "cluttered" first impression i think).

for me firefox has hit the mark with that clean, simple interface.

Re:Mod me up! Insightful, thoughtprovoking comment

[ArseneLupin]

Seems your theory worked: -1, Redundant.

(Please mod me down btw, thx).

PNG Support?

[Sophrosyne]

It would be nice if IE could view transparent PNG files

Re:PNG Support?

[tiger99]

I didn't know it coudn't!

Draw your own conclusions about why, and it is not (just?) because I am stupid.

The fact is that I haven't used anything but Mozilla, sometimes Konqueror or Opera, for serious browsing for so long that I have forgotten how useles IE is. Still, it only ever was a tool for an Illegal Monopoly to destroy Netscape, it never needed to be a good browser, never has been, and never will be.

Re:PNG Support?

[Sophrosyne]

Even still- it is shocking how even though they've cancelled Internet Explorer it is still insanely popular just due to the fact people could care less.
All this means is that web page design is stuck in 1997 from the lack of transparent png-24 support. Not to mention all the other broken aspects of IE.
Perhaps someone could make some nice looking banners and buttons for people to put on their websites saying: in order to view this site you need to install the IE7 style sheet.

Re:PNG Support?

[steved]

Here's a hack that will make IE render transparent/translucent PNG files.
http://www.mongus.net/pngInfo/

Re:PNG Support?

[Tumbleweed]

Please to note the caveats with that hack - it causes other problems one should be aware of - so don't just plug that in and never look back. FYI.

Re:PNG Support?

[subtropolis]

here's some code which will fix a ie's rendering of a transparent PNG which is set as the background image of div with id=contentBox. You could adjust this to fix ie for all of your PNGs by giving them a class and using getElementByClassname() in a loop.

blank.png is a 100% transparent (that is, one which ie can deal with on it's own), 1-pixel placeholder. It *must* be available for this to work.

onload = function() {

if (/MSIE (5\.5)|[6789]/.test(navigator.userAgent) && navigator.platform == 'Win32') {

pngBGImage();

}

}

function pngBGImage() {

var blankSrc = '/images/blank.png';

var contentBox = document.getElementById('contentBox');

var bgImageSrc = contentBox.currentStyle.backgroundImage;

bgImageSrc = bgImageSrc.substring( bgImageSrc.indexOf('url("') + 5, bgImageSrc.indexOf('")') )

contentBox.style.backgroundImage = 'url(' + blankSrc + ')';

// set filter

contentBox.runtimeStyle.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoade r(src='"

+ bgImageSrc + "',sizingMethod='scale')";

}

Sorry 'bout the lack of indenting - ecode tag jettisoned it.

Re:PNG Support?

[McGarnacle]

The stylesheet is server-side, end-users don't need to install anything.

Re:PNG Support?

[_newwave_]

It can: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/pngopacity/

I gotta say that IE is one of the worst.

[mcwop]

IE is one the crappiest browser out there. So many other browsers are so far ahead, heck you only need tabbed browsing to achieve that status. Thank god, MSFT did not kill off browser competition. On my Mac it is all Camino (needs a panther tab update) and Safari.

Re:I gotta say that IE is one of the worst.

[stecoop]

IE isn't that crappy - it has Google search bar and Yahoo Companion integration.

I would enjoy moving off of IE and go to Mozilla with its tabbed browsing and cookie filter (add features as you see fit) but I like the Goggle bar and Yahoo Companion way too much to leave IE. When the Yahoo Companion tool bar is exported to another browser than I won't care what browser I use.

So IE isn't totally bad.

Re:I gotta say that IE is one of the worst.

[mcwop]

it has Google search bar and Yahoo Companion integration.

I think those are 3rd party enhancements. MSFT themselves has done a bad job of improving their browser.

Re:I gotta say that IE is one of the worst.

[Scott Robinson]

Every enhancement that the Google toolbar + IE brings to the table is already is Mozilla/Firebird.

And it's faster.

So, what are you waiting for?

Re:I gotta say that IE is one of the worst.

[Anonymous Coward]

>IE isn't that crappy - it has Google search bar and Yahoo Companion integration.

Those aren't part of IE, they're external add-ons.

Opera and Firefox both have a google search box built-in by default (and yes you can choose another default search engine).

As for Yahoo, I don't even know what you're talking about (or why you even use their services).

Re:I gotta say that IE is one of the worst.

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari has a built Google search right next to the Address box. I find it darned handy too. Hit command-T to open a new Tab, then type my search tersm and press enter

Doing their job for them

[Anders Andersson]

it's a sad state of affairs when a developer outside of Microsoft actually ends up doing something that MS should have done themselves

Such as, Linus Torvalds implementing an entire operating system kernel for hardware that would otherwise be limited to software provided by Microsoft? I can really see Bill Gates getting a free ride off the collective efforts of the open source community here...

Shows the power of IE^H^H*OPEN* *SOURCE*

[Anonymous Coward]

mozilla was last released yesterday - ie6 was released 2+ years ago

Take that, you astroturfing shill.

I was expecting another kind of patch

[armando_wall]

Rather than fixing IE, how about using the same method to make Mozilla render pages designed for IE correctly?

Mozilla is my favorite browser in both Windows and Linux platforms, and it works so well that whenever I stumble with a broken page, I blame it to site designers, not Mozilla, and move along.

However, sometimes I need to browse the broken page. Wouldn't it be cool if you could fire up some DHTML code to parse the broken page and make it standards compliant, so Mozilla (and others) can read it flawlessly?

This wouldn't encourage correct site design, but while in that fight, it would be a nice temporary solution.... do you think this could be done?

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[the pickle]

They already wrote a patch for that.

It's called (shudder) IE.

I don't like it any more than you do, but there's a reason I keep a copy around -- once in a blue moon I run across a site that simply refuses to work properly on anything else, no matter what. For that brief (and fellow Web designers, listen up: if I an FORCED to use IE to view your site, my visit WILL be extremely brief) time, I can tolerate IE's suckiness.

But I'm using the Mac version, which, well, doesn't suck nearly as much as the Windoze versions do. :-\

p

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could fire up some DHTML code to parse the broken page and make it standards compliant

Not only is it not possible (take a lot at some of the hoops the HTML Tidy developers have had to jump through), but in many cases, making something "work" involves actively doing something that the specification forbids.

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[Anonymous Coward]

For 9 out of 10 of such broken sites, just an option "reload page identifying as IE" would do... or even "identifying as Netscape 4.5" would do the job! So many pages require you to use one of those browsers, forgetting that there are updates of the latter, which would work as well... My Internet banking site (Bank of China (HK) It's Banking) is one example.

Wouter

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[DeanEdwards22]

I've done this too: http://dean.edwards.name/moz-behaviors/ (when my site is back up!)

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[Anonymous Coward]

>Rather than fixing IE, how about using the same method to make Mozilla render pages designed for IE correctly?

There's one big problem with this idea: if you emulate IE's bugs, you simply give up on forcing people to upgrade their websites to be W3C compliant. You also have to make sure you emulate the bugs to be exactly like IE's which can be wishful thinking at best (MS-Word file format, anyone?)

Also, if a website isn't W3C-compliant, most modern browsers *already* go into "legacy mode", which emulates old browsers. However some webpages might declare to be standards-compliant but aren't at all, which might throw off the legacy mode... I'm not sure what happens in those cases.

The point is, don't try to copy the leader if he's crappy, try to push him out of the way.

It's also possible to write CSS-compliant websites (see CSS Zen Garden), you just can't use *ALL* CSS tags because of broken support in ALL browsers (yes, that includes your dear Gecko engine).

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[xutopia]

I just send emails or contact the companies/people who have outdated or crappy web sites using proprietary stuff. It seems to work half the time. If more people would do like I do we wouldn't have a problem.

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[mdowden]

I completely agree regarding Mozilla -- typically when I encounter an error, I blame the site designers and move along. Since I spend most of my time developing sites, I generally know what things are Mozilla errors, and what was just poor design.

I definitely think that some sort of "rip" (I can't justify calling it a patch, since we're really doing the exact opposite) for Mozilla to conver IE-specific garbage into standards-compliant code would be great. The biggest argument I hear from people against using Mozilla as their primary browser is that there are "so many sites that it doesn't work with." (In my own experience, that number is really not so large, but anyway...) So any opportunity to refute that argument could go a long way to breaking Microsoft's IE monopoly.

Re:I was expecting another kind of patch

[krumms]

Standards were made so that developers wouldn't have to do things like this.

What you're suggesting makes it easier for web designers and harder for software developers, who should instead be devoting their time to making things standards compliant - not supporting other people's broken code.

Microsoft-compliance ?

[guigouz]

Maybe it's possible to make firefox/mozilla/khtml microsoft-html compliant using css ?

Useful for enhanced IE browsers

[Mr_Silver]

This would be useful for something like AvantBrowser, CrazyBrowser or MyIE2 which use the IE rendering engine but add other nice features such as pop-up blockers and tabbed browsing.

It would be pretty simple for them to have a local copy of the stylesheet and modify the HTML from the server to include this before rendering.

Re:Get firefox.(Get opera)

[Azghoul]

Just to be pedantic, I'm one. Tried Opera a couple times, within the last couple years. Don't care for gestures, don't care for the way opera works. Nothing personal to them, good luck.

I wonder what makes people (me included) pipe up and have to give the alternate, contrarian view on anything that's posted out here? Just a thought...

Cute, but...

[SloppyElvis]

This type of solution doesn't really fix the problem that the CSS2 W3C standards aren't correctly supported in any browser. We deal with having to support old browser versions all the time, and believe me, the W3C standards (particularly the DOM), really help to reduce the amount of logic we need to duplicate for various user agents. However, we haven't the luxury of saying, "bah, forget the old browsers, our users have only the very best". So, our server scripts output HTML 4.01 and scripts redirect on failed functional tests and noscript tags to non-script versions of the site.

The point is, CSS2 doesn't fill its intended purpose for those who must support legacy apps. Its faster to bite the bullet and format layouts with tables, and it works for ancient browsers (Netscape 4.x anyone?). To me, that's one of the main advantages of JSP, PHP, ASP, and the like: I can include complex logic in my site and output lame ole' HTML 4.01. Code and UI are separated, and everyone is happy.

Besides, take a lesson from Google, simple layouts are best.

Re:Cute, but...

[protohiro1]

I'll give up css when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.(although I use tables if I need to do html at work for the reasons you listed, mostly users that won't upgrade) I code my personal sites with php4, and I understand how it is possible to seperate design and code with php, but it is a freakin chore. Css makes it all so easy. On my site I can write my php to generate my news section and it looks like this:

echo("<h2>" . $postdate . "</h2>\n<h1>" . $postheadline . "</h1>\n<p>" . $posttext . "</p>\n");

Before I used tables to layout and I had to code in a whole mess of formating nonsense, which I get to keep in the css file now. Its really great. I'd say that table formating is to css formating as flat files are to databases. Sure you can do the same with each, but the fancy way is so much easier, faster and flexible.

Re:Cute, but...

[SloppyElvis]

I'm not against CSS, I find it essential for styling, really (inline styles hamper the readability of the HTML). CSS2, on the other hand, has some nice features that I can almost never use for the reasons I previously stated.

Usually with PHP, I'll separate code from HTML by using HTML files with inline PHP:

<table><tr><th>
<% $heading_c1 %>
</th></tr></table>

or I'll call functions from imported files, etc. Though its not really relevant, I'm also starting to like XSLT for XML DB stuff. The XSLT then contains the full html representation, and the PHP is pure code.

So, I like CSS, don't get me wrong, but I usually find myself using tables for formatting.

Corporate Business Strategy

[SeaDour]

Did you hear? McDonald's heard about this move by Microsoft, and was inspired to imitate their strategy. McDonald's is now pushing through the Department of Agriculture to add "Big Mac" and "Chicken Nuggets" to the Food Pyramid, placing them just below the highly-coveted "Dairy Products" block. McDonald's argues that since such a huge percentage of the population is eating their food, everyone should consider their products a nutritional standard.

PNG?

[LoudMusic]

Still doesn't fix the lack of proper PNG support ... @#$%^!!

Re:PNG?

[MyHair]

Is it possible to make a native plugin that IE would use to render PNGs instead of its native code? Then again, those who would probably would rather use an OSS browser for many reasons.

Re:PNG?

[ChiperSoft]

There's a behavior file (htc) that you can link to on all your webpages that makes IE properly render PNG transparency, if that's what you mean. You can get it here from WebFX.

IE used to be advanced.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back then, when Netscape Navigator 4.* was alife, we used to bitch about it in the company. Whatever you wanted to do, dhtml, layers, css and other modern cool stuff, it looked cool in IE but totally failed in NN. We had to include alot of workarounds for NN.

Today, we have Mozilla, KHTML/Safari and Opera and we can do what ever we want to do, all the modern stuff like CSS 2.0, tableless page layouts and other funky stuff you want to do in the year of 2004. It looks great in all browsers, except IE. Nowadays IE is the bad kid who destroys the party. I hope MS fixes it soon or lets it go the NN 4.* way.... please...

Let me get this straight...

[orthancstone]

MS should pay $1 billion for preventing this guy from distributed this, eh? So...

That'd be the easiest money /. members ever made...the site is already slashdotted!
:P

Welcome to 2004

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... it's 2004. Welcome to today. We use css 2.0 for layouting the pages and not crappy non standard html, tables and one pixel gifs. I work as a html coder for a huge company, and I tell you, IE is the suck.

Re:Welcome to 2004

[rudy_wayne]

>> IE is the suck.

This should be displayed whenever IE starts up.

Re:Gone with only 3 comments

[Anonymous Coward]

" * in my kitchen! "

My guess is he's just using the /. effect to cook his dinner.

They got a solution for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a while ago there was a post about retooling slashdot with valit html.... all they have to do to use that. it would even look good in lynx or w3m.

Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards

horrible

[hey]

What a horrible job... He'd have to know every foible and gross quirk of IE in order to convert the page into decent HTML. And the very next version of IE will have different oddities. Yuck.

Re:Misleading title : corrects CSS2 selectors only

[Anonymous Coward]

>The title of the news is misleading : this JS component only corrects some CSS 2 selectors that IE doesn't natively support.

Which in turn means this also requires JS to be activated, which is a no-go.

Any website that requires JS simply to navigate the site and view the content should be deleted and rewritten.

Forget JS, forget Flash. The Web is meant to share information, not a television/videogame-like experience.

CSS is just a nice way of styling that information so it doesn't look like a plain ASCII text file.

Mirror

[DeanEdwards22]

thanks to all those who have offered to mirror/host my site. i'm currently working on a solution so i should be back up again soon. thanks to Asheesh Laroia there is now a temporary mirror here: http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~alaroia1/dean/ please note: only the html test files work on this mirror. thanks again. dean edwards

All things considered...

[NeoSkandranon]

I'd rather have a stylesheet/extension for Moz that causes all the IE specific junk to be rendered properly. If there was such a thing, I'd have much greater success converting people (#1 complaint: My best friend's div based blog with drop shadows and javascript doesnt look right anymore!)

Still no cure for bug #97283

[Anonymous Coward]

Still no cure for bug #97283 in Mozilla. Simple thing:

<div style="overflow:auto; height:50px; width:50px">

1<br />
2<br />
3<br />
4<br />
5<br />

</div>

Mousewheel: Does not scroll down
Space: Does not page down
Page-Down: Does not page down
Cursorkey-Down: Does not scroll down

"Microsofts Invention", the iframe works like a charm in Mozilla, simple W3C CSS fails. Since 2001.

Re:Still no cure for bug #97283

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsofts Invention", the iframe works like a charm in Mozilla, simple W3C CSS fails. Since 2001.

Both <iframe> and CSS were developed by Microsoft and standardized by the W3C.

Probably more difficult

[kristoferkarlsson]

I would imagine that going from good to bad is an easier transition than the other way around.

What's up with that comma, dude?

[ReadParse]

MS offcials say that a malisious hacker, is destroying websites around the world, by making them compatible with other web browsers.

Actually neither of them are really needed, but the first one hits the reader like a brick in the head. Don't get me wrong, it's not so much about you. I've seen this kind of extreme comma usage a lot, and I've never understood it. Can somebody provide some insight about this? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this comma is absolutely correctly placed. I'd be thrilled to see the rule that calls for this comma if somebody has it handy.

You also misspelled malicious, but hey, mispellings happen. I don't care. I'm more concerned about the potential rule misunderstanding with the comma, that's all.

Oh, and don't get me started on overzealous usage of "whom" :)

Thanks,
John

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[platipusrc]

Man, you need to leave Mr. Shatner alone when he's trying to make a point!

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[Crazy_Vasey]

I can see why the second comma is there, to denote a dependant clause, but I don't see why the first is there.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[sydb]

You've been modded a troll and it's probably right. But it's Friday, and I'm fed up with illiterate morons and I agree with you.

I come across this all the time. People send emails with stuff like:

"Can someone, please look at, this."

What does it mean? By the way, this is a manager. She gets paid more than me and yet she can't string simple written English together.

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in peoples' minds, then I realise I'd rather not know.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[operagost]

We, need, more, dramatic, pauses, Scotty!

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[Peaceful_Patriot]

There needs to be a website where the anal retentive, grammar/spelling police can post endless comments on the proper usage of commas, spelling and punctuation and hilarious examples like the one above. However, I don't think /. is the right forum for this.

Many /.ers speak English as a second language. How many languages do you speak/write? Do you always do it flawlessly?

Unless the error substantially changes the meaning of the post, these types of comments should be rated as Off Topic.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[cloak42]

Many /.ers speak English as a second language. How many languages do you speak/write? Do you always do it flawlessly?

Actually, MOST people I know from other countries who speak/write English as a second language do it FAR better than most native English speakers I know.

I would wager dollars to doughnuts that the person who makes a mistake like that is NOT foreign.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[bccomm]

Yeah, and there should be a comma between standards and compliant ... No one cares, dude.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[bccomm]

... Hyphen, rather ...

Yet another troll gone awry.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[peragrin]

It was 6:35 am I had just gotten out of bed. I know the spelling was off, but I can't spell anyway. As why those comma's are there I can't say anything other than I have been using a lot of NyQuel lately.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're nitpicking, that should read "people's"... sorry man, had to, do it :)

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's NyQuil. And there's no apostrophe in commas.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :-p

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[sushi_steve]

It looks as though he thought he was using a apositive, but was wrong.

Example of an apositive:

My dog, the big brown one, chased after the ball.

It's where you add a descriptive phrase after the object it modifies, surrounded by commas. The commas written were incorrect and unnessecary, unless it would have provided a smooth flow when spoken, which it doesn't.

I don't claim to be an English master (check my spelling?)

But I do attend a public high school in Texas (I am correct :p); all of our English teachers aren't incompetant.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[MemoryAid]

"Can someone, please look at, this."

I'd send it back with a note:

It looks good overall; just remove the two commas and change the period to a question mark. I'm happy to help.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

She gets paid more than me and yet she can't string simple written English together.

Well, technically it should be:
"She gets paid more than I"

There is an implied "do". You wouldn't say "more than me do".

But that would be nitpicking someone's grammar. Oh, wait. You were.

Re:What's up with that comma, dude?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

I have learned French at school for a few years, and I can read most normal written French and speak it almost fluently. I probably make a lot of errors when speaking, and I ask people if I messed up so that I can speak better.

People with English as a second/third... language who make errors probably want them pointed out to them so they can speak better English and not look illiterate later.

There's a reason teachers mark spelling/grammar errors in papers: to help the student improve, not to make fun of the student or demonstrate their superior knowledge.

Would you like a C compiler that just ignored it if you, say, implicitly cast 1000 to a char? I would prefer one that gave me a warning, so that I can fix the code and/or know to explicitly cast these in the future.

Now that's some real innovation

[Wolfier]

Infinitely more patentable than any of the crap that we've seen lately. And the author is NOT doing it. I give him a big thumbup.

Slashdot crashed another site

[dthomas731]

Went to the link site and it is down do to high traffic. Slashdot does it again

Idea to make all browsers secure!

[Anonymous Coward]

All we have to do is make it so browsers just render one huge-ass image for every page. It'll bring the web to a crawl, but wouldn't the world be a safer place? hahaha

Re:Idea to make all browsers secure!

[corsec67]

You didn't see the bug in IE that allows an IMAGE to execute arbitrary code?
It may be slow and SHOULD work, but microsoft can screw anything up.

Re:Idea to make all browsers secure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case anybody thinks this is a joke, a security hole really was found recently that lets images execute code when you view them. It was found just after the Microsoft source leak, and was a typical buffer overflow as I recall.

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a Microsoft product isn't standards compliant?

who ever heard of such a thing. this can't be true.

Corporate Intranet Apps

[MyHair]

For some reason my company has a woody for MS right now. We have several web apps that require IE due to a combination of activeX stuff and IE's unique object model. I tried to get OSS browsers to work, but apparently nobody's implemented IE's proprietary object model for javascript objects, if I remember correctly. (I have no influence on the developers of these apps so I can't fix it at the source.) And IIRC there are 3 object models: an IE one, a Netscape one and the standards-based one. OSS can handle the latter two. So all my users use IE and spyware/adware is becomming epidemic.

Oh, and we're now migrating to ADS even though we have mature NDS and LDAP in place. :p (Mature meaning we've had it installed, stable and working for years.)

What really cracks me up is that they started this MS push right after Code Red hit. Whaaa?

Re:Corporate Intranet Apps

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

KHTML and Opera partially implement the IE object model. Mozilla refuses to implement it (and I agree with them). The old Netscape 4 object model is dead and buried, no current browser supports it. The W3C object model is supported by all current browsers and is what web developers should be using.

Moderator comment

[crashnbur]

This is offtopic, but I believe it deserves attention. Moderation of a comment for being "insightful" should be reserved for comments that are, well, insightful. The quality of being insightful is characterized by perceptiveness, or seeing below the surface to a deeper meaning or truth.

Simply having a good idea is not seeing below the surface of the idea at hand. At best, it should be "interesting" or "underrated". My personal opinion is that this comment is definitely worth modding up, but it is "interesting" rather than "insightful".

Re:Get firefox.(Get opera)

[koniosis]

yeah opera did used to kinda suck, i strongly suggest you try the latest beta, its come on so far in such a small amount of time.

Standards schmandards

[Phisbut]

I'm not sure if I totally understood, but the way I see it, IE will download a webpage that is W3C standards compliant, apply a stylesheet so that it locally becomes non-compliant so that IE can display it fine? Talk about Microsoft's way of doing things...

Useless

[Karem Lore]

Now what I want is a patch that makes other browsers able to read the thousands of websites created under IE that look like a heap of c**p on anything but IE.

Then again, what I would really like is M$ forced to use the standards, and any improvements to that have to go through the appropriate bodies for inclusion...In fact, i'd just like to see IE gone....and Windows...oh, and M$...

Re:Misleading title : corrects CSS2 selectors only

[duffbeer703]

WTF are you talking about?

90% of browsers are using Javascript.

Prolly 80% of browsers are using Flash.

Any primadonna user who thinks the world should redesign itself around his or her preferences needs to wake up.

Standards or just plain common sense?

[pooh666]

I know this is not new to a lot of people judgeing by the number of hits I get when searching for solutions. IE's submit button doesn't lock, as many times as you click it, is as many times as it breaks its former connection and makes a new one.

I can't believe even MS would do something that stupid!!! Since I learned about forms on Netscape, it never occured to me that this problem could exist until I saw it for myself.

I couldn't care less about DHTML or CSS "compliance" when IE can't even act like a simple web client correctly!!

Eric

For starters, fix Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why, but Mozilla very often renders Slashcode sites incorrectly (mainly Slashdot). Text from the left navigation column always extends into the main window and blocks the article/comment text. This is unacceptable, so I always use IE for Slashcode websites. Please fix this, kthnxbye!

Is Mozilla hiding its' security problems?

[darthcamaro]

I've always though of IE as being the 'weak link' BUT check out this post on MozillaZine about how RUS-CERT has critized Mozilla's security policy. Supposedly Mozilla doesn't issue regular patches/update/notices to users - security fixes are only incorperated into the 'latest' release ?!?!!

Re:Is Mozilla hiding its' security problems?

[The One KEA]

No.

You can download an official nightly build, built fresh from the current CVS trunk, from the Mozilla FTP server. If security bugs come to light that concern you, all you have to do is wait for a new nightly build containing the bugfixes and download it.

Re:Is Mozilla hiding its' security problems?

[darthcamaro]

of course you can ..but when your dealing with WinDoze users and *nix newbies..how many of them will even know what CVS is? let alone have the patience or ability to download and install from CVS as opposed to just a patch (or even a *diff)?

Kudos, but...Pressure point.

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a developer, I can choose to make my site work in Mozilla and KHTML - and will - but I can't choose to force my audience to use them."

And yet people upgrade to the latest Microsoft product and force others to upgrade so they can read it.

It's OK to "force" the issue one way, but not the other.

Re:Get firefox.(Get opera)

[lucas teh geek]

crashed less than firefox anyway
Geeze man, what are you doing to make firefox crash? i'm yet to see it happen. maybe its a faulty stick of ram or a generally unstable system causing your problems

Damn, we need an edit option

[Anonymous Coward]

To prevent some unnecessary posts: Or Safari or Chameleon or Galeon or any Gecko-based or KHTML-based or OSS or cool browser.

wag the dog...

[jeff13]

wag the cyber-dog. M$ is the first and worst enemy of any standard for technology. Don't make me laugh! M$ has built an entire empire by using it's unprecedented monopoly on the industry to destroy standardization in thier favour and the detriment of the poor slob who ignorantly bought that Wondows crap.

After all... if there were any standards people would buy thier software with some sagacity.

Google bar? There you go!

[RenatoRam]

GoogleBar for Mozilla
Enjoy!
(dunno what yahoo companion is supposed to do, sorry... but pretty much sure FireFox does that natively or with an extension ^__^ )

Re:Google bar? There you go!

[stecoop]

On that site I found Mozila's version of Yahoo Companion for http://companion.mozdev.org/

Good I will be able to dump IE soon as the Mozila's Yahoo Companion bar becomes a little more stable (can we all sing ding dong the witch is dead now?) ...

Even more significant...

[freeBill]

...is the impact this will have on Longhorn.

Many of the features Microsoft is trumpeting to promote their next operating system (in the "technology previews" they are offering) are already implemented in DHTML or in the W3C's vector-graphics standard. A big question which has remained: Would they implement these using their own standard (ala Flash)? Or would they accessible using W3C standards? Or both?

Many of us felt that MS was delaying an announcement on this because they going to follow the standards only if public opinion and market conditions forced them to. If no one forced them to follow the standards, they could sell products which made it possible for people to access features of LonghornIE which could not be accessed without buying those products. If there was a demand for standards compliance, adding that in would be relatively easy.

This CSS suggests that doesn't matter. If Microsoft implements the features through its own non-standards-compliant protocols, a standards-compliant web site could still call them with DHTML (or whatever other W3C standard they want to use) and still use the features of Longhorn's pseudobrowser via just this kind of stylesheet.

"Official Mirror"

[DeanEdwards22]

thanks to Lizard for this mirror:

http://edwards.furhome.net/

all html and xml examples should now work.

thanks again for all the offers for mirrors i've had.

dean edwards

Re:"Official Mirror"

[Bloody Twit]

thanks to Lizard for this mirror:

http://edwards.furhome.net/

Oh, great. Now the government people monitoring which websites I visit will place a check mark next to "Is a furry."

again with the designer-bashing

[The Queen]

Listen.

I am currently begin forced to rewrite all our client's websites from the lovely php they are in on our Linux box to run on the new M$ asp box we are getting, so that another piece of software we have can be upgraded. I don't like it any more than you do, but when M$ is used by other software companies as the yardstick for development, web designers' hands like mine are freaking tied. Okay? It sucks. But don't bash all of us just because some people don't know better.

Re:again with the designer-bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently begin forced to rewrite all our client's websites from the lovely php they are in on our Linux box to run on the new M$ asp box we are getting

PHP can be run under IIS. Furthermore, what you use for back-end coding has nothing to do with valid vs invalid HTML.

Re:again with the designer-bashing

[subtropolis]

I understand. I've been in that position as well. But there is a solution: use standards anyway. Don't use ie-only bullshit. Show your producers how much better the page looks in mozilla/safari/opera compared to the "standard" ie. Explain to them how the "standard" ie cannot keep up with standards and that it is a complete rip-off for them to hold on to it.

Sorry this sounds like a rant. I feel your pain.

Re:again with the designer-bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently begin forced to rewrite all our client's websites from the lovely php they are in on our Linux box to run on the new M$ asp box we are getting, so that another piece of software we have can be upgraded.

What does this have to do with anything? Can asp not produce proper html?

when M$ is used by other software companies as the yardstick for development, web designers' hands like mine are freaking tied.

How so? Add a few lines in the css to make Mozilla and Opera use IE's box model, then it's fairly trivial to make almost anything look similar in all three.

It's only really a problem if you don't know what you're doing or you have 20 minutes to make an award-winning site, graphics included.

Non-Microsoft browser required

[Gary Destruction]

I used to have a cgi script that would send IE users to a spoofed IE error on my site. I think I was losing too much traffic for using it though http://www.silentchaos.com/ie_error.html

Konqueror for Windows

[farlukar]

Konqueror is part of KDE, which isn't available for Windows

Well, actually it is...
It's sluggish and eats up all your RAM, but it's pretty cool to have a KHTML engine for Windows to check your site.

The correct way

[at2000]

It is meaningless to comment by saying "hey I use firefox", because the rest of the world is not using it. Now still 25% of my visitors are using IE 5.5, given that IE 6.0 is there 4 years ago.

Yes, it is much easier to make Mozilla/Opera more IE-complaint. [See IE Emu]

It is also quite easy to design a new set of API such that they are deligated to the correct version supported by the browser in runtime. [See DHTMLLib] [See CBE]

But these are just the wrong way.

1. It gives excuses for IE people to think that they are right. It works well for all sites. (but of course we can't afford IE not supported (tm)
2. It makes our code bad. We are not coding for the standard, but for the bad browsers. It created the economics that bad browsers will never be gone.

A patch to IE means:

1. We are coding for the standard. Sooner or later when there is no more IE, just remove the line and our code works pretty well.
2. IE works by emulation. This means it will definately be made slower. When there are enough such sites, it gives people one more sites to move away from IE. That is, IE works, but not as good.
3. IE is considered second class. We focus on standard, and IE just work, by mistake. This is important when IE-to-Mozilla has become 50%-50%. It gives people more comfort to use Mozilla because it has the "brand" to work better.
4. Be prepared that IE can stop working at any time. When IE-to-Mozilla has become 30%-70%, we can start withdrawing this script, forcing extinction of IE.

It is exactly something like Cygwin, which implies UNIX-style programs are correct programs. When you move to Linux is just your choice.

Re:The correct way

[DeanEdwards22]

i love your comment. you really understand what i've done. -dean edwards

The most important files are missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mirror (and I'm guessing the Google cache) are both missing key files. Can you please obtain these from the author and put them on your mirror?

ie7-html.css
ie7-style.htc
ie7-xml.css
ie7.htc (partially there)

Yeah, the source for ie7.htc exists rendered in HTML on the site, so you can copy/paste that into his javascript packer to get a small version.. but there doesn't seem to be any copies whatsoever of the other three files.

If anyone has them mirrored, can they post a URL here?

Re:The most important files are missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the mirror site now pointed to by the main site now has these files:

http://edwards.furhome.net/my/behaviors/ie7-html.c ss http://edwards.furhome.net/my/behaviors/ie7-style. htc http://edwards.furhome.net/my/behaviors/ie7-xml.cs s http://edwards.furhome.net/my/behaviors/ie7.htc

How long until..

[yabos]

MS buys this script and includes it in IE so they don't have to code anything to make IE actually work.

Why on Earth?

[WNight]

Why would anyone contribute any time to making a Microsoft product better? It's only helping the company that's trying to stamp out our freedoms.

There's already a way to make IE standard's compliant... Go to www.mozilla.org and download a working browser. Anything else just helps Bill's quest to own the internet.

Re:Why on Earth?

[evilviper]

This doesn't improve Internet Explorer in any way. What it does is to allow web designers to make one version of a page, using standards-compliant code, instead of IE-specific crap.

I think this makes the world better, not worse.

IE is updated in SP2

[bonch]

And to think it'll be a wait of several years before IE is updated with Longhorn.

Windows XP SP2 is due out any month now. IE is receiving several upgrades--including pop-up blocking and a download manager.

Re:IE is updated in SP2

[setmajer]

Windows XP SP2 is due out any month now. IE is receiving several upgrades--including pop-up blocking and a download manager.

But no rendering engine improvements, I take it?

Reminds me of GM in the early '80s: stick a bunch of chrome and a vinyl roof on a cavalier and say it's a 'luxury sedan'.

Sadly, I fear they'll have more success with their warmed-over IE than GM did with the Cimarron.

Indeed....

[Kjella]

I bet Microsoft was hoping the rest of the browsers would follow IEs "standard". Then they can subtly break it so their own previous versions don't, but every follower would. That way they could run the "If you want it to look right, use IE" scam forever.

Kjella

For something this small

[Kjella]

...a conventional download would be just as easy. Someone just needs a reasonably fast uplink...

Kjella

Dean Edwards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa, for a second there I thought I was in a time warp and looking at the Democratic ticket six months ago!

To sum it up

[bonch]

Slashdot:

"IE hasn't been updated in years, it is stagnant and doesn't adopt the standards that other better solutions do! Let's post articles pointing it out.

Oh, uh...yeah, by the way, validating HTML standards on our own site has been disabled by the server so you can't see the results. Don't ask us about it because we won't answer. We haven't updated in years, we are stagnant, and we don't adopt the standards that other better sites do...but here's another standards-incompliant IE article to read! Just ignore our table columns spilling into the article summary..."

Re:To sum it up

[Anonymous Coward]

rotfl. slashdot = owned.

This is just peachy

[Anonymous Coward]

Great... more bloat because of, or from Microsoft. On the upside, if everyone starts using it, IE will be the slowest loading browser. Mozilla and Opera will start making faster headway and MS might begin to think it is a good idea to implement standards, w3c's instead of MS.

This is a known bug

[Anthracks]

See this bug in Bugzilla: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217527 . As others have pointed out, if Slashdot used remotely modern, comliant HTML this wouldn't be an issue, but of course that doesn't mean Mozilla shouldn't fix the rendering bug. If you reload the page or do anything else that causes a reflow (resize text, etc) the problem usually goes away, strangely.

And please, please don't spam this bug with "I see this too", "I don't understand why this isn't fixed yet, it should be easy", etc, it has enough of those comments :).

Re: Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.

BANG! ... I think not.

I Expect Microsoft to Sue Any Moment Now

[Nom du Keyboard]

I expect Microsoft to sue any moment now for his usage of "IE7", which undoubtedly is a trademark owned by Microsoft. After all, if you can go after "Mike Rowe Soft"...

Please don't

[Midnight Thunder]

Rather than fixing IE, how about using the same method to make Mozilla render pages designed for IE correctly?

Pages should not be designed for browser x (replace x with browser of choice). This is bad web design. Web pages should be designed to follow standards, as should web browsers. In many cases I would also recommend not using the latest rendition of a standard, since most browsers probably don't support it. The philosphy of web design, is 'write for all, view by all'. NOT 'write for one, view by one' as this is lazy, shows bad design and is just careless. I like to be able to use the browser on whatever computer I am sitting at and still have it display correctly.

This is a rant, but one which I feel passionatly about. Now don't get me going on how Macromedia Flash also shows signs of poor web design.

mod parent +1 funny

[Anonymous Coward]

rotfl, that's so good, and so true. (anon. for obvious reasons).

Re:mod parent +1 funny

[jesser]

anon. for obvious reasons

You're afraid to admit that you sometimes select a menu item adjacent to the one you're trying to select? Don't worry, everyone does it.

Uhm..

[DrEvil]

Ok, forgive me, but I have to vent...

Let me get this straight - so Microsoft publishes a program and, duh, it doesn't fully conform with some standard or other but is completely capable of being adapted to conformance with said standard using builtin means.

Instead of saying "Wow, we could have had a standards conformant browser by client side adaptions since its publication, that's actually pretty nifty" the reaction is "They should have done what we wanted from the start and it's a shame that we have to work to achieve something we desire"?

This is just another sad example of people not taking responsibility and tackle their own problems but making a fuss about how someone else should do their work for them. Most people don't care about conformance, and Microsoft targets "most people". For those who care, there is a solution that requires some extra work. Stop the whining and get on it. That's what being an engineer is all about.

Give the man a prize!

[RodeoBoy]

Now if someone could make a style sheet that I can run locally in firebird that makes IE specific web pages appear less broken would be a help. Then I wouldn't even have to use the Open Link in IE context menu anymore.

On that note has anyone experienced links when viewed in Mozilla/Firebird that don't work that work fine in IE. I still haven't bothered to see what that is all about.

Hey, Genius.

[Anonymous Coward]

The grand parent said Proprietary is slow to provide the customer with what they want compared to Open Source. Negative counter examples were provided, therefore, his assertion is false. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THERE IS ONE POSITIVE EXAMPLE.

Next time when you're trying to make a point, any point, think not emote. Or you could just put on a dress and whine inscesantly.

What's up with that defensive attitude, dude?

[Doc Ruby]

Why do the corrections bother you? Especially if you're less familiar with the vagaries of English spelling, grammar and pronunciation, I'd expect you to appreciate learning more proper English. Or are you just embarrassed, and trying to supress the revelation of your errors? That belies mental defects much more serious than bad punctuation.

Re:What's up with that defensive attitude, dude?

[Peaceful_Patriot]

Good question. Just as your 'pet peeve' may be people who use incorrect English, one of my 'pet peeves' are those who feel the need to pick apart other peoples posts on a subject that has nothing to do with the topic.

This is /. Not an essay contest or a competition to see who is the smartest. Sometimes the brain is moving much faster than the fingers can type and the words just flow. Some people just dont *care* as much about proper spelling and grammar as you do and it demeans their point to treat it like a sixth grade English assignment. And some otherwise very smart people are terrible spellers and writers. It doesn't make their point any less valid.

Whew! Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Re:What's up with that defensive attitude, dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is /. Not an essay contest or a competition to see who is the smartest.

I didn't read the post as an attempt to look smarter or to unnecessarily put down the original poster. I feel the same way - I'm English, and most of the people I communicate with are English, yet most of them make hideous mistakes in the way they communicate.

Making the odd spelling mistake is one thing, being unable to write a few sentences without at least five mistakes (spelling or grammar) is horrifyingly bad, yet it seems to be the norm these days.

Like somebody else noted, I find that non-native speakers that happen to use English on a day-to-day basis are far more familiar with the language than native speakers. The English skills of the average English person is something to be ashamed of (and I'm pretty sure it applies to people from the U.S.A. as well).

Re:What's up with that defensive attitude, dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like somebody else noted, I find that non-native speakers that happen to use English on a day-to-day basis are far more familiar with the language than native speakers. The English skills of the average English person is something to be ashamed of ...

As somebody else noted, I find that non-native speakers who happen to use English on a day-to-day basis are far more familiar with the language than native speakers. The English skills of the average English person are something to be ashamed of ...

Re:What's up with that defensive attitude, dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for proving my point. I've far better English skills than most, and I still made three mistakes. Perhaps this highlights how bad my peers are.

Embrace and Extend fodder

[Doc Ruby]

HTML is a standard that Microsoft employees have tried to subvert in every possible way to perpetuate their corporate hegemony. Yet they have failed to enforce their defacto standard on the Web, due to stubborn plurality of the Web, and the superiority of the actual standard. Just because you worship M$'s monopoly, don't expect the rest of us to ignore their deliberate vandalism of our environment.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[prisoner-of-enigma]

HTML is a standard that Microsoft employees have tried to subvert in every possible way to perpetuate their corporate hegemony.

So? I fail to see how this makes Microsoft's implementation any less valid. What MS is doing is definitely in bad taste, but that does not mean their "standard" is any less technically correct than any other proposed "standard."

Yet they have failed to enforce their defacto standard on the Web, due to stubborn plurality of the Web, and the superiority of the actual standard.

I'd agree on the stubborn plurality, but "superiority" of the actual standard is debatable. If it's so superior, why hasn't it completely displaced Microsoft's "inferior" one? The answer, of course, is that Microsoft's "inferior" standard works just as well as the "superior" actual standard for most people.

Just because Microsoft doesn't follow someone else's rulebook does not mean Microsoft's own rulebook is any less valid. Microsoft's HTML implementation was formed via a group of human beings the same as the actual HTML standard. You're making an argument that sounds suspiciously akin to "the only way to ascend to heaven is through accepting Christianity, and I know that because the Bible tells me so." That's a slap in the face to any other religion, because each of them have their own book that lists conditions for entering the afterlife (or equivalent) and each of them feel their "standard" is as valid as anyone else's. Who are you to judge which belief is "superior" and which is "inferior?"

Just because you worship M$'s monopoly,

[sigh] Why does it always devolve into this? Has it not crossed your mind that it's possible to disagree with a company's (or person's) actions yet it's still possible to rationally argue in their defense? Have you never heard of the Devil's Advocate? Just because I point out that splashing water makes everyone equally wet, I'm now a Microsoft lackey? That's a ridiculously narrow-minded and intolerant viewpoint you've got there, Doc.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Doc Ruby]

The standard body is not just some company, they're the standards body, with industry consensus. It's like the difference between a poll and a vote - one is official consensus, the other is a shared private opinion. The HTML standard is by definition and by consensus "accurate". Microsoft deviations from it are errors, broken software. That doesn't stop the M$ malware from being popular, due to their monopoly. Unless it's the monopoly that you respect, because market might makes right. Conversely, where there is competition in the same industry, Apache has whipped IIS, and Netscape's httpd before that, before AOL killed their competitiveness. As an engineer, I'm qualified to judge which HTML spec is superior: the standard wins on interoperability, ease of maintenance, consistency of machine generation, and public documentation of its functionality. That's a rational evaluation, not some kind of faith based Microsoft apology.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[prisoner-of-enigma]

The HTML standard is by definition and by consensus "accurate". Microsoft deviations from it are errors, broken software.

This is where we cannot agree. You're saying that the HTML standards body is "accurate" because they got together and came up with how they thought HTML ought to work. But when a group of people get together at Microsoft and come up with a standard that they consider to be how HTML ought to work, they're wrong. This is your double standard.

The fact that Microsoft is one entity and the HTML body is several entities is irrelevant to the point of the argument. The argument is, in fact, this: that any group can come up with anything they want and call it a "standard," but the actual relevance of the standard relies solely on whether or not it is adopted. Intel "standardized" on the ATX form-factor motherboard, yet Apple uses a different form factor. Is Apple's implementation "inferior" to Intel's? By your definition, yes. By mine, no.

As a parting note, writing Microsoft as "M$" is generally accepted to be a pedantic, infantile expression. I would hope that you're capable of more maturity than that.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Doc Ruby]

First: Money and Microsoft (M$) is the name of their game - your parting note is pedantic - nevermind its condescending mockery of "maturity". Second: The HTML standard is an RFC, which largely documents existing functionality, proven through use. That's where the standard gets its superiority, not from some kind of branding. And the multiple vendor composition of the W3C contributes to the all-important cross platform compatibility, which M$ not only lacks, but avoids, in the pursuit of marginalizing competition through leveraging its monopoly market control.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[prisoner-of-enigma]

First: Money and Microsoft (M$) is the name of their game

So? I fail to see what relevance this has on the suitability of one "standard" over another. Unless you're just anti-capitalist to begin with, you ought to be able to weigh the technical merits of each regardless of who it comes from. To put it more plainly, would you be upset about this if it were Microsoft who had created a standard and the HTML committee was disregarding it? My guess from your previous posts is "no" since you seem to be rooted in double-standardism.

your parting note is pedantic - nevermind its condescending mockery of "maturity".

If you are incapable of carrying on a logical argument without resorting to petty namecalling, you're the one meeting the definition of pedantic. Your response to my calling you on it shows I was wrong to assume you can rise above this level.

Second: The HTML standard is an RFC, which largely documents existing functionality, proven through use.

And Microsoft's implementation, which largely documents existing functionality, is also proven through use. IE is on more desktops and sees more websites than all other browsers combined. If this isn't "proven through use" then you're just too blind to see it.

That's where the standard gets its superiority, not from some kind of branding.

And this is where you're wrong. Standards do not automatically gain superiority simply because they are standards. You are making a circular argument. A standard becomes relevant when it is accepted and widely used. In fact, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a "standard" as "something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example." The public's usage of IE certainly meets the condition of "general consent as a model or example" by anyone's definition. Perhaps you ought to rethink your position.

And the multiple vendor composition of the W3C contributes to the all-important cross platform compatibility, which M$ not only lacks, but avoids, in the pursuit of marginalizing competition through leveraging its monopoly market control.

Again, you're trying to say that the HTML committee's standard is "superior" because it's altruistic. This is an emotional argument, not a logical one, and it seems to be rooted in some hatred you have for Microsoft in general. This is clouding your ability to reason. If you thought about this objectively, you'd realize that a standard gains superiority through widespread acceptance, to the point where all other "standards" are marginalized. Altruism has nothing to do with that at all. If Microsoft were to succeed in dominating 100% of the web browser market, Microsoft could define what standard HTML is to the entire world, and all the committees in the world could not change that.

You really do need to think about this logically as opposed to emotionally. Your arguments are circular and make no sense unless you're simply just frothing with hatred for Microsoft.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Doc Ruby]

Money and Microsoft is irrelevant to whether the M$ version of HTML is superior - it's relevant only to my abbreviation of "M$". I never claimed any other relevance. Similarly, I have been harping on the superiority of the HTML standard in terms of consensus of implementation, among its other technically superior features. Not claiming that it's better just because it's standard: that's your straw man argument, that I have never promoted. Nor have I attributed "altruism" to any W3C committee: its members reach consensus out of self-interest, which is driven by interoperability in the face of M$ subversion of the platform. The M$ de facto standard is a problem, not a solution. Just note the topic of the story to which this entire thread is attached: how to make IE behave so the Web works, for users and professional content developers.

Your straw man technique is irritating, so there's some emotion involved. But I have not resorted to anything but clear reason in my propositions. While I note that you are the only one sinking to ad hominem attacks, calling me "pedantic", "petty", "blind", "emotional", "frothing with hatred" - all while framing nonsense as if it were my argument. Just to stamp your empty rhetoric for what it is, here's the definition of "pedantic":

Synonyms: pedantic, academic, bookish, donnish, scholastic
These adjectives mean marked by a narrow, often tiresome focus on or display of learning and especially its trivial aspects

It's not irony that your clinging to the trivially appropriate definition of "standard" that includes "de facto" has become tiring. Your desire to frame my rational and practical defense of HTML standards in spite of M$ dilution of them as "circular", isn't ironic, either, it's a projection of your own rhetoric's flaws onto my reason, in the absence of any real argument. Good luck with that.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Anonymous Coward]

Computing standards are about interoperability. In fact, the IETF standards track requires at least two implementations that can interoperate. Microsoft's divergences are less useful precisely because they're the only entity that implemented them.

Writing "M$" is often regarded as immature, but never pedantic (excruciatingly correct) or infantile (babies can type?!)

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[prisoner-of-enigma]

You seem too emotional to make a reasoned argument. Even the slightest criticism of your reasoning ignites you into rhetoric. And again you sink to the level of trying to pin some silly little label on Microsoft with your usage of the dollar sign. Is that really necessary? Aren't you capable of making your point without being so childish?

However, I'll give you one last chance. You state the following:

The M$ de facto standard is a problem, not a solution.

Please explain to me exactly why this is a problem. Please explain why any company, individual, or group imposing a de facto standard is always, without question, a bad thing. You seem to be so immensely sure of it, I'm sure you've got a sound, logical reason that isn't based on some preconceived hatred of Microsoft. I'd like to hear it.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[prisoner-of-enigma]

According to Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: pedantic
Pronunciation: pi-'dan-tik
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or being a pedant
2 : narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned
3 : UNIMAGINATIVE, PEDESTRIAN
- pedantically /-'dan-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

I think Doc meets the third definition quite well with his immature usage of the "M$" label. Apparently he's incapable of making a logical argument on merit, so he sinks to ad hominem attacks.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Doc Ruby]

Stick your "last chance": I'm condescending to swat you as you chase your own tail, barking at it as if it were me, only this last time. You can't even box your own shadow without trying to turn my unmasking of your "rhetoric" around - at least pick your own words to invent inappropriate insults. The only feeling I have for this quicksand you're churning is contempt. I'm not going to quote the insulting names you've called me, in place of debate. You're the one so sensitive and irrational that you've sunk this entire disagreement to a debate about my using "M$" to abbreviate "Microsoft". I am not going to now defend some ludicrous position you just contrived for me, that "any de facto standard is a bad thing". If after all these replies the best you can do is convert my position to a crude combination of fallacy of the excluded middle, as a straw man forced on me to defend, they you'll never understand the simple fact that M$ HTML is broken, everyone who has to deal with it knows it's a nightmare, the story we've been discussing is all about the desperate lengths a hacker has finally gone to in order to make it usable by the rest of us. All you'd like t hear is the echo of your own arguments. So you're welcome to that.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[prisoner-of-enigma]

You again prove you're incapable of making an argument, and fall down to sputtering and frothing. I see I'm wasting my time with an ardent Microsoft-basher who has no logical thought process to back up his vitriol. You argue that Microsoft's "standard" is broken, but the only ruler you hold it up to is the HTML committee. May I remind you that large companies have singlehandedly come up with "standards" before? Ever hear of TN3270? Alas, you are too deaf to hear history. I'm sure it's intentional.

Good day to you, and may you one day grow up.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain why any company, individual, or group imposing a de facto standard is always, without question, a bad thing.

Yet another straw-man argument. He didn't claim that. He claimed that this specific instance of Microsoft trying to subvert HTML is a bad thing.

Re:Embrace and Extend fodder

[Anonymous Coward]

You're saying that the HTML standards body is "accurate" because they got together and came up with how they thought HTML ought to work. But when a group of people get together at Microsoft and come up with a standard that they consider to be how HTML ought to work, they're wrong. This is your double standard.

No.

HTML was conceived and designed by Tim Berners-Lee. It was then superceded by a number of revisions as the HTML specification grew.

At that point, Microsoft comes along, buys an existing implementation of an HTML user-agent, and releases it as Internet Explorer. With each successive version, Microsoft have followed the HTML specifications a little, whilst undermining the standard by deviating from it just enough to make web developers tear their hair out in frustration.

Have you ever visited a website that requires Internet Explorer to function properly? You are witnessing one of the symptoms of this attitude towards HTML - where Microsoft's deviations have caused web developers to write "MS-HTML" rather than normal HTML that will work in any other web browser.

"MS-HTML" isn't a standard. It's simply a corruption of the preexisting HTML specifications. You can't even claim it as a defacto standard, as it changes between releases of Internet Explorer in unpredictable and undocumented ways.

Furthermore, it's not like Microsoft have forked the HTML specification and called it something else. They still claim that Internet Explorer is an HTML user-agent, they still participate in the W3C HTML working group, and they are still a member of the W3C. To state that they have their own "version" of HTML is simply false. They develop HTML in cooperation with the W3C, and then turn around and subvert it with Internet Explorer's exceedingly poor implementation.

the actual relevance of the standard relies solely on whether or not it is adopted.

And the HTML standard has been adopted by every browser vendor other than Microsoft, and Microsoft claim compatibility with HTML. That sounds like pretty strong adoption. The problem is that Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems, and they illegally bundled Internet Explorer to gain masses of market share. That doesn't mean anybody has "adopted" "MS-HTML".

writing Microsoft as "M$" is generally accepted to be a pedantic, infantile expression.

I agree.

Re:MSIE is the standard

[owlstead]

What I'd love to see someone do at some point is re-skin FireFox to look like IE and then abuse one of IE's many security holes to replace IE with the reskinned FireFox on any machine that visits the website. :)

Ah, yes, but that would not work. See Java's stab to look like Windows (or any other OS) using swing. There are always lot's of small things that make it different. One pixel can make quite a difference. IBM won't eclipse the Sun, but SWT might have a stab at eclipsing Swung.

Re:File upload

[Anonymous Coward]

Every other browser I know of sends just the name of the file, in the content disposition header, but IE sends the full path

Thanks for the info. I've often wondered if my filepath was being sent when I upload files. With the knowledge that IE allows this privacy leak, I'll make sure to never use it for uploading.

icky

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you happen to notice that the mirror site is on a 'furry' server? Wash your hands after using that code, you don't know where it's been, or how it was dressed when it was there.

Pornzilla

[Jack Zombie]

Not surprising, since Jesse Ruderman hosts and maintains the Pornzilla project.

Re:The site seems down?

[CVD1979]

Well actually, at the time of reading this article, it only had 2 comments and I thought it just went online. Never knew the /.-effect would kick in that fast.

Standards and standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Making IE comply - how about making MS comply? Fuck IE. Who uses that shit anyway? Fuck it. Get MS to comply - that's a style sheet, lemme tell ya.

Re:File upload

[Xugumad]

Glad someone got some use of this. I'm mildly confused how a detailed description of IE breaking a couple of RFCs is offtopic in a discussion about making IE standards complaint, but apparently the mods think it is.

If you're interested, browsers I've tested this on include Mozilla (and varients), Netscape, Opera and Safari. I think I tested this under Lynx as well, but wouldn't swear to it.

Mirror of IE7

[gessleX]

With permission of Dean Edward, I have copied the IE7 information and src download to my webserver for mirroring purposes. http://opensource.worldhuman.net/mirror/IE7

This doesn't work

[DeanEdwards22]

use this mirror:

http://edwards.furhome.net/IE7/

thanks anyway Casey

Re:This doesn't work

[gessleX]

fixed.

You can already use mozilla rendering in IE

[Nailer]

The Mozilla control is an ActiveX control that encapsulates the Gecko layout engine, allowing it to be used in any ActiveX container. Developers can use any ActiveX development tool such as VB, Visual C++, Delphi and even Internet Explorer to embed the Mozilla ActiveX control into a form.

The Mozilla control also uses the existing Internet Explorer interfaces meaning that it can be a drop in replacement for the Internet Explorer control in many cases.

Get it here

Mozilla has Yahoo Companion, Google, Amazon, AMG..

[lunachik]

You know, I said the same thing as you when I first read about Mozilla--nope, gotta have my Yahoo & Google toolbars! Good thing they have both:

Yahoo Companion at mozdev:
http://companion.mozdev.org/

Google Toolbar at mozdev:
http://googlebar.mozdev.org/

However, I have gotten away from using either of these, as they take too much screen real estate. Mozilla Firefox has a compact search box built in with Google, and which you can download any other search engine module for (Dictionary.com, Amazon, All Music Guide, even Slashdot)

Search plugins for Mozilla/Firefox
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html

Finally, you can get this search functionality in ANY browser by putting a neat little javascript popup box bookmark on your personal toolbar bookmark area. I learned this trick from WordReference.com, which provides quicklinks for their Spanish translation dictionary, like so:

WordReference.com search link:
javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void (Qr=prompt('Translate to Spanish:',''))};if(Qr)location.href='http://wordre ference.com/es/Translation.asp?tranword='+escape(Q r)

Just copy and paste that text all on one line into a bookmark and whala, you have a little popup box search that, with a little sophistication, can be tweaked to work for whatever site you want.

I did this for Amazon.com by going to their site, View HTML Source, search for "form", copy the link in that form tag, paste it over the WordReference.com link in my bookmark, search for "input" in the source, find the name of the input for the search term, and add this to the end of the boomark's URL "?searchterm=". Hope that makes sense! Unfortunately I can't demonstrate it directly because slashdot forbids javascript links (with good reason).

Amazon.com search link:
javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void (Qr=prompt('Search Amazon:',''))};if(Qr)location.href='http://www.ama zon.com/exec/obidos/handle-generic-form/ref=br_ss_ /103-8765421-6019820?websearch.field-keywords='+es cape(Qr)+'&start=0&search-option=search-amazon&sto re-name=all-product-search&Go=Go!&action-next-page =templates/web-search/encode.html'

No, it is not a stylesheet

[Dr. q00p]

I know this is /. but it would be nice if someone for once actually read the pages linked to. Oh wait, I actually read them. Wow, first time on /. !!!

Anyway, IE7 uses htc which is mostly JavaScript.

Re: "me" vs "I"

[some guy I know]

Well, he could have meant "She gets paid more than she gets me ...", in which case "me" is correct.

(And, yes, I know that the comma is supposed to go inside the quote, but that just doesn't look right to me.)

Re:Misleading title : corrects CSS2 selectors only

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of browsers are using Javascript.

That's a made-up number. In any case, would you run a shop where you randomly refused entrance to one in ten people?

Any primadonna user who thinks the world should redesign itself around his or her preferences needs to wake up.

CERT recommend switching off client-side scripting. Many businesses do so on behalf of their users as well. This isn't about an individual's preferences.

This still does not work (sorry)

[DeanEdwards22]

Casey. you need to amend the css files to point at behvior files (htc) or none of the examples will work. -dean

OT: your sig

[kelnos]

Being a soldier means as much about loving war as being a firefighter does about loving fire.
-- Uggy, Slashdot

just an FYI: this quote actually comes from 'a painted house' by john grisham (which i just read last night). i don't know if its use in that novel was original or borrowed from somewhere else, but methinks that's a better atrribution than "uggy".

Where?

[0x0d0a]

That's odd. Thanks to the Internet, it took all of a minute to download a copy of "A Painted House" and grep through it to check the attribution -- I can't find any instances of "fireman" in the entire text. None of the sentences that contained "soldier" looked anything like this quote.

Can you provide the actual quote from "A Painted House" that you're thinking of? Uggy specifically claimed that this quote was original and from him. I *would* like to give credit where credit is due, but I honestly can't find what you're thinking of.

Re:Where?

[kelnos]

hmm, that's odd that you didn't find it. perhaps it didn't come from there, though i'm relatively sure it comes from a book i read very recently, and that would be the only one i've touched in the past week or so. sorry i can't give you a specific page number.