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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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

[Dashing Leech]

Or even better: crashes them.

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Lothsahn]

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

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...

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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: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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[/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

[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

[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

[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

[Drantin]

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

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.

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.

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

[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

[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: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.

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

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.

[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

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...

more than enough bandwidth to cover it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...thems sound lik fightin' words :)

yehaw boys!!

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

[PhilHibbs]

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

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.

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.

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?

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:.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)

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.

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

[l0wland]

"Microsoft should hire him..."

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

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.

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.

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... ;)

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?

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.

Source Code for IE7 htc

[EqualSlash]

via Google Cache : IE7.htc

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.

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: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. :)

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 :-)

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: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!

IE

[ward.deb]

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

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.

PNG Support?

[Sophrosyne]

It would be nice if IE could view transparent PNG files

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

[DeanEdwards22]

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Re:Welcome to 2004

[rudy_wayne]

>> IE is the suck.

This should be displayed whenever IE starts up.

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.

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".

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$...

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

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 ?!?!!

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

[platipusrc]

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

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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