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Opera Lays Down Acid2 Challenge
sebFlyte writes "The CTO of Opera has proposed a new version of the acid test for browser compatibility, and has challenged Microsoft to make IE7 a browser worth having that will do the Web good. He's asked to help from Web designers the world over to build a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to. "
*cough* Firefox
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Has anyone (even Opera) managed to create a browser that does what all the web designers want it to do? Does the web designer community have a consensus of what they want the browsers to do?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You can usually remove the word "acid" from "acid test" without doing any harm.
This is laughable. Opera is hardly the bastion of interoperability.
Is anybody actually caring about IE at this point? There's only so much you can put up with before it's time to cement its feet and dump it in in the ocean.
Oddly enough, when I went to "read more", FireFox spat this at me:
404 File Not Found
The requested URL (articles/05/03/16/1556228.shtml?tid=109) was not found.
If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.
Looks like the bar has already been set too high!
Not even THEY get their browser download under 2 megabytes anymore.
And thusly, fail it.
yeah, I'm sure they'll agree to that!
Will IE 7 have 'Electric Kool-Aid' tags?
The coolest voice ever.
Name me any other big industry where the little guy can still try to put the smack down on the big one!
It'd be nice if there were reference pages made by the standards committees, so a browser could be simply deemed compliant or not.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
MS has never shown the initiative to make things compliant why should any developers waste precious time coding a page for MS to balk at when there are other browsers out there? Firefox is slowly but surely gaining market share. I say Good Riddance to IE and make room for the new guys. Why HELP MS strenthen their hold?
Microsoft's IE7 developers allow themselves a chuckle and think, "Ha! We've been on acid for decades."
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Standards compliance is for companies that don't have 90% or more of a market.
Next!
You win. At least my loserness is attached to my user account, you AC.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is brilliant!! Appear to be helpful, but really just point out shortcomings and bugs in your competitor's product, all the while gaining visibility and recognition in the community. I really must remember to do this sometime.
Load even more spyware!!!
Err, oh. I guess that that was not a valid choice.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Microsoft would more than likely simply ignore the challenge completely. What do they have to gain (at this point) from actually producing a standards-compliant browser?
Now, perhaps if FireFox continues to chew up the percentages of web browser usage, they might try it for PR purposes, but that's hardly an issue at the moment. Microsoft is more of an in-the-moment company (unless you're speaking of up-and-coming products, where they announce competing programs years before they actually plan to implement the changes).
As opposed to a real name like ScentClone! Thank god we can trust you.
MS tells us what we want not the other way around...
I humbly submit my idea for building a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to.
Get Firefox!
If it can properly render that link, I'll be satisfied.
I'm a big tall mofo.
At least not reasonably. There are too many different cases and uses to test. A large majority of web designers (even the best ones) only use a small portion of what CSS can really do. Making an acid test web page can be done, but it would be tens if not hundreds of pages to go through.
Aren't there test suites that test the conformance of an implementation to all aspects of CSS2 standard already? And if not, why not?
Question: Is Opera looking for market? Basing your business model on selling a web browser is not going to make it. Note to Opera: Application Platform. Or die.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
*Testing if code is Acid* *Code is BASIC*
I can now stop time, but the effect is only temporary
an entire web site to fully test w3c standards, css-1, css-2, javascript, etc. One page isn't going to do it.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
I don't want my browser doing what many web "designers" want it to do. I want my browser to do what I want it to do. The challenge is a bit misleading, or its restatement is. The browser should be capable of doing things in a standards compliant manner. Too many web designers (or designer wannabes) want to do stupid, irritating things. Nobody has to let them.
And let's not be smug about everyone but Microsoft following standards. The company I used to work for had a file-upload javascript that worked with Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and IE, but it didn't work with Safari and we had to specially recode the script just to accomodate that Safari quirk.
It would be nice if every page rendered the same way on every browser, but let's be real. There will still be millions and millions of people who are slow to upgrade. Even if the latest versions of Opera, Firefox, Safari, and IE join hands in a circle and sing Kumbaya, you're still going to have to test your sites on Netscape 4.7, IE 5, etc. or you're going to have issues with the 30-40% of the market who hasn't upgraded yet.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Open Source geeks challenged M$ to make windows the most secure OS.
US challenged China to be most democratic country
blah blah
Mod me down as troll, but what makes anyone think M$ cares about a challenge from a competitor?!
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
OK then, how about Trusting The Karma. Just trying to avoid the spam, dude. I don't care what a user's name is, and there are time when anonymity makes perfect sense (say, when your job may be at stake)... but ad hominem attacks aren't one of those times. Leave a trail when you're hassling somebody - it's only sporting.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Slashdot produces some of the worst html code available, and it doesn't produce the same exact code EVERY time. Some days it offers spans, some days tables missing end tags, it's just random garbarge. How do you expect ANY browser to render code the same, EVERYTIME? God. I fed a troll... *shaking head*
Let the other browser creators build a site, publisize it and ashame M$. This might work but no guarantees.
I've been an Opera supporter for years, but at some point it must become evident that Hakon Wium Lie (and other Opera employees) are simply venting frustration.
While I think the acid test is great, Opera has been uncharacteristically silent on getting XMLHttpRequest up to the Firefox/Safari/IE level. I know Opera will tell you "it is coming in version 8", but I thought the position of the one commerical browser of the bunch was to lead, not follow.
P.S. Why do all the Fire/zilla mouse gesture packages use nearly identical mouse gestures from Opera with the exception of [right button]+down is new window instead of new tab? As an Opera *and* Firefox user, this is frustrating.
I know what they should do...get all the browser companies together to create a BlueBrowser Special Interest Group (SIG), and define standards for interoperability. Then, to top it all off, create a special logo that can only be used by browsers that meet the rigorous testing and qualification requirements that ensure BlueBrowser software will render webpages properly.
Nah, who am I kidding...That sort of thing would never take off.
Or the malicious ones who miscode their site to intentionally over-support a browser.
I support Hakon, but I think he's aiming at the wrong spot.
Caveat: I have used (and liked) Opera since version 3 or so. I am have used (and hated) IE since version 2 or so. I am hardly unbiased.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Opera, complaining about standards conformance, thats comical at best. Anyone ever tried to develop for that peice of junk. Its dom implementation tries to pass itself off as ie compatible so much without ACTUALLY BEING IE COMPATIBLE that it makes it almost impossible to write for without putting in special checks to make sure its not opera. Then they bugfix something and bitch about people doing it. And dont even think about trying to use liveconnect, man that browser dies a thousand deaths for every liveconnect page that works properly.
Go back to rendering plain html+css. I'll keep ie for my web applications.
No matter what people ask for or do, I don't think it will have it all. They might at some point in time have been leading, but right now they're playing catch-up big time.
Full, proper CSS support (including complex selectors) is just a start. We also very much need it to support standards (like support the <abbr> tag, not just <acronym>), including standard voice+xml technology as well (but I can't see that happen). If they don't use the same things as the rest of the world will use for that, then it just makes it harder for us to use the new technology, as a good portion of browsers won't support it (same thing about XForms or whatever). Their proprietary stuff prevents us from using these useful technologies. I think we don't need another ActiveX-like thing. It's their chance to prove us they're serious about their claims of interoperability (and security), but something tells me we'll be really deceived again. (And I didn't even ask for niceties like firefox style extensions, tabbed browsing or anything - just a good standards-compliant browser)
///<sig
it's not over till the fat browser sinks, eh?
haha, I kill me... *snicker*
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Opera is an increasingly marginalized player in the browser market. The only thing Opera can expect to get out of this is a little PR that only delays the inevitable for them (non-player).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
with the way MS products behave, it's obvious they've had acid before!
We need them to learn to read specs!
AC comments get piped to
Most people are not web designers.
Most people are not familiar with the nuances of CSS2.
Most people are not aware of the various published spec's from W3.
Most people are users.
Most users use IE.
Most people percieve "what the web can do" to be what they've experienced as "what IE can do."
Most people don't know what they're missing.
"What Microsoft provides" is already the de facto standard for the web. And most designers are resigned to living with this--nobody puts out CSS2 elements that IE does NOT support on production pages.
There's zero pressure on Microsoft for standards compliance. Most people can barely comprehend the technical nuance of what the weberati say is "noncompliant," let alone be up in arms about it.
If MS made IE7 "a browser worth having that will do the Web good" his company (Opera) would be out of business! Not that his distant-third browser matters to anyone anyway!
'quixotic'
:)
Damn I love Firefox's dictionary search extension
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
This is not meant to be an attack on IE. If reasonable assumptions can be made about what the code should do, even when coded incorrectly, then it's great that IE does this. I'm not sure of any specific examples, but when I first started writing web pages (years ago), I remember that Netscape would cough on some pages that IE rendered well. Invariably, the problem was that I had left off some terminating tags, and IE correctly figured out my intentions.
Three caveats:
First, having Netscape scold me allowed me to fix my code. IMHO, a better way to do this, however, would be to have an option called "pedantic" that would insist on matching tags (where appropriate). This might exist now, and if so, that's great.
Second, trying to "guess" what was intended is rife with problems. Anyone who has used MS Word for long enough knows what I mean.
Finally, I currently use FireFox the vast majority of the time. I do not know if any of what I said is still true.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Tell that to Linux / Mac users who try to use the system. But I get your point...people who design to IE only aren't worried about standards. To them, IE is the standard.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
I stopped using Opera as my tabbed browser when Firefox users designed the "reload every" tag. Why should I pay for a browser when I can get the same features through a free, open source one?
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
http://validator.w3.org
Just a thought (many dead bodies spinning in graves), what if IE7 is the Tit, the Jones, the Cake, the next best thing to drugs, and secure? Will it be a sign of the apocalypse?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
...all links posted on slashdot go directly to Roland's webpage.
I'll be more impressed by something Opera says about compatibility when they fix their own issues--particularly their shoddy XMLHTTPRequest implementation.
Why do you ask? Simple. It's the same reason Microsoft has chosen to make everything different from the standard. As long as they control the operating system, they control the components of that operating system and people are more prone to use their products to maintain an industry standard.
As soon as users can get exactly the same performance from IE as another browser then an even larger number of users will switch. The same holds true for any other component of that operating system. Microsoft knows this, just as everyone who reads this article knows this.
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
Indeed. I've been sorely missing the giant banner-ad "feature" that's present in the free version of Opera. I always thought I had too much screen space anyway.
Even though it sounds a little tinfoil-hattish, the fact that a non-standards compliant web browser dominates the market might have a whole heck of a lot to do with all those web pages that don't follow standards, and rather choose to be compatible with IE.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I'd like to submit someone elses example page of the horrific way IE6 handles CSS2:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspira l/demo.html
It not only describes what goes wrong, but why, how and where.
Oh: Eric: if you're reading this: Thanks! :)
...the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, Apple's Safari and Opera will increase their user share as a result.
And he has a problem with that? I don't understand why he is "looking out" for MSFT. Wouldn't he *want* them to crash and burn?
The only reason I could think of is that since IE commands market share, IE standards are the de facto web standards.
Thoughts?
You and I probably count WC3 standards. Others like the parent post probably count IE standards. See how that changes everything?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
that MSFT will promise to comply and deliver something which does not comply.
....
Practice makes perfect
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Make eeryone use IE5 and write the whole lot in flash.
Why not do conformance testing against W3C standards like everyone else.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Look at this detailed analysis of how IE, Opera and Mizilla render CSS. Note that Opera and IE were both wrong at first, but Opera has adopted Mozilla's convention.
This clearly demonstrates that the "browser war" is really a one(IE)-on-one(Firefox) battle with Opera and others simply choosing which side to mimic.
Thank you for the info - just installed SlashFix and Slashdot renders SO MUCH better now - not perfect, but at least consistant and no overlapping text.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
The next time Opera has a blatant headline-grabbing press release ploy, they should have it sung by a fat lady in recitative style. That would get lots more attention.
web designers.. these the same people who use flash at every turn.
Are paid to place 'ads' creatively in YOUR FACE.
pfft..
Microsoft is constantly competing with itself, not others. It needs people to buy the latest versions of its OS and applications (office) to keep revenues coming in.
:)
As a result, it chooses to do things like release the XP2 firewall but not offer it for win2k - to push people towards newer versions, despite win2k being in mainstream support.
Recently, they've been forced by the HUGE number of corporate customers to offer WinFS as an option for XP as well as future versions of the OS. Why? Because corporate customers don't run bleeding edge software.
So what they need is a huge, wonderful carrot that will lead customers to the latest version. We arent talking about Dear Old Aunt Sally - she doesn't buy new versions of OS's. She buys a computer, and it comes with it.
We are talking about corporate customers. They didn't buy the concept that WinFS couldn't work on XP, but Microsoft has been shouting (even swearing in court) that the browser is part of the OS.
As a result, MS could very easily make IE7 only available on longhorn. As such, it's an opportunity for them to make it a selling point - a carrot.
To make the carrot more attractive, they need to make it do as many things RIGHT as possible. If IE7 truly supported css2, png transparency, javascript, and so on, WEBDESIGNERS would start drawing the line at older versions of IE - doing Microsoft's selling for them!
Businesses, portals, and the list goes on - anywhere that wants to make a truly compelling site without a million css box model hacks would start suggesting users use IE7, and before long, REQUIRING IE7.
Microsoft has every reason in the world to kick major standards-ass with IE7, but unfortunately, they have a track record of not doing it.
Here's hoping that their business savy is more powerful than their laziness.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
This is as boring as a reality show.
Next time on Survivor: W3C...
Tension mounts as the tribes try to win the Acid2 Challenge!
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
One page won't replicate the way IE handles MIME types (it tries to open things so you have to fake the stream), unless you write PHP or Servlets to do it all. Plus the erratic behavior it exhibits after handling downloads (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb ;en-us;306673#kb3/).
Not to mention the whole list of JS bugs that have existed in IE for several versions... if IE7 is going to be good it needs to be reworked from the gound up with w3c standards in mind. Fat chance of that.
And in other Headlines:
Kwon Suk electronics throws down the Blu Ray interoperability gauntlet to Sony...
OpenOffice.org throws down the multiple file-format compatibility gauntlet to Microsoft...
The SVG Coalition throws down the open source scalable vector graphics gauntlet down to Macromedia...
And..
Belgium throws down the human-rights gauntlet to China...
Now that we're done listening to the pitiful whines of the little guy can we get back to accepting that most things aren't fair?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Sorry dude, but any moron can get karma around here. Seriously, at one point I had a streak of 15 +5 posts in a row, and they were all mostly banal obvious crap.
We should all realize this is typical Opera behavior: Make broad claims against Microsoft in order to attract attention to itself. Works well in politics and now in browser wars...
Despite their inevitable protestations, web developers are NOT the arbiter of the desired behavior of browsers (any browser). The arbiter is that the browser properly renders pages according the the DTD at the top of the document - nothing more. "Proprietary" extensions to the HTML/XHTML standards should be frozen out, and properly coded pages should display consistently in all browsers purporting to meet the standards.
Even if IE gets 100% standards compliant, lots of people will still use IE 6 and lower for years to come. I'm thinking it will take at least two years before at least 50% of IE users start upgrading. So developers will still have to make ass-backwards code for them.
No existe.
I challenge Bill Gates to drink a gallon
of Draino. That's about as likely and
much more useful.
They've mostly converted msn.com to xhtml strict with stylesheets. It ain't the prettiest thing but it's a step forward when it comes to web designs.
- css.html/
http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2005/01/31/msn-goes
The tag is supported by Netscape, FireFox, and probably others but NOT Internet Explorer.
Microsoft has ignored this important feature for years.
I think it can definitely be defined as "a non-proprietary agreement among the members of a field"
...you might be a standard
...you might be a standard
...you might be a standard
...you might be a standard
...you might be a standard
:)
The whole non-proprietary thing rules Microsoft out of claiming that almost anything they do is a standard. To put it another way:
If people don't have to pay to use you...
If you are agreed upon by the majority of members of a community...
If you aren't controlled and owned by a single entity...
If you aren't used as a tool to squash competition...
If you don't by design benefit only one party in the community, against the will of others...
Capiche?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
"The web community has always had this consensus, going back to HTML 3.2 and even further back. It's the browser makers that can't seem to come to a consensus, which is ridiculous because the W3C tells you how a user agent should behave."
I thought some didn't like the W3C, and their "standards"?
XMLHTTPRequest is not specified in any standard. It's more Microsoft extension nonsense which Mozilla foolishly embraced. Then again, the Mozilla guys tend to make poor decisions (hello IDN!)
A good example would be something along the lines of this (a response from an actual discussion I took part in, the funny thing was I wasn't trying to tell anyone anything about the W3C or the importance of standards, I just asked a question about a script that was acting strange in Firefox, my current platform of choice): Admittedly this is an extreme example, but I believe it is representative of a broader belief that might makes right. Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Safari are still a relatively small ripple and there are some stodgy people out there who at best, simply don't care if their code works on a minority browser.
Until it hits their pocket-books thats not going to change. The pressure needs to be put on businesses so that when say Bank AAA gets a site built that can't/doesn't support your browser (because of non-standard code created by people either too stubborn or too lazy to spend the extra 3 seconds to create/read about browser-friendly code) they hear about it. Maybe even lose some customers.
Then our friendly web-developer can come back and learn how to fix his/her code. If that happens enough they'll get tired of doing it the old way and maybe play nice from the get-go.
FTR, the code we were discussing in the the above quoted passaged did get fixed, by me and I have about 2 weeks of javascript programming under my belt (and if your wondering about the preceding conversation, no, I wasn't impolite or anything like that, I'm too old to pull that kind of crap).
Quack, quack.
That bug has been fixed in the beta they released today. But tell me, since when does a proprietary ActiveX object count for the purposes of deciding whether something is interoperable or not?
Maybe Slashdot should just put it on the front page.t ension.html
http://hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-firefox-ex
This is a firefox extension that fixes the strange rendering that Slashdot's broken html creates.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
N/A
Microsoft has absolutely no incentive to participate in any kind of 'standards' testing for IE. Why should they? They own 85%+ of the browser market and the type of testing being proposed is the same as the plight of the typical IT manager: "The best you can ever be is not a bum". If they pass the standards test they are no better off than they were before. Nobody believes that the IE haters in the universe are going to change their minds because Microsoft passes this test. On the other hand, if they fail the test, they are harmed. It will never happen.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
HEHE OMG!! YOU'RE SO CLEVAR!! "APPLICATION PLATFORM. OR DIE"!!!! HEHEHEHE!!! JAJAJ Y0U ARE T3H T0PZ!!
I can't believe you got modded up for that trite buzzword spewing bullshit wrapped in formulated follow-the-leader sentence structure, lame ass. Get some fucking creativity and original ideas.
i had a css style sheet that _crashed_ IE6 on XP/XPSP2, i had to hack it to bits to make it work.
...the site they need it to work with is Vincent Flander's old webpagesthatsuck.com pages. We don't need more standards compliance from browsers, we need more standards compliance from web coders, the group which actually generates more WTF? responses than all the app coders at MS. Are legibility, ease of use, lack of eye strain, sensible intuitive layout, grammar, and spelling that much to ask for? If so, let's just turn over all web design by law to people who've never visisted the Internet by anything but AOL.
Java powered buttons that jump and prevent you from clicking them, flashing backgrounds, swirling letters flying all over, embedded music forcing you to yank the freaking speakers off the machine... That's where compatibility is at right now.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
It's a preview for a reason. And what higher standard are you holding Opera to? Firefox has plenty of bugs and misfeatures of its own, and yes, they do tend to go unfixed for a depressingly long time (up to and including never).
Certainly in my experience as a web developer, Opera's tended to fare better than Gecko and KHTML-based browsers with regard to layout problems and incomplete standards support. Opera's hardly perfect, but it gets closer than most.
In short, no.
Even if someone makes a browser that does everything designers AND developers want it to, it still won't do any good to those of us stuck supporting browsers that DON'T do all of it. The entire world is unlikely to switch instantly to the new wonder browser, leaving us to support legacy products.
Where I work our top tier browser/OS matrix is:
Win 98 - XP; IE5>, Mozilla 1.3>, Firefox 1>, Netscape 6.2>
Linux; Mozilla 1.3>, Firefox 1>, Netscape 6.2>
Mac OSX; Safari, IE 5.3>, Mozilla 1.3>, Firefox 1>, Netscape 6.2>
This is a nightmare to build, even worse to QA. Opera, ironically enough, is not in our top tier BECAUSE it rendered pages differently enough from the other browsers- even though we were authoring XHTML 1.0 trans and CSS2 compliant- that it got shunted to a lower tier of support.
If you pick any of those, IE would be the worst example, you can get different implementations between versions of how a page is supposed to render.
I think this is why a large portion of the pages on the Web are authored they way they are- the broadest reach for the narrowest buck.
Mac isn't the only brand with a cult. Build the world's best browser and you'll still have legions of people SWEARING that their choice in browser is the best, and pages that look like shit in it are due to the page not being written correctly rather than the browser's render engine using its own interpretation of WHAT the page is SUPPOSED to look like
On the cynical side, I think a browser that did everything that Web designers wanted might come out something like Homer's car.
Or Opera.
R(k)
"He's asked to help from Web designers the world over to build a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to."
Why would anyone ask such question? If IE7 were to catter to every single designer out there, the software will be vaporware for the rest of eternity.
A better challenge: make IE7 do everything it's supposed to do, as far a W3 standards go.
My request: "Can IE7 prepare my breakfast, while rendering HTML? Everyday?"
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
Do you really think Microsoft have interest in doing a better Internet Explorer? .NET? .NET, and .NET is only a remake of the Windows API.
Microsoft need to sell Windows, and why will it improve the browser to compete against
A better browser interface will enable using the browser as a client, and will transfer all the programming work to the server, and why Microsoft will fight in the server arena?
Now Microsoft is selling
The new Internet Explorer version will came because the Firefox success.
Actually Opera Software is doing well, on desktop too. The desktop revenues last year increased with 43%, and 88% year on year for Q4 2004, which was the quarter when FireFox 1.0 was released. Those are not numbers of a struggling company. In fact all browsers benefit from an awareness that there are alternatives to Internet Explorer.
The Opera 8 Betas (1,2, and 3) support XmlHttpRequest. I've been using them for the past few months, and they're as stable as a release browser. Can even use Gmail with them, although there are still a few layout rendering bugs there.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
I'd love to see a browser GUI test page that was bundled with a successfully rendered bitmap, and tolerances for rendering "differences". Then much of the testing could be automated, which trial and error is usually a big chunk of GUI debugging. Which therefore usually gets blown off in favor of earlier shipping dates, at the expense of useability.
--
make install -not war
My current version (Linux Debian/Unstable) seems to be rendering fine lately. The version on my windows box (either 1.0 or 1.0.1) tends to be stupid about it and will crap layers over top of each other, etc... so that the article/comments text overlaps the left nav bars.
The IETF does it right: after there are two independent implementations, then they'll consider making a standard out of it.
I was just trying to write HTML. (This was years ago when I was first learning.) I believe one problem was when I left off </li> tags. IE correctly assumed that when I started a new <li> tag, that it should insert a </li> for me. Netscape ignored the new <li> tag since it hadn't received a </li> tag, and hence my list was not a list under Netscape. I did know enough to look at both browsers, so it isn't accurate to say that IE was the reference browser. This was not the only issue, but it captures the flavor of some of the discrepancies.
This is not to say that what you describe doesn't happen. It's just not the only explanation.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
There is none.
I'm glad they made that "foolish" decision, because without XMLHTTPRequest you have no such thing as responsive web apps, no gmail, no google maps, etc.
I can already picture the ad campaign:
"Now you'll see the Internet the way it was meant to be seen."
Or some other touchy-feely marketing speak.
and don't forget, its not a bug, its a feature
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Seeing as how Dreamweaver and GoLive use Opera's engine for their web development apps, and all those mobile devices and general users who run Opera every day, it's hard to believe anybody on Slashdot (which is rabidly pro-Firefox no matter what) when there are comments like "Opera is dead" that actually get modded up.
Opera has long been one of the better and faster browsers. Not only does it take up half the memory of Firefox, but it takes up half the file size.
To explain this, I'll use the infamous "Aunt Sally" test; Aunt Sally downloads a new version of IE that meets all standards. Then she finds out that half of her favourite web sites don't look right because they were coding to IE bugs.
Question: Who will Aunt Sally blame? She won't blame the site, because she doesn't even know what HTML is, let alone CSS. She'll blame Microsoft for putting out a bad browser and revert to the old version.
If you iteratively apply the Aunt Sally test, and thus have hundreds of thousands of Aunt Sally's with the same problem, what will the media do? Well, they'll put together news stories that say IE7 is not working yet and tell people not to download it.
And what's the end result for Microsoft? It spent mega-$$$ on upgrading IE7, and the only people that like it are those whiny Linux users, who don't use Microsoft products anyways.
So what do you really think MS will do?
I'm up for the challenge unrelated, embedded Flash suchs
XmlHttpRequest is part of the in-development Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group (WHAT-WG) Web Forms 2 (aka HTML5) standard, which will be submitted to a number of standards bodies when it's ready. WHAT-WG has members from Opera, MoFo, and Apple. All of those organisations have committed to implementing it.
Why is anything anything?
I might point out that the majority of users are obviously *NOT* concerned with interoperability or they wouldn't be using MS-IE in the first place.
Whilst I think interoperability is good (and I don't use MS-IE, except for that danged Add/Remove Programs applet) people need to realize that it's the Web Developers who are making the most noise about interoperability, and unfortunately, the Web Developers are in the community minority.
One could argue that MS isn't likely to pay attention to the minority purely from a Business/Economics point of view. (ie: it costs them money to satisfy "developer whims" on a free/bundled product.) Perhaps they'll start to pay attention once their marketshare gets eroded by Firefox and other browsers. :)
*crosses fingers*
"He's asked to help from Web designers the world over to build a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to. "
I would settle for IE doing what it's supposed to do per specifications (ie. CSS).
Slashdot is "pro-" a lot of things, but being pro-firefox is normal, everybody seems to be like that, not just slashdot. Opera might be one of the best, but it's no better than firefox (doesn't even come close imho) and it cost money or you have ads. Oh, and filesize IS completely irrelevant nowadays, and memory wise, I've never seen it be an issue on any PC I've tried it onto. It works well, fast, lots of features and all. I have yet to see anyone (other than on /.) say they prefer opera over it.
No, I don't think apple stuff is really this good at all, no I never really cared for iPods, no, I don't think linux/foss is the solution to everything nor all that like too many ppl say here, but opera is in NO WAY AT ALL WHATSOEVER better than Firefox, not even close.
My shop supports IE, Moz and khtml engines and only w3c dom. We test on multiple platforms. Generally during a build the pages work in all derivitave browsers in all platforms except bugs that pop up in IE, which we later fix.
If anybody else is in the same boat all we have to do is save that version of a site that works in everything except IE and submit it. No need to create a special version.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Opera just hadn't been in a /. story for a while.
Perhaps you mean ad nominum attacks?
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Am I the only one who thinks this is an ugly and confusing sentence unfit for a slashdot headline?
Why don;t you set your reading level to more than 0 then, can;t figure out where the pref page is?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
"Once that starts happening, it means you've been sucking hard for a good long time and you've got a lot of catching up to do in terms of features and good will."
So when are we going to get "Government 2.0"?
Oprah Lays Down Acid2
Wow. I've been staring at this screen just a little too long.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
It's a preview for a reason. And what higher standard are you holding Opera to?
The reason for the "higher standard" is that I don't recall anyone from the top ranks of the Firefox developers pulling a PR stunt like Opera's.
Don't get me wrong: I like Opera the browser. I even shelled out for it a few years ago. But try to see a spade for a spade.
As I recall, both tables *and* frames were Netscape extensions. And don't forget the all-singing, all-dancing layer and ilayer tags (ugh). And then there's applet, embed, non-tag stuff like the layers collection, JSSS (JavaScript Style Sheets), even JavaScript (nee LiveScript) itself.
You could maybe count the img tag too, which was implemented Andreeson while everyone else was haggling over details of the much more useful object tag.
Netscape did a lot to push the web forward, but they made a hella mess while doing so. Historically, Microsoft was much more standards-friendly. Heck, the authors of the first Acid Test refused to even test Navigator/Communicator 4.x because its CSS support was so gawdawful poor the list of things that needed fixing was virtually indistinguishable from 'everything'.
Nothing like overstatement to answer overstatement, yes?
.innerHTML*.
.innerHTML is much faster in terms of rendering time than the corresponding W3C DOM methods.
Microsoft added some things that are getting implemented by other browsers, but very often they're being implemented for compatibility with IE-only sites, not because they were such good ideas. The document.all collection, for example.
Other things are truly useful (offsetFoo -- Height, Width, etc. -- for example), and others are convenience features that don't really do much that couldn't be accomplished via W3C-recommendation-compliant methods like
Still others were on a par with the worst of Netscapes excesses (marquee anyone?).
There are also plenty of areas where Microsoft went off on their own path and nobody followed (conditional comments, behaviors, CSS expressions) or abused the W3C recommendations with incompatible and/or incomplete implementations (e.g. the object tag, esp. their, ah, 'interesting' use of the codebase attribute).
* Maybe not the best example, as at least some tests indicate that in most all browsers that support it
So does Firefox, and the current development version of the Acid2 Test exposes at least some of them (I'm on the dev list for the test and have seen it).
Netfront is supposed to kick Opera's butt?
Hahaha... Hilarious. Netfront is trying hard to catch up with Opera, but will never be able to because Opera started out as a real web browser, while Netfront started out as a lame WAP/mobile browser without proper support for normal web sites.
Access (creators of Netfront) are scared shitless of Opera. They even ripped off Opera's help files!
It's sponsored by the Web Standards Project, just as the original Acid Test was.
A couple of Opera people ARE doing a lot of the work on the test, but the current dev version exposes Opera bugs as well (I'm on the dev list and have seen it).
I can't speak for either the WaSP as a group or the other folks involved in the test, but I can assure you I have no interest in contributing to something that's just an Opera PR stunt. This is intended to reveal weaknesses in ALL browsers. The challenge to MS is a result of their inaction/indifference since IE6 (itself rather half-hearted in terms of improved standards support, save for the 'fixed' box model), not because they're the only ones not getting the standards right.
Or you could just use the standards compliant way to do XMLHttpRequest, namely DOM3 Load and Save.
Clever signature text goes here.
why the hell would you care?
However, the CSS and XHTML specs on the W3C site are difficult to understand and therefore not all that useful when you're trying to debug a rendering problem. In addition, which browsers support searching the specs for, say, all rules that contribute to this border?
I know this is all fine and wonderful that Opera can throw gauntlets at Microsoft and call them out on their lack of CSS support. But what about Opera and it's horrible broken implementation of javascript? ..
edxwelch's comment, take 3: There is a standard available (XForms), but no one has yet deployed it.
Son, talk to me when you have a 200000 user number. Until then, shove it.
Remember back when everyone, even companies had a best viewed with netscape link on their page.
Netscape always sucked. I never could stand it, but for years everyone was telling me I had to use it.
Lots of colour and movement .... pretty ...
"Cats like plain crisps"
You just described the Slashdot moderation system.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
>edxwelch's comment, take 3: There is a standard available (XForms), but no one has yet deployed it.
Yes, that's mostly true. It's been published, it's been implemented, but it hasn't been widely depolyed. There are deployments, but widespread deployment will depend on widespread implementation. I'd be satisfied with implementation in Firefox, and move on from there.
http://www.google.com/search?&q=this-page-is-best+ OR+this-site-is-best+viewed-with-*-standards-compl iant
gewg_
Just a little heads-up here---that's a chick.
Happy to help, my friend.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Here's an example of how to position a block (table cell) of fixed width and height, in any of 9 relative positions within the doc, and then to have content similarly positionable. It's very easy to alter the alignments (positioning). This kind of thing can be simulated using CSS but each position requires special "hackery" and winds up being complicated to switch between (and not even considering IE here).
Now, I agree that the structure below (two levels of tables!) is far from desireable, but it's quick and it works. Now you would think that you could create a div (or something) and put its style to display:table-cell and remove at least one level of table. I'd love to see it work. This is simple basic stuff that people need - unless CSS offers it, developers will be staying in table land.
A second example I saw today. Someone had an input element (of type text) in a table cell they wanted to expand to the full width of the cell (because they had several such in the same column and this was a simple way of producing uniform width). This did not work because the margin extends past the box! IE may have gotten the box model wrong, but there were some things that were much cleaner with it. The point is that reasonable types of things should be easy to do - that's what will gain mass acceptance.
Csaba Gabor from Vienna