Migrating IE Web Apps to Mozilla

PabloHoffman writes "Have you ever wondered what would it take to make your (unfortunately) IE-only web app to work on Firefox?. IBM published an interesting article about migrating Internet Explorer specific web applications to Mozilla-based browers. It covers basic cross-browser development techniques, and some developing strategies for overcoming the differences between both browsers."

Comments

Firefox tools

[coflow]

I often have to make my apps work in both, simply because I find the Firefox DOM inspector to be indispensable for tracking down screwey CSS behavior. It really hasn't been that tough to make the apps work in both IMHO.

And why would most use IE anyway?

[ShatteredDream]

IE has some advantages for businesses that have already standardized on using Windows, but for companies that aren't diehard supporters, why bother? The "debugger in IE," if you can even call it a debugger at all, is horrible as is the browser in general these days.

Any sane company that doesn't need the IE-specific features would be insane to not build on Mozilla with its excellent debugging tools and then test with standards-compliant browsers like Opera and then test with IE. IMO, build on IE first instead of using Firefox or Mozilla is akin to using Notepad and nAnt for Windows .NET development when you have free access to Visual Studio.

Not priter friendly

[WMNelis]

I find it interesting that an article about creating cross browser web pages does not print out properly from Firefox. The right side of some text gets cut off.

Re:How about making server side only apps?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Why should I make the sever process this.

Javascript has plenty of uses, but relying only on client-side code to validate data is a recipe for disaster.

On the server side, it's usually an extremely simple action to check the validity of the data.
The server MUST have functions to check for data integrity.

You should also enforce the rules in the database.

If you rely on the client to do all this, you'll need to deal with buggy clients, or people who copy your page, create their own cracked version of the page, and use the cracked version to screw with your server.

There's plenty of use for client-side javascript, but you shouldn't use it as an excuse to exclude server-side security.

Automigration

[Doc Ruby]

I'd love to see IBM bundle their Eclipse IDE with tools that convert IE-only (or Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox-only, for that matter) code to truly cross-browser code. Automated conversion. They've got the manpower and other resources, including global human testers. And the more productive is this "migration" program, the more money IBM makes selling hardware and services to the defragmented market.

Re:Or you can use XUL

[DJ-Dodger]

I looked so you don't have to:

http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there. is.only.xul