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A Mozilla Plugin to Help Overcome IE Rendering Flaw

Posted by timothy on from the like-a-screaming-monkey dept.

least_weasel writes "An article on Ars Technica reveals Mozilla's intention to create and release a plugin for Internet Explorer that would allow the often-criticized IE to utilize some of the cooler rendering code developed for Firefox. The current WIP focuses on rendering using HTML5 standards, but the plans seem to be more ambitious than just fixing this one small piece of IE. The article covers some of the plans, hurdles, and potential benefits. It also spills the beans on the code name for the project: Screaming Monkey."

10 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Er... by XanC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's the advantage over just installing Firefox? Do people who don't have permission to install software have permission to install plugins like this?

    1. Re:Er... by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it makes MS and closed source look bad if Mozilla/open source fix their deficiencies.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    2. Re:Er... by the+kostya · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People who would care about these things already use Firefox/Opera/whatever. Everyone else does not care. It is like mocking the jocks because while all they do is run around and bang chicks, you gain valuable programming experience working on code no one will give a rats ass about.

    3. Re:Er... by jsebrech · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It allows web developers to take advantage of this feature

      Canvas is a strange pick though for something to extend IE with. There's excanvas, which does a reasonable job of emulating canvas on IE using VML. It's not a perfect emulation, ofcourse, but in my experience it's good enough once you learn its limitations. For stuff like dynamic charting canvas is the right choice even today.

    4. Re:Er... by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would definitely like to think that way too, but I guess Mozilla/Firefox deserves a bit more credit here. I sincerely believe that they are doing this for two things primarily:

      1) To improve user's experience - even if they are using IE
      2) More importantly, to do their part in better standardization.

      From TFA:"The Canvas element allows web developers to programmatically render interactive bitmap images in HTML content. It was invented by Apple to bring richer graphical capabilities to the company's WebKit renderer. The Canvas functionality eventually became part of the HTML5 standard and has been implemented in both Gecko and Presto. Canvas is used extensively in several popular web applications, including Google Maps, but it hasn't gained widespread acceptance because it isn't available in Internet Explorer. "

    5. Re:Er... by Ash+Vince · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It allows web developers to take advantage of this feature, but still have their sites be accessible by people using IE (out of ignorance or otherwise). Right now no web-developer can really target features not available on IE unless they want to alienate a large percentage of their user base.

      As a professional web developer I can say that is complete rubbish. We can not rely on most IE users to have this plugin so we can not take advantage of any new features. The fact is that while IE is as prevalent as it currently still is we have to develop primarily for that platform. In the corporate world a great many people still use IE6 so we have to test under that very thoroughly too.

      --
      I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
  2. I'm a bit skeptical by superyanthrax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great idea... but if someone would have the wits and knowledge to look for this plugin, wouldn't they be using FF already? If websites prevented stuff from working without this plugin, wouldn't that just turn off viewers? Not sure how this is going to help, people have been harping at Microsoft about standards for years and all they've done is move towards them at the pace of a snail.

  3. Re:tacit recognition of fail by Lucid+3ntr0py · · Score: 3, Insightful

    M$ didn't leave it broken so users had to deal with it, they left it broken so developers continued to support IE. If we have to code differently for IE, because it doesn't follow standards and many users use IE, it makes us constantly concerned with what M$ does.

    It's like the ex who keeps you as a friend on facebook and makes sure you see all those new pictures with her new bf. Except with IE you just can't defriend it.

  4. Designers... by hummassa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    can design on a sane model with sane tools, deploy the plugin when the users are IE.

    --
    It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
  5. Re:Will not succeed on the field by Ant+P. · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Any person "clever" enough to click Yes on an activeX installation prompt, you mean?