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Microsoft's New Multiple-Browser Tester
Z80xxc! writes "Microsoft recently announced a new product called Expression Web SuperPreview, which lets developers view their web pages in any browser installed on their system, as well as in different versions of IE, all from the same interface. The product has one genuine innovation — a built-in tool for overlaying the rendering from one browser over another to compare (referred to as 'onion skins'). There are also HTML debugging aids and other helpful tools for web developers. A beta version is available for download. However, the current build only has support for IE — it will compare rendering in IE6 with either IE7 or IE8, whichever is installed. An internal build shows Firefox and Safari on Windows as well. The final product will appear as part of MS Expression Web Studio 3 when it is released later this year. (It will not be available in the Expression Mac suite.)"
Because obviously you have no other important work to do until it's finished.
Because you just design websites from your mom's basement for some spare cash on the side.
Anyway, browsershots is useful for browsers you don't have installed and want to *eventually* check. This product is for browsers you have installed and want to debug *now*.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Oh, very much not true. Webkit (either Chrome or Safari, take your pick) and Gecko render things very differently. Especially in regard to fonts. Not even Chrome and Safari render fonts the same way.
There's also some weirdness related to boxes, but that should come as no surprise to anyone.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
And to be on the safe side, just CSS reset everything initially. (this should always be a priority if you want a website looking "pixel perfect" across all browsers)
I've done this for most things, and generally, everything was perfect across all browsers.
The more advanced things only screw up with IE.
I always do a more up-to-date browser first, never even looking at IE until i pretty much have it all completed.
Actually, it's quite sad that I should have multiple browsers installed at all.
A rendering engine is a useful library for an operating system to have. So is a DOM parser. I should be able to pick any rendering or DOM parser library I want and have every bit of software in the OS that needs HTML services use that particular selection. In fact, I should be able to pick and choose at any time for any reason.
There shouldn't be multiple browsers. There should be a single browser that uses any renderer library I want, any DOM parser I want, any scripting languages I want. If I want Trident or Gecko or KHTML/Webkit or Presto, I get to pick. If I want client-side Javascript or VBScript or Perl or some form of fake-C (C--?), I should be able to load it if the page needs it.
This is the sort of thing that ActiveX tried to do, but it failed miserably because it trusted people on the Internet. (Ha!) It's also like the way Linux is supposed to work (and in many cases, does). You pick your components and they do what they're supposed to as long as they implement the proper API for everything else to tie-in to.
Mmm... sky pie... ghlghlhglahglhaglhagh
its called a virtual machine ;)
I knew that. Please let me rephrase my question:
You have one PC running Internet Explorer versions 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 in virtual machines. What kind of PC hardware would one need to run these virtual machines at an acceptable speed, and how many licenses for Microsoft Windows operating systems loaded into these virtual machines would one need to purchase?
That's no argument against the fact that presuming that, as per your example (which GP didn't give),
- Arial IS available
- The user IS NOT overriding the document style
- The window size etc. IS the same (or the website is presented in a fixed-width format to begin with)
things still do not render the same even between browsers that supposedly use the same engines.
I lay much of the blame with the W3C. All that fuzziness with "A browser MIGHT display this as:" and "a browser MAY ...". All that has no place in 'strict' documents. Either the browser renders it exactly the way as specced, or it doesn't follow the spec. Sounds simple enough, but apparently as long as you just do things 'close enough', you're standards-compliant.
Doesn't take away that IE is indeed, by far, the worst of the bunch (IE/FF/Opera/Safari/Chrome), but to dismiss the fact that there are differences between even the 'standards-compliant' engines/browsers as "well they're just minor differences" (as per your sibling poster) or "you probably just didn't design your site right" is a bit silly
Adobe did a demo of their next Dreamweaver release last fall at their Adobe Max conference. Similar feature there, except a bit better. Using a render farm your page is rendered in pretty much every browser, on each OS (rather than just what you have installed), including the "Onion Skin" feature shown in Expression Web. They even used the same name for the feature.
paul reinheimer
Would Netscape 6.2 offer that much a better browsing experience for today's internet?
Probably not, because today's internet tests for IE6 and hand feeds it something it can handle. The same isn't done for Netscape 6.2. However, if you removed the hand feeding and fed Netscape 6.2 what you feed Firefox, it would do vastly better than IE6.
Also, Firefox 1 arrived less than a year after IE6, and its standard support is probably on par with IE7.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Pro Tip: Presentation matters as much as the content. In fact, presentation *is* part of the content.
Yup, spend too much time on the fluff and there's no content left for the meat.
As for Hutnick's site it's definitely a case in point. He's using (almost) plain HTML and what should have happened was that your browser would supply your favourite style sheet so that it doesn't look ugly and bland to you. That way the web is an information source and nobody needs to create the fluff.
Of course, then Microsoft declared the browser wars and everybody started bastardising HTML. Some people who understood the original hope got a committee together and started on CSS for the publishers who demanded complete control, however, it looks like most of them misunderstood the requirements so CSS has no reasonable layout engine (eg: a "stretchy grid") and even where it is workable it has weird and unintuitive hidden rules (inheritance and weights) that cannot be learnt by example (ie visually), a rather serious flaw in a language for visual presentation by primarily visual people!
Javascript, isn't too bad. (faint praise; Okay, okay it's actually a damn good language now) The original implementations were flaky but that's mostly gone. It's only real problem is the object model and yet again Microsoft are the main criminals here. Still the language is probably good enough to fix everything ... if noscript lets it.
Arrrg! CSS is CRAP! There I said it. The only way the inheritance and selectivity rules can be used is to minimise their effects and as for layout you basically have to pin everything to a static grid and pray your boxes and gaps are big enough. Sure there are a few simple layouts created by "CSS gurus" that with do the right almost every time, almost. But don't expect more than three stretchy columns or any sort of column wrap. As for doing something a little original like having the screen laid out with a fixed height and adding columns as the content increases ... yea, right!