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Best Browser For Using Complex Web Applications?

Posted by timothy on from the fatal-error-encountered dept.

yanyan writes "I'm fairly new to the field of web application development. Currently I'm working on a big online ticketing system for passage and freight for a local shipping company. It's a one-man show and the system is written in Ruby and uses Rails. Aside from the requisite functionality of creating bookings the system must also print reports and tickets, and this is where I've discovered (the hard way) that most, if not all, browsers fall short. I've had to switch from Firefox 3.6.3 to Opera 10.53 because of a major printing bug in Firefox, but the latest stable Opera is also giving me its own share of problems. To complicate things, an earlier version of Opera (10.10) doesn't appear to have 10.53's printing problems, but I'm wary. What browsers and specific versions do you end up deploying for use with big, complex web apps that include printing? Also consider CSS accuracy and consistency."

1 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Re:but I thought HTML was supposed to fix all that by gatapia · · Score: 1, Troll

    Hahaha, I kid, I kid. If your interface is complex, why are you using HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc? Why not take advantage of a more advanced and mature UI widget set, such as that provided by Java or *shock* the native environment?

    The web is about where MacOS was 20 years ago in terms of ability to deliver a rich application UI experience. Google are excellent at marketing it as some sort of advance, but it really isn't. Don't shoehorn.

    This is just soooo wrong. I don't know if your kidding about the MacOS 20 year ago thing or if your just really ignorant about web development. I suggest u look at - Bespin IDE (http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2009/02/introducing-bespin/) - Apps like MET (http://www.picnet.com.au/met/) - Google Apps - YouTube To the original question asker. There has to be huge reasons to abandon web for native development. And as for Java, sheesh really? Java lost the applet battle about 5 years ago. JavaScript is now a powerful full fledged language that is FAST!!! (Ofcourse not as fast as native languages, but you will not notice this unless you are doing bad things) Html5 + CSS 3 is an incredibly powerful, flexible and extremely easy to use UI platform. Do not underestimate these 2 ladies. So Ignore what idiot poster posted above and use cross browser html with PDF for printing as suggested by many more knowledgeable people in this thread. Guido