| From: | Matt Sealey |
| Date: | 13 Mar 2001 at 11:37:49 |
| Subject: | Re: Javascript Does'nt work on my amiga ??? |
Hello Andy
On 13-Mar-01, you wrote:
>> stuff like accessing IE-specific features like ActiveX)
>
> MS haven't set any standards, it's the W3C or (ok, I'll give you that one),
> ECMA.
(ask yourself why there are at least two people from Microsoft ratifying
all the W3C standards.. could it be that they have the most use for them?
Could it be that the W3C don't actually SET standards, they just rationalise
already existing models into a neutrally-documented specification - and
it's a recommendation as well.)
> Deciding against IE-specific features like ActiveX is also a very good plan
> too.
They didn't "decide against" ActiveX, it's impossible for them to do :)
> And don't forget, IE also has all sorts of weird JS bugs too, so they're not
> sticking to any standards.
A bug, by definition, is not a thought-out decision not to comply to written
specification. Care to name one of these bugs? I found a juicy one in NS4
the other day, where a misplaced comment in JS would break the script
<SCRIPT><!--// cam counter
ble bah boo;
//--></SCRIPT>
NS was actually adding garbage characters (C<!--) and breaking
script functions just because I put the HTML comment too close to the
<SCRIPT> tag and the // comment too close to the HTML comment.
Now if that isn't one of those bugs that makes you so annoyed about
a browser that you refuse to write for it..
>>> Depending on what browsers it works in, of course.
>>
>> Owt with support for the decent side of the DOM.
>>
>> I'm certain NS6 allows it. Certain, I say.
>
> Which is still kind of insignificant as browsers go. Most people are still
> using NS4 or IE4/5.
IE4/5 supports it. There, with NS6 and IE4 support, you've trapped 90%
of the browser market already (btw, I checked, Opera does it as well,
that's 92% :)
>>> Don't give up on NS4.x just yet
>>
>> No, I did, because it's shit.
>
> Good argument ;)
Okay, now you try actually writing (argh!) and debugging code written to
their specifications. Wait, you might misunderstand that: have you ever
tried to add Javascript functions to a browser? Do you know how much of
a pain Netscape is to "mimic"? It's the most f**ked up browser on the planet,
and when you read the docs and talk to the people, it really confirms your
contempt for a company.
It seems that people lament the "loss" of Netscape in the browser war as
a bad thing only because they've never had to really deal with anything
but a crap toolbar system and the lame HTML support.. dig deeper, and
ye shall find much sewage..
> In some cases, you have to make sure a site works fine in NS4.x.
I don't :P Whee!!! My job is ace :P
> the sites I've done in the past year is getting around 50% NS4. And a fair
> amount of traffic for a fairly specialised and obscure site. (Ok, most hits
> are from .ac.uk domains, apart from the random 190k hits from a .mil.us
> domain ;)
Academic institutions need slapping. A lot of them are controlled by idiots,
and self-righteous software panels who hold a misplaced fear of everything
they may actually get product support on. So they use Netscape on things
like Windows 95 OSR1, and wonder why the web dev team is always shouting
at them..
> And no, I didn't report it to them. Got better things to do with my time.
So you'd rather let this "bug" lie, and live with it, than report it to people
who might just say "jesus, this is annoying. We'll fix that for IE6".
What the HELL are you complaining about?
> that annoying, really, just sometimes pisses me off. And it was just an
> example of the many things that are crap about IE5.x
The fact that it doesn't re-format your badly inputted URI's to something
usable before attempting to access the site? I don't know, maybe if you
preach about standards compliance you might actually want to follow
those standards yourself. Missing off the http:// protocol bit is a dumb
idea, expecting IE to fill in the blanks is slack. And when it goes wrong,
you say IE is crap. Hmm.. can you say h y p o c r i t e ? :)
>> IE - which does have sterling support for the W3C DOM - has the best JS
>> and the richest set of features. That you can't type in a valid URL and
> get
>> pissy when IE doesn't predict how you wanted it (Andy, go read the W3C
>> docs on how to format a URI) is annoying at best.
>
> IE still has rather dodgy support for various other standards (like XML?).
Or, IE has in fact got the most support for XML on any platform, in fact.
Dodgy support? Hahaha, you've gotta be kidding. The IE5.5 release had
virtually no real-world HTML fixes, it was all XML subsystem additions.
> get me wrong, all browsers are pretty crap anyway. NS6 would be great if it
> wasn't so slow. (Ok, the layout engine is wonderfully fast, it's just the
> rest that's slow).
OpenSource bites. Too many cooks spoil thr broth. Too many Netscape
engineers spoil the browser, especially when egged on by OpenSource freaks :P
> And a URL without the http:// bit is technically not right, but find me any
> other browser that won't assume the http:// bit and not fall over with some
> silly error.
In principle you shouldn't be typing it in anyway, Standards Boy.
> Speaking of which, IE generally doesn't give you anything in the way of
> helpful errors anyway.
So don't make mistakes yourself :)
Thanks
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