Browser and W3C standards Debate

[drhowarddrfine]

Code to standards:
http://validator.w3.or g/

And they should be almost identical (good luck with firefox, it falls a little short)

Though this is an old thread, I wish to correct this statement about Firefox as it is totally false. Firefox, along with Opera, are the most standards compliant browsers on the planet right now while IE, all versions, are nine years behind web standards. It's lead developer, Chris Wilson, stumbles over himself apologizing for IEs shortcomings and publicly acknowledges they have a long road to hoe before catching up with everyone else.

A web developer's mantra is "Code for Firefox/Opera; adjust for IEs quirks and bugs." If you code to web standards and test in Firefox or Opera first, then you can be relatively assured it will work in all browsers. Coding in IE only and you can be relatively assured it won't work in all browsers.

[drhowarddrfine]

Yeah I'm doing ok coding to the w3 standards...its just that Firefox has a different way of interpreting the tags than IE....and IE 6 is different from IE7....etc.

I would like my apps to look the same way in all browsers.
I'm just getting fed up with having to publish my site in order to test it with a browser other than IE during.

I'd like to be able to hit the |> (play/start debugging) button in Visual Studio and have it load the site in Firefox instead of IE.

As stated above, Firefox interprets the standards far better than any version of IE. It is IE that fails some code altogether or misinterprets what is there. Never, ever initially test code in IE or you are almost guaranteed it will fail in modern browsers such as anything but IE.

[Plater]

Funny, I can never get firefox to work with CSS. I code to standards, the W3 validators say I'm doing it perfect, yet half the features are missing in firefox

Now I'm not saying IE is good, by all means yes IE6 vs IE7 even have different intrpretations of how to "default look", but when I change the border on something. Most differences I see are because IE's defaulting for objects is different then how firefox defaults. I get those. I fix those. It's fine.

[Frinavale]

Funny, I can never get firefox to work with CSS. I code to standards, the W3 validators say I'm doing it perfect, yet half the features are missing in firefox

Now I'm not saying IE is good, by all means yes IE6 vs IE7 even have different intrpretations of how to "default look", but when I change the border on something. Most differences I see are because IE's defaulting for objects is different then how firefox defaults. I get those. I fix those. It's fine.

I find the same thing.

-Frinny

[drhowarddrfine]

Wait a minute! Are you talking about default settings or standards compliance?! Those are two different things.

There are lots of sites out there that show the problems of IE and how to fix/hack them. There are NO sites on the 'net dedicated to fixing FF or Opera or any other browser.

I defy ANYONE to show where Firefox or Opera do a worse job of complying with the standards than ANY other browser on the planet. You can't do it!

[Plater]

As I JUST said in that post and in a PM
CSS -> border color.

I was moving on to the reasony why IE "fails" is because it add default assumptions not put in standards compliance. I don't believe I said IE was great at compliance, I said I didn't like firefox did it, and they're not in compliance either.

[drhowarddrfine]

Firefox has NO problems with border colors and you need to show your COMPLETE html and css so we can show you the correct to code html and css. Obviously you are doing it wrong. From your PM you indicate you can leave out units for dimensions but expect browsers to know what you mean. You have to follow the rules if you expect a standard response from a browser.

[Plater]

I don't think your reading comprehension skills are very high (nor is my ability to make coherent sentances).
That is not what I said, I was providing aside answers, you appear to have skimmed and smushed thoughts together.
I DO NOT expect things to look right when i leave out units, I was saying that that kind of defaulting, non-strict, behavior is where IE fails to follow standards.

[drhowarddrfine]

My contention with you is your statement above that the poster needed to code to standards but Firefox "falls a little short". Rather than hijacking this thread with OT comments, you can start another thread or continue this via PM.

[Plater]

The thread was already hijacked when you saw my post on a related topic in another forum and went searching for my other posts about it.
Perhaps compliance is the wrong word, I found firefox falling a little short in it's "implementation " (ie, it seemed to leave stuff out, doesn't mean what is HAS isn't following a standard I suppose)

[Frinavale]

The original question was how do I change the default browser for Visual Studio 2005 to be FireFox instead of IE for testing purposes.

I don't think its possible...inst ead I created the project in the Inetpub/www/projectName folder (the web server) on my dev machine so that all the code I edit is already edited on the server.

That saved me the time of having to publish my code constantly to the web server folder before I could view it with FireFox.

As for the issue with browsers w3c code compliance...th is is just another reason why marketing bothers me.

Every browser wants some sort of competitive edge over another browser so they changes things ever so slightly in order to give the customer some little thing that only works in their browser. They want to hook their customers in.

The marketing people have plagued us programmers with their strategy. They've made our lives harder and that's all there is too it.

FireFox may be W3C compliant but it acts differently than IE and Opera etc.
We know that the problem exists.
We have to live with it because there's no going back in time to prevent the marketing peoples (<-- wanted to use stronger language here) from making our lives difficult.

Even though we follow the W3C standards, we still have to check and tweak things so that it works across board.

I don't understand how you can get so heated over the issue.
Its just a fact of life as a programmer that we can't get around. We'll never be able to convince the marketing peoples to change their products so that they work consistently with respect to the other products on the market.

(in other words, calm down ;)

-Frinny

[drhowarddrfine]

FireFox may be W3C compliant but it acts differently than IE and Opera etc.
We know that the problem exists.

Different in what way? As far as rendering a web page goes, Firefox and Opera are virtually the same. Or do you mean how the menus operate? As far as W3C standards compliance and rendering go, Firefox and Opera are the leaders. If you code to the standard and test in one of those, you will almost always be fine in all browsers. It is only IE that causes problems. If it weren't for IE, my development time might be cut in half because I wouldn't have to waste time fixing working, standard code to force fit it to IEs bugs.

No, Internet Explorer did not handle that properly.
IE is a cancer on the web.

[Frinavale]

Different in what way? As far as rendering a web page goes, Firefox and Opera are virtually the same. Or do you mean how the menus operate? As far as W3C standards compliance and rendering go, Firefox and Opera are the leaders. If you code to the standard and test in one of those, you will almost always be fine in all browsers. It is only IE that causes problems. If it weren't for IE, my development time might be cut in half because I wouldn't have to waste time fixing working, standard code to force fit it to IEs bugs.

No, Internet Explorer did not handle that properly.
IE is a cancer on the web.

I'm not getting into this debate.
I was hoping to calm down the conversation.
Browser differences are just something that we are going to have to deal with as programmers. I know its frustrating and we all have to vent at some time but as Experts and Moderators we should be a bit more...discrete with our venting.

I'm going to split this thread so that you can vent in the Cafe/Lounge forum.

-Frinny

(PS it was the a menu issue I was referring to...Firefox just made a mess of it and I had to find another menu control that worked in all browsers...I'm happy with it now that it's working.)

[bartonc]

Different in what way? As far as rendering a web page goes, Firefox and Opera are virtually the same. Or do you mean how the menus operate? As far as W3C standards compliance and rendering go, Firefox and Opera are the leaders. If you code to the standard and test in one of those, you will almost always be fine in all browsers. It is only IE that causes problems. If it weren't for IE, my development time might be cut in half because I wouldn't have to waste time fixing working, standard code to force fit it to IEs bugs.

No, Internet Explorer did not handle that properly.
IE is a cancer on the web.

Then why, for example, does Firefox NOT copy code from posts on this site properly. I have to go in and get the raw text from the Reply page to avoid a "#\n" on every other line, instead of what I'd like to do: Copy directly from the post.

Don't get me wrong. I like the speed of Firefox and I like for M$ to have competition. And I would really like to switch browsers without having to find a bunch of work-arounds. I am very close to setting Firefox as my default browser, but still have issues (as I type this, text is scrolled slightly to the left) with the way some widgets are handled. How can we say "It's the site's fault" when these type of things are handled by other software more elegantly?

[drhowarddrfine]

It's unfortunate I am leaving to go out of town in about an hour. I have not heard such posts about Firefox in over a year and am shocked when someone makes one. I thought those battles died back then.