Re: wine and IE
Gary Turner said:
> page of nested tables, simply because that seems the best way to present
> your ideas. Then take a look at the page with Lynx.
i don't think that's fair. lynx is not what I would call a feature
complete browser. links may be better to compare with. But for me
as long as a page LOADS and is viewable(without plugins like java,
flash, activex whatever) it's good enough for me. How long have tables
been around for? Probably 7 years? maybe more? lynx still doesn't
support them? In this particular case I would blame the browser.
don't get me wrong though lynx is a good browser I use it for a lot
of testing, but links is much better for modern sites. And when I mean
testing I mean testing in a system admin standpoint, I'm by no means
a web developer, though I do host a lot of websites and pages which
I made.
> The graphic artists, or anyone coming from print seem to think they can
> control the final look. That may be the reason so many sites are
> effectively IE only :( The fact is that browsers render differently, and
> are further affected by user preferences. Since the final look is *not*
> under the author's control, the author must test and rewrite until the
> page at least looks ok regardless of browser.
to a certain point of course. Even different versions of IE render
pages differently in many cases(I've read posts by people who said
their intranet apps were designed for IE 5.5 and the ONLY work in
IE 5.5 not in 6 not in 5.0, not in anything non IE). To really make
it work regardless of browser you'd probably have to use HTML 3
or below(not that I have anything against that, when I was on the
net back in 1995 and '94 pages looked just fine, even e commerce pages,
though not sure which version of HTML was standard back then).
But a web developer can't test every possible combonation, e.g what
about the web browser on QNX? or BeOS? or embedded systems? what about
eudoraweb on my handspring visor? or Blazer on my visor(which goes through
a proxy even to format content so it's more suitable to a small screen),
or Netscape on all the various unix platforms, since mozilla is new
enough that many systems do not meet the software requirements(e.g.
debian 2.2, current mozilla builds do not run on glibc 2.1). What about
things that are clearly bugs in the browser(e.g. the vendor admits
it's a bug). Hell my phoenix 0.5 still won't load www.debian.org
without crashing! But if I remove my ~/.phoenix directory it loads fine.
Some amount of testing is important, but saying regardless of
browser goes too far I think. Nobody has unlimited time nor unlimited
platforms to test on. My last company's internet web site programmer
screwed up the main page so it would not render in netscape 4.x. I
mean all that would show is a BLANK page, nothing! That is bad
design, but it took about 2 weeks for me to notice it, and another
week before a customer noticed it and they were pressured to fix it.
Since that company is a unix software company with lots of customers
running HPUX, AIX, Solaris ..they have a lot of customers using
netscape 4 since thats what runs best on those systems for the most
part. And these may be real old versions of netscape 4 like 4.04 or
something, I tried upgrading to a more modern netscape on a AIX 4.x
machine and couldn't get past the dependencies, needed all kinds of
patches and stuff to support the libraries needed by it, so we
stuck with the version that came with the OS.
If someone really wants to make their stuff work on most any browser
they have to drop all the modern stuff like xhtml, css, javascript,
and whatever other fancy web buzzwords that I can't think of right
now. I miss the days when websites were simple. Or at least make
a version of the site that does not use such technologies.
I don't encounter many pages that I can't view in phoenix/moz/opera
but when I do(e.g. mostly flash only sites) I leave and never go
back. last night for some reason I was trying to download a BIOS
upgrade for my sister's dell from dell's support site(I HATE DELL),
and the damn site wouldn't let in in using phoenix, no matter what
link I clicked it took me to the same page(choose what kind of
customer you are). Mozilla worked though so i managed to get the
update..only to have to fire up vmware in order to make the floppy
to update it!
oh, and of course I absolutely refuse to load VMWARE to load IE
(or wine or any other method) to view a site. If the site wants
to lock me out then that's their choice. And it's mine to choose
not to go there or reccomend it in the future to anyone.
I started using linux in 1996 so I never really got attached to
any sites that focused on MS-only stuff. IE 4.0 beta 2 I think
was the last version of IE that I used seriously, and it's part
of what made me jump to netscape on linux. So, it's been much
easier for me to be not attached to anything IE or MS-centric
as a result.
nate
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