Hi,

Do any of you know of good souces highlighting the cross-browser issues to avoid - primarily between Explorer and Navigator.

I ask because whilst I'm getting expected results with Explorer, when testing my application against Navigator (7.1) I'm getting really clunky results. For instance PNG's sometimes do not render properly and vertical pixel spacing sometimes appears differently.

Maybe there's a list of advice notes spmewhere - eg render items as jpegs rather than pngs?

Thanks

Bruce

Hi Bruce,

I presume that you know that Netscape is more or less a lame duck these days and that version 7.02 (if you can get it) may very well be the last "Netscape" release.

From a SVG perspective, Netscale 7.02 uses the Corel SVG viewer and not the Adobe viewer.

Although Netscape leaves a considerable legacy; and though there is much in the way of politics in the browser business; in terms of active development, Mozilla and Opera are regarded as the chief competitors to IE regardless of present market share.

When I have need, I now choose Mozilla over Netscape---Mozilla being based in part on Netscape.

This is a very indirect answer to your question, but it is likely relevant. Netscape is dead or dying.

Muzz

Hi Muzz,

Thanks for your input - I'm not as up to speed as I should be with browser development. I'll have to accommodate the legacy browsers - they tend to hang around for a few years. If Navigator is dead or dying do you think that anything other than Explorer will dominate the market in the future? By my way of thinking, regardless of Explorer's capabilities, given that most corporates use it, most home computers arrive with it installed as standard, and that Microsoft don't currently charge for it; there's not much likelihood anything else will get a look in. It's a case of VHS and Betamax all over again- Betamax was the better system; VHS got the market share.

The only change I can see to this scenario would be if Microsoft started charging a significant sum for it. It's the reason I (and and an increasing number of corporates and educational establishments) use OpenOffice/StarOffice rather than Microsoft Office.

-Bruce

Hi Bruce,

I keep track of this stuff through my subscriptions to PC Magazine Online and E-Week OnLine. The Netscape business was in the news for a long time with the last thing I heard being Microsoft's $750 million offer to either AOL or Times Warner (or whomever "owns" Netscape) to either buy them out or settle a grievence. In any case, it was going to spell the end of Netscape as we knew it.

It has since dropped out of the news. I did a search on the subject and one article was lamenting "lack of support" from Netscape and that was two years ago.

I wrestled like heck over whether to make allowances for Netscape in my site; and and after 20 changes of mind finally said no.

But there is of course the Communicator series of which 4.79 I believe was the last version; and there are a lot of people quite loyal to that sequence. Netscape 4.08 was sort of a classic for a long time. Win 95 users would still be using them.

Beta vs VHS. I sure got burned there. Bruce, I have spent more hours than I care to admit chewing over the future of the browser market.

This is my present understanding with eyes definitely turned towards implications for SVG.

The next version of Internet Explorer will, apparently, have no modular aspects and will be built directly into Windows (code name LongHorn, due to be released in 2005/2006). I imagine this has raised quite a few eyebrows because it will mean de facto that you will be paying for it amongst a few other implications.

I have to disappear for awhile. Basically, though, unless Linux can threaten Windows, then IE will survive by virtue of market lethargy and the "I can't get a job if I don't know MS Word" syndrome.

I like star office.

Cheers,

Muzz

Hi Bruce,

I am checking out a few browsers, and will give you the links:

(a) Netscape Communicator from Google: Doesn't fare too well in the reviews.

http://download.com.com/3302-2356-7980579.html?tag=mta

(b) The link to that entire section in Google. Although Avant browser is in Microsoft's hip pocket, it does provide genuine full screen viewing. I use both it and Slim-Browser, which though it uses IE's rendering engine is somewhat more independent of IE than Avant. Both are good browsers.

http://download.com.com/2001-2137-0.html


(c) My favourite except for the SVG animation issue: Opera I see that there is a new release:

http://www.opera.com/

(d) This is a site called "Browser News" from "All the Web". I don't know how good it is, but it might give you some of the information you are after.

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/


I'll keep poking because this subject holds a major interest for me. The above are just off of the top. The real question is what is up and coming.

Muzz



[This message was edited by RC on November 12, 2003 at 04:21 AM.]

[This message was edited by RC on November 12, 2003 at 04:25 AM.]

[This message was edited by RC on November 12, 2003 at 04:30 AM.]

[This message was edited by RC on November 12, 2003 at 04:34 AM.]

[This message was edited by RC on November 12, 2003 at 04:42 AM.]

Thanks Muzz. Browser News was especially useful.

I downloaded Mozilla and Opera and tried my application against them.

Mozilla was more stable than Netscape 7.1 in particular when it came to image rendering. Like Netscape though it still hammered the disk when dealing with larger DHTML framed images which gave the impression of it being very slow at times. Otherwise all the applications ran fine.

Opera didn't handle my (hand crafted) dhtml at all, which makes me wonder if there's a standards issue in the way that I'm writing it. It also appeared to changed the z-index of some items. I think the key for me is to identify the browser that is most standards compliant in the belief that if I can get my application to run well on that it will run on (almost ) anything. Any thoughts?

-Bruce

Hi Bruce,

For starters, I am very, very in interested in the fact that Opera won't handle DHMTL (see my post on scripting in Animation). And here is the real kicker: historically, and I am not aware of this having changed, Opera WAS and IS the most standard compliant browser in the business.

No doubt things have changed somewhat now, especially with the growing dominance of WYSIWYGs, but when we were all hand-coding HTML 3.2 and kept at least four browsers around to check your code; as sure as hot beans bubble, Opera would catch stuff that IE would let go. Netscape was somewhere in the middle.

From from what I have heard, Mozilla is supposed to be standards compliant also. In the final analysis, however, as I still do some hand-coding in HTML 4,0 Transitional, it is still best that you check things out on at least 3 browsers.

Opera are apparently connected directly to the W3C -- which is how they check your work. I'll try confirm that though. What exactly do you mean by the "z index." Is this 3D work? I have never coded in DHTML.

The reason I ask is that I will be going into the Opera Forum sometime today or tomorrow and will post any questions you have. (Opera will even send you e-mails!! -- though it is getting tougher as they continue to grow.) Except for animation, Opera is my choice hands down.

If you are using XP, you have to be very careful in assessing any third party browser, especially Opera. You definitely have to check out the file type settings for one and that you are running in Windows Custom mode. And with Opera,in addition to that, go into File>Preferences>Default Browser> and make sure everything is ticked and applied as regards the type of files it will handle.

I saw a 3D browser yesterday somewhere which I want to check out.

Cheers,

Muzz

Hi Muzz,

The application is complex so it will take me a while to identify which part is throwing a tantrum in Opera - it might not be the DHTML - could be for instance the use of iframes - when I've tracked something down I'll post it - will be in a few days though as I've got some other building to do first.

By z-index I'm refering to the order in which images are shown on the page in DHTML . - ie image A and image B overlap; image A's z-index is 2 and image b's z-index is 3 so B overlaps A. If I change image B's z-index to 1 then it appears behind image A.

Likewise could be the apparent z-index issue I experienced with Opera is down to another cause.


-Bruce