I am just venting here, but who else is completely annoyed of having to program websites for multiple browsers? Why can't anyone just standardize the freaking browser. I mean i don't care if Microsoft and Netscape and Mozilla all have different browsers, but they freaking need to standardize the means of the browser's capabilities. I'm tired of writing CSS classes and viewing it with IE and then trying it out with firefox and realize it can't read 40% of the dynamic effects. Just drives me up the wall, or even worse it won't display things on the page correctly.

Does anyone else agree.. what's your views?

It can be a pain...but I find if you first view things in firefox (while you're making the site..) you have less problems. Usually when it works in firefox it will work elsewhere, that isn't the case often for IE.

That is quite true, as soon as everyone realizes anything made by Microsoft sucks (that is, except a vacuum :-D ) and switches to more capable browsers like Firefox, the world will be much better off.

Originally posted by OmegaVortex
That is quite true, as soon as everyone realizes anything made by Microsoft sucks. That is not true, the keyboards are quite good.

But seriously, having to code differently for every version of IE on every OS really sucks. Go, check out pages with IE5 on a Mac, quite a few surprises.

Firefox is a pain in the ***.At least IE should have some standarts.

Heh, no thanks, I think I'll stick with trusty ole' Linux and Firefox. Note: I've used Microsoft products for years, and as a result have become a devout Linux user and hater of all things Microsoft :-D

Im an OSX user, so i program for the browsers available to me. That means Safari and Firefox.

Hacking anything to work on IE is just an after thought, but generally if it works on Safari/FF, it works on IE or requires a few extra hacks to satisfy IE. Javascript programming can be a little more complicated (Im looking at you ActiveX) but it is mostly just adding a couple of hacks.

My only problem with firefox/other non-IE browsers is their lack of support for xml data islands.

I want them all to dispense money from my cdrom....

I use the build with firefox (and the web developer extension/ javascript debugger ;)) and test in others methodology fairly often myself. FireFox is not a pain in the *** it's what made me switch from IE as my everyday browser.

However I do like some of the features provided by IE and wish others would look at them with open minds, and I don't 'hate' Microsoft, it's just another tool, and a damn good one for alot of things that otehr OS's can only emulate.

I have my linux development server right next to my windows development machine, and I'm really growing fond of Solaris...anyway

Regardless of what we prefer, a large percentage of the internet uses IE on windows at 1024 x 768, so if you neglect that your neglecting alot of people.

If you think multi browser development (and no one has even mentioned AOL yet..) is bad - just wait until you have to write code that works on cell phones and palm pilots!

I'll jump in on the Develop in firefox, then view it in other browser bandwagon. I use to develop in house, intranet only, apps for a 100% IE company. So, when I changed to a more broad audiance I started having compatibility issues. For the most part, IE implements a good deal more non-standards based stuff. So, if you're using those features heavily it's a major pain switching.

I went thru that trouble and now I'm writing pretty compatible code between the two. Then you've got Opera in the mix, about 5% of my sites users are on Opera, which is giving me some headaches lately. Still, if I work in firefox it works better than if I was in IE at dev time. I may even be working thru opera soon just to see if I have less to tweak then.

Honestly, it's all a big pain. I prefer not to install more software if I don't have to, so I prefer to use IE as my primary browser. Less crap for me to install when I change HD, machines, etc. I like to keep a small footprint, but as a dev I don't get that luxury. I'd really like to have a top notch, easy to navigate reference I could code by 100% and not have to worry. E.G. an extremely good standards reference that I've yet to find(like the MSDN HTML Objects reference, but standard stuff only).

However, there are a couple things off the top of my head IE does that you just can't get in the competition right now. These aren't plug-ins/browser features for the user. I'm talking about programming tools that let developers give users a better experience.

First, IE supports Modal Dialog windows. These can be really handy. One place I've used them was in form lookups. For instance the user needs to enter an email address, but don't know it off the top of their head. Click a button, pop up a window and let them search for the person in active directory(Win2K platform here). Once they select the person, fire a return routine and return the info to the parent window. Process the return in javascript and update the interface. It's not nearly as easy and smooth without that modal dialog. It's just a great tool to have and one I want right now for a file upload routine I'm writing. Cross-browser though, I don't have it.

Second is the contenteditable flag contrasted to designMode. IE does this so much better allowing tons of screen items to be individually edited inline. In firefox, you're limited to a full document edit(which typically means an iframe). I love the IE functionality. I have a CMS tool that renders an object just as it would appear when published to the database and the user edits the div space for the content right there. I'm working on the same features for firefox, but it's so much simpler and dynamic in IE.

I really hope both of those IE features will become standard in all browsers as I'd really like to have them. From a users feature standpoint though, IE needs to add tabs and I'd be quite happy with it. Especially after pop-up blocker was put in not long ago.

Anyway, yes I get frustrated dealing with the browser differences while deving. Oh and anyone wanna point me to a good standards reference. Don't say w3c.org either because the organization/formating of information there is horrendous.

Originally posted by Axiss Oh and anyone wanna point me to a good standards reference. Don't say w3c.org either because the organization/formating of information there is horrendous.

The O'Reilly book - Dynamic HTML by Danny Goodman is great. Mine has many notes in the margins on slight inaccuracies and bugs with various browsers. Still it is the best reference I have seen for multi-browser support.

Cross browser support is most certainly a pain.

Oh and anyone wanna point me to a good standards reference
http://zvon.org/index.php?nav_id=references&mime=html

Originally posted by nnormal
(and no one has even mentioned AOL yet..)

That is because AOL's browser is based off of IE's engine.

In essence, AOL is IE with a "slicker" GUI, so it is really a version of IE with AOL ads.



When i program stuff for the web, my test browser is Firefox. If that works, i can normally get it to work in IE with some minor ajustments (like deleting line breaks, which for some reason matter in IE, but only in some places). Then it will work 98% of the time in Opera after that.

Oh and anyone wanna point me to a good standards reference

One word -- quirksmode.org -- the be-all end-all of cross browser compatibility issues.

I dislike having to adjust layout of my websites for certain browsers because of their implementation of (x)html/css etc, but it's a necessity and that's how it is.

In addition to fyrestrtr's link, I'd like to point out the following: http://www.alvit.de/handbook/

I bet some of you guys will benefit from that alot.

Dreamweaver is quite a help in this issue. Its browser compatibility test is quite accurate and very easy to use.