Looks like you’ve got some comment spam…

Anyway, in the same way that the original dreamer was dreaming of equality, this coder was dreaming of a day when all browsers might be equal in their support of web standards. Where no longer do we have to care which platform we run on or whether the users’ browser renders all of our CSS tags correctly.

Dream on.

Yeah, the comment spammer was some tool griping about Zillow. He left footprints the size of Sasquatch.

Thankfully CSS has made life a bit easier, but it’s only a band aid 🙂

To D. Lambart:
Actually if you look a little closer, the coder was really hoping for a day when IE was up to date with the Web Standards. I am actually a web coder, so I might be able to read this a bit clearer than others, but basically he has a different bit of code for every version of Internet Explorer, except he put IE version 8 in the same category as the other browsers, the ones that do follow the standards. I believe that the “I have a dream” is there because he is hoping that by the time Microsoft releases version 8 it will finally be up to the standards the rest of the world uses, and coders can finally stop using weird little tricks (like the ones you see above) to get their sites to display the same no matter what the user has for software.

Thanks, Kurtis. I’m a web developer, too, and I’ve seen all of those “other” browsers exhibit their own quirks. I’ve seen the same browser render differently on different platforms, as well.

HTML and CSS is difficult because you’re relying on different browsers to implement “standards” exactly the same on multiple platforms using different code bases. That’s why “rich” canvases like Flash are gaining popularity – the common engine means there’s less chance for platform-specific rendering bugs.

The developer is probably dreaming of a day when IE has a decent JavaScript debugger, which will probably never happen.

Actually the Realtor.com sites seem to be mighty IE focused and perusing the HTML source is quite an adventure in how not to code. Seems like a lot of the code is generated through the .Net framework so it wouldn’t surprise me if this originally came from an MS engineer.

HTML/CSS is not difficult as MOST browsers adhere to standards. The hard part is getting things to work in IE 6 & 7. I wish I could bill MS for all the debugging work they have put me through.

The IE blog just posted on the one-year anniversary of IE7, I’m gonna head over there to vent some more.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/30/the-first-year-of-ie7.aspx

IE 6 was good in it’s day (2001), but that day has LONG since passed. The most frustrating thing for me as a web developer, is that the majority of the web browsing world is still using IE 6 even though there are much better alternatives (IE 7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 & Opera 9, pick one). MS screwing up Vista certainly doesn’t help IE 7 (which is still a welcome improvement over IE 6, even if you prefer Firefox, Opera or Safari).

Flash has poor Linux and Win64 support, so I’m holding out hope for MS Silverlight or perhaps Google Gears.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to Firefox 3. Safari on Windows is a disappointment to date, and Microsoft’s silence on IE 8 is not a welcome sign. Oh well, at least MS is doing good work on the server side lately (even if it’s web browser is lacking).

True, I must start this post by saying that I am a fan of those other browsers. This post is extremely biased.

I for one, will think poorly of any software that cripples your entire system if it is hacked. Really, with most bugs that I have seen attacking Windows it first got IE and then worked down the monolithic OS. I know this has gotten (somewhat) better with Vista, too many people don’t want to make the switch.

As far as standards complience goes, all I have to say is that after about 6+ years of outcry, IE 7 still doesn’t render transparent PNG files. Not a standard, true, but when are they ever going to actually give what the customer wants. Not anytime soon, as far as I see. They don’t follow standards, they make their own and force the world into it. Have you read anything about OOXML? A good example of what I am talking about. Those standards are already in place… All I’m saying is that the developer above didn’t have to use any funny tricks to get around those “other” browsers versions.

I check all my sites on Firefox and Opera on both Linux and Windows. The only time that I have ever seen those display anything different was with a font that wasn’t installed, so of course things aren’t going to display correctly. I believe that this has more to do with the font rendering of the system than the software.

Flash is great, and I program with it as well, but I see two drawbacks that will most likely be fixed as time goes on. Mobile support and 64bit versions. Like I said, fixed with time but two big reasons I don’t recommend that most business use flash.

Kurtis with a K,
You opined…”This post is extremely biased.” Huh?? Can you explain?

Well, I don’t want to be labeled a “Fanboy” or a “Blog Flamer” for starting a flame war for sharing my opinion about the drawbacks of Microsoft, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

Too often when a Linux user joins the scene, his/her opinions are usually brushed aside because they don’t fit the mold and use the more popular, proprietary software. To many flame wars are started and comments get blocked. I just wanted people to know that I understand that and still wanted to share my opinion.

That’s all.

Kurtis with K,
Don’t worry about it. This isnt that kind of tech blog. I doubt anyone here has the time for a bitchfest about their favorite server platforms etc. I know I don’t.

MP

Glad to hear it. Linux has gone beyond the server now though, it’s quite usable as a desktop. In fact, I am making this post on my Linux desktop.

Ubuntu

Kurtis K – Can’t we all just get along? I do prefer MS technologies & platforms, but I am open minded. Besides, what do office suites have to do with web browsers anyway?

I’ll freely admit that Firefox 2 is superior to IE 7 (Firebug rocks!), Apache is a powerful web server, and Linux is a fine OS to run a web server on. I’m also glad to hear you’re happy in your choice of OS platforms. Life’s too short, to use software you don’t like.

I think we can both agree the world wide web would be a better place with less IE 6 on the internet. 🙂

Yes, I would love to get along with the rest of the software world.

The office suite question is regarding my comment about OOXML? That was merely an example of how Microsoft doesn’t play along with the rest of the world. Because they have the market share, they can do as they please, and the rest of the world conforms. If you are looking for some examples just let me know, I can point you to many, many sites describing law suits and foul play to prove my point. True, Microsoft does some things right. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the market share in the first place.

I would love it if the world had one set of standards that a lot of different software applications could run. Back to the office suite example, Word 2007 defaults to a .docx file format, which is so locked up in DRM that Microsoft put there to force users into upgrades and license fees. They did not include a reader for the already popular .odf format, because they were trying to push their OOXML format, before it was even a standard.

On the other hand, OpenOffice.org, a free and open source office suite included Microsoft’s OOXML because they recognized it as a new file format. If you want to ask “Can’t we all just get along?”, I would start at asking Microsoft.

I was been after the WWW for this information and just wanted to thank u for the post. Also, just off topic, where can i download a copy of this theme? – 10x