[Info-vax] IE8 got me too :-( Sorry Jeff.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 19-01-2010 09:08, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article<4b551638$0$278$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
> 	Arne Vajhøj<arne at vajhoej.dk>  writes:
>> On 18-01-2010 08:47, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> In article<4b53ca5d$0$273$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
>>> 	Arne Vajhøj<arne at vajhoej.dk>   writes:
>>>> On 14-01-2010 08:07, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>> In article<4b4e8718$0$282$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
>>>>> 	Arne Vajhøj<arne at vajhoej.dk>    writes:
>>>>>> On 13-01-2010 21:31, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>>>>>> In article<4b4e7946$0$279$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=<arne at vajhoej.dk>     writes:
>>>>>>>> On 13-01-2010 08:50, AEF wrote:
>>>>>>>>> I actually tried IE8 at work, hoping it would be better than IE6. But
>>>>>>>>> it was blurrier on the monitor. I checked it on others' machines and
>>>>>>>>> the blurriness varied, and all the monitors were ViewSonics. (I did
>>>>>>>>> only check 2 or 3 others, but mine was blurrier than IE6 and that's
>>>>>>>>> all that really mattered to me.) So I went back to IE6. And I did
>>>>>>>>> check if you could do that before I tried IE8. It turns out that all
>>>>>>>>> you have to do is uninstall it, except that a certain OS patch would
>>>>>>>>> get in the way if you have it and you'd have to uninstall that first,
>>>>>>>>> then reinstall after expunging IE8 from your machine.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I do have Firefox installed at work and I use that for some sites, but
>>>>>>>>> others work better on IE6. Hate the spastic Find function in IE6, but
>>>>>>>>> at least you can use it to highlight a link, or get near it with an
>>>>>>>>> easier target and then tab to the link, and without the mouse just
>>>>>>>>> press Return and it works! Safari can't do that, but Safari is better
>>>>>>>>> with multiple choice items in forms and for printing. Safari puts all
>>>>>>>>> the print params on a single page! I've never understood why all the
>>>>>>>>> important things like page size, orientation, number of copies,
>>>>>>>>> certain things on the Page Setup dialog box and such aren't all in one
>>>>>>>>> place. WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY PUT THEM ALL IN ONE PLACE LIKE SAFARI
>>>>>>>>> DOES? Arghhhh.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> IE6 is pretty bad in AJAX context due to its deviation
>>>>>>> >from the standards. IE8 is a lot better. It actually passed
>>>>>>>> ACID2.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Let me know when it can pass ACID3.  AFAIK, only Safari does so.  Firefox is
>>>>>>> close.  It gets to 93/100.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Opera 10 also passed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> IE8 will most likely never pass ACID3. It will be IE9.
>>>>>
>>>>> And if you are writting web pages that use features of ACID3 that IE
>>>>> doesn't do and you competitor is not who is going to pay the price?
>>>>> The target should be your desired audience and not some obscure ivory
>>>>> tower standard.
>>>>
>>>> It is very good to follow the standards.
>>>
>>> Only if there is some tangible gain in doing so beyond the desires
>>> (and profits) of the standards body.
>>
>> Oh yes - it lowers maintenance costs, because the code will
>> work with next generation of browsers.
>
> Only if you can plan on the standards body not "deprecating" the
> features you used.

Very few features get removed from standards.

And only after a very long deprecation period. And even after
that some vendors will continue to support it.

So not only is it rare but you also get many years of notice.


>>>> It may not be good to use all features in the standard.
>>>
>>> Most of the standards I have seen are all or nothing.  If you ignore
>>> parts of the standard then you are just as non-compliant as if you
>>> used none of it.
>>
>> Nonsense.
>>
>> If all the tags you use are in the HTML standard then your page
>> is compliant.
>>
>> The fact that you are not using all the tags does not in any
>> way make the page non-compliant.
>
> Well, I was talking about things like what browsers handle and not
> what web masters write.  For example, by your logic if I write a
> program in pascal and don't use any of the "Digital Eextensions" to
> the language the compiler somehow becomes standards compliant.
>
> It is compliance in the browsers that matters.  If your users have
> a browser that doesn't implement the whole standard then you have
> no way of knowing what you can and can't use without testing that
> particular browser.

That is of course correct.

But utterly irrelevant.

Because there are no browsers available today that does not
follow standards.

The question is only about how many they follow.

 >                   That leaves two practical choices.  Test every
> browser against your web page or keep the features you use to some
> small, safe subset.  Or, the third.  Risk loosing customers because
> they can't use your website.  If I go to a website and can't display
> it, I don't go looking for more browsers to install, I go looking
> for anotehr source of whatever I was looking for.  I think that would
> be the most common reaction.

By far the most obvious is to write your web pages following the
standards that the browsers are compliant with.

Arne