Browser Wars


dflemstr said:
Now, can this browser discussion please end?


Now you've beaten your chest enough and feel you've won? Sure. I never set out to scream "IE is best" - only that it'd be nice if a problem with this site didn't make the site awkward to uview using it. I apologise for that heinous crime. Browser wars are no more interesting to me than OS wars etc. - those games are IMHO best left to those who love bickering above all else.

Ta :)
 
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Monk said:
Now you've beaten your chest enough and feel you've won? Sure. I never set out to scream "IE is best" - only that it'd be nice if a problem with this site didn't make the site awkward to uview using it. I apologise for that heinous crime. Browser wars are no more interesting to me than OS wars etc. - those games are IMHO best left to those who love bickering above all else.

Ta :)
I didn't bother to read every single post, but I'm betting his point of view is this:

It'd be nice if a problem with IE didn't prevent it from properly rendering the site.

See what I did there? Rather than being a problem with the site, it's IE's problem. And technically that's the correct point of view - just like how in North America we drive on the right side of the road, so driving on the left would be "incorrect". I happen to know there's countries where people drive on the left, but here in "Standards Compliant North America" we drive on the right, capiche? ;) And it's not the problem of the people driving on the right when some dip driving on the left crashes into you, even if in his native land he wouldn't have had any problems.

I apologize in advance for that horrible car analogy.
 
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Kramy said:
I didn't bother to read every single post,

See what I did there?


Yes, I saw what you did there - you failed to read the actual posts, missed the context, and missed where I had employed EXACTLY that tactic in order to arrive at the eye-opening alternative viewpoint to try and illustrate how "the issue" could be viewed as "the board's" fault rather than as IE's fault - the default view.

Brilliant. You've found a way to look smug AND a complete dick at the same time. You, sir, have my congratulations.

The "Guru" badge on this site - and this site alone of all sites I visit - renderes incorrectly on IE, screwing up whole pages wherever a Guru posts. That doesn't make it IMHO inherrantly "IE's" fault or the board's "fault" without further investigation (quite a lot of it from where I sit, innocent and disinterested in the "standards wars"). But there is a distinct issue in that particular combination. Since not everyone is willing and/or able to install the relevant supported browser for each site (I have a need to access a site at which Firefox simply fails, for example, which would rule FF out by itself even if nothing else did) it comes down to no fix, fix IE to cope wiyh gp32x.de, or fix gp32x.de to be compatible with IE. My initial guess was theat the GP32 communicaty would be the more pro-active one, with more in inclination and capability to find and squish the problem. I thought that was a large part of the ethos of "Open Software" communities - this whole "It's because of the stuff you use, you should change what you use" type of attitude seems to me more the closed Microsoft-style approach. Maybe there is no difference in approach, just competitors?
 
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Monk, I must say that I can't follow your logic.

If I have a mixer that I want to mix fruit with, but that mixer is of such a low quality that things always get stuck in it, is that the fruit's fault? Should I really modify all of the fruit out there to be softer, or should I instead just realize that the mixer is defective and use a different one? That's how you sound, and I really can't understand the reason why.

Also, the W3C (the consortium responsible for HTML, CSS, etc) has set up very strict standards that define what a web page is, which rules it must follow, and so on. IE doesn't comply to those standards (I think you've understood this by now), meaning that if I want to make a site compatible with IE, I have to deliberately break it (so that it contains errors and can cause problems for the 10-20 other browsers out there that DO follow the standard) just so that IE will render it correctly. After that, I have to test the web page in all of the other browsers out there to see that no errors were introduced, or alternatively work around those errors individually per browser. It's just such a PITA that I could say that it just isn't worth oit out of sheer laziness, and lots of people would agree with me.

EDIT: And that a site is incompatible with FF... Now, it is a valid claim to say that such an incompatibility in fact is that site's fault, since Firefox does follow the web standards and therefore isn't to blame for the faulty rendering.
 
To be honest, it doesn't really matter which browser you're using so long as it isn't IE6. But that's just me. Carry on bickering!
 
Mmmmmmmm, Just warming my hand on this heated discussion, Aaahhh that`s better.

Anyway, Monk, Couldn`t you try using any of the many "Portable" versions of certain browsers available ?, For some of the sites that don`t seem to render correctly in IE. You don`t need to install anything when using a portable version, They run from usb flash drives,
You can take it with you where ever you go, Along with your bookmarks, Saved tabs, Plug-ins etc.

Off the top of my head, There are "Portable" versions of:

Opera
Fire fox
IE
K-Meleon
Chrome

And probably many more.

Trooper
 
dflemstr said:
Monk, I must say that I can't follow your logic.

If I have a mixer that I want to mix fruit with, but that mixer is of such a low quality that things always get stuck in it, is that the fruit's fault? Should I really modify all of the fruit out there to be softer, or should I instead just realize that the mixer is defective and use a different one? That's how you sound, and I really can't understand the reason why.

Sigh. I hate browser wars so I'm torn. I'd kinda hoped this wouldn't go that way... but I'll play for a bit, I guess.

I agree with the mixer thing, but I do not see clearly which is the fruit and which is the mixer. IE works for me perfectly on all but 2 sites that I regularly visit (amusingly - perhaps - the other site that has problems with IE is the one that has problems with FireFox!). I don't care to learn all the depths of the standards and read up on or test which browsers seem to comply with which standards, which ones fall over when a rule os broken and which ones fail elegantly and so on and so forth - like many of the hoped-for-future users of Pandora and Linux I don't WANT to be all geeky about it - I just want the thing to work. To me, if there are 2 components that don't work together which do I blame if they all work with everything else? Maybe it's worth some effort to find out, and maybe it isn't. In this instance the problem I am encountering I encounter on no other forum - and I don't encounter it with any type of user other than the "Guru" users on THIS forum. To me it seems likely - probable even - that there is some difference in the Guru user postings which is the cause of the problem. I don't want or need to look any closer at who is "responsible" - whether what's different in the Guru settings is within some technical spec. that some browsers treat differently to others - I just know it has to do with the Guru feature of this forum and Internet Explorer 7 - and possibly other browsers (I don't know, I don't use other browsers on this machine and I don't visit this forum from other machines).

So - if my problem is with the code used to display Guru settings conflicting SOMEHOW with Internet Explorer, what should I do about it? Expect Microsoft to fix it? Use a browser I cannot (or will not?) use? (obviously I can't do things that I cannot do) Or assume/hope that the peope who have access to the way the board works can find what's different between a Guru and a user or a power user or a (insert various other categories of forum user that DON'T freak IE out here) and go "Ah! We can fix that for all our IE users just by fising up that line of code!"?

The last thing I expected from my presenting a compatability problem was a browser war. I mean, really, who here isn't too old for this ship?

dflemstr said:
EDIT: And that a site is incompatible with FF... Now, it is a valid claim to say that such an incompatibility in fact is that site's fault, since Firefox does follow the web standards and therefore isn't to blame for the faulty rendering.

As I say, the site that has FireFox problems also tends to have IE problems. But if it didn't (and no, theya ren't the same problems) then how/why should I say it's definitively the site's fault? All I want to do is browse, chat, talk about the topic. This site here is in no way my responsibility. I figured reporting that there was a problem and wondering if anyone could help out was about the lkmit of my responsibility. I can't expect more IMHO from the site that breaks in FireFox because the underlying site design isn't my responsibility or fault in either cace - or my interest. Here my interest is the GP2X and Pandora gaming devices - not the site design.

trooper said:
Anyway, Monk, Couldn`t you try using any of the many "Portable" versions of certain browsers available ?, For some of the sites that don`t seem to render correctly in IE. You don`t need to install anything when using a portable version, They run from usb flash drives,
You can take it with you where ever you go, Along with your bookmarks, Saved tabs, Plug-ins etc.

Nope - that's not a tenable option for various reasons, probably the least of which is "why should I go to the hassle of doing that - and keeping the extra browser up-to-date and so on and so forth - for one site?". I think it was especially the fact that it was Craig making an early snarky comment that really pithed me off - as IMHO he ought to have more of a "user-friendly" attitude wanting his kit to sell to people for... playing games. And games playing is the topic I come here for - not browser tech or OS wars or (yadda yadda). I'm the first to admit that topic drift is a great way of becoming aware of other things (for example, while being here looking for news about Pandora I found out about World Of Goo - a game which has caused hours of entertainment since!). But... OK, I think I have a handle on a way to explain it. It's like DRM as far as I'm concerned.

Ignore any work, NDA, official secrets act and so on balderdash reasons as to why I may be best served using IE. It really doesn't matter AFAICS as it's my information and is not IMHO necessary to the conversation - I have to use IE ergo I have to use IE. But let's take a look at it, if I may, from the point of view simply of what a USER is/has to do. One of the main things I hate/loath about DRM is that it is software to do not what *I* want it to do, but what someone else wants me to do (or not do). Usually, it seems, SONY or one of their pals. I object to someone else telling me what software I have to run on my computer for them to permit me to do... whatever. Play games, manage bank accounts, do route finding, play music - whatever it is one of the lures of the whole "Open" movement is the concept that I have software to work for me, software that does what *I* want to do. I don't have to run stuff for other people, I have choice. This si the idea and goal I keep pushing for, and looking for.

I can view browsers the same way - I should IMHO have the choice to run a browser of my choice. It really doesn't matter if the browser is the crappiest one going, I ought to be able to use it and expect a reasonable amount of compatability IMHO. I'm not talking about expecting sites to cope with the quirks of every version of every browser since IE3, but IE7 is hardly THAT old. IE 8 isn't even at SR1 yet (see other threads for "never use before SR1 comments!) not is it so new IMHO that one can scream "It's so new and buggy that we don't know quite how it will work in 6 months time yet, let it stabilise before we work wround it's problems" (or similar). It's not, it seems to me, unlikely that "the problem" is fixable by changing something in the Guru panel code that is different to the other badges. I don't know what as I haven't dug into the HTML to compare different badges, but it seems to be there. Frankly, I find that my request for aid in this area turning into a browser war cum DRM-like "you need to run THIS browser for our site" type approach bewlidering. Offputting. Not friendly in any way shape or form.

Actually your post has been *one* of the less belligerant sounding, but even so you're suggesting I modify my computer use to work with this site. Which every other IE user would have to do. To me, it would be better if "the problem" were fixed - either by improving the browser IF that's part of the issue (unproven, uninsterested) or by fixing the code of the site. I did not think approaching Microsoft would be of any use. I DID think that this site would be more interested in being user-friendly and pro-choice. I expected a much more open go-to-it approach... such as Gruso initially offered (OK, he didn't fix anything but he displayed EXACTLY the kind of response I expected - vague interest in where the issue might be and therefore how it might be addressable, comradea-like approach).

Now I would really REALLY like to be shot of this argument. There are places for browser wars, I am sure, and I do not believe this to be one of them, personally. I'd just like the issue addressed. If the official board stance is "IE users can change broswers, put up with fatal flaws, or leave" then at least I will know where I stand.

Phew! I just wannt chat about the Pandora, yannow? this is too much like... work!

Thanks to the few people, but especially Gruso (as he sticks out in my memory), who have made positive comments.
 
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Sounds to me that you're arguing for choice - the choice to use whatever browser you want.

But you're not giving the owners of this site any choice. You just expect them to support you.


At work I use IE(7&8 depending where) Tried FF - PITA to run legacy stuff :p
FWIW - I don't have a problem with this site
 
gp32rich said:
Sounds to me that you're arguing for choice - the choice to use whatever browser you want.

But you're not giving the owners of this site any choice. You just expect them to support you.
Exactly. I've displayed this site with Firefox, Konqueror, Chromium, Chrome, Arora, Rekonq, Midori, K-Meleon, Safari, elinks, lynx, the Wine Gecko module thing, Qt WebKit, and that GNOME browser with some japanese sounding name, whatever it was. And guess what? They all worked perfectly. Don't claim that you don't have a choice. We're not saying that "you should get THAT mixer", just saying that "you should get any mixer with blades that don't suck".

And this site has no obligation to support you. They (the guys at Invision) follow the web standards and have even done loads of IE hacks in the past just to make the site display at all. You already have the "reasonable amount of compatability[sic]" that you expect from a crappy browser as you put it.

BTW, this isn't a browser war. We aren't pro anything; we just want you to experience this site as well as we do, and are trying to identify the problem you're having (→ you're using IE, since the site works with all other gazillion browsers out there and it's proven that IE doesn't follow the standards, that must be the problem) and find a solution to the problem (→ use anything you want, just not IE, or live with the problem until someone merciful goes through the whole process of making the site work in IE and then making it work again in standard browsers as well).
 
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arrrgh said:
To be honest, it doesn't really matter which browser you're using so long as it isn't IE6. But that's just me. Carry on bickering!
Indeed, IE 5 works just perfectly. We don't need no stinkin' upgrades.
 
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Does anyone have a archive of old browsers with which they can tell us which is the oldest browser which this site works in? I like the idea of browsing it with netscape etc. just for retro reasons.
 
craigix said:
Does anyone have a archive of old browsers with which they can tell us which is the oldest browser which this site works in? I like the idea of browsing it with netscape etc. just for retro reasons.
I'm writing this post using Lynx. The original lynx came out 1993, way before Netscape. However, I'm using Lynx 2.7 right now, does that still count? :p
forunwithlynx.png
 
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gp32rich said:
Sounds to me that you're arguing for choice - the choice to use whatever browser you want.

It's not where I started, but it seems to have been where I have ended up - reluctantly. Of course it's a little overstated - not any browser I want, but a major and reasonably modern browser. The "not bleeding edge" version of the browser that ships with every copy of Windows, so however one slants it this isn't some backwater unusual browser - it's somthing a lot of people have (IIRC 70% from what Craig said?).**

gp32rich said:
But you're not giving the owners of this site any choice. You just expect them to support you.

Expect? Actually yes, on reflection I guess I did expect "them" (?*) to support a 70% share of the browser market. I have huge doubts about statistics - I'd be willing to bet that, although I know that any statistics based on the buner of FireFox downloads will be wrong (as I have downloaded it in the pastbut am not using it) that Micro$oft are at least as guilty of manipulating the numbers... but the 70% is just a number that Craig threw into the discussion whilst slating IE/IE users. I actually started the comments in the spirit of "Hey, did you guys know your site is borked?" helpful attitude hoping that in fixing the site for me, "they" would fix the site for many. Or help me find out what MY "real" problem is if it somehow has nothing to do with this site.

gp32rich said:
At work I use IE(7&8 depending where) Tried FF - PITA to run legacy stuff
tongue.gif

FWIW - I don't have a problem with this site

Interesting - so are you saying that the Guru posters messages appear correctly using IE7/8 on your equipment? That could suggest that the problem isn't IE and would NEED further investigation at my end if I'm to find the issue (i.e. maybe I NEED to try accessing this site from another machine to try and work out factor involved at this end). It would still be helpful to udnerstand how and why the "Guru" badge is different to other badges.

Note that "expecting" isn't "insisting". I expected a helpful attitude, mostly what I got was not that (with some exceptions) and that's my bitch far more than that there is a problem. The attitude is one I keep encountereing from the (rather over generalised) Linux crowd of snobbery/eliteism, which I really hoped (hope each time I dip my toe in Linuxy waters) had been grown out of. I don't "insist" that the forum supports the visistors, my attitude was confusion along why they would not only do so as a matter of course, but why attack the poor blasted victim? Is that the best possible attitude?

*I'm not so sure how much of a "them" there is as opposed to "different levels of "us", some of whom have the ability to modify the boardsetup and some don't, but yes - I expected the forum to have a helpful go-to attitude to someone having a problem with the board rather than berrating them for their "choice" (or not) of browser.

**I've gone and put in 5 minutes of research. Time I will never see again. craig's 70% seems fair enough as a very rough estimate of "general web browsers users". How many would admit to using IE on a site as anti Microsoft I don't know, but there must be at least 5% of the users here using IE
wink.gif
 
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You have to appreciate (or at least understand) that Microsoft intentionally broke compatibility by not following the standard that was laid out, and felt they could get away with it because they are the market leader. The result was a lot of websites that were not standards compliant in order to work with IE, but then couldn't work properly with anything else. The reverse is also true: perfectly standards compliant websites that do not render correctly in IE. Web developers shouldn't be expected to "fix" their website by intentionally breaking it, and some people would (and apparently do, as this thread has suggested) find it rude to even ask that they "fix" their website.
Stealing the car analogy from earlier and making it worse: suppose we have an established village of 100 people in North America. 200 people from the UK come across and move into this village. They bring their cars for some reason. Should these 200 people (who now outnumber the 100) be allowed to drive on the left side of the road within the Village? They're the majority, they should be accommodated. Yet the first person who suggested it would get laughed at. Or at least should be laughed at.

At the root, I think the problem is that you had a problem, and have been arguing to try and look into the problem from the beginning, whereas everyone else completely forgot that you were having a problem, and were focused on the "why do so many people use broken browsers?" debate. Swapping the context, it does make the responses seem a lot harsher than I think they were meant to be.
 
WizardStan said:
You have to appreciate (or at least understand) that Microsoft intentionally broke compatibility by not following the standard that was laid out, and felt they could get away with it because they are the market leader.

You mistake me muchly, I think (or having read more of your post, some have. Maybe you, maybre not). I can agree with that and a great deal besides. I am significantly NOT pro-Micro$oft to the point where I am happy to "admit" I am anti-Micro$oft. That isn't the point though IMHO. The point is the problem
smile.gif


WizardStan said:
They're the majority, they should be accommodated. Yet the first person who suggested it would get laughed at. Or at least should be laughed at.

The majority... there's an old saying I love (I love a lot of old sayings). To abuse it via memory it says something like "A person CAN be intelligent, but people are idiots".

WizardStan said:
At the root, I think the problem is that you had a problem, and have been arguing to try and look into the problem from the beginning, whereas everyone else completely forgot that you were having a problem, and were focused on the "why do so many people use broken browsers?" debate. Swapping the context, it does make the responses seem a lot harsher than I think they were meant to be.


Indeed. I appear to have been mistaken for someone who would like a good long rant about bvrowsers, or to argue on Microsoft's behalf. Whilst on occasion I enjoy devil's advocate, this isn't such an occasion. All I wanted was to look at a problem specific to Guru posts on this site. My initial feeling of trying to be helpful (pointing out a problem) and hoping to be helped got kinda swamped by the unexpected attitude.

My favourite quote from www.w3schools.com (during my 5 minutes of research) is:

"The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers."

followed closely by:

"You cannot - as a web developer - rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading."

(a slightly more polite version of the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" line).

IE is used a lot. That doesn't make it good.

Thanks for your post
biggrin.gif
 
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Monk said:
Indeed. I appear to have been mistaken for someone who would like a good long rant about bvrowsers, or to argue on Microsoft's behalf.
That may or may not be true, but the point I was trying to make was that you seemed to be getting offended (and still are coming across as offended) over a conversation that only you were having; everyone else was on a completely different page with their rants, they just overlapped heavily.
Which has a disturbing similarity to the very argument that was going on.

edit: yes, I'm aware you got that, but I couldn't tell if you got that I got that you got it until I reread your post.
 
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WizardStan said:
That may or may not be true, but the point I was trying to make was that you seemed to be getting offended (and still are coming across as offended) over a conversation that only you were having; everyone else was on a completely different page with their rants, they just overlapped heavily.
Which has a disturbing similarity to the very argument that was going on.

edit: yes, I'm aware you got that, but I couldn't tell if you got that I got that you got it until I reread your post.


I may have been editing it even as you responded, for clarity :)

A conversation only I was having? I'll get me coat. Because I thought I knew what you were saying, but if I didn't then it's getting FAR to convoluted for me. I am but a simple man :( My conversation had nothing to do with IE's shortcomings or any other browsers, and had no argumentative aspect, nor room for such.
 
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Monk said:
A conversation only I was having? I'll get me coat. Because I thought I knew what you were saying, but if I didn't then it's getting FAR to convoluted for me. I am but a simple man :( My conversation had nothing to do with IE's shortcomings or any other browsers, and had no argumentative aspect, nor room for such.
And yet that's what everyone else was talking about, if you go back and reread every post without thinking about what you were actually trying to accomplish. Or maybe it's only me that thinks it looked like two conversations were going on at the same time.
http://xkcd.com/476/
 
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WizardStan said:
Monk said:
My conversation had nothing to do with IE's shortcomings or any other browsers, and had no argumentative aspect, nor room for such.
And yet that's what everyone else was talking about


I know it was. That's what was so damned frustrating.

{throws hands up in air}.

I conceed. I give up. Good day all :D
 
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Monk said:
WizardStan said:
Monk said:
My conversation had nothing to do with IE's shortcomings or any other browsers, and had no argumentative aspect, nor room for such.
And yet that's what everyone else was talking about


I know it was. That's what was so damned frustrating.

{throws hands up in air}.

I conceed. I give up. Good day all :D
Well, lesson learned: don't light matches in the forest, especially not after a drought (check digg.com for details)
 
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