On 01 Jul 2001 17:38:59 -0400, marc lindahl wrote:
From: Bill Anderson <bill@libc.org>
Actually, if you look at it, NS 4.x follows more standards. IE made it's popularity by ignoring invalid HTML. The big, big, problem people have with Netscape's handling of *HTML* is that it will quite often not render incomplete table definitions. Just as it should be.
The big problem I have with NS4 is that it doesn't not render complete table definitions, if they're nested too deeply. And it does not deal with CSS correctly.
Yes, CSS support is terrible in NS4.x. Deeply nested tables are asking for trouble anyway ;) Of course, I could go into a litany on how MSIE screws up such things as the box model, which NS/MOZ get right, and other things, but you get the point I am sure.
In fact, there are so many bugs with this browser, there are piles of websites dedicated to it (google returned 150,000 hits for 'netscape 4 bug list'). For example:
Do a seacrh on google.com for "IE Bugs" and you get 389,000 hits, and for "IE bug list" and you only shrink it by 3000. The point? This is not a useful tool for determining the accuracy of any given browser's HTML compatibility. Oh, yes I realized after writing the above that Iwas opening up to all IE bugs, not just one browser. So, i went back and added the '5'. it climbed to 'about 567.000'. Dropping the 4 of of your netscape search returned 'about 297,000'.
most of the 'tips on this page apply equally well to IE. In fact, most of these, if not all, apply to CSS, or at a minimum the use of Styles. And of course, one would be remiss to not point out it's counterpart in IE: http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/ie5.html Which lists the numerous bugs in IE5/5.5 (ignoring for the moment IE3 and IE4). And of course, Nestcae 6, which is found at the same site: http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/ I am sure you did no tintend to slant the state of affairs by intentionally not mentioning the problems/bugs with IE, but just teh same, it is "fair" to include them as well. It is also fair to all of the browsers that some of the alleged bugs with them are not bugs, but simply differences in handling unclear, or vague parts of the various specifications. Just because browser X does it differently than browser Y, does not make it a bug.
http://www.wowwebdesigns.com/power_guides/worst_nightmare.php
Again, I have not made argument with CSS support, merely noted that CSS is not HTML. it is, indeed, a separate sepcification and standard.
Other than that, it does have nasty issues with javascript. Though, in fairness there are a lot of cross-browser libraries that handle most of the differences.
Can you provide some pointers for some good ones?
How abou thte best: dynapi.sourceforge.net This one sets us up the bomb. ;) It is very well done, and provides a nice API for building cross-browser sites. it handles animations, layers, dynamic layers, has widgets, does dragging, frames, floating layers, and more. Contrary to some people's uninformed opinions, a cross-platform library does not have to be huge, and generally only needs downloaded the first time, after which the browser stores it for future use (individiual reconfiguration the noted exception to all such configurations). DynAPI is more than just *a* tool for X-browser JS, it provides a rather nice foundation of tools, in a reasonable size. This is the descendant of DynDUO, for those who remember it. There is also DynaCore. at http://www.dynamic-core.net which has much of the same functionality. And, it is LGPL :) Bill