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Archive for March, 2008
Said in simple words
“Here we go again. Fixing the web for Microsoft. Isn’t Microsoft supposed to be fixing IE for the web?”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks Rob.
More on the Meta Nightmare
Computer World recently posted an article talking about how IE8 was breaking several websites. Then a post was created here defending IE8 and explaining why it was behaving erratically mainly focusing on the fact that it is only a Beta.
Now I know we can all agree that this is a Beta version and it’s supposed to have errors and that is exactly why it is a beta version so this errors can be fixed before the actual release. The problem that I see and some people don’t, is that it is breaking things that were breaking before on IE7.
Then of course we get into the Meta tag crap which some people hail as the savior of the Internet when in reality it has no reason for existing. I mean, I’ve already lost time and money, either mine or my clients, making sure websites work correclty o Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE6 & 7 and now a lot of functions will not work correctly on IE7. That is unless I use their marvelous meta tag, which know I have to go to every website I created, or at least the ones for clients willing to pay for the work, and add this tag to each individual page on the site.
Just so we are clear, my Website were not poorly written and only used hacks when standard things decided not to work correctly on IE7 and specially on IE6, in which case I usually use a separate css file to target this browser alone.
We have yet to see what come up of this beta and meta tag mess but so far, it’s not looking very good for us developers. Yes, we might make some money when clients start calling about problems with their websites, that if of course if they believe that a Multi billion company is the cause and not us in which case they might go elsewhere.
IE8 Does Not Pass the Acid2 Test
A lot of us where stunned when rumors surfaced indicating that IE8 passed the Acid2 test. We were even more astonished when screen captures like this one:
Of course some conspiracy theories were formulated but some of us decided to give Microsoft a chance and start celebrating. That was of course until some people started claming that this:
Was the real way that IE8 rendered the Acid2 test. Well people, if you look at the screen shots closely you will see that the first one is using the www while the second one is not. According to IE8’s Team something with their ActiveX and cross domain scripting is causing the error.
In other words, Microsoft is pasing the Acid2 test only when their ActiveX feels like it.
Fun With IE8 & Maps
After posting about IE8 breaking suckerfish, I kept trying some of my sites and luckily one of them had a Google Map. I don’t know what this is, css, javascript or god knows what, but I decided to take a screen shot of the actual Google Maps page for everyone to enjoy IE8 at it’s best:
I then decided to search and found that some people had alreqdy realized this nightmare and was actually pointed to some other issues like MSN own Live Search Maps:
& Mapquest:
And I didn’t even get to the Ask.com map since the Ask.com website displays like this:
and the map link doesn’t work. Can anyone smell a lawsuit coming?
Ps: I know this is still a Beta Version, but if they already passed the Acid2 Test, then why is everything else so screwed up? And, once everything else is fixed, will they still pass the Acid2 Test?
Suckerfish Dropdowns - Broken on IE8 Beta
After testing some websites on IE8 and realizing that some clients are going to call me pretty soon complaining about their website, I decided to give the Suckerfish Dropdowns a try since I use this technique on some of my menus with perfect results on all browsers, IE6 & IE7 included.
First, I went to the Vertical example (most of my menus are vertical so I wanted to give this one a try) and everything seemed normal. Then I decided to test the rollover since all my sites were doing crazy things on this function and this is how IE8 displays it:
Something with the z-index seems to be changed since now the text displays above the rollover, making the menu useless.
Well. at least I know all the crazy behavior I was seeing is not my fault, after all all the hacks that I’ve implemented to make the menu work inside my websites (where I have some other div, classes, scripts etc) were working fine on the previous IE versions.
IE8 Beta … Oh Crap
So yes, I installed IE8 Beta after carefully thinking about it and now, IE7 is gone, my IE6 (installed with the multiple IE application) is rendering pages wrong and a lot of sites are looking wrong.
Yes I know it is only a Beta Version, but I also know that Microsoft is planning to release IE8 in a couple of weeks which I don’t think it is enough time to fix all the bugs in this browser.
The funny thing was that I installed IE8 yesterday and didn’t have much time to play around with it, but since it was looking all right this morning I was thinking of psoting something nice about it, but… after trying out some sites and finding out that even my IE6 is broken, well, what can I say.
No comments, simply, no comments.
Racist Websites
For those of you who don’t know what this means, we are talking about Websites that for some reason will block every browser that is not Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Here’s a list of some of the reasons why some developers go this route: http://toastytech.com/evil/onlyie.html
Here’s another list of some of this Racist Websites: http://toastytech.com/good/badsitelistframe.html (focuses on firefox but we are pretty sure all mozilla based browsers will share it’s fate).
