Bill Quote
I ran into this quote today: “There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.” (Bill Gates)
Maybe is time we start counting?
Archive for Frustrations
By a User
“Sorry,
I am still a newbie, and getting more frustrated all of the time.
I have been working on a website for work, using the Sons of Ursidae menus.
I had previously tried to use the Sons of Suckerfish menu, and I got it to work in IE, but unfortunately, the third level menu was much too short and caused the form name to show up on mutiple lines. See www.twiggtimes.com/cccco/index4.htm
So I after researching, I found that this was a problem with this type of menu. So I found the Sons of Ursidae menu. www.twiggtimes.com/cccco/index10.htm which overcame that problem. The javascript was moved into a separate file, as I had read that it would be better to only load it when necessary, and to keep the html looking better.
I kept fighting with it, and could not get it to work in IE 7. Then I decided to try it in Firefox, and it worked. I also tried it in Opera, and again it worked. I do have an issue with the video showing up on top on the menu, but I would change the video back to a image file in a heartbeat to get the menu to work.
Is there something that is obvious to you that I am missing?
This thing is becoming more annoying to me everyday.
Thanks for your time,
Patrick”
And The Reason Is…
The reason for the Emulate IE7 button on IE8 is because Microsoft is always behind on what they should do. For instance, you have a crappy browser, IE6 so you decide to force people to update but, and only if, you have a valid version of windows. So obviously a lot of people do not update their browser. Of course Microsoft realizes that this is a mistake and releases IE7 without any genuine check so that everybody can upgrade but there’s still some people that do not want to and we are just left to wonder, why if they force other stupid updates they don’t get everybody to IE7 once and for all.
Now with IE8 coming this year, it looks like IE7 will still be around which means that developers will have to use the IE7 button when testing their websites to make sure it looks correct on both versions and after that, use Multiple IE’s to be able to test on IE6.
Thanks again Microsoft, for making the Web DEveloper life so more interesting.
Mootools & IE7
So here I have a simple login page
Notice there is nothing fancy and I’ve included a forgot your password button that is using the Mootools Framework to slide the form used for the forgotten password recovery as well as disabling the form used to login
It works perfectly on all browsers including IE7 (haven’t tested this on IE8). That is of course the first time around. If I decide to cancel the forgot password and then open it back up, I get only half of the first line like displayed below:
This behavior happens only on IE7 and although it might not be common for a user to open, close and then open the forgot password again, it faces me with the decision of leaving it as it is, after all it works perfectly on every other browser, try to figure out a way to make it work on IE7 or changing my whole idea so that the forgot password form doesn’t use the mootools slide.
Thanks again IE, for making me waste my time in your stupid products.
The Microsoft Way Of Thinking
“…the specification needs to be fixed, not the other way around.” Yes, I know. I also clinched when I read this. As it turns out, there is somebody defending IE8 and the Microsoft team and they base their argument in their theory that standard compliant Websites are not the norm and so, browsers should change according to whatever anybody is doing and somehow accommodate and render every website correctly.
I decided to create a mental experiment and apply this theory to several aspects of our daily life to see the results:
1. Traffic lights. Following in this theory, traffic lights should accommodate according to motorist and not the other way around. Yes, some lights will stay on longer at certain times of the day to improve the flow, but according to the theory presented above they would need to let everybody go while stopping everybody at the same time since motorist would be in control, not the lights.
2. Baseball. Since the season is almost here let’s take a look at how this theory would benefit the game. Umpires would need to learn each teams set of rules before hand and somehow combine them so that each team can play the game according to their own set of rules and without breaking the game. So, If team A decides to have only one out while team B stays with the normal three outs rule, well, I don’t see an easy solution for the umpire.
3. Laws. All of them. Could you imagine the court system having to conform to each and everyone of us and our own interpretation of the law? It would be sweet in some cases but really crazy and scary in others.
So, fixing the standard because a bunch of people decided to create websites without following the standards makes absolutely no sense and I have yet to see a non standard or standard website break in a standard compliant browser the way a lot of standard and non standard websites break on IE8, IE7 & IE6.
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 will still break sites
i was at the ieblog site today and was surprise to findout that ie8 even with it’s super standard mode will still break sites????WTF
i am sad to say that i am not the only one mad at the fact that ie8 will still not work to standers but that there is going to now be another version out there to code for i had hope that they would just let it die at 7 and just start shipping firefox with there os.
i will say no more take a look at the ieblog and the Quotes here is my quote and my top two.
Saturday, February 23, 2008 9:20 AM by kimane
i have just about had it with Microsoft i have been a web developer for over 8 years and at the point of just doing something else!!! coding now for 3 versions of ie is making everyone nuts do you all not read what people are saying, i think not cause now your going to put another one out there come on would you all over there just please resign and have them ship the os with firefox For The Love Of God please BILL just let them all go.
crying web developer
Thursday, February 21, 2008 8:06 PM by Oliver
And of course you’re going to allow me to run the beta standalone aren’t you. I mean anything else would be crazy wouldn’t it, given the number of changes you’re making to turn your product into something that has suddenly started to adhere to standards…
Oh wait… you aren’t? I’m going to have no way of testing compatibility between versions 5 through 8 of what has been the buggiest, most consistently inconsistent browser of all time?
“Run them in virtual machines”. No. I’m not going to have 4 different installations of Windows on my machine. I can’t be bothered any more. I’m just going to develop in Flash, Flex and AIR (Silverlight can take a running jump given how I feel about how I’ve been treated as a developer by Microsoft over the last 7 incredibly painful years) and if I do write HTML I’m going to make it standards compliant and include a “gold bar” at the top of the window telling IE users to download Firefox.
Including proprietary headers like X-UA-compatible is not something I’ll be doing just to save Microsoft’s blushes. As much as the current team is to be commended for their efforts, their employers did nothing for *years*. Developers were required to work hundreds of hours for no recompense to get it to work properly and I, for one, have had enough.
Thursday, February 21, 2008 8:09 PM by Gyrobo
You’ve just ADMITTED that even WITH super standards mode as an opt-in, IE8 will STILL cause site breakage.
The question remains: are you incompetent, or do you just hate developers?
When Frustration Strikes The Game
Play the cubicle freekout game
Good for the days that you just feel like smashing stuff and if you are a web developer doing css on ie6 and ie7 this is every day!!!!!!!!
