<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/securit ... m">Firefox, bah humbug</a>
> Check out this link under Internet Explorer, and
> then Firefox. I have created a Web page with a
> fixed position left, top and bottom sidebar that
> surrounds a scrollable area. All regions resize to
> completely fill the browser when its dimensions
> are changed.
As (Non-)Bug 268134 points out (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268134), your page is flawed. The table cell has
no specified height, so the "ScrollRegion" expands to the entire page height without the use of scrollbars. A more detailed explaination of your problem is above. It's not a bug; it's a strict implementation of W3C standards.
IE is infamous for supporting buggy and bad HTML/CSS code, and intepreting (or sometimes breaking) these standards in the loosest fashion possible. This was done on purpose to try (and succeed) in getting shotty webmasters to blame Netscape for problems with their own code. The old axiom of "Well, it works in IE, so it should work on your browser" is heard around the world, even as faulty a statement that it is.
Their continued practice of supporting buggy code is continued for the sole purpose of keeping the competition down, and it has worked for years.
Hey, garbage in, garbage out. Why should Firefox be any different?
> Why it would kill anyone to provide
> "document.all" support in scripts is beyond me,
> though document.GetElementByID() does the trick,
> if in a more verbose fashion.
There's a very simple answer for that: document.all was NEVER PART OF THE STANDARDS! It was a creation by Microsoft, and it's mostly bloat because IE has to waste memory filling it up. The second trick does work because it's right there in the DOM standards. The Firefox coders have been very reluctant to port non-standard items, but it's very very rare, and it's solely because so many yahoos decided to use it for IE. (Hey, even FRAMEs was non-standard for a while, but who's to say that it was even a good idea?)
Microsoft is part of the W3C group to implement these standards, so if they want it in the official standards so badly, they can do it through the proper channels. Otherwise, they should leave out the "innovation", and leave the standards-implementation to the pros. Given that it took them close to 10 years to (partly) implement CSS1/2 (yes, the standard is that old), Microsoft doesn't have a good track record of even implementing the already existing standards, must less adding new crap to their DOM.
> A number of respondents to my last article
> claimed incompatibilities didn’t matter, because
> if a site didn’t provide decent Firefox support,
> the community would apply pressure to force them
> to change or else face lost customers and/or bad
> press.
That is certainly a warped way of saying "Web developers should stick to the standards."
> Essentially, Firefox’s (or Opera’s, or Safari’s)
> refusal to implement features found in the
> browser used by 95 percent of people who access
> the Internet means that they are insisting that
> hundreds of thousands of Web sites around the
> world tailor their sites to accommodate them.
> That seems an uphill battle, not to mention
> strange given that many who demand it are the
> same people who will be tasked with ensuring
> compatibility across all those browsers. I don’t
> know about you, but navigating browser
> idiosyncrasies isn’t my idea of a good time.
Again, blame Microsoft. They are the guys in charge of breaking compatibility across browsers. Nobody cares that IE is used by 95% of the world. Being popular does not automatically make it the standard. It's on par with creating laws, with the lawmakers who created those laws breaking them and encouraging everybody else to break them.
The standards are put in place to ensure compatibility acress browsers, not break them. That's why they are called S-T-A-N-D-A-R-D-S. Man, I just feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again...
> Ximian’s Miguel de Icaza has noted that Mono (an
> open source implementation of .NET) benefit from
> Microsoft marketing and documentation efforts.
To say that Icaza is a Microsoft apologist and suckup is an understatement. But, honestly, the open-source community needs people like him to sastify the businesses trying to veer away from Microsoft. Icaza needs to keep a straight face to prevent from being blackballed from Microsoft developers on his own projects. (On that note, Samba has survived very well without Microsoft's support, and in most respects, to Microsoft's anger.) However, even Icaza gets annoyed by Microsoft's ideas of implementation, as illustrated by his recent conversations with Chris Anderson on Avalon. (http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/arch ... ep-09.html)
> Microsoft provides extremely good documentation,
> a fact noted by many developers less enamoured
> of Microsoft technology than myself.
Microsoft only provides good documentation because Microsoft desparately want people to use .NET "technology". .NET isn't hugely popular, and Microsoft isn't in a position (yet) to cram it down anybody's throuts. You'll notice that Microsoft is more than happy that Icaza is developing Mono, and is willing to turn a blind eye when the dreaded OSS acronym (and "Linux") is thrown around.
> It must be admitted, though, that Firefox does
> have more support for "official" standards, as
> this link shows. I can’t say that all the
> missing features are equally important, and some
> I doubt I’d use at all.
I think I'll take this time to rant about PNG. More specifically, IE's lack of alpha-transparency for PNG. Next to CSS support and getting regular PNG to actually work in IE (only took you guys 8-10 years!), this has been the single most wanted standards-related feature that I want in IE. (No, I don't consider a buggy add-on for IE to be actual "support".)
Imagine being able to create your own logos/text with alpha-transparency, and being able to change the background without that nasty white or black border used in the transparent-text transition. This type of innovation is stalled because of Microsoft inability to fix their half-baked implementation of it. They aren't going to fix it because nobody uses it, and nobody is going to use it because IE hasn't fix it. It's a web developer's Catch-22.
> Lastly, as others have noted, Firefox is
> probably a safer security bet than IE. Don’t be
> lulled, however, into a false sense of
> complacency. Firefox certainly doesn’t use
> Browser Helper Objects, a technology misused by
> "spyware" vendors to monitor where a user goes
> on the Internet (or, as I found on a friend’s
> computer, hijack it to strange locations). On
> the other hand, it’s not true that Firefox isn’t
> extensible. Binary installers (the standard way
> Browser Helper Objects find their way onto a
> Windows system) can install Firefox extensions
> just as easily as they install IE extensions.
The key here is default security, instead of security as a afterthought. Despite starting out from Netscape, Mozilla/Firefox was re-written from stratch, and security was always on their mind. IE is based off of the same code, DLLs, foundation that they started from, and security has only recently become a focus. Because of this, they have had to try to put good(?) code on top of their buggy virus-ridden bad code.
Focusing on the immediate argument, Firefox's extensions are only installed if the user actually agrees to install them. Even so, the user has to tell Firefox that the domain it's coming from is safe for extensions. (Unless it's coming from it's default extensions.mozdev.org site.) That is the kind of default security that prevents viruses from invading.
On the flip side, IE is currently being haunted by a security hole that will execute in a carefully crafted JPG file! Other side-splitting security "features" include URLs that infect IIS (CodeRed/Nimda), backdoor RPC ports that are on by default (Blaster/Nochi), and overly powerful VB turned on by default coupled with a bug in Outlook Express that automatically executes attachments (various). Such costly security mistakes can only be the product of bad implementation and coding ethics. One does not make those kind of mistakes when your security conscience on top of your shoulder (the one with the angel wings and white hat) says that it's a bad idea.
[Wow...what a reply! Maybe -I- should be the one writing the ZDNet commentary.]</div>
> Check out this link under Internet Explorer, and
> then Firefox. I have created a Web page with a
> fixed position left, top and bottom sidebar that
> surrounds a scrollable area. All regions resize to
> completely fill the browser when its dimensions
> are changed.
As (Non-)Bug 268134 points out (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268134), your page is flawed. The table cell has
no specified height, so the "ScrollRegion" expands to the entire page height without the use of scrollbars. A more detailed explaination of your problem is above. It's not a bug; it's a strict implementation of W3C standards.
IE is infamous for supporting buggy and bad HTML/CSS code, and intepreting (or sometimes breaking) these standards in the loosest fashion possible. This was done on purpose to try (and succeed) in getting shotty webmasters to blame Netscape for problems with their own code. The old axiom of "Well, it works in IE, so it should work on your browser" is heard around the world, even as faulty a statement that it is.
Their continued practice of supporting buggy code is continued for the sole purpose of keeping the competition down, and it has worked for years.
Hey, garbage in, garbage out. Why should Firefox be any different?
> Why it would kill anyone to provide
> "document.all" support in scripts is beyond me,
> though document.GetElementByID() does the trick,
> if in a more verbose fashion.
There's a very simple answer for that: document.all was NEVER PART OF THE STANDARDS! It was a creation by Microsoft, and it's mostly bloat because IE has to waste memory filling it up. The second trick does work because it's right there in the DOM standards. The Firefox coders have been very reluctant to port non-standard items, but it's very very rare, and it's solely because so many yahoos decided to use it for IE. (Hey, even FRAMEs was non-standard for a while, but who's to say that it was even a good idea?)
Microsoft is part of the W3C group to implement these standards, so if they want it in the official standards so badly, they can do it through the proper channels. Otherwise, they should leave out the "innovation", and leave the standards-implementation to the pros. Given that it took them close to 10 years to (partly) implement CSS1/2 (yes, the standard is that old), Microsoft doesn't have a good track record of even implementing the already existing standards, must less adding new crap to their DOM.
> A number of respondents to my last article
> claimed incompatibilities didn’t matter, because
> if a site didn’t provide decent Firefox support,
> the community would apply pressure to force them
> to change or else face lost customers and/or bad
> press.
That is certainly a warped way of saying "Web developers should stick to the standards."
> Essentially, Firefox’s (or Opera’s, or Safari’s)
> refusal to implement features found in the
> browser used by 95 percent of people who access
> the Internet means that they are insisting that
> hundreds of thousands of Web sites around the
> world tailor their sites to accommodate them.
> That seems an uphill battle, not to mention
> strange given that many who demand it are the
> same people who will be tasked with ensuring
> compatibility across all those browsers. I don’t
> know about you, but navigating browser
> idiosyncrasies isn’t my idea of a good time.
Again, blame Microsoft. They are the guys in charge of breaking compatibility across browsers. Nobody cares that IE is used by 95% of the world. Being popular does not automatically make it the standard. It's on par with creating laws, with the lawmakers who created those laws breaking them and encouraging everybody else to break them.
The standards are put in place to ensure compatibility acress browsers, not break them. That's why they are called S-T-A-N-D-A-R-D-S. Man, I just feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again...
> Ximian’s Miguel de Icaza has noted that Mono (an
> open source implementation of .NET) benefit from
> Microsoft marketing and documentation efforts.
To say that Icaza is a Microsoft apologist and suckup is an understatement. But, honestly, the open-source community needs people like him to sastify the businesses trying to veer away from Microsoft. Icaza needs to keep a straight face to prevent from being blackballed from Microsoft developers on his own projects. (On that note, Samba has survived very well without Microsoft's support, and in most respects, to Microsoft's anger.) However, even Icaza gets annoyed by Microsoft's ideas of implementation, as illustrated by his recent conversations with Chris Anderson on Avalon. (http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/arch ... ep-09.html)
> Microsoft provides extremely good documentation,
> a fact noted by many developers less enamoured
> of Microsoft technology than myself.
Microsoft only provides good documentation because Microsoft desparately want people to use .NET "technology". .NET isn't hugely popular, and Microsoft isn't in a position (yet) to cram it down anybody's throuts. You'll notice that Microsoft is more than happy that Icaza is developing Mono, and is willing to turn a blind eye when the dreaded OSS acronym (and "Linux") is thrown around.
> It must be admitted, though, that Firefox does
> have more support for "official" standards, as
> this link shows. I can’t say that all the
> missing features are equally important, and some
> I doubt I’d use at all.
I think I'll take this time to rant about PNG. More specifically, IE's lack of alpha-transparency for PNG. Next to CSS support and getting regular PNG to actually work in IE (only took you guys 8-10 years!), this has been the single most wanted standards-related feature that I want in IE. (No, I don't consider a buggy add-on for IE to be actual "support".)
Imagine being able to create your own logos/text with alpha-transparency, and being able to change the background without that nasty white or black border used in the transparent-text transition. This type of innovation is stalled because of Microsoft inability to fix their half-baked implementation of it. They aren't going to fix it because nobody uses it, and nobody is going to use it because IE hasn't fix it. It's a web developer's Catch-22.
> Lastly, as others have noted, Firefox is
> probably a safer security bet than IE. Don’t be
> lulled, however, into a false sense of
> complacency. Firefox certainly doesn’t use
> Browser Helper Objects, a technology misused by
> "spyware" vendors to monitor where a user goes
> on the Internet (or, as I found on a friend’s
> computer, hijack it to strange locations). On
> the other hand, it’s not true that Firefox isn’t
> extensible. Binary installers (the standard way
> Browser Helper Objects find their way onto a
> Windows system) can install Firefox extensions
> just as easily as they install IE extensions.
The key here is default security, instead of security as a afterthought. Despite starting out from Netscape, Mozilla/Firefox was re-written from stratch, and security was always on their mind. IE is based off of the same code, DLLs, foundation that they started from, and security has only recently become a focus. Because of this, they have had to try to put good(?) code on top of their buggy virus-ridden bad code.
Focusing on the immediate argument, Firefox's extensions are only installed if the user actually agrees to install them. Even so, the user has to tell Firefox that the domain it's coming from is safe for extensions. (Unless it's coming from it's default extensions.mozdev.org site.) That is the kind of default security that prevents viruses from invading.
On the flip side, IE is currently being haunted by a security hole that will execute in a carefully crafted JPG file! Other side-splitting security "features" include URLs that infect IIS (CodeRed/Nimda), backdoor RPC ports that are on by default (Blaster/Nochi), and overly powerful VB turned on by default coupled with a bug in Outlook Express that automatically executes attachments (various). Such costly security mistakes can only be the product of bad implementation and coding ethics. One does not make those kind of mistakes when your security conscience on top of your shoulder (the one with the angel wings and white hat) says that it's a bad idea.
[Wow...what a reply! Maybe -I- should be the one writing the ZDNet commentary.]</div>
Rosalina: But you didn't.
Robert: But I DON'T.
Rosalina: You sure that's right?
Robert: I was going to HAVE told you they'd come?
Rosalina: No.
Robert: The subjunctive?
Rosalina: That's not the subjunctive.
Robert: I don't think the syntax has been invented yet.
Rosalina: It would have had to have had been.
Robert: Had to have...had...been? That can't be right.
Robert: But I DON'T.
Rosalina: You sure that's right?
Robert: I was going to HAVE told you they'd come?
Rosalina: No.
Robert: The subjunctive?
Rosalina: That's not the subjunctive.
Robert: I don't think the syntax has been invented yet.
Rosalina: It would have had to have had been.
Robert: Had to have...had...been? That can't be right.
