[WEB4LIB] Firefox revolution over?

[Thomas Dowling]

"Firefox is...a chore sometimes, what with most sites using that pesky 
nonstandard IE code. Not everything renders properly, and some sites 
just plain don't work."

[What's the definition of rendering "properly", btw?  Mystically knowing 
exactly how it looked on the designer's desktop?  Even an all-IE 
environment won't get you there.]


I must be going to the wrong sites.  What is this pesky nonstandard "IE" 
code that's causing Firefox to fail everywhere?  I see a lot of bad 
markup but little in page designs that are specific to IE.  I honestly 
cannot name a site I've visited that fails just because I'm using Firefox.

I do see some scripts that essentially say:

   if (your browser is IE) then
     you get a script that would actually work in any
     modern browser
   otherwise
     you receive a "Get a better browser" message and
     are told to take a hike

Other than giving users a way to lie and say they're really using IE 
after all (which both Opera and Firefox have), what's a non-IE browser 
supposed to do?


I increasingly think that the "[Non-IE browser of choice] won't render 
everything right" is a tool used jointly by lazy web designers who don't 
want to defend their IE-only designs and lazy systems people who don't 
want to defend their IE-only platform support.  You can't control too 
many designers, except by using their competitor's sites, but you can 
take your systems folks aside and tell them this attitude won't cut it.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu