Web browsers that don't support web standards are a scandal. As developers, we're the interface between the content and the browsers, so we need to know where the browsers screw up or our pages will fail.
Nice situation isn't it? We've got users and content providers, and a web with clear standards to connect the two. Then there's all these browsers with their failed standards support getting in the way. If you like paranoia, follow the money and concoct a conspiracy theory or two. Or despair about human intelligence.
Meanwhile, when one of these outfits promotes their "partial compliance", give them hell. Partial compliance isn't compliance, and it's destructive to the web. Users don't know better, but you do. Get loud about full standards compliance.
Confessions
- Mozilla Bug Specs. This completely rocks. No one should produce a browser without supplying exactly this kind of documentation.
- Opera 7 Support
- Opera 6 Support
Exposure
There is no way I'm going to list all the bug sites, but here's a few I'm trying to remember at the moment.
- Grouped
- PPK's CSS2 Tests
- Eric Meyer's Big Charts
- IE Specific
- CodeBitch's CSS Bugs in IE5/5.1 Mac
- IE 5/Win: "moving" margins
- IE6 Infamous Jumping Links Guillotine Bug
- related IE6 a:hover Styling tests
- related IE6 CSS Oddness
- Evolt MSIE6 Bug With Floating Divs and Spacers
- Netscape 4
This browser must die. But it's not dead yet. Other than the handful of seemingly rational people who simply like it, it's still a popular institutional installation. Businesses, schools, and libraries have their people locked into this. I'll express opinions on this elsewhere, but meanwhile you need resources to deal with embracing it or ignoring it.
- WaSP's Browser Upgrade Campaign
- RichInStyle's Bug Guide
- CSShark's CSS and Netscape 4.xx Issues
- Johannes Koch's How to hide CSS from buggy browsers.
- Bob Sawyer's Short List of What Works
- CodeBitch's Netscape 4 Crasher Pages
- Mark Newhouse's Real World Style
Tell Them Like It Is
Filling in bug reports is part of a developer's life. But follow the guidelines of each company. Some busy engineer, who may agree with your opinion, has to weed through these to separate tech info from flames and just plain useless reports. Help make the browser better by just giving the facts asked for. Opinions of the software and the company go elsewhere.
- WaSP's one-stop bug report stall.
- Opera
- Bugzilla for Mozilla
- Netscape
- Microsoft ... Funny, I can't find it either. The irony is thick.
Get Yours
Of course you need to have the browsers to watch your valid CSS fail in them. By the way, did you know you can only run one IE PC on your OS? That's right. Yes, it made me happy to learn that too.
- Evolt Browser Archive. Bless these people for making your life easier.
- Peter-Paul Koch's Many Names Of Netscape. Because you'll need to know.