[thelist] Browser and standards question

Frank lists at frankmarion.com
Thu Jul 31 06:40:38 CDT 2003


At 07:35 PM 2003-07-30 -0700, you wrote:
>So, which Mac browser is the least buggy? And of the least buggy browser, 
>is there somewhere where I can read (in plain English) what the bugs I'm 
>likely to encounter (nothing too obscure, in other words) are? Like 
>"such-and-such browser screws up this css standard, so your results are 
>likely to look like this ugly example" but no discussions that sound like 
>"how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin"-type bugs.


Diane,

My experience is that no browser is flawless, and it's a fact of life that 
all will need work-arounds at some point. That being said, on the Mac side, 
I would say that Mozilla, it's derivatives, and Safari are excellent 
browsers. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Moz and Safari mimicked 
each other.  And Safari seems to be getting even better, quickly and regularly.

The counter to this is that (Mac) IE --by relative comparison-- does a poor 
job of handling CSS (and Javascript! Grr!).  It's my experience that when 
building standard compliant documents, that inevitably IE (both Mac and PC) 
will bullocks the  job up, and require about 60% of the development time to 
equalize. I'd like to say that this observation a prejudice against MS's 
products, but it's not. It's the *cause* of my prejudice.

[Tangent - I'll probably owe a tip for this]
I'm finding that open-source/small developer products seem to have the 
tendency to adhere to standards better than large companies, possibly 
because they are developed by developers on their own time. Most good 
developers seem to share certain character traits, such as a zeal for 
meeting standards as a means to a good reputation, a love of good products 
as an art form, and the challenge of doing things right for the simple 
satisfaction of having it done right.

Further, most probably don't have marketers/managers breathing down their 
neck shouting "Deliver! Time to Market! "Good enough' is good enough! Ship 
now, fix the flaws later!"

My observations/opinions.


--
Frank Marion     lists at frankmarion.com      Keep the signal high.  



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