Navigation and Browser Wars

[Dennis D.]

FrontPage 2002:

I like FrontPage site management tools. They are probably the single best
reason for using the product.

Hate the browser wars. The website is being rewriting to get most of the
inline CSS into stylesheets, and we're finding ourselves back into the
browser wars again. Mozilla doesn't seem to play well with Microsoft as well
as it used to. What is the current best strategy(s) for solving browser
incompatibilities? Used to be that a sniffer was used and basically two or
three separate versions of the site had to be written. Is that still the
case?

Here's one irking problem:
Mozilla does not word wrap in a column. It stretches the column instead of
breaking the string. This is a problem for the FrontPage navigation system.
A navigation lin bar object that should look like:
xxxx | xxxx | xxxx | xxxx
xxxx | xxxx | xxxx
turns out like xxxx | xxxx | xxxx | xxxxx | xxxx | xxxx | xxxx

It extends past the column end and into the next column. Cell padding and
paragraph margins, contained in a stylesheet, have no affect. So how do you
get the navigation link bars to wrap around inside the column in Mozilla?

Is there a text or website devoted to dealing with browser incompatibilities
using particularly CSS and HTML?

#2: Wanting to get something close to standard XHTML and CSS, while solving
the above problems we were looking at TopStyle Pro. Any recommendations for
that particular task of keeping the HTML and CSS separate and maintaining
browser compatibility in the code?

Thanks,

 

[Ronx]

Don't use that style of Navigation.
Mozilla gets it right, IE and FrontPage display the bar incorrectly.
The <nobr> tags and &nbsp; characters inserted in the nav. bar should
prevent the navigation bar from wrapping at any point in its length, however
IE incorrectly allows the line to wrap on the pipe ( | ) character.

Also note that, with reference to your wish to use XHTML standard code,
<nobr> is "illegal" HTML in HTML4, and XHTML, so for standards coding do not
use any FrontPage navigation components.

If your HTML and CSS follows the W3C recommendations there should be few
problems with cross browser compatibility, but the most popular browser does
not render pages strictly according to those recommendations.

 

[Kevin Spencer]

As a side note, everybody hates the browser wars, and thankfully, they are
going away. The latest information from Microsoft regarding IE7 is that it
will come a lot closer (but not quite all the way yet) to the W3C standards,
particularly in support for CSS. I believe it will also come much closer to
the other HTML standards. Microsoft is on a big standards kick these days.

The browser wars were an outgrowth of the "wild west" days of the WWW, when
standards simply did not exist. Every browser manufacturer wanted their
browser to have the best do-hickeys and gizmos, so that everyone would use
them. Unfortunately, most of these do-hickeys and gizmos would not be
supported by other browser manufacturers, in an effort to discourage people
from using the other browsers. Netscape layers and IE ActiveX Controls come
to mind.

Fortunately, standards organizations were formed, and standardization began
to make things more civilised. It has taken awhile for these standards to
take hold, and IE 6 has been around for far too long now, and seems to be
(for the most part) the last of the browsers that fails to live up to the
standards as well as the rest.

I should mention that these standards do not preclude any browser from
adding additional features that are not part of the standards, and most of
the current flock do have such features. In fact, at least in the case of
IE, which is a central part of the Windows UI, this is absolutely necessary.
However, by having these standards, HTML and XHMTL developers can count on a
core set of markup that will behave in almost exactly the same way in all
browsers. If HTML and XHTML developers stick to only the W3C standard DOM,
they will have a much easier time of it.

Then we can all concentrate on the more important things in life! Tom Pepper
will have more time to play with Casey. Dave Berry can write more. Stefan
can ENJOY life more. Tom Rowe can spend more time in the newsgroups than
anyone else again! And the rest of us, well, we can do whatever it is that
we prefer to do when we're not testing our HTML in different browsers!

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
A watched clock never boils.

 

[Dennis D.]

Ever think of collaborating over the net and building an editor with .net?
Can't think of anyone more qualified.

From a user perspective, the current list of authoring tools is a forest
with trees that are missing various DNA sequences. They all fall short, and
generally need to be recombined to get the job done.

Of course, it would be daunting to build a 'be all' editor, but cutting down
the number of tools that are needed to build and maintain a site would help.
You would think that Macromedia products, with their high cost and learning
curve, would be an author's dream, but instead they fall far short of being
both intuitive and functional.

The availability of standards makes the requirements simpler rather than
more complex. I would think it's time for a product that does the task of
providing small and medium businesses with the intuition and functionality
required to do basic and advanced site development in a compact environment.

Thanks Kevin.

D2

 

[JoeM]

I find that you can write a website and it will display differently in, FF
IE Opera Netscape

 

[Dennis D.]

No kidding! Thanks to the browser wars. I started out about the time the
browsers were coming out, and fought the browsers wars. The people who got
it closest to right were the coders. The Microsoft homepage was 5 pages of
code, beginning with a top of the line browser sniffer. The situation never
got better. The whole idea of putting up a site was to deliver content, but
that was co-opted by code writing in a big way.

I thought it would get better with W3C recommendations, but little changed.
The wars continued with differences in how the browsers handled CSS and
HTML, and then XHTML, and I think it's still that way today.

Long ago I figured the XML (XHTML) technologies were the way to go because
technology was moving in that direction. I should have stayed with it. At
any rate, I'm scrubbing my work and going back to the XML technology
standards (XML, XHTML, XSL-XSLT ...). I'll treat it as a project, and give
it some timelines. At least the work will show measurable progress in a
forward direction.
<----------------------------------------------------------->

 

[JoeM]

What I do when I creat a site is,
First see what is the biggest browser coming into the site, in the case of
all my site IE ranks 95%-99%, so I first code for IE.
Second I see which browser comes in second place and tweak it for the
browser.
(This is not using a sniffer to create 2 different pages)
That covers me for about 98% of all browers coming into the site.
I do use alot of Active X controls(not home grown), and some IE only code.
But I try to make sure it does not hurt the other users, just makes my site
look better if you use IE. I also mention on my sites that the site is
designed around IE.
Just check your traffic and go from there.

 

[Rabia]

would u like to tell me DNA ...............what is difference bet damain name
& DNA ............how we use DNA????????????????

 

[Kevin Spencer]

would u like to tell me DNA ...............what is difference bet damain

name
& DNA ............how we use DNA????????????????

Did you mean "domain name?"

A domain name is a human-readable representation of an IP address, a
4-octect number that uniquely identifies the location of a network computer
in a TCP/IP network.

********************************

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic
instructions specifying the biological development of all cellular forms of
life (and most viruses). DNA is a long polymer of nucleotides and encodes
the sequence of the amino acid residues in proteins using the genetic code,
a triplet code of nucleotides.

In complex cells (eukaryotes), such as those from plants, animals, fungi and
protists, most of the DNA is located in the cell nucleus. By contrast, in
simpler cells (prokaryotes) such as bacteria, DNA is not separated from the
cytoplasm by a nuclear envelope. The energy-generating organelles known as
chloroplasts and mitochondria also carry DNA.

DNA is often referred to as the molecule of heredity as it is responsible
for the genetic propagation of most inherited traits. These traits can range
from hair colour to disease susceptibility. During cell division, DNA is
replicated and can be transmitted to offspring during reproduction. Lineage
studies can be done based on the facts that the DNA in mitochondria
(mitochondrial DNA) only comes from the mother, and the male "Y" chromosome
only comes from the father. (Wikipedia.org)

********************************

In fact, the 2 have nothing whatsover to do with each other.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
If you push something hard enough,
it will fall over.
- Fudd's First Law of Opposition

 

[Dennis D.]

Domain Names are used external to the enterprise. They are simply names
(like a family name) given to addresses (like street addresses) on the
Internet. Distributed Network Architecture (DNA) is a Microsoft technology.
It is proprietary, and can be used for both Internet and intranet
applications. They are not related generally.

Web design can be general or specific. You can specialize in graphic arts
for the web. You can specialize in a technology or a language. You can
specialize in machine applications written specifically for computer
systems, or higher level application development. Or you can do it all. You
can be a web developer who develops applications for use over networks.

Microsoft has just committed to a new set of certifications for web
application developers. So here are the links you may want to read:
DNA:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...rver/reskit/en-us/iisbook/c06_windows_dna.asp
Certification:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/default.asp

If that is way over your head, then visit a library and do some 'Getting
Started' research first. Librarians are usually your best resources. It will
probably take you a few weeks to learn the basics you need to write for the
web. Then you will be looking for a place to put your work. Good luck.

Hope that works for you.
Thanks for asking about web design.

Dennis D.,
http://www.dennisys.com/

*What you gonna do with that logic probe; that logic probe; that logic
probe?*