I wasn't actually planning on getting into this thread, but I feel the need to do so to defend and extrapolate on a few things mentioned in this thread.
I'd like to state some things about the concept that "IE is 100% standards compliant". I develop web sites and web applications for a living. This is what I do. I use Opera as my test browser because, believe it or not, its much more compliant with the standards it DOES support than IE ever has been or ever likely WILL be. If you bring up a page using extensive CSS, layers, table-positioned elements - you will OFTEN find that you get the EXACT and EXPECTED results in Opera. You place something somewhere - and it appears correctly. More times than not, IE will be 'off' and you'll find yourself "fixing" the page for IE. IE likes to play by their own rules. Compliance standards are completely ignored by IE. Should a form element show up if there are no form tags? In IE, the form will happily show up. What about failing to close tags? Writing COMPLETELY invalid HTML will render (in some fashion) in IE without penalty (normally not showing up what you planned, but oh well). IE encourages sloppy, badly written web sites, and I cannot subscribe to this being a 'good thing'. 100% Standards Compliance doesn't mean adding your own NON-COMPLIANT functionality to counter the functionality that is SUPPOSED to be compliant. This is what IE loves to do; mostly to try and get their OWN standards as approved instead of playing nice with the other children (remember MARQUEE?). Mozilla is more standards compliant than IE is. Opera just happens to be a helluva lot faster and more robust than Mozilla is. You say that Opera doesn't support a full DOM implementation - and you are correct. I would direct everyone interested to this page: http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/ I would like to say, however, that The Bat FAQ could EASILY be done in compliance with DOM that can be rendered by almost all browsers, including Opera 3.x and greater. I've done several dynamic forms using Javascript in Opera that would all IDENTICAL functionality as the Bat FAQ under IE does. The bottom of the truth is, the product used to create it isn't interested in making standards compliant pages (any more than FrontPage or Word is); they are making IE pages. With 10 million downloads of Opera, they should start thinking about reworking their logic and making it work for everyone. I'm with the rest of the group. If I pull up a search engine result set, and the first page I go to is so badly written that Opera pukes on it, I have 1,334,212 other pages to visit and get what I want. The weekend warrior non-standards web page days are likely to come to an end soon - if AOL implements Netscape as their pack-in browser, these "IE ONLY" sites are going to get a hard slam. As much as I dislike AOL and Netscape, as a devoted and happy Opera user, its going to make my life better (scary thought). A well-written page, following exacting, RATIFIED standards renders well everywhere. That's what standards were DESIGNED to do - level the playing field. Opera is an excellent tool. And the only thing standing in the way of it being useful to all (aside from the blatant product dumping that keeps Microsoft in the lead) is the fact that people aren't writing "web pages"; they are writing "IE pages" - and that doesn't benefit anyone trying to be standards compliant. Popular doesn't mean better. That's my stand on things, folks. I won't dredge it up anymore. Thanks for listening. -- Shane R. Monroe Dark Unicorn Productions http://www.darkunicornproductions.com Wednesday, May 15, 2002, 4:13:31 PM, you wrote: <snip> MDP> I use two browsers - IE and Opera. My statements about Opera come from MDP> using it, working with it and trying to write code to drive it. I MDP> mostly use IE for its 100% observance of the standards. Sad but true. MDP> MS don't often do that and usually invent their own and claim them as MDP> de-facto and, sure enough, look beneath the skin and you find many MS MDP> "additions" to the standards. That said, they're just extensions (and, MDP> okay, gaping security violations, but a firewall keeps you cozy and MDP> snug there) and the proper standards are in there. <snip> ________________________________________________________ Current Ver: 1.60k FAQ : http://faq.thebat.dutaint.com Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives : http://tbudl.thebat.dutaint.com Moderators : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] TBTech List: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Bug Reports: https://bt.ritlabs.com
