web browsers

[monsieurjohn]

uh you should really get that folder viewing problem fixed

 

[Justin Case]

the particular one i've noticed is my school's student web site...

http://hereandnow.northwestern.edu

open in IE and then opera - everything is left-aligned in IE and centered in opera. that's obviously no big deal, but it makes me wonder whenever i'm using opera if the page is displaying as intended or not

Well, if you have a quick look at the source code, the entire content is wrapped inside <center> </center> tags. I really wonder what the page designer was thinking, he gives it an XHTML 1.0 Transitional doctype and uses tables stuck with old, deprecated tags like he was using HTML 3.2!! So, actually, IE is doing wrong. And even "more actually", IE isn't. There simply is no <center> tag at all in XHTML.

when i go to "new posts" and then view one of them and then go back (with the back button), in IE the page is updated with which ones i've visited. opera still shows them as new

i also visit a private asp-based forum and it doesn't update the forum listing after i post in a thread, it continues to show the thread as it was before i posted. in fact, when i go back to that page after a few hours away it tends to pull from the cache instead of asking me to log in again, still has the unupdated forum listings, etc

Go to Preferences and configure Opera not to cache pages. Geez.
Pages in the Back button are always cached though. That's the point too. IE allows pages to decide if they want their pages cached or not. Imagine being on dialup, for instance, and you just loaded a page with 500 kB of text and pictures, and then click a link on it. Then you need to go back to the page to click another link - and when you go back, you must reload the entire page, just due to IE not giving a crap in its users.
You can always hit Reload, or press F5 or Ctrl+R, or do a mouse gesture to reload the current page.

since my friend wrote that one i'm willing to stick to IE for it, since it clearly works better. but i wish opera would behave more like IE for alien soup and for the site linked above, if only just to put my mind at ease

IE does certainly not "clearly work better". IE has barely no features at all, surfing the web is so much more comfortable with Opera. IE is also extremely slow, especially when rendering tables. You are now telling that you don't want to use Opera because your friend is too stupid to even have a look in the Preferences section or in the Help section to easily find a solution to his problem, but instead just immediately giving a "crap stamp" to the browser due to his very low intelligence level.

 

[monsieurjohn]

i meant "clearly works better" for that site

i'll try turning the cache off though

 

[Diesel]

I think the only place that I've seen the kind of elitism (name calling, condescending, placing blame on others, etc.) that Justin Case is exhibiting is among Mac users.

The fact is that more than 90% of the world uses IE. You can't blame site designers for designing their sites specifically for IE, or only making sure their code lives up to IE "standards" when that IS their target audience. In many cases, it's just more cost efficient for companies to make sure their sites are "just good enough" than it is to ensure that they adhere strictly to standards.

 

[monsieurjohn]

ohh, that's why it sounded familiar. it *is* like mac users! :lol::lol:

 

[Justin Case]

i meant "clearly works better" for that site

i'll try turning the cache off though

Pages that look good only in IE generally have really crappy coding.

See, Diesel, I did it again? I said "crappy coding". Such a pity I'm right.

 

[monsieurjohn]

i bet there are plenty of sites out there with crappy coding, including plenty i would like to see displayed as intended

 

[Alien]

Justin Case: If you wished to make a point and bring attention to inaccuracies you can do so without calling people's posts stupid and such dribble (I let it go at one occurance but it's continued).

I'd recommend you cool it in the future if you want to stay a member here. You clearly have a brain, you can use it to find other ways to debate without name-calling. It only weakens your argument dramatically.

 

[Alien]

...poll re-opened...

The timeout was set way too low!

 

[monsieurjohn]

oh and i just noticed how badly you misread my post above, when you quoted me and said something about my friend and a "cramp stamp" (????)

my friend WROTE a site that opera runs WRONG. and there's no reason my friend should have to rewrite an otherwise perfectly functional site. hope that clarifies matters.

 

[Justin Case]

Monsieurjohn,
I would like to see your friend's site. Do you have the link?

 

[monsieurjohn]

as i said (i think), it's a private forum site, so in short no. but that's not exactly the point. the drop-down menus on alien soup also don't display correctly... they fall behind the google ads and one of the ones in the very top right breaks apart. in a site designed with aesthetics very much in mind, that's an unacceptable deviation from the designer's intended vision

IMHO.

so in summary, i bounce back and forth between opera and IE. i prefer opera for casual surfing but i always feel like pages *might* not display right, and there are a few sites i have to use IE for. and with that i think i'm done posting in this thread... yeah.

 

[moonsee]

yeesh
calm down people
personal preference is allowed....
just because you like something doesnt mean EVERYONE has to
i've used pretty much every browser noted in this thread, and I prefer IE ...

 

[HIQ]

I've followed your discussion here from the side, and I'm not coming to join it.

I'm just saying that I like and use Opera. That's my personal opinion about myself.

 

[Justin Case]

as i said (i think), it's a private forum site, so in short no. but that's not exactly the point. the drop-down menus on alien soup also don't display correctly... they fall behind the google ads and one of the ones in the very top right breaks apart. in a site designed with aesthetics very much in mind, that's an unacceptable deviation from the designer's intended vision

IMHO.

so in summary, i bounce back and forth between opera and IE. i prefer opera for casual surfing but i always feel like pages *might* not display right, and there are a few sites i have to use IE for. and with that i think i'm done posting in this thread... yeah.

It's true, Opera does not support z-indexes on iframes. Looks like it treats iframes as windows elements. If you wish to get an improvement to the issue, please contact the Opera staff at www.opera.com.

I am not saying that everyone should be using Opera. I am merely proving some statements about Opera to be wrong. Statements that are wrong. If you can't post the link John, not then. But could you please do a favour and ask this guy if he has ever heard about standards?

 

[Justin Case]

P.S. The first stable (non-beta) version of Opera 7.50 was released not long ago.

 

[Diesel]

But could you please do a favour and ask this guy if he has ever heard about standards?

Man, you're being awfully critical of a site you've never seen.

I'll state again... since more than 90% of typical users are using IE (current company excluded, since I don't think any of us are "typical users"), designers are often forced to skip standards in favor of making pages render "properly" in IE.
IOW, they have to make it look right for the majority of the people who will be viewing it. If that means not adhering to "standards", then you really can't fault them. They have to code it based on their target audience, and the tools the audience will be using to view it.

Let's break the situation down, and take a typical user.
This user wants to view 10 web sites. Two sites don't necessarily adhere to standards. 8 of the sites look fine in Opera, but the two that don't adhere to standards look a little off. All of the sites render in IE "according to the designer's vision".
If I'm a user who wants to see what the designer intended, I do one of two things at this point:
1) View the site in IE.
2) Write the developers of Opera and wait for them to update the program.

It's really not a tough decision for the typical end user, who only wants to view the page correctly. On one hand, they can view the page now with no further interaction. On the other, they have to actually compose a fairly technical email to convey the problem to the Opera team, and then they have to wait, meaning they still can't view the page as intended.

Opera is a very good piece of software, but until site designers start coding pages specifically for it the way they have for IE, it will never be as popular.

 

[Justin Case]

Let's break the situation down, and take a typical user.
This user wants to view 10 web sites. Two sites don't necessarily adhere to standards. 8 of the sites look fine in Opera, but the two that don't adhere to standards look a little off. All of the sites render in IE "according to the designer's vision".
If I'm a user who wants to see what the designer intended, I do one of two things at this point:
1) View the site in IE.
2) Write the developers of Opera and wait for them to update the program.

aaaaahhhhhhh

9/10 of all pages that only look good in IE have serious coding errors. Wrongly nested tags, like <b><i>Text</b></i> (simple example only), block level and inline elements mixed completely wrong, unitless and wrong syntax CSS, missing closing tags, etc, etc. Such errors can be fixed at once by running the page through a validator.

There are, of course, cases where you are attempting to use modern standards compliant code that IE has never even heard of. For most cases, hacks have already been invented. Just search webmaster related forums and you'll get something. But I don't think there's ever a case where you need to choose, whether to support Mozilla and Opera, or IE. Meaning that you support IE only is equal to sloppy code. And you're even saying you should write to the Opera developers and tell them to start supporting your wrongly nested, deprecated sloppy code!?

 

[Diesel]

Clearly, there's no explaining this in a reasonable manner to you, so I'll stop trying. No sense in putting forth the effort when someone just refuses to understand the point being made.
:rolleyes:

 

[Justin Case]

I understood your point pretty well and tried to break it down. As I can't see the code of the page, I assume it uses sloppy coding that only IE is willing to show the way you want. That is almost the only reason to a page that only looks good in IE. Unless it uses a lot of IE-specific filters and JavaScript.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that IE-only pages should be reported to Opera so that the Opera browser could be "fixed". As I already said, these IE-only pages have crap code and it's the pages that should be fixed, not the browser.