Why Does Netscape suck?

[Coderifous]

I'm a perl programmer, but I routinely have to mess with Javascript. My goal is ( as always ) to have the same ( or atleast similar ) results on both IE and Netscape.

In general, I am able to get results using IE much easier than I am with Netscape. Even with simple stuff. What is it with Netscape that precludes it from parsing JS half as well as IE? I don't believe that IE is able to read my mind and just know what I want to see happen, but I swear that's what's happening.

I have a page with seven layers ( <div> content </div> )
and I set their style attribute to 'hidden' ( yes, each <div> has a unique ID, and I set their positions to absolute with in the style parameter ). In IE, it's beautiful, you see nothing. In Netscape, voila! All but the first div are visible. What the hell?

I have problems like this all the time. Why doesn't someone decide on a standardized browser? I swear - it would be much easier.

OK, I'm done ranting. Thanks guys.

--Jim

 

[starway]

gerrygerry,
Writing the same code three times for the three major browsers is the most stupid thing one can do.

I stand for the code written once that works everywhere. By &quot;everywhere&quot; I mean IE5+ (probably IE4 also, but not necessarily), Opera 6 (and even Opera 5), Gecko-based browsers. I cannot test Konqueror as it is Linux-only and I don't have it right now, so it's not included. Browser versions for Mac should show the same functionality (except well-known incompatibility issues), but it is also good to test them if you have a chance.

You can see that NN4.x is not in the list, but it doesn't mean that I forgot about it. In most cases it is possible to get the same functionality in it. Also, from my experience, the things that can't be done in it (or extremely hard to do), are not needed at all! As long as NN4.x is still in use, you have to keep in mind what it's users will tell you.

It also doesn't matter what percent of users represent some browser. This is one of excuses I talked about. I even don't talk about the fact that your statistics if for US, and that US is not the entire world.

Did you ever hear about Mozilla/Netscape6? Yes, those Gecko-based browsers I mentioned above. If not, you stayed back in year 1999 or 2000.

All this was said 1000 times already and I don't want to continue saying it again and again.

>>Allowing Opera to be a concern only contributes to the dissemination of coding variations and varying standards.
First of all, I never advertised Opera as The-One-And-Only (as you do about IE), but sayed what it is by my opinion. This opinion is based on more than 2 years of extensive daily use.
I recommend you to read something from independent sources about standards and their support, and then revise what you said.

I see that you enjoy making IE a standard de-facto by force. All I can say that it will not happen because there will always be the ones who respect the user's right for free choice.

 

[UNIMENT]

One of the things about versions of Netscape before 6 that makes me maddest is the inability to retrieve the HTML of an element. Try this:
[COLOR=aa0000]

<form><input /></form>
<script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;>
alert(document);
alert(document.forms[0][0]);
</script>

[/color]
If you tested the above code in Netscape 4, you'd first get an alert box alerting you of an empty string (We've all tried it). The second alert box that appears, however, will alert this:[COLOR=aa0000]

<input type=&quot;text&quot; size=20&quot; maxlength=-1&quot;>

[/color]
[sic]. Why the heck does it allow you to retrieve the HTML of a form element but not the [COLOR=aa0000]

document

[/color]??? What kind of person thought that up?

Here's a list of things that I think are truly disappointing in Netscape 4:
1. No way to retrieve innerHTML other than for form elements
2. No way to attach event handlers to non-layers and non-links
3. [COLOR=aa0000]

onmousedown

[/color] and [COLOR=aa0000]

onmouseup

[/color] are by default not captured on layers.
4. Inability to capture any events on <ilayer>'s
5. Inability to [COLOR=aa0000]

document.write()

[/color] to an <ilayer> without seriously screwing up the page
6. No equivalent for [COLOR=aa0000]

style.display

[/color]
7. Stiff refusal to re-render the page
8. Practical impossibility of manually telling the browser to re-render (other than by reloading)
9. Changes to stylesheets to not take effect unless the page is re-rendered (a practical impossibility).
10. Inability to access a statically positioned <div>'s

If I thought hard enough, I could probably go on and on. Either way though, the damage has been done -- No matter how much you fuss and whine about how bad it was, Netscape 4 is out there, making web developers around the world tear out their hair and scream during the day and go to bed in the night as disappointed and defeated people.

And once in a while, Internet Explorer makes me angry too -- no [COLOR=aa0000]

.toSource()

[/color] method, no [COLOR=aa0000]

.watch()

[/color] and [COLOR=aa0000]

.unwatch()

[/color] methods, and their [COLOR=aa0000]

setTimeout()

[/color] method doesn't allow you to pass parameters to the called function (requiring you to do a lot of string concatenation -- and making objects global -- instead). However, the things that IE makes me mad about are generally trivial compared to the disappointments of Netscape 4. I guess there are two choices: Code for all browsers and be terribly disgusted, code for only standards-compliant browsers (that doesn't include Opera as far as the DOM goes) and be only moderately happy, or go out and make your own language and wait for your aching brain to realize that unless you're Bill Gates, your language won't get anywhere no matter how good it is.

- UNIMENT

 

[WhiteTiger]

To put it simply...just make it not work in netscape. But, I do support Geko, Opera, etc...as far as I've seen, I've been to a lot of 'IE' sites on linux, w/ Konquorer and have had no problem. Sign of great development. Regards,
Anthny

 

[Coderifous]

Ahhh.. my work is done here.

 

[Guest_imported]

Agree with you. Sell company to one of the bigger guys or nuke it.