Firefox vs. Explorer

[supernatural_247]

I had started a previous thread entitled "What is so good about Firefox?" and it has evoloved into a debate over which browser is the way to go and why.

Feel free to post your opinions here.

Cheers,
Tim

[premtech]

Bacicaly it's not up to us to decide which is the best browser....Thats up to the surfer..It is our job as web designers to develop sites that work in both Firefox and IE (and others). If that makes our job harder then so be it. We have to produce products based on consumer needs not what we think.
After all it is our clients proffits and money we are talking about here, if their site is turning away customes because it breaks apart and dosen't work in the browser the customer is using, then what does that say about our interest for our clients. This is why we need a regulated standard. That way if you preferr IE use it, but at least you will know that you site will display exactly the same way in other browsers. The only thing stopping this happening is Greed, Egos and stubborness. Until web designers and browser developers realiase there has to be compromise we will forever and a day be fighting the browser wars.

[supernatural_247]

Originally Posted by premtech

Until web designers and browser developers realiase there has to be compromise we will forever and a day be fighting the browser wars.

yup. see, if you're a simple web designer designing with static code, you're bound to encounter less browser problems than when you're dealing with more complex code. And there can never be set standards due to the amount of diversity. It's like trying to make everyone in the world learn english (which, ironically, happens to be the main language of the www). So far, there is no resolution as you have indies like me fighting standardization and folks like you promoting it... there really ought to have been one browser but then that would have given too much control to the minds behind it... the debate goes on...

[ADAM Web Design]

Originally Posted by premtech

It is our job as web designers to develop sites that work in both Firefox and IE (and others). If that makes our job harder then so be it. We have to produce products based on consumer needs not what we think.

There has always been an inconsistency in this argument based on the now-antiquated notion that the Internet is strictly an informational medium. The fact is that it's not anymore. It's a commercial medium, an entertainment medium, a communications medium, as well as many other media.

So what's your point, Adam?

The point is that the whole argument of cross-browser compatibility stems back to the days when the Internet actually was an informational medium only. At that point, a browser's "job" was to correctly interpret the code that generated that information.

But lo and behold, people began to discover that the Internet could be used as a commercial tool, and began to grow businesses online. Some of them really took off, the dotbomb era came and went, and we found that businesses were still trying to sell products to their customers.

All of you remember the old adage, "you can't please everyone all of the time." The concept of "web standards" is code that pleases all of the browsers all of the time. But what about the people who use those browsers? Do we take away features from our websites that would be useful to those people (i.e. the customers) just so that we can adhere to "standards" set by people who aren't going to buy our products and services anyway?

Here's an example: a few months ago, I designed a site that was optimized for 1024x768 resolution. And right away, I can hear the reaction from some of you: "why would you do that? Why wouldn't you design for the majority of users, who have 800x600 screen resolution?" Because in this case, the vast majority of the client's customers (the engineering community) had 1024x768 or higher screen resolution, as did everyone in the offices of the company. So, not only to please the client but the client's clients as well, I designed for 1024x768 and put a 543K background image in, because most of said engineers had broadband connections. Again, build for your target market.

The client's customers dictated the standard, and I coded to that standard. And you know what? The site's making money for my client hand over fist.

Another example is in my occasional use of inline frames. For the most part, I think frames in general are a pretty dumb concept, but iframes can be useful for presenting content from external sites within the framework of a customer's site. For example, for my retail clients I'll often iframe the manufacturer's page for a product from within the retail client's site. That way, they can get additional manufacturer info without actually leaving my client's site.

Pretty useful, right? I think so. But in XHTML Strict, it's not allowed. I've often gotten around issues like this by coding the iframe within a Javascript, which is "acceptable" by the "web standards people", even though JScript isn't enabled on all browsers.

The W3C should not be the sole arbiters of standards for the web. The end users of the website should ultimately have the final say, based on their activity within the website, when it comes to standards.

I can't speak for anyone else, but if I had to choose between the W3C and money for my clients, I'd say "to heck with the W3C".

Another way I look at it is by comparing it to the software industry, because even though sites require a browser to interpret them, we are doing some form of programming to get them going. Anyway, back to the software issue.

Most pieces of software are coded for Windows, whether it be 3.1, 2003 SBE, or any and all points in between. Do we go chewing out the software developers because the latest version of their groundbreaking accounting software or game or productivity pack isn't coded for Linux? Is there a group that is arbitrarily appointed to set "OS Standards" and force all the operating systems to play nicely? Or better yet, is there a "Word Processing Standards" committee, or a "Spreadsheet Standards" committee? It would be nice if there were, but let's face it, that ain't gonna happen. And we accept this. So why is it so difficult for the world to accept that browsers operate on basically the same principle?

In other words, I don't have a problem with "standards". I simply have a problem with the blind sheep-like following of the people who set the standards as broad, sweeping guidelines without any idea of, or regard for, what the individual end user may want.