netscape

George,

Being from Canada, your news may not have been full of reports from the US DOJ antitrust suit against Microsoft, but among things that I would expect most people who had been paying attention to those reports to know is that Microsoft has deliberately made products like Frontpage output web pages that cannot be displayed by Netscape.
tongue.gif
They put in special codes that Netscape cannot display and special code in Internet Explorer to handle those perverse cases. The obvious inference, even though I do not know just exactly what you are trying to do on your page, is that you are suffering from one of those MS sabotage "bugs".
frown.gif


My strong recommendation is to stick to standard HTML instead of trying to incorporate additional bells and whistles. Remember, too, that not everyone uses Netscape or IE. Palm Pilots are becoming increasingly common. "Text" browsers are still in use, e.g., among blind users, at least some of whom are known personally by me to be knife users. The more your web pages stick fairly closely to standards, the less you have to worry about browser incompatibilities, etc. I strongly recommend to everyone that they check on this sort of thing. Probably the easiest (not necessarily the "best" whatever that might mean) check that you might run would be to go to http://www.cast.org/bobby/ which has a web-based utility to evaluate web pages for accessibility (especially to people with disabilities). Follow their advice -- it's good. You're much better off making your site accessible than adding extraneous fluff. It also makes your pages download and render faster, which most users find rather desirable.
smile.gif


Sermon mode off now.
smile.gif


Paul


------------------
Paul Neubauer
prn@bsu.edu
A tool is, basically, an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself.
 
Um, excuse me, but smoke is blowing
out your, er um, "posterior"...

Those html tags are not to "sabotage"
netscape, but to extend html capabilities
that AREN'T supported in netscape.

So before throwing stones, make sure you
even understand the stones you are throwing.

In case you need some more incentive as to
how downlevel netscape is, search for the Boston SMIL 2.0 spec, and netscapes
compliance with the W3c timing standards.

and then lets back to talking about knives,
rather than throwing them...
smile.gif



 
The problem here is that html is loosely standardized at best. Browser manufacturers are welcome to add "extensions" to html. In fact, this is basically how html grows and evolves. Someone adds an extension, publishes the details of it, that extension becomes popular, other browser manufacturers incorporate it. Microsoft has published all of their "secret" extensions. It's just that Netscape hasn't yet incorporated them. Netscape has published extensions that are implemented by Navigator that have not been implemented in Explorer. And there are other browsers out there too which are in various states of compatibility with the two big ones. The problem is that when Microsoft adds an extension fo Explorer, they roll it out in Frontpage simultaneously and they don't clearly offer you the option of not using those as yet not widely adopted extensions.

In composing a website, you have to ask yourself what your goal is. Is your goal to show off Microsoft's new html extensions, or is it to communicate your information or message. Don't let the media interfer with the message. I strongly urge people, especially businesses, making web sites to check them with as many browsers as possible, with old versions of browsers, under different operating systems, from different ISPs, etc. Unless your goal is to promote a new html extension, you don't want someone's new html-ism to get between you and your audience.



------------------
Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
 
Just to add a little fuel... Netscape was the company who started out with all the weird extensions (while back when MS didn't even have IE yet)...
smile.gif

But seriously, I hope people would stay away from all those extensions. Even on a fast connection (I have one here at my workplace) they are usually just pain in the.... Try to do just regular pages. Give it some fancy pictures, but keep on small too (the file size). Don't make things flash or anything... Man those are annoying.

Hugo (I know, what can I do - the good old days won't come back...
frown.gif
)
 
Something else as previously mentioned,
in this newer (and broadening) world
of PDA's and wireless, all those cool
animated gifs, scrolling baners, etc
just suck up bandwidth, and look horrible.

Dont get caught up in making things look
so cool, that they suck on slower machines,
with limited download speeds.

Or consider your site with two entrances,
one for the "bare bones", and one
thats more splashy.

With respect to downlevel browsers, sometimes
you just have to say ok, I'll check
Ie5.0+, and NetNav X+ and not worry about
every other downlevel browser.
(Mac IE, and Unix/Linux browsers, etc.).

Unless you have alot of time, equipment,
and a test team...
smile.gif


 
Sorry to continue this off-topic subject, but if the only problem were "new" tags, there would be no problem. There has always been an explicit standard for what to do with unrecognized tags -- ignore them. If the only problem were unrecognized tags, Netscape would still render a page -- it just wouldn't have the "enhanced" effect. Microsoft doesn't just use "enhanced" tags, though. They often deliberately do things like fail to close html elements that are obligatorily (according to the standards) supposed to be properly closed, or improperly nest html elements. Considering that it would be just as easy to output a valid format (even with non-standard tags), I cannot credit the idea that MS is simply "enhancing" their own browser. New and enhanced tags are "cool" and the ability to handle invalid html can also be nice, but I don't see any reason other than sabotage for producing wildly invalid html.

Still, my recommendation to stick to relatively standard html is not only predicated on "downlevel browsers" but primarily on "universal access" and on download speed as a friendly gesture. Remember that not everybody has a T1 to their house. Make your pages fast and you go a long way toward encouraging people to come back. I know that I don't often go back to seriously slow sites, even from work, where I have quite a fast connection.

Paul


------------------
Paul Neubauer
prn@bsu.edu
A tool is, basically, an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top