Experimenting
Jun 10th, 2009 by Brian Robertson
UPDATE!
Ok, it didn’t take long to figure this one out — why my page (and others) appear to have gone whacky. If you are looking at this site and find that the blog is “exploded” with items in wrong places or if you scroll down the right hand column and see RELATED ARTICLES with noting below it, BUT you see a number of related pages at the bottom of the page, you’re using Internet Exploder Explorer.
Rather than conform to standards common on the Net, Microsoft (and I know this is tough to imagine) has been changing their browser in hopes of nudging the coding market their way. It isn’t working. I looked at my various sites through Firefox, which I love, and even the new Google Chrome, which I like a lot except the opening page design but is jaw dropping in its speed. The results? In everything except IE, the sites look perfectly wonderful.
I know IE ships with Windows which is why it has a huge audience share, although on my own site it’s a distant 2nd at best. I know we all have a comfort zone on our computer, but I really would encourage you to try Firefox or, if you want another type of view, Google Chrome. I’d suggest Firefox because, frankly, I’m not so sure what’s behind Google sometimes in terms of privacy, but I base that on a few of the features and some of their other actions and could be mildly incorrect.
Anyway, be brave. Try Firefox and browse more quickly and safely. It’s a snap to install. Even for me.
Blessings,
Brian
Technorati Tags: internet exploder, internet explorer, IE, firefox, google chrome
Firefox is a great tool and easy to enhance with addons.
It will work out great if you surf the web, except if you go and visit those Microsoft pages.
And what would we do if there was always perferction in life. Might be boring and stop us from thinking about it
Just some extra added validation. I switched to FireFox two years ago after IE7 completely crashed my new (at the time) laptop.
I was a little hesitant to try a new browser, but I’ve been using nothing but Firefox since and it’s awesome.
Just adding my $.02
Hi Brian,
I’m a software developer who does a fair amount of web developement. There are a number of sites documenting the CSS support offered by the different browsers in a very nitty-gritty, feature-by-feature basis. On those sites you can see that FireFox does an excellent job of CSS and HTML DOM compliance, but there are areas that they are not compliant also. In some of those areas, IE is standards-compliant, but FireFox is not. Currently no browser is fully standards-compliant, but IE7 is roughly equal with the versions of FireFox released around the same time.
Several times I have seen a page render well on FireFox and poorly on IE7, and other developers were grousing about IE7’s poor compatibility. But then when I looked for the source of the problem, the page had been written to support FireFox which did not support the W3 standards, and IE did. It seems that many people have a knee-jerk reaction that differences between IE and FireFox’s rendering of a site are always because IE is crap and FireFox is great.
I’m concerned by the willingness to judge Microsoft’s motives as “make people do things our way.” Most of the W3 standards were created as proprietary extensions in early versions of Netscape or IE, then the standards committees decided which way would be “standard” (or some compromise between the two). Many sites were written to support Microsoft’s browser after Netscape lost the browser war. One of the reasons MS is slow to reach full compliance is that they don’t want to break a bunch of nonstandard old websites. I guess we could argue that since IE7 supports most of those old sites, yet renders your blog very well (almost identical to FireFox), they’ve done a good job.
I think it’s great that we have a wide variety of choices in software. FireFox especially has done a great job and is rightfully popular because of that. I think everyone should try FireFox, and Chrome if they’re interested. But you shouldn’t compare an ancient browser like IE6 with FireFox (I assume that’s what happened since the site renders nicely in IE7), and although I don’t think Microsoft’s motives are more pure than any other corporation, I’m not comfortable with the apparent judgement of their intentions.
Hopefully nobody gets the idea that I’m offended by your post - I just felt the issue could use some more balanced discussion.
I didn’t come across any problems using IE8 (right now I’m using Opera), but I haven’t eplored the site too extensively. Have you tried the problematic pages in IE8’s compatibility mode? IE8 has the option to visit “older” sites in this mode in order to see them correctly. If the pages worked in earlier versions of IE, they should work in compatibility mode too.
@Brian
Have you looked into Jakob Lorber yet. His works aren’t too well known yet in America. maybe worth a good mention, most definately worth a study.
Hudson
I just switched over to Firefox. What I did not know is that it would take over all my site (is the word) management. The larger medical facilities I network with do not accept Firefox and it is a hassle to switch back and forth. I am sure there is way around this but I don’t know it. Anyway, I am enjoying Firefox and your site looks fine on it.
Haven’t seen any new posts in a while. I miss reading this blog
Every IE has its own compatibility issue. It’s getting to the point that casual browsing is often interrupted because of an error in CSS code. It’s just Microsoft’s way of saying, we’re Microsoft, we can do anything.
Hi - I just came upon your site from a Dogpile search looking for information on Christian meditation tools. Glad I did. I do use Firefox. My website show up weird on some MS programs, fine on others. I noticed you are not W3 registered (right term?). I have only just learned of it. Ran my site through it - wow, I have a lot to improve! HA. I will keep coming back. I have a blog on my life as a very worldly engaged hermit (not really an oxymoron). It is http://blessedsilence.wordpress.com. I am currently using the same template. I find it very relaxing. Thanks. I will be back.
Brian,
I hope all is well. There hasn’t been a new post on this site in a long while. I always enjoy reading your words. Again, I hope all is well.