[UPHPU] Swift: a web browser for Windows

[Mac Newbold]

Today at 11:23am, Wade Preston Shearer said:

> The company making the product is not the reason that it is junk. It is junk 
> because of (1) bad design decisions by it's developers, (2) proprietary 
> commands and syntax, (3) blatant disregard for industry standards, and (4) 
> blatant apathy because of their monopoly for improving/updating it.

I second all of these.

> How many of your clients are using MSIE 7? It is going to be a _long_ time 
> before it's users base is high enough that it's old issues are no longer 
> issues.

Well, the rumor I've heard, unfortunately, is that they're going to force 
MSIE7 on everyone at once as a high-priority critical update. So anyone 
who updates their windows box will probably get it forced down their 
throat, broken (likely) or not (near impossible).

>> I know I will probably get lynched because I like a Microsoft product but I 
>> want to know what is broken?
>
> You must not do web development if you have to ask what's broken in MSIE. I 
> don't mean to be rude, but it is painfully obvious when attempting to render 
> the most basic code.
>
> Some of the most notorious (that I deal with on a daily basis):
> .	box model problem
> .	lack of translucency support
> .	form elements rendered on the OS level
> .	non-standard margins and spacing
> 	(examples include headers and paragraphs)
> .	lack of support of many basic CSS features (such
> 	as auto margins and min/max heights)
> .	lack of support for :hover on anything besides anchors
> .	poor style inheritance
> .	default margins on lists are all messed up
> .	major security issues since it is not a stand alone
> 	application (tied into the OS)
> .	distance and size calculation (fonts, absolute positioning,
> 	widths and heights) bugs and inconsistencies
> .	lack of support for advanced CSS selectors
>
> If every other main stream browser supports these features or handles these 
> correctly (correct being defined as the accepted industry standard) and has 
> done so for years and years and MSIE does not, then it is a piece of junk.

That's a great list, Wade.

Anyone who develops web sites and cares how they look on the "major 
browsers" (in which I include MSIE (6), Mozilla/Firefox (on Win/*nix/Mac), 
and Safari) will quickly find many differences in the way even the 
simplest site renders. Firefox and Safari are usually very close in how 
they render things, other than the pretty Aqua buttons, which is exactly 
why we have standards. MSIE is a different story most of the time.

For those who are visual learners, allow me to present a few 
illustrations. First, take a look at this legend:

http://www.visibone.com/products/bbk16-_850.jpg

Note carefully that the Purple borders, shadings, and icons indicate 
things that MSIE does not support, that only MSIE supports, or that are 
bugs etc. in MSIE. Then take a look at this page about HTML tags:

http://www.visibone.com/products/bbk4-5_850.jpg

Look around at all the purple areas, where MSIE is different than the 
rest, even on some relatively common tags. Note that this doesn't include 
differences due to the broken box model MSIE uses. Now, Here's a page 
about CSS:

http://www.visibone.com/products/bbk6-7_850.jpg

This one has even more purple than the HTML one. And the same is true on 
the next page, about DOM elements and properties and methods:

http://www.visibone.com/products/bbk12-13_850.jpg

Those are great examples of where MSIE is deviating from the standard. 
Their "embrace and extend" philosophy turns out to mean, in practice, that 
they pretend to implement a standard, but frequently do it 
differently/incorrectly, whether accidental or malicious. Then they 
"extend" by implementing a bunch of non-standard things, which often 
conflict, duplicate, or are redundant with the standards, and encourage 
people to use them, making it seem like it is the standards-compliant 
browsers that are broken.

Take a look at the changes being made in MSIE 7 compared to MSIE 6. Try 
and find more than two that aren't just fixing their own bugs or playing 
catch-up with the other, more standards-compliant browsers. Sure, it's 
probably a good thing that MSIE 7 will have alpha-transparency for PNGs, 
and tabbed browsing, but everyone else has been doing it for years. Yes, 
years, plural. What's really disappointing is MS's apathy, as Wade 
mentioned, and how slow they are to catch up to reality. Of course, we 
could go on and on, since Vista is doing about the same thing for 
Operating Systems as MSIE 7 is doing for web browsers.

I don't ever want to "bash" anything, except when I feel it is a fair and 
true statement. So if I'm coming across as a MS-basher, it's just me 
saying that I think their products are inferior, and I'm frustrated by the 
fact that their monopoly allows them to push them on so many people who 
don't know that there's better, cheaper, stuff out there they could be 
supporting instead.

Mac

--
Mac Newbold		MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC
mac at macnewbold.com	http://www.macnewbold.com/