Website works fine in IE but doesnt work in Firefox

[SyK]

Originally Posted by Luke212

A large portion of the market still uses IE6. Its large market share makes it an important standard.

I hope this clears this up.

note: are you telling me you dont adjust your sites to work with IE6? how can you ignore it?

You want to be careful here, it depends a lot which "market" you're talking about...

Last job I was at we officially dropped support for IE6 and stopped specifically adjusting/testing anything for it when our # of visitors using it dropped below 5%, and that was quite a few months back now.

And it was never a standard, which was a huge chunk of the problem. Sure, nobody used to actually adhere to the W3C standards but they had a development and review process and were officially documented.

MS had a completely arbitrary pile of shit which worked based on how they felt on the day, with no guarantee that they wouldn't totally change anything at any moment just because they felt like it.

That is why having an official standard is important. Even it is a pain in the ass during transitions at least you can pray for some stability between them, or even have input to what they are, in many cases.

[GumbyNoTalent]

Originally Posted by Luke212

IE was nearly the sole standard in web browsers a few years ago. I dont think you understand the practical implications of a standard, which involve support and market share.

Um no it wasn't and never was, it is losing market share at a great rate of knots and will continue to do so because the web changes faster than MS changes. You go on your merry way and develop IE6 specific websites for your "clients" I'm sure they will be happy.

[effekt26]

Originally Posted by Luke212

You can ask yourself: What standard does IE6 adhere to? Well the answer is it is its own standard, backed by a large group of users.

The answer is: No Standard.

Whatever IE6 "Adhered" to in IE6 was not even the resembalence of a standard. Actually, IE6 never adhered to anything. What it was is a an application going against standards (already set in place by W3C, long before ms had a browser..the info has already been shown...), to try and implement its own way to render HTML and CSS. and that failed. like i have said. MS Failed by not going standards compliant...and now playing some serious catch up.

Originally Posted by Luke212

IE was nearly the sole standard in web browsers a few years ago. I dont think you understand the practical implications of a standard, which involve support and market share.

You really need to stop referrering to how IE display's HTML and CSS as a standard...because it simply is not, was not, and won't be. Period.

So, say i develop a program that everyone uses and has support...does that then make that a standard? No, sorry, im afraid it does not.

[Luke212]

You really need to stop referrering to how IE display's HTML and CSS as a standard...because it simply is not, was not, and won't be. Period.

So, say i develop a program that everyone uses and has support...does that then make that a standard? No, sorry, im afraid it does not.

dont tell me what to do. If you cant see IE6 as a standard you are myopic, thats all.

[Luke212]

Originally Posted by GumbyNoTalent

Um no it wasn't and never was, it is losing market share at a great rate of knots and will continue to do so because the web changes faster than MS changes. You go on your merry way and develop IE6 specific websites for your "clients" I'm sure they will be happy.

youre arguing the wrong thing (strawman argument). who would write for ie6 specifically? rather, you should be compatible with all major browsers.

[Rezin]

Originally Posted by Luke212

dont tell me what to do.

No worries. Feel free to continue doing whatever it is you want to do. Your successes and losses don't affect us in the slightest.

[Luke212]

Originally Posted by Rezin

No worries. Feel free to continue doing whatever it is you want to do. Your successes and losses don't affect us in the slightest.

i wasnt talking to you. i care what you say, because your posts are funny.

[Rezin]

Originally Posted by Luke212

i wasnt talking to you. i care what you say, because your posts are funny.

Thanks.

Let's put this another way....

• IE only had a major market share because Windows was (and is) the predominant OS, and IE was built-in to the OS.
• Most people were content to use whatever got them browsing porn the quickest, and as IE was already there they just used that.
• As a few have pointed out, the W3C was around before IE and will still be around long after IE loses the majority of the market share, and the developer's of browsers look to the W3C to guide them in what is appropriate and what isn't, not Microsoft.
• IE has a history of not following the standards properly and introducing their own little methods, but as they are not part of the standard the other browsers don't have to follow them and as those browsers gain market share these little IE-only methods will be next to useless.
• IE7, which follows the standards a lot better than IE6, was only released earlier than what was scheduled because their market share was reducing rapidly due to the choice user's now have when deciding which browser to use.

So, the point is that you should develop for the standards first, then adjust your code to allow for all the idiosyncrasies that various browsers have - those idiosyncrasies may not exist in the next version of that browser as the developers fix them to closer follow the standards.

I'm sure these aren't the best arguments or the most correct way to word them but you should be able to understand what I'm trying to say.

[effekt26]

Originally Posted by Luke212

dont tell me what to do. If you cant see IE6 as a standard you are myopic, thats all.

It was more of a suggestion rather than telling you what to do, sorry if it came across wrong.

but hey, how you do or see things is none of my business.

[OzStick]

Nice to see that we've all gotten over Netscape.......

I like the way this argument is shaping up - it's like Ford Vs Holden!

To use that analogy, Luke212 is insisting that Ford and Holden are a "standard" unto themselves, which is not correct in a strict sense.

Just as a Ford or Holden are simply vehicles that enable access to the myriad of roads and destinations out there, web browsers are vehicles that enable access to the WWW. So how can they be a standard unto themselves???

In the meantime, unfortunately none of this helps the OP.

[bugayev]

Luke its llike the road rules.

Driving on the left is the standard. The government says we drive on the left so we do, because its safer and better for everyone, and we get penalised if we don't.

The standards set by the W3c are very similar. They say why we should do things in a certain way, because its more accessible, useable and maintainable, and if we don't follow them we get penalised by potentially losing users/sales, being sued for having an inaccessible site under the law (particularly in the sector i work in), or most importantly by users complaining that the site doesn't work properly in their browser of choice.

If 100 people decide to drive on the wrong side of the road, is that a standard because lots of people do it? If I release a calculator that is biased by 2, so every calculation is wrong, and millions of people use it, does that mean that I have redefined the fundamental principles of mathematics?

The whole point of these standards isn't to pander to a particular vendor. Vendors have input into the standards definitions, as do developers, accessibility experts, usability people, legal minds, the whole deal. Microsoft chose to do what it has consistently done of late and ignore the defined standard and implement their own, in the hope that it would become the de facto standard. It hasn't - only IE does things the IE way, and no matter how many peopl euse it, that doesn't make it the standard. It makes it common.

[chrisorm]

Originally Posted by GumbyNoTalent

Um no it wasn't and never was, it is losing market share at a great rate of knots and will continue to do so because the web changes faster than MS changes. You go on your merry way and develop IE6 specific websites for your "clients" I'm sure they will be happy.

I wouldn't say that in regards to the average australian user. You need to be careful looking at stats from USA or EU, they are a different market entirely.

I work on an australia wide network of news websites where the readers don't get any more NOOB and the stats there have been pretty static at ~15-18% Non IE since last year. FF gained massively when 2.0 came out and then has stagnated.

IE7 has gotten to around ~25% and stayed there and the rest is IE6.

There's also ~3% Safari included in the 18% non-IE. Opera is basically unmeasurable (<0.1%)*

That's all from a few 10s of millions of page views per month.

For what it's worth, we dropped IE5 PC support this year, we don't specifically test on Opera, but we generally make sure everything works on IE6,7 FF, Opera and Safari.

But by dropping support, we don't mean we block it - I've even tested our newest ecommerce site in LYNX without any hassle completing an entire transaction.

Chris.

*Even when an opera users sets the UA to appear as IE it still has "OPERA in the string, so we do measure those as well.

[the-enigma]

Originally Posted by Luke212

dont tell me what to do. If you cant see IE6 as a standard you are myopic, thats all.

If IE6 is a standard, can you point me to the documentation explaining exactly how a web browser is meant to display "IE6" code?

[Dedge]

Originally Posted by chrisorm

But by dropping support, we don't mean we block it - I've even tested our newest ecommerce site in LYNX without any hassle completing an entire transaction.

Degrading gracefully is as equally important as modern browser support. Not everybody uses flash, or javascript. I also test my sites without stylesheets.

[hamishbindrinki]

who knew my two links could start such a discussion.

Anyway, I pose you a simple question.

If you feel that Microsoft's IE6 Rendering technique is paramount to a standard due to its large market share, and hence the other browsers should have been adopting it rather then W3C's standards (i think thats what your saying, please correct me otherwise), why do you think Microsoft themselves are now, with their latest version trying to adhere more towards the standards set out by the W3C. As you say they still have more then 50% market share and could very well do whatever the hell they wanted, so why are they changing?