Re: [Hampshire] Iceweasel

Tim wrote:
> On Monday 13 November 2006 09:06, Vic wrote:
>>> At least with windows you have
>>> a flat playing field (you several playing fields, 98, me, 2000, XP, 2003,
>>> Vista etc.), if you design a web app for windows IE you have a good
>>> chance that it will work on all versions of windows.
>> Tell me you're joking, please...
>>
>> The last estimates I saw reckon that 13% of all websites will be broken by
>> the "upgrade" to IE7. And that, apparently, is a lower-than-expected
>> figure because many sites deliberately don't code for standards compliance
>> - they code to look right in various browsers. IE7 struggles with
>> standards, apparently...

It's a ludicrous position Microsoft have got themselves in. I think they
have simply stalled for too long. Web developers have been forced to
produce standards compliant versions and IE versions with
version-specific workarounds for specific bugs and misfeatures. There is
now little Microsoft can realistically do to converge on standards
compliance without massive breakage with either the compliant lot /or/
the non-compliant lot.

> My point was not well made, with IE7 it will work with XP, Server 2003 and
> Vista, so you build your site or web app to work with that then it will work.
> But in the Linux world where Firefox is installed on several different distro
> which all have to own little setting that need to be tweaked to make it work
> is the nightmare for the developer.

That is not how it works. Minor FF versions use branched Gecko versions.
There are no build option that can cause Gecko to lay out pages
differently. These rules exist to prevent a slew of Firefox release
builds with different capabilities.

> Maybe Debian was forced, but by allowing the OS to run non free software do
> they have the conviction of their own philosophy??

Total gibberish. Debian philosophy is to guarantee people the legal
right to do whatever the hell they want with the software with the sole
exception of voiding those rights for anyone else. That precludes in any
way restricting what software people can run.

Dan