Community Relations Archive
Thread: Please make your website Firefox compatable
Firefox for teh w1n
Message Edited by Knocky on 03-24-2005 02:45 PM
That said, you'll be happy to know in the next update to lithium the "graphical" editor for these forums is supported in firefox.
Excellent. Thanks.
GarVa wrote:
Yep, I'm not sure when but I'm toldSoon™
Rothin wrote:
Hey Garva, the most annoying thing in firefox for me is that the threads don't maintain the right width at certain times. In IE, they will all maintain 100% width, in firefox for some reason they expand well beyond that causing scrolling from left to right which is annoying when trying to read a long thread.
I actually have this same problem with IE, so it's not a Firefox thing.
I'm glad that Firefox is starting to see some increased support though - as a programmer, it's always nice to see some open-source apps get some good use. 
OrionsByte wrote:
Rothin wrote:
Hey Garva, the most annoying thing in firefox for me is that the threads don't maintain the right width at certain times. In IE, they will all maintain 100% width, in firefox for some reason they expand well beyond that causing scrolling from left to right which is annoying when trying to read a long thread.
I actually have this same problem with IE, so it's not a Firefox thing.
This seems to happen when some oblivious soul decides to type in a long line of nothing but hyphens (or other character) rather than using the horizontal rule that's provided in the Lithium editor.
Very annoying.
Meanwhile, since everyone else is weighing in on Firefox/open source, I guess it must be OK for me to express an alternative view: No thanks.
Computing technology advances much too quickly to try to control it with somehastily-crafted new standard that everyone is supposed to bow down to. I have nothing against W3C; I think some of thediscussions they supportare useful in helping to identify new ways to use computing technology. But I also have come to believe that W3C moves too quickly in some areas, proposing standards before the market has a chance to speak on what real live computer-usinghuman beings actually want to use.So abrowser doesn't become goodmerely because it's basedon a standard -- a browser (or any other product) becomes good because its makers listen to consumers and improve that product based on what the market says works.
Which is precisely what Microsoft has done with its Internet Explorer software.
Microsoft is today's IBM -- bashing them is fun. But the reason Microsoft is still top of the heap today is because every MS employee spends every day trying to figure out what computer users really need, and thenimplementing that feature. Ifthe new capabilityfits into some "standard," fine; if not, then the standard needs to be scrapped and rewritten (if a standard is necessary at all) to deal with consumer reality as it actually is, not as some high-mindedtheoretician wishes it could be.
If someone wants to write a Firefox or an Opera, and others want to use it, excellent -- if there are good ideas in them, then a commercial product with real support can take the good ideas and incorporate them. The competition is good for all consumers.But what we don't need to do is short-circuit that market process with some over-hasty standard cobbled together before the market (i.e., theconsumer) has spoken on what it actually wants to do with a computer, or a product based on such a standard. For that reason, we also don't need to support a Firefox merely because it hews to what the W3C in its wisdom has decided that consumers should be happy with.
(Side note:we alsodefinitely don't need to be jumping on Firefox/Opera/what-have-you simply because it's not a "proprietary" commercial product. That's just silly.)
So -- if Lithium chooses to spend a little time tweaking its software to support non-IE browsers, I can live with that... but more than a little time is not acceptable. Thatis time that would be better spentproviding support for Internet Explorer, because that is the browser that the vast majority of people use.
...
Again: This is just an alternative viewpoint, which everyone is free to consider or ignore as they please.
We now returntothe Firefox lovefest, already in progress.... 
--Flatfingers
Flatfingers wrote:
OrionsByte wrote:
Rothin wrote:
Hey Garva, the most annoying thing in firefox for me is that the threads don't maintain the right width at certain times. In IE, they will all maintain 100% width, in firefox for some reason they expand well beyond that causing scrolling from left to right which is annoying when trying to read a long thread.I actually have this same problem with IE, so it's not a Firefox thing.
This seems to happen when some oblivious soul decides to type in a long line of nothing but hyphens (or other character) rather than using the horizontal rule that's provided in the Lithium editor.
Very annoying.
Meanwhile, since everyone else is weighing in on Firefox/open source, I guess it must be OK for me to express an alternative view: No thanks.
Computing technology advances much too quickly to try to control it with some hastily-crafted new standard that everyone is supposed to bow down to. I have nothing against W3C; I think some of the discussions they support are useful in helping to identify new ways to use computing technology. But I also have come to believe that W3C moves too quickly in some areas, proposing standards before the market has a chance to speak on what real live computer-using human beings actually want to use. So a browser doesn't become good merely because it's based on a standard -- a browser (or any other product) becomes good because its makers listen to consumers and improve that product based on what the market says works.
Which is precisely what Microsoft has done with its Internet Explorer software.
Microsoft is today's IBM -- bashing them is fun. But the reason Microsoft is still top of the heap today is because every MS employee spends every day trying to figure out what computer users really need, and then implementing that feature. If the new capability fits into some "standard," fine; if not, then the standard needs to be scrapped and rewritten (if a standard is necessary at all) to deal with consumer reality as it actually is, not as some high-minded theoretician wishes it could be.
If someone wants to write a Firefox or an Opera, and others want to use it, excellent -- if there are good ideas in them, then a commercial product with real support can take the good ideas and incorporate them. The competition is good for all consumers. But what we don't need to do is short-circuit that market process with some over-hasty standard cobbled together before the market (i.e., the consumer) has spoken on what it actually wants to do with a computer, or a product based on such a standard. For that reason, we also don't need to support a Firefox merely because it hews to what the W3C in its wisdom has decided that consumers should be happy with.
(Side note: we also definitely don't need to be jumping on Firefox/Opera/what-have-you simply because it's not a "proprietary" commercial product. That's just silly.)
So -- if Lithium chooses to spend a little time tweaking its software to support non-IE browsers, I can live with that... but more than a little time is not acceptable. That is time that would be better spent providing support for Internet Explorer, because that is the browser that the vast majority of people use.
...
Again: This is just an alternative viewpoint, which everyone is free to consider or ignore as they please.
We now return to the Firefox lovefest, already in progress....
--Flatfingers
For me its not so muc an issue of which is better... I just don't really have an option. The vast majority of what I use my PC for (aside from galaxies) is programming and development, and that just doesn't fly too well under windows. Linux is much better suited. Since I'm not about to shell out $150 for a copy of windows just to browse the forums, and Microsoft won't put out a copy of IE for linux... I use firefox (I like the interface a lot better as well anyway).
Flatfingers wrote:
Meanwhile, since everyone else is weighing in on Firefox/open source, I guess it must be OK for me to express an alternative view: No thanks.
Computing technology advances much too quickly to try to control it with somehastily-crafted new standard that everyone is supposed to bow down to. I have nothing against W3C; I think some of thediscussions they supportare useful in helping to identify new ways to use computing technology. But I also have come to believe that W3C moves too quickly in some areas, proposing standards before the market has a chance to speak on what real live computer-usinghuman beings actually want to use.So abrowser doesn't become goodmerely because it's basedon a standard -- a browser (or any other product) becomes good because its makers listen to consumers and improve that product based on what the market says works.
Which is precisely what Microsoft has done with its Internet Explorer software.
I'm not going to disagree that IE is more feature-rich and has built-in support for some very fancy things. I'm also not going to disagree that the current W3C spec leaves a little to be desired in that department.
However, the idea behind having an industry standard is ease of development and consumer-friendliness. It means that I can write a web page to conform to that standard and know without a doubt that any browser that conforms to the same standard will display the page correctly. Currently, that's not the case, and developers typically have to make an IE-compliant version plus a W3c-compliant version plus any other standard out there they want to support. A web page author then puts his or her stuff out there and says, well it will work on this browser and this one, but I'm not sure about this one.
Having standards isn't about constraining the industry... it's about harnessing its growth and making it accessible to everyone. What Microsoft is doing with its Internet Explorer software then, is trying to keep all the growth to itself. Business practices aside (as they're outside the scope of this argument), Microsoft is essentially shrugging off the rest of the industry who are trying to come together and figure out a way to make everything work together, instead grabbing at every opportunity like "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" and saying "Mine mine mine!" It's beta vs. VHS all over again, except Microsoft gives itself a head start by pairing it's browser with the operating system that already won its battle.
I don't personally have anything against Microsoft, but I do wish they would contribute to the medium more instead of trying to define it themselves.
Message Edited by OrionsByte on 03-25-2005 06:44 PM
thebodster wrote:
If you are going to make things play nice with firefox can you make sure that opera works too (it kind of works but only if you set it to identify itself as IE6.0)
I'd definitely like to see the Lithium software properly translate < certain characters > to HTML entities. That's been my only ongoing problem using this forum with Opera IDing as Opera.
(The new main page doesn't format correctly too, but that's still a new problem in SWG time.
Flatfingers wrote:Microsoft is today's IBM -- bashing them is fun. But the reason Microsoft is still top of the heap today is because every MS employee spends every day trying to figure out what computer users really need, and then implementing that feature. If the new capability fits into some "standard," fine; if not, then the standard needs to be scrapped and rewritten (if a standard is necessary at all) to deal with consumer reality as it actually is, not as some high-minded theoretician wishes it could be.
Yes features is very important and that is the one reason why I don't use IE, it's missing a feature that I can not see myself browsing the web without: Tabs. And according to the MS people in charge of developing IE tabs is not something people want and will not be implemented in IE. And then there is security...
I don't use Firefox because it is Open Source I use it because it's a superior product.
Mcgreag wrote:
(...)
(...) And then there is security...
I don't use Firefox because it is Open Source I use it because it's a superior product.
QFE
I use Firefox because a lot of the "features" IE has are also loopholes for some nasty code to sneak into my system and most virus programmers are catering towards non-standard extensions of IE.