[mwinter]

Originally Posted by Gabber

I think you guys must get out of thet FF craze.

What Firefox craze do you think I'm 'in'? I prefer Opera really, but after reinstalling XP I started using Firefox. I only installed Opera again relatively recently and I can't be bothered to switch back.

I don't have objections towards IE because I'm trying to push FF, but simply because I detest IE, as both a developer and a user.

More and more FF bugs and security issues are being reported

As Firefox receives more attention, the probability of discovering and reporting a problem is bound to increase. Simple mathematics. However, the important difference between the Mozilla Organisation (and others) and Microsoft is that bugs actually get fixed. Microsoft haven't released a single significant feature update since the original release of IE6.

screw the w3 compliant stuff when you don't even color the scrollbars!

You're kidding me, right? You'd rather have a polarised industry just so you could get coloured scrollbars?

Everyone benefits from standardisation. Developers have a reliable, stable feature set, which increases productivity and allows them to predict behaviour. This in turn creates a better experience for users because they don't have to choose between user agents just to get basic content.

Browser competition should be based upon perceived efficiency, performance, ease of use, and extra features. Specified behaviour shouldn't be an issue, not by a long margin.

W3 does not own the net [...]

No-one owns the 'net, but it's the Web we're talking about here. Still, no-one owns that, either. The W3C have never claimed to. What the W3C does represent is the consensus of all of the major players, including Microsoft. They all play a part in negotiating the various publications, but apparently Microsoft don't seem interested in implementing what I assume they've agreed to.

It's just guidelines

Some of the publications are guidelines, but others are also specifications and standards. However, the W3C aren't the only standards body. Microsoft doesn't implement some aspects of HTTP properly either, and that's maintained by the IETF.

[...] IE is much more used [...]

Only because Microsoft have a near monopoly on desktop PCs. When was the last time you saw a brand new PC sold with a Linux distribution in an average store?

Most users don't even know that there is an alternative to IE. Some of those that do are wary of the fact that sites will be incompatible with those alternatives because the designers are incompetant.

Popularity doesn't necessarily represent preference, and IE is certainly not widely used on the basis that it's a good piece of software.

I can show you some sites with highly well done DHTML and Javascript that work 100% in IE while FF screws all up!

By all means do. However, I expect your definition of 'well done' will differ from mine.

And this is well documented, FF does not have the same abilities as IE - should not be a surprise.

No, it isn't. As far as I can see, Microsoft put their own features ahead of the basics.

[...] I won't buy "Spread Firefox" spam.

If Microsoft are to change for the better, they need a competitor. If the state of Web development is to improve, Microsoft need a competitor. At present, Mozilla is the only browser able to assume that position.

By the way, don't throw the word 'spam' around. Mozilla haven't done anything close to that.

Some sites get screwed without IE, but IE-fan-sites never have pop up boxes that say: "you have FF, beat it".

I've never seen a site with a pop-up like that, but then again I haven't used IE for well over a year. However, I certainly have had pop-ups telling me that I need to use IE, or 'information' screens with text to the same effect.

As for JS, well... simple... most gets slow and a bit screwed.

Performance varies between the two. As for screwed, what do you mean? Doesn't work? That's usually because the script was written solely for IE, so what do you expect?

Originally Posted by Twey

Internet Explorer, as a point of interest, doesn't actually understand JavaScript

In all fairness, most browsers don't. JavaScript is a language defined by Netscape for their browsers. Later, Microsoft implemented their own version, JScript. Later still, these two languages were standardised by ECMA to create ECMAScript. All modern JavaScript-like languages (including both JavaScript and JScript) are now implementations of this single language (which is why I tend to refer to it, rather than JS).

Originally Posted by Gabber

Adapting to many browsers can render a site compatible, but completly dull.

It's a matter of determining what a browser is capable of doing (not what it is). If it can support the extra features, you provide them. If not, you write your script so that it falls back to something simpler, yet still functional. The same principle applies to cases where no script support is available at all.

Remember that a person can always say: I made my site for this browser, this resolution, so I advise you to use it

In my opinion (and not just mine), it is bad practice to do so. If properly authored, it really won't matter because the user won't be missing anything significant (and a decorative, but otherwise useless script doesn't count).

NO, I won't put some text in my html to give publicity to w3.org.

So don't. No-one's forcing you do, and I don't see any point in doing so. The average user doesn't care, and doesn't add anything beneficial to their experience. Besides, just because a SGML validator says your document is valid doesn't actually mean it is - only knowledge of the specification can tell you that. The validator is just a tool to catch simple mistakes. Nothing more.

And that is basically it... the validator code and so on... just publicity

What? *shakes head*

IE can handle sites pretty well without it...FF too...

They have little choice. If a browser actually implemented HTML the way it's meant to be, it would be all but useless on the Web. This isn't the fault of HTML, but simply the state of things. There are so many sites that are utter junk from a technical point of view that they make it impossible for browser vendors to stick strictly to the standards. However, they should do as much as is practical.

This is, in my mind, part of the reasoning behind XHTML. An XHTML-conforming browser, when presented with XHTML (not XHTML served as HTML) will simply stop parsing the document if it comes across nonsense. This allows resource-strapped hardware like mobile devices to implement a light-weight parser, rather than something bulky like a tag soup parser. If XHTML ever becomes practical (it isn't, as yet), it may go some way towards producing a tidy Web.

Sorry, it's just another scheme for me... it may have good intentions to make guidelines, but that is just it guidelines... Meant to be flexible, always changing and adapting to innovations programs bring

The publications that are specifications are just that - specifications that are meant to be implemented as written. As I said previously, innovation is something completely different which should happen far removed from basic functionality. Eventually, a unique feature may be incorporated as a basic feature if it's deemed worthwhile, and that's just fine, but extras shouldn't compromise everything else and that's part of my gripe with Microsoft.

As Twey said, this has nothing to do with IE versus anything else. This is simply a matter of principle and harmony. Chaos and conflict isn't productive or helpful. It just creates problems, and it's why society has rules.


Back to the actual topic at hand. As you seem intent on doing this, it may as well be done well:

document.onkeypress = (function(g) {
  var words   = [{text : 'google', url : 'http://www.google.com/'},
                 {text : 'ddrive', url : 'http://www.dynamicdrive.com/'}],
      input   = 0,
      matches = [];

  function filter(c) {
    for(var i = 0, j = 0, n = matches.length; i < n; ++i) {
      if(matches[i].charAt(input) == c) {
        matches[j++] = matches[i];
      }
    }
    return j;
  }
  function getCharacter(e) {
    var c = NaN;

    if(!e) {e = g.event;}
    if(e) {
      if(e.which) {
        c = e.which;
      } else if(e.keyCode) {
        c = e.keyCode;
      }
      if(c) {
        return String.fromCharCode(c);
      }
    }
  }
  function reset() {
    for(var i = 0, n = words.length; i < n; ++i) {
      matches[i] = words[i].text;
    }
    input = 0;
  }
  reset();

  return function(e) {
    var c = getCharacter(e),
        i, l, m, n;

    if(c) {
      if(!(n = filter(c))) {
        reset();
        n = filter(c);
      }
      if((1 == n) && ((m = matches[0]).length == ++input)) {
        for(i = 0, l = words.length; i < l; ++i) {
          if(words[i].text == m) {location.href = words[i].url; break;}
        }
      } else {
        matches.length = n;
      }
    }
  };
})(this);

Could be better, but I can't be bothered. Works in Firefox, Opera 7.03+, NN4, and IE4+. Allows multiple action words and recovers from spelling mistakes.

Mike