Browser speed & web standards

[lewmur]

To pronounce CSS as the only way to code is just silly. No offense to your web efforts but looking at your site reminds me of just about everyone else coding blogs in CSS. You may be in exact CSS standards compliance but the overall visual style is bland.I would love to show you my work but unfortunately it is proprietary and my NDA does not allow me to show it to others outside the company I contract with.I will only say they are the largest HMO on the planet. They are not overly concerned with web standards as my work pertains to inside the company facilities management system across the country and HI.I'm given a problem to provide data to employees who clean facilities. From hospitals to MOBs (medical office buildings. There are anywhere from 17 to 47 types of spaces (rooms). In each of those spaces there are various materials and surfaces which each requiring a specific cleaning method and cleaning material protocol.Adherence to exact CSS standards was not a consideration. Ease of use for employees was paramount so that any employee regardless of whether or not they had prior cleaning experience would be able to access the relevant cleaning data for any room they were tasked to clean.I believe in coding to provide solutions... not in following the latest web standard craze...

Why would ANYONE use a Web developement tool to *CODE* applications for a individual company? The point you are missing is that, by definition, Web pages are designed to be viewed in a PUBLIC forum. So, while *proprietary standards* may be OK for *proprietary* applications, they are NOT suitable for PUBLIC sites. But, unfortunately, many PUBLIC sites, run by GOVERNMENT agencies, use M$'s *proprietary standards.* And, IMHO, that should be against the law.

[Neil P]

But, unfortunately, many PUBLIC sites, run by GOVERNMENT agencies, use M$'s *proprietary standards.* And, IMHO, that should be against the law.

If they aren't accessible, it is against the law.

[Marsden11]

Why should I waste time on a guy in his trailer in Montana, off the grid, peddling his bicycle generator surfing the web by candle light on his lappy with some unheard of distro with an ever more bizzare beta browser? He made the choice to go NON-standard.But no.... I'm supposed to code for him... Not!There are applications that we code and we tell our clients up front before they sign any contracts what we will and won't support. We for the most part do NOT support non-IE browsers. Period. If the client does not like that they are free to shop elsewhere.

Why would ANYONE use a Web developement tool to *CODE* applications for a individual company? The point you are missing is that, by definition, Web pages are designed to be viewed in a PUBLIC forum. So, while *proprietary standards* may be OK for *proprietary* applications, they are NOT suitable for PUBLIC sites.

Where did I ever say that the internal non-public company web site was "public?" I have not developed for the public side of Kaiser Permanente.When we do public sites we code for the number one current installed browser on the planet. With browser detection code we send all the others to less pretty pages with the same info.Unfortunately, it is really the needs of the many that outweigh the needs of the few...

[Gary]

There are applications that we code and we tell our clients up front before they sign any contracts what we will and won't support. We for the most part do NOT support non-IE browsers. Period. If the client does not like that they are free to shop elsewhere.

With an attitude like that , they should.

[Marsden11]

Guess what? We are turning away business! We just signed a deal with Coca-Cola Bottling in CA. We don't have enough installers to meet current demand.

[Guest LilBambi]

Glad business is booming for you Marsden.However, it makes me happy that Coke isn't my soda of choice.EDIT: And don't take that wrong. I was referring to the proprietary standards, not that your company was doing the coding. I am happy for any Highlander who does well.

Edited December 15, 2005 by LilBambi

[Marsden11]

Let me be perfectly clear... 99% of our work is not for public consumption.Think of this in terms of a support context.How many support people would we have to employ to cover the 20 to 30 browsers currently on the market?What platform are you on? Latest patches? What 3rd party tools are installed? Firewalls? Spy-ware? Virus checkers? What version of FF are you using? What plug-ins do you have installed? Extensions? Any one of these in some bizzare combo could drastically affect how our software intracts with your experience.Thousands of possible combos... your machine is not the same as the gal across towns machine or the guy in the next state.We also don't support Win95, Win98, 98SE, Me, or NT4. Neither do we support IE4 or IE5.This policy greatly reduces our support exposure. We are in business to make money...

Edited December 15, 2005 by Marsden11

[Peachy]

Why should I waste time on a guy in his trailer in Montana, off the grid, peddling his bicycle generator surfing the web by candle light on his lappy with some unheard of distro with an ever more bizzare beta browser? He made the choice to go NON-standard.But no.... I'm supposed to code for him... Not!There are applications that we code and we tell our clients up front before they sign any contracts what we will and won't support. We for the most part do NOT support non-IE browsers. Period. If the client does not like that they are free to shop elsewhere.Where did I ever say that the internal non-public company web site was "public?" I have not developed for the public side of Kaiser Permanente.When we do public sites we code for the number one current installed browser on the planet. With browser detection code we send all the others to less pretty pages with the same info.Unfortunately, it is really the needs of the many that outweigh the needs of the few...

I would argue that it would be more efficient of your time to code one HTML template and the appropriate stylesheets. Browser detection code? C'mon, you're duplicating your content. With one common HTML file and multiple stylesheets you can code for 99% of the browsers. Use the @import directive to load your fancy stylesheet for Gecko and IE6 browsers and let the Netscape 4.x crowd in with a linked stylesheet. Why create a seperate printer-friendly HTML page when all you have to do is add a print-friendly CSS file that has the media attribute set to "print". And for really annoying IE-specific CSS rules, use IE's conditional comments ability to load IE-only CSS files:

<!--[if IE]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie.css" /><![endif]-->

If 99% of your work is not for public consumption, then sure, be proprietary as you want. But it doesn't hurt to start think about changing your coding practices to streamline your own efficiency. How much of your template and code has to take into account your table layout and formatting choices? If you let the CSS handle your formatting you could probably reduce your template size by 80% and the amount of unnecessary code you have to generate. I'm just advocating that there are tangible benefits to writing to web standards.

[Marsden11]

How exactly does your code apply to a proprietary ActiveX control?Most large enterprises choose a default browser as well as default OS platform.We code for the default...Actually, we are running our application via the ActiveX control. The content of that application is streamed live form the server.The browser just has to run the control and display the application window. It isn't really HTML at all. We don't need CSS or Tables or anything else... The web is more than just HTML or XHTML...

[Peachy]

It doesn't obviously. The code snippet I included was for public web sites. My comment after the code was actually meant as a separate post but I accidently edited the first post and got lazy.

Edited December 15, 2005 by Peachy

[Guest LilBambi]

Actually, the Yahoo CSS that Marsden posted that started this discussion was also for public web consumption.

[Neil P]

The whole point of the standards is that you don't code for a browser, or a platform, you code for a standard, and let the developers of those products worry about making it work.The WaSP, or Web Standards Project, is an organization with the following mission statement:

Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. We work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.

Their FAQ answers What are the advantages of using web standards?In an ideal world, every page coded to standards (that validates) would display the same in every browser. Of course, that doesn't happen yet. If we took bets on which browser failed the most using advanced CSS (CSS2 was published as a recommendation in May of 1998), which one would you bet to fail the most readily? I'm putting my money on IE. What about XHTML? XHTML 1.0 was recommended in January of 2000. IE6 does not support the MIME Type application/xml+xhtml. IE7 will not support it either. Ian Hickson explains why sending XHTML as text/html is considered harmful.Why doesn't IE support it? If IE had the same standards support as Firefox or Opera, or Konqueror/Safari, then "coding for platforms" wouldn't be necessary. Currently, Microsoft is trying to keep its 85%+ share of the web, and the only way to do so is to keep people away from the standards. The other browsers have better features, but if websites only work right in IE, nobody will want to use them. There is a wikipedia article on criticisms of Internet Explorer.

[Marsden11]

wikipedia

Personal opinion masquerading as fact...

[Neil P]

Personal opinion masquerading as fact...

All wikipedia articles are written with a neutral point of view. That, along with the verifiability and no original research policies means the information is mostly reliable, when written according to them. Of you don't agree that the article is neutral, you can dispute it, or discuss it with others, or rewrite parts of it.It didn't look very biased to me, though I'm sure people have tried to take shots at IE on that page and others.

[Marsden11]

All wikipedia articles are written with a neutral point of view. That, along with the verifiability and no original research policies means the information is mostly reliable, when written according to them. Of you don't agree that the article is neutral, you can dispute it, or discuss it with others, or rewrite parts of it.

There have been several news items lately concerning wiki and bad info being passed on as fact."Neutral Point of View..." Most if not all points of view are hardly neutral...A quick comparison between Internet Explorer and FireFox criticisms on wiki hardly constitutes a neutral point of view. Whoever edited the FireFox criticisms likes the frequent use of alleged to spin the emphasis from negative to positive. I can post speed results for all browsers and there will be a post to the contrary that proves across the board that the test is meaningless because his copy of FF loaded a particular page faster. (He never stated if it was a "cold" or "warm" start. It does make a difference.)The silliness of this is that if someone were to challenge the wiki "facts" on any given subject such as FireFox and posted a negative complaint regardless of validity or not, would be instantly challenged to the opposite point of view. Kind of like what we do here on this forum...We have an entire Federal department dedicated to regulate what manufactures can claim on their labels. "My organic supplement will make you feel better." Maybe it will and maybe it won't.

A false Wikipedia 'biography'By John Seigenthaler "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." — WikipediaThis is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It could be your story. I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. There was more:"John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.I had heard for weeks from teachers, journalists and historians about "the wonderful world of Wikipedia," where millions of people worldwide visit daily for quick reference "facts," composed and posted by people with no special expertise or knowledge — and sometimes by people with malice.At my request, executives of the three websites now have removed the false content about me. But they don't know, and can't find out, who wrote the toxic sentences.Anonymous author I phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder and asked, "Do you ... have any way to know who wrote that?""No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two websites said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual.Naturally, I want to unmask my "biographer." And, I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.But searching cyberspace for the identity of people who post spurious information can be frustrating. I found on Wikipedia the registered IP (Internet Protocol) number of my "biographer"- 65-81-97-208. I traced it to a customer of BellSouth Internet. That company advertises a phone number to report "Abuse Issues." An electronic voice said all complaints must be e-mailed. My two e-mails were answered by identical form letters, advising me that the company would conduct an investigation but might not tell me the results. It was signed "Abuse Team."Wales, Wikipedia's founder, told me that BellSouth would not be helpful. "We have trouble with people posting abusive things over and over and over," he said. "We block their IP numbers, and they sneak in another way. So we contact the service providers, and they are not very responsive."After three weeks, hearing nothing further about the Abuse Team investigation, I phoned BellSouth's Atlanta corporate headquarters, which led to conversations between my lawyer and BellSouth's counsel. My only remote chance of getting the name, I learned, was to file a "John or Jane Doe" lawsuit against my "biographer." Major communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame online. Only if a lawsuit resulted in a court subpoena would BellSouth give up the name.Little legal recourse Federal law also protects online corporations — BellSouth, AOL, MCI Wikipedia, etc. — from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others. Recent low-profile court decisions document that Congress effectively has barred defamation in cyberspace. Wikipedia's website acknowledges that it is not responsible for inaccurate information, but Wales, in a recent C-Span interview with Brian Lamb, insisted that his website is accountable and that his community of thousands of volunteer editors (he said he has only one paid employee) corrects mistakes within minutes.My experience refutes that. My "biography" was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers "edited" it only by correcting the misspelling of the word "early." For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before Wales erased it from his website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks.In the C-Span interview, Wales said Wikipedia has "millions" of daily global visitors and is one of the world's busiest websites. His volunteer community runs the Wikipedia operation, he said. He funds his website through a non-profit foundation and estimated a 2006 budget of "about a million dollars."And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them.When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.John Seigenthaler, a retired journalist, founded The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He also is a former editorial page editor at USA TODAY.

A very dangerous tool in my mind... Edited December 15, 2005 by Marsden11

[Neil P]

There have been several news items lately concerning wiki and bad info being passed on as fact."Neutral Point of View..." Most if not all points of view are hardly neutral...A quick comparison between Internet Explorer and FireFox criticisms on wiki hardly constitutes a neutral point of view. Whoever edited the FireFox criticisms likes the frequent use of alleged to spin the emphasis from negative to positive. I can post speed results for all browsers and there will be a post to the contrary that proves across the board that the test is meaningless because his copy of FF loaded a particular page faster. (He never stated if it was a "cold" or "warm" start. It does make a difference.)The silliness of this is that if someone were to challenge the wiki "facts" on any given subject such as FireFox and posted a negative complaint regardless of validity or not, would be instantly challenged to the opposite point of view. Kind of like what we do here on this forum...We have an entire Federal department dedicated to regulate what manufactures can claim on their labels. "My organic supplement will make you feel better." Maybe it will and maybe it won't.

No matter what you think about wikipedia, the article about criticisms on IE has facts in it.IE6 does not support the alpha channel of png images. Its XHTML support is extremely minimal, and it does not support the proper MIME type. It manually checks for what a page contains and displays a page how it thinks it should look, sometimes disregarding the MIME type altogether. CSS1 support is shaky, CSS2 support is non-existant. All of those problems are bad enough. I don't know much about the DOM, or the plugin API, or Unicode support. this article goes into extreme detail on what IE screws up.That particular article is well written. Using wikipedia for any authoritative research is silly, as anyone can edit any page. I love wikipedia, it's a great idea, but not every page is accurate. CSS1 was published as a recommendation on 17 December 1996! There is no reason why IE6, released sometime in the second half of 2001, shouldn't support it properly! Microsoft is a member organization of the CSS working group.

[Marsden11]

I'm not disputing the IE facts.I was commenting on the lack of a neutral point of view between the 2 browsers as covered by wiki.

[Gary]

I'm not disputing the IE facts.I was commenting on the lack of a neutral point of view between the 2 browsers as covered by wiki.

How can anyone have a neutal opinion on anything?

[Marsden11]

And one of the main flaws in wikipedia not to mention anonymous authoring with no real editorial oversight.

[Gary]

And one of the main flaws in wikipedia not to mention anonymous authoring with no real editorial oversight.

Much like this or any other forum.

[Guest LilBambi]

Wikipedia:VerifiabilityFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.For vandalism, see Wikipedia:Vandalism (WP:VAND). This page is an official policy on Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Feel free to edit the page as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy reflect consensus before you make them.Wikipedia should only publish material that is verifiable and is not original research. One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they should refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by a reputable publisher. The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and reliable encyclopedia, so editors should cite credible sources so that their edits can be verified by readers and other editors."Verifiability" in this context does not mean that editors are expected to verify whether, for example, the contents of a New York Times article are true. In fact, editors are strongly discouraged from conducting this kind of research, because original research may not be published in Wikipedia. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable or credible sources, regardless of whether individual editors regard that material as true or false. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. For that reason, it is vital that editors rely on good sources.Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policy pages. The other two are Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Jointly, these three policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in the main namespace. The three policies are complementary. They should therefore not be interpreted in isolation from one other, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three.

Wikipedia is like any other medium. There have been books written based on lies. Movies that have taken the facts and twisted them so that eventually the truth about a given topic would be muddled with their wonderful 'based on a true story' movie which would stick in people's minds better than dry text they learned at some prior time.There are companies that spout FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) as a matter of their public policy to discredit their competitors.Truth apparently is irrelevant to many in the 'new age.'The thing about the Internet medium, as with any 'information' gathering medium, especially in this day and age, is that every user must pull from many sources to get even close to the truth. Sad but true.There are no encyclopedias, school text books, news outlets, etc. that are 100% right. No matter how one tries to be unbiased, it will reflect on some level the bias of those who may have some 'agenda.'The goals of wikipedia are awesome and staggering. There may be times when the information gets vandalized, misrepresented, etc. but this is true everywhere. And eventually with so many people interested in a topic, the information will get reported as false, corrected by those the story is about (which by the way, John Seigenthaler could have done himself), or those who have more information/sources for the "truth."I remember a story of a student and a teacher of 6th grade science class. In that class they were teaching (directly from the text book) on electrons and plating. It taught from one particular 'truth' which in fact was 'false' - the truth had been discovered, but not corrected in the textbook. The student, who was an electronics enthusiast from a very, very young age, knew it was wrong. And he stated so.He was sent to the principle's office for questioning the teacher. The principal being a tad more 'open' to 'truth' than the science teacher, suggested the student do a report on the subject and present it to the class. And the principal made sure the teacher knew she'd have to let him do this.He did the report. Proved what he said was true even to the teacher. He got an A+ on the report and that teacher had to grudgingly live with that.But. she made the same mistake many do - thinking that if it was in the textbook, then it was fact. End of discussion.Because she was going by the information provided in the standard public school 6th grade science textbook as fact, she refused to believe that anything else could be true, she refused to even look at the possibility. That student was my hubby.And as far as the 'false' story about John Seigenthaler. I agree that supposition should not have been put into Wikipedia and is strictly disallowed by Wikipedia policies.But I have another question. Who really knows the truth? There is so much suppression of 'full facts' in government from the federal to the local level, from companies, from even families and individuals for that matter. Take for instance, a question that should be so simple - the question, who really killed John Kennedy and look at all the controversy that started. The facts are so muddled now that I am not sure whether even the CIA/FBI, or the person who thinks they pulled the trigger know for sure (just kidding there).I have always felt that truth was incontrovertible, but we see lawyers, judges, politicians, companies, churches, even individuals who see truth from a certain point of view (thank you Ben Kenobi ).It's like a group of blind men describing an elephant from their vantage point.What I am trying to say is, yes, truth is incontrovertible, but man's vantage point on the truth may not be.

[Gary]

Wikipedia is like any other medium. There have been books written based on lies. Movies that have taken the facts and twisted them so that eventually the truth about a given topic would be muddled with their wonderful 'based on a true story' movie which would stick in people's minds better than dry text they learned at some prior time.There are companies that spout FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) as a matter of their public policy to discredit their competitors.Truth apparently is irrelevant to many in the 'new age.'The thing about the Internet medium, as with any 'information' gathering medium, especially in this day and age, is that every user must pull from many sources to get even close to the truth. Sad but true.There are no encyclopedias, school text books, news outlets, etc. that are 100% right. No matter how one tries to be unbiased, it will reflect on some level the bias of those who may have some 'agenda.'The goals of wikipedia are awesome and staggering. There may be times when the information gets vandalized, misrepresented, etc. but this is true everywhere. And eventually with so many people interested in a topic, the information will get reported as false, corrected by those the story is about (which by the way, John Seigenthaler could have done himself), or those who have more information/sources for the "truth."I remember a story of a student and a teacher of 6th grade science class. In that class they were teaching (directly from the text book) on electrons and plating. It taught from one particular 'truth' which in fact was 'false' - the truth had been discovered, but not corrected in the textbook. The student, who was an electronics enthusiast from a very, very young age, knew it was wrong. And he stated so.He was sent to the principle's office for questioning the teacher. The principal being a tad more 'open' to 'truth' than the science teacher, suggested the student do a report on the subject and present it to the class. And the principal made sure the teacher knew she'd have to let him do this.He did the report. Proved what he said was true even to the teacher. He got an A+ on the report and that teacher had to grudgingly live with that.But. she made the same mistake many do - thinking that if it was in the textbook, then it was fact. End of discussion.Because she was going by the information provided in the standard public school 6th grade science textbook as fact, she refused to believe that anything else could be true, she refused to even look at the possibility. That student was my hubby.And as far as the 'false' story about John Seigenthaler. I agree that supposition should not have been put into Wikipedia and is strictly disallowed by Wikipedia policies.But I have another question. Who really knows the truth? There is so much suppression of 'full facts' in government from the federal to the local level, from companies, from even families and individuals for that matter. Take for instance, a question that should be so simple - the question, who really killed John Kennedy and look at all the controversy that started. The facts are so muddled now that I am not sure whether even the CIA/FBI, or the person who thinks they pulled the trigger know for sure (just kidding there).I have always felt that truth was incontrovertible, but we see lawyers, judges, politicians, companies, churches, even individuals who see truth from a certain point of view (thank you Ben Kenobi ).It's like a group of blind men describing an elephant from their vantage point.What I am trying to say is, yes, truth is incontrovertible, but man's vantage point on the truth may not be.

Edited December 16, 2005 by Gary