Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Mike Schilling]

"Mike Meyer" <mwm at mired.org> wrote in message 
news:86mzl6yfko.fsf at bhuda.mired.org...
> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling at hotmail.com> writes:
>> "Mike Meyer" <mwm at mired.org> wrote in message
>> news:86y84rxryr.fsf at bhuda.mired.org...
>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling at hotmail.com> writes:
>>>> "Mike Meyer" <mwm at mired.org> wrote in message
>>>> news:86fyqzzskt.fsf at bhuda.mired.org...
>>>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling at hotmail.com> writes:
>>>>>> What matters in generating HTML is which browsers you want to support
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> what they understand.  Standards and recommendations are both
>>>>>> irrelevant.
>>>>> Unless, of course, you want to support any compliant browser.
>>>> Since no browser I know of is perfectly compliant (e.g. bug-free), 
>>>> that's
>>>> not a feasible goal.
>>> I guess you'd say developing any software isn't a feasible goal,
>>> because it'll never be bug-free, will never have bug-free compilers to
>>> compile it, bug-free linkers to link it, bug-free GUI/db/etc libraries
>>> to link with it, bug-free servers to communicate with, and bug-free
>>> operating systems to run it on. Fortunately, most developers aren't
>>> quite that anal, and realize that you can get useful work done in a
>>> less-than-perfect environment.
>> I'm not speaking theroetically. My company (though not me personally)
>> creates browser-based UIs, and one of the biggest expenses has been 
>> dealing
>> with IE rendering bugs   Given the market share of IE, the fact that
>> something should work, and even does work in Firefox, Opera, etc, is
>> irrelevant.  If it breaks IE, we can't use it.
>
> Been there, done that, threw out the T-shirt as to ugly to wear.
>
> Yes, you have to work around bugs in the popular browsers. That hasn't
> changed since the first published specs showed up. That doesn't mean
> you throw out the standards and only support a trivial set of
> browsers.

If you're working on a commercial product, it means you support IE (possibly 
being able to insist on a specific patch level), Foxfire if you can, and 
ignore the < 1% of the market that won't live with those restrictions.