ADC Rates Web Browsers For Javascript Compatibility 42
blamanj writes "The Apple Developer's site has an article about Javascript compatibility. They rate the 6 Mac browsers for feature-completeness in the Javascript arena. For those who don't read articles, Mozilla wins by a nose."
People are concerned about this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:People are concerned about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://netWindows.org/docs/round_trips.html
Apple: "We're Great" (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, is this meaningful in any way whatsoever?
I wonder (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
so failing the load xml test doesn't really tell us anything, other than the reviewer needs to take more care.
Re:Apple: "We're Great" (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have a Mac to test on but at least my old Nightly Build of Mozilla 1.3b (ID:2003021806) does render also the DHTML test perfectly[1]. You're right that the XML test is broken (the server is misconfigured).
[1] Or... it does display and remove the scrollbar as expected when the div goes over (under?) the right edge of viewport. However, it doesn't display the scrollbar when the div goes over the left border of the viewport, which I consider as a bug also. It's the bug ID:6976 in case you want to vote it. Don't post extra comments to that bug unless you have a fix.
Re:Apple: "We're Great" (Score:3, Insightful)
diveintomark.org [diveintomark.org] details CSS and rendering issues. This was a JavaScript test.
Seriously, is this meaningful in any way whatsoever?
What would you rather Steve said? "Safari is insanlely great!"? Apple posted a reproducable test suite that outlined some of Safari's positives and negatives. As for Apple saying "We're Great", the conclusion reads "The new Safari 1.0 beta is a strong contender." Safari went toe-to-toe with Mozilla and came out alive. That is quite an accomplishment and Apple should be commended for it.
Re:Apple: "We're Great" (Score:2, Insightful)
... There's no telling how many tests where done, but whose results we won't get to see until they have fixed the bugs. Let's see some tests from an independant third party. I bet Safari won't get "Perfect except for that W3C draft thing which no browser except Mozilla support, test that seems like it was put in there just so Safari would fail it, and the test will look more neutral".
Nothing more than propaganda, I say
Re:Apple: "We're Great" (Score:1)
Oh, yeah, and I'd like to see how well Safari fares with all those crappily implemented DHTML menus floating around the 'net. The problem with JavaScript isn't with respecting the W3C standards, it's with dealing with all that crappy code that doesn't follow the standard, but since it works in version X of browser Y, it's good enough for everybody
As long as the big two browsers support broken JS, the smaller browsers will have to support it as well, lest they lose what little market share they already have
Mozilla do ALL the test OK. (Score:5, Informative)
In my pc seems to work, too.
I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
Based on experience, I'm not holding my breath.
Mark
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
The only test it seems to have some issue with is the W3CDOM test where it creates form fields on the fly.
It creates the fields, but the radio buttons don't seem to accept a click. This may have to do with the fact that the radio buttons don't have a name attribute. I've noticed before that IE (at least mine) doesn't like unnamed radio buttons (as that's how it knows how to group them).
Otherwise, the other tests worked quite well.
--
Using Mozilla/Phoenix on win - the 'Import XML' test fails on my system.
From the Phoenix JS console:
Error: xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("apple")[0] has no properties
Source File: http://developer.apple.com/internet/javascript/te
Line: 31
Re:I wonder... (Score:1)
As someone said elsewere, it's a problem with the MIME setting of the server.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Informative)
Wonder no more. IE6 on Win98 performed every test flawlessly. YMMV, IANAL, etc.
interesting... (Score:2)
Re:interesting... (Score:3, Funny)
Anyway, I kind of like the Bork edition for windows... it adds quite a bit of entertainment value to the msn site. For example:
Re:interesting... (Score:2)
Re:interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:interesting... (Score:2)
Re:interesting... (Score:2)
Re:interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
I still prefer Safari! (Score:1, Interesting)
If I need to go to a site and it doesn't work in Safari, here's my browser order...
1. Safari
2. Chimera
3. IE
4. Lynx
5. Mozilla
Re:I still prefer Safari! (Score:1)
Presumably Mozilla itself is on the list because the newest version of Mozilla will be more up to date than the newest version of Chimera.
Re:I still prefer Safari! (Score:3, Funny)
The XML test... (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the point of testing browser compliance if you're going to execute separate code for specific browsers? Why not just check the navigator.appName and then write browser specific javaScript code like we've had to do ever since IE entered the browser war?
Re:The XML test... (Score:4, Interesting)
Browser specific hacks are what got us into the document.all vs. document.layers mess in the 4.0 days anyway.
As for browser-specific-code WRT to the XML loading thing, there's little (if any) support for DOM 3 Load And Save (as there's no public spec yet), so executing conditional, browser specific code to get this functionality is necessaray. Mozilla has implemented the XMLHTTP object that first appeared in IE, and so it's kind of the defacto standard (similar to innerHTML, which would also go away with DOM 3 Load And Save), however creating these objects is different on the various platforms, and is again not standard.
not a total waste of time... (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, no real differentiation is made between DOM 0, DOM 1, and DOM 2 style events and their setters. There's not even a whisper about mutation events. The section on "display" properties totally misses the related (and more useful) problems of using attribute getters and setters in the various browsers. Ever tried setting a div to have overflow="scroll" on Safari?
One last nit: does anyone else find it uber-annoying that ADC's articles don't have authorship attribution?
Re:not a total waste of time... (Score:2)
YES, it would be okay if they didn't keep saying I did this or I did that. I wish they would at least put a name so we know who this mysterious person is that is reporting this to the world.
-Adam
They did not test JavaScript (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm basing this on my experience writing a contact form that thwarts spam [ostermiller.org]. It has (optional) client side verification of the fields based on regular expressions. (The same regular expressions are then used again on the server, the client side stuff just makes it fail fast.) When a web browser thinks it supports JavaScript, but doesn't do it well enough this runs into problems. I keep finding browsers that like the regular expressions I use.
If you are using an uncommon browser, I would appretiate the testing. Please go to my contact page [ostermiller.org] and fill out a valid email address but no subject or message. If your browser works correctly, you should not get an error about the email address. Then send me the results. (If you do have problems, disable JavaScript first.)
Windows Browsers (Score:3, Informative)
Opera and Mozilla both handled everything flawlessly except for the XML. Neither seemed too happy with the imported XML text, instead remaining blank. On the other hand, I.E. rendered all of the above with no problems.
In any case, you shouldn't be importing your site's content as XML anyway, as another poster pointed out. If you have to, your site will be I.E. only for now. Unless they have a Mac.
Safari debugger (Score:4, Interesting)
Konqueror just got better Javascript debugging. It's in CVS now and it's slated to be part of 3.2. I wonder if Apple will pick this up sooner?
Re:Safari debugger (Score:2)
That said, Konq 3.1 is an absolute joy from end users's perspective. Now if only the same could be said about support for those developing against it...
IE doesn't seem to run SSS correctly... (Score:2, Interesting)
SSS is a Finish guy's clever way to encrypt
a web page's contents, unlockable by p'word
It's implemented in Javascript.
We just had a disappointment, after a Client
revealed that they use Mac's and their brow-
ser (IE) wouldn't unlock the page.
Actually, I'm surprised that Opera 6 was
rated to low on this battery of tests...
its Windows implementation runs SSS well
Has anyone used SSS (successfully) on a
Mac? If so, which browser did it work on?
TIA
PS SSS's scheme doesn't show the encrypted
page - even after it's been decrypted &
displayed in clear text; a cool system!
ECMAscript spec (Score:2)
Particularly gratifying, considering that this standard has only been out since 1999... so most vendors have only had half-a-dozen or so revision opportunities...
Couldn't read the story... (Score:2)