Firefox is the only web browser, period

FirefoxWell, it is not like I didn’t know this fact already, but I have been so spoiled in my enjoyment of a bug free web experience over the past year that sometimes I simply forget. Recently, however, I have been rudely reminded of just how incompatible most browsers are with open source programs like WordPress. So this post is a way of slumming, a kind of How the Other Half Lives of web browsers like IE Explorer (whose multitude of sins makes it synonymous with eternal damnation) , Safari, and Netscape users. Here is what I learned when when canvassing WordPress by way of the dilapidated tenements of non-compliant web browsers and their greedy slumlords:

  • Netscape 7 and Safari will not allow you to see the Rich Text Editor in the “Write Post” & “Write Page” tabs.
  • Netscape 7 will not allow you to rank the order of a WordPress page nor assign it as a child to a parent page (very bad)
  • Explorer simply explodes when you open WordPress … OK, not really, but for one professor I am working with it has been inserting strange tables when she copies text into a static page she is editing (quite bizarre in a very IE Explorer type of way)

That’s all I have for now, but just enough to make me pull my last hair out!

Did I ever tell you I love Firefox?

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6 Responses to Firefox is the only web browser, period

  1. Andy Rush says:

    I know that last line was for me!

  2. Martha says:

    Interesting. We’re having weird problems with IE choking on pages that have been created from cut and pasted Word documents in the blogs I’ve set up for Classics. Sounds like it might be the same think you’re describing.

    Also, the text is displaying really large in IE for both of those blogs (we’re using K2).

    The solution seems to be telling students to download and install Firefox. What’s frustrating for me about this is that it’s not the same as when we have to tell people to download IE to use an application because the application was built in a non-standards compliant way–and essentially it was built only to run in IE. Instead, we’re actually running into the problem (I presume) that the application was built in a MORE standards compliant way but IE can’t handle the standards. The reason is different, but it still means we have to tell people that applications don’t run cross-browser.

    Why can’t browsers just get along?

  3. jimgroom says:

    Martha,

    I have a CSS hack to fix the display issue with large text in IE, I will pass that along shortly! AND I entirely ahgree with your frustraion in regardss to browsers. My solution, as we already have discussed, is that I will only deal with questions about Firefox, all other browsers, for the purposes of this class, are dead to me!

  4. Cathy says:

    According to Google Analytics, 93% of the users on the UMW public web site use IE 6 or later. As you can imagine, this is a source of tremendous frustration.

    Would that there could be a king of the Internet that made everyone use Firefox. IE totally absolutely 100% sucks.

    Just a professional opinion.

    -Cathy

  5. jimgroom says:

    Cathy,

    Your opinion 100% does not suck!

  6. Andy Rush says:

    … and for just a little perspective here, back in the day, IE (v.3 & 4) was the all conquering browser. It kicked Netscape’s hiney. IE/MS thought they had it all wrapped up with 5 and just quit after 6. Glad to see Firefox is still agressively moving forward. FF2 RC1 later this month!

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