US copyright office thinking of going partially IE only

[xyle_one]

Last I read firefox continues to gain market share. It is still growing fast.

Not that it matters, but just about everyone I know uses it :/

[hm_murdock]

Safari is unrelated to Mozilla. It's KDEHTMLthingamajig based.

[worker201]

My bad.  You are correct - Safari is KHTML-based.
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, KHTML is far less error tolerant than Gecko, the rendering engine of Mozilla.  I would actually consider that a good thing, since it forces people who write sites for Safari and Konqueror to actually be intelligent and pay attention to their code.

[noob]

anything that will only work with M$ peoducts is crap. my sites dont work with ie at all. theres a few bugs in firefox that i use to my advantage. like, in a frame or iframe, the bgcolor of the page in it is the same as tha main background unless it is specified in the frame-page.

[Orethrius]

anything that will only work with M$ peoducts is crap. my sites dont work with ie at all. theres a few bugs in firefox that i use to my advantage. like, in a frame or iframe, the bgcolor of the page in it is the same as tha main background unless it is specified in the frame-page.

So basically, you don't like the W3C because it produces pages that show up properly in ALL browsers (MSIE included)?  What about Safari, Konqueror, and Galeon?  You realize that makes you worse than Microsoft, since you're effectively telling MSIE not to view your site and thus shooting any potential "switch to *x* browser" effort you may launch squarely in the foot?  I mean, don't take this personally, but don't you think you're being a little petty by shutting out browsers like that?  What if somebody has Firefox identifying as MSIE to get into, say, their bank's billpay site?  What then?  :p

[davidnix71]

You can spoof your user-agent easily enough. Opera can do it and Firefox has an extension for it. To refuse to support only IE would have to be willful. That is to say, using some form of Java or Windows authentication that another browser couldn't spoof.

I've been to Yahoo's streaming music site in Firefox and they let me in if I pretend to be a PC running XP and IE6 (when it's actually an eMac/Panther/Firefox. But, the music won't play because the popup window's Java is slightly different than a real pc's with IE, so some of the controls aren't there.

[worker201]

How to fuck with IE: the right way.

Make a website in graphical form
Save it as a png
add a layer above the sitegraphic
fill that layer with white
adjust the transparency of that layer until you can see through it well
save and upload

IE will just see a blue screen

[Refalm]

How to fuck with IE: the right way.

Make a website in graphical form
Save it as a png
add a layer above the sitegraphic
fill that layer with white
adjust the transparency of that layer until you can see through it well
save and upload

IE will just see a blue screen

I have tweaked that on my new website.

I have a script which detects by PHP which browser you're using (the user won't even notice one thing, because it's all in the background).

If you use a real browser, you get feeded the css file, plus a seperate one, created for real browsers. It got this:
#logo { width: 225px; height: 55px; background: url("images/refalm.png") }

However, if you use IE, you get the CSS file, plus this:
#logo { width: 225px; height: 55px; filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(enabled=true, sizingMethod=scale src="images/refalm.png") }

Finally, I use this to insert the PNG into my website:

This clearly shows that Microsoft slows down progress of building websites and new web technologies.
Using a gif isn't usually an option, because it's outdated, and doesn't match the superb quality of PNG.

[worker201]

Using a gif isn't usually an option, because it's outdated, and doesn't match the superb quality of PNG.

Not to mention the fact that Compuserve requires anyone who produces a gif to have a license.  Adobe bought a license, which transfers to you when you buy Photoshop.  But the Gimp, being free and open source, cannot create gif images.  Nor can any other open source program.  That's the main reason the W3C created and pimped png in the first place.

Conspiracy theory:
Apparently, supporting png transparency is a trivial matter.  The png specification is available for anyone who wants to read it, along with guides for implementation.  Yet Microsoft is somehow unable to do this.  Why?  One possible answer is that they are dumb (but just like George W, their dumbness is a front designed to draw your attention away from their real intentions).  Another possible answer is that they don't want to appear weak by "caving in" to web standards - if Microsoft supports one standard, customers will demand that they start supporting more.  But I think that a secret deal with Compuserve is the real reason.  Think about it: Compuserve gets into a little deal with Microsoft, Compuserve gets a few bucks and strong backing (which it must need since it pretty much died), while Microsoft has exclusive rights to extremely outdated gif technology.  They continue to support gif - if they didn't, gif would be completely supplanted by the far superior png within a year, causing Compuserve to belly flop.

Just an idea - I can't prove any of it.

[skyman8081]

Not to mention the fact that Compuserve requires anyone who produces a gif to have a license. Adobe bought a license, which transfers to you when you buy Photoshop. But the Gimp, being free and open source, cannot create gif images. Nor can any other open source program. That's the main reason the W3C created and pimped png in the first place.

Conspiracy theory:
Apparently, supporting png transparency is a trivial matter. The png specification is available for anyone who wants to read it, along with guides for implementation. Yet Microsoft is somehow unable to do this. Why? One possible answer is that they are dumb (but just like George W, their dumbness is a front designed to draw your attention away from their real intentions). Another possible answer is that they don't want to appear weak by "caving in" to web standards - if Microsoft supports one standard, customers will demand that they start supporting more. But I think that a secret deal with Compuserve is the real reason. Think about it: Compuserve gets into a little deal with Microsoft, Compuserve gets a few bucks and strong backing (which it must need since it pretty much died), while Microsoft has exclusive rights to extremely outdated gif technology. They continue to support gif - if they didn't, gif would be completely supplanted by the far superior png within a year, causing Compuserve to belly flop.

Just an idea - I can't prove any of it.

Um.... the GIF patent expired 2 years ago in the US, and a year ago everywhere else.  And compuserve sold the patent to Unisys, who then cracked down on it's use.

http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw

I use GIF because Adobe's PNG implementation is utter crap. If I use less than 256 colors (anything that isn't a photo, just about) Then I will use gif.

[worker201]

Gimp and Fireworks do good png work.  In fact, png is Fireworks native format.  I can't really speak for Adobe Photoshop, since I don't use it very often, and almost never for web graphics work.

There's nothing really wrong with jpeg as a web-deployable format, since it compresses quickly and strongly.  Which makes it good for complex bitmaps, like photos.  But I would never use it for non-web - that's what tiff is for.

[Aloone_Jonez]

PNG even supports diffetent colour depths, 1, 4, 8 and 24 bit modes are supported, the only disadvantege it has it it lacks animation.

[DBX_5]

PNG even supports diffetent colour depths, 1, 4, 8 and 24 bit modes are supported, the only disadvantege it has it it lacks animation.

That could be an Advantage, because sometimes animation on webpages are very annoying. Some people here would approve.

[MarathoN]

Yeah, I hate Flash Banners!

[noob]

So basically, you don't like the W3C because it produces pages that show up properly in ALL browsers (MSIE included)? What about Safari, Konqueror, and Galeon? You realize that makes you worse than Microsoft, since you're effectively telling MSIE not to view your site and thus shooting any potential "switch to *x* browser" effort you may launch squarely in the foot? I mean, don't take this personally, but don't you think you're being a little petty by shutting out browsers like that? What if somebody has Firefox identifying as MSIE to get into, say, their bank's billpay site? What then? :p

nothing to do with the agent, its stuff in the html engine. ie doesnt like parts of my site. im not recoding it all just soit looke great in ie.