FIREFOX Is A Pain In The Ass

The BBQ Pit
1

OK, I know it is open-source, and I know every Bill Gates hater LOVES Firefox, and I don’t doubt that someday it might very well become the standard browser of choice…however…in the meantime…

I am about half way through a university course on Internet Design and Technology and when designing websites, it is mandatory that the site works on both Internet Explorer and Firefox (Netscape seems to be of less importance).

Well, I can whip up a great website that looks just great in IE, but when I look at it in Firefox, well - it looks like shit. It takes hours, if not days, to get the damned thing to work in Firefox - I have to do Internet searches on “fixes” for this and for that, and boy do I ever find lots of links - it seems I am not the only one screaming in front of my computer. And then, sometimes when I get it to finally work in Firefox, it is screwed up in IE!

One of my instructors won’t allow us to use IE in class (he loathes it), yet when it comes time to help fix the damn sites in his beloved Firefox, he more or less tells us to work it out on our own.

I believe about 20% or less of all Internet users have Firefox as their main browser, but about 80% of all my problems so far have been in creating sites that work in Firefox. It is like I am spending all my time fixing something for the fuckin’ brat child.

I know I am still the novice when it comes to website design - still taking, or just finishing, courses in HTML, XHTML, Dreamweaver, CSS and several Adobe programs. And in every single class, it is pretty much the same old story…“make sure it also works in Firefox!”

How about the wonderful people involved with Firefox make sure their damned browser works for the rest of the world, instead of making everyone else jump through hoops for them? You like your damned program so much, fix the damned thing to work as well as the evil IE.

Yes, I am aware of the shortcomings of Microsoft and Internet Explorer, especially the occasional crash and burn, but at least IE can read pretty much everything. Firefox seems to be the big, world-wide Beta experiment, and to be quite honest, I am tired of having to play along.

OK - blast me for being a website designer novice, blast me for not appreciating the vision of a free and wonderful new browser on the horizon, blast me for being a Microsoft lemming - but at this point in time, fuck you Firefox! You are a major pain the ass!

2

Yeah, it’s one of Clint Eastwood’s lesser films as a director, and it does tend to drag in the middle, but I wouldn’t call it a pain in the ass.

What?

3

I think you are confused. You are blaming Firefox for not conforming to IE, rather than blaming IE for making up its own rules as to how it should operate.

If you use correct standard HTML and CSS, it will work in Firefox.

It should also work in IE, but sometimes it won’t. That’s where fixes are required - to get it working in IE.

4

DMark, I feel your pain. But right since the beginning of the Web, about 50% of web design work is cross-browser compatibility.

Take it from someone who does this for a living, if you designed websites for Firefox you’d be giving the same rant about IE. IMO IE is the one at fault because it’s got so much proprietary crap in it and doesn’t fully conform to W3C guidelines (Firefox has a few glitches, but they do seem to try harder!). But sadly, IE is still the majority browser so we have to put up with the shit; it’s best if you get paid by the hour! :wink:

5

Uh, no.

I just took an 8 week course in HTML, and am working on a CSS project (using Zengarden.com as a basis for our final project) and both of them are/were FIREFOX nightmares.

In XHTML there were about 5 fixes I had to make, searching on the Internet and having to download special code.

In CSS, the centering and spacing was a disaster. Once again, search the Internet to find the damned fixes - and mind you, this was ALL pure CSS code for the project - Zengarden rules of the game. And if my instructor, Mr. Firefox, can’t give me a quick fix in CSS class, I hardly think it is a matter of using “correct” code - maybe “correct FIREFOX” code, but once again…let’s all jump through hoops.

6

I’ve been a web designer for 8 years. Trust me, Firefox is using CSS correctly. Maybe not logically (padding and spacing can be confusing) but definitely within W3C standard.

7

jjimm, you know I value your opinion highly. Yes, I am only waist deep in website design doo doo at this point in my studies, and hope it gets easier with experience…and while I do appreciate the FIREFOX web designer toolbar, and yes, there are new plug ins and toys daily…seriously, this is like trying to make a Mercedes and a Yugo compatible.

8

And then bitching that the Mercedes isn’t made with Yugo parts.

9

I know one thing.

I switched to Firefox from IE around three years ago. I haven’t had a single spy infection, browser hijack, etc since that day. Maybe IE7 is more secure than 5/6. I don’t know and I don’t care. Firefox does everything I want it to do and more besides.

All hail the Mozilla Foundation!

10

Let’s just say I have had a bad week…spent days finalizing a project and then discovering I get to do practically the whole damn thing all over again, due to that little problem of “logic, padding and spacing”…

11

As you become more experienced, you’ll end up checking everything in both browsers as you go - the W3C theory is all very well, but both browsers make mistakes along the way. I highly recommend sitepoint.com as a resource for design and compatibility issues. They have a good weekly newsletter.

12

And you have nailed the problem.

Yes, was my own damned fault for not checking both as I went along…and by the time I realized it, it has put me back to square one.

Still…one browser (name shall go unmentioned) is not making nice.

13

Here’s your new mantra:

Test early.
Test often.
Test in all required browsers.

Repeat as necessary.

14

I just wanted to point out this Firefox extension that makes testing your page in both browsers quick: IE Tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/

Once you have the page loaded in Firefox, with a single click you can change the rendering engine of the tab to IE’s, while still in Firefox.

15

For every browser share statistics reporter that reports FF use at 12-20%, there is another reporting it at 20-30%. The only thing all the stats agree on is that, whatever the actual number, IE’s browser share is slowly shrinking, and FF’s is slowly growing. So this is an issue that you are going to have to come to terms with as a web designer.

Apparently you had the misfortune to get your early exposure to the web when the first wave of the browser wars was over, and IE had a 95% share. Those days are fortunately over.

Can you give us an example of a problem that worked well in IE but was difficult to fix in FF?

16

So you’re blaming somebody else for your own ignorance and shitty development work?

Your professor was probably trying to get across that you’re better off coding to standards and fixing it for IE’s braindead rendering, but you did it the other way around.

If you want a real kick in the ass, try it in Opera.

17

I’ve just checked the site that I run professionally - UK government-to-business - and the stats for this week are 7.33% Firefox, and 90.24% IE. Comparing this with a similar week in June gives me 6.34% Firefox and 91.26% IE. So even though it’s small - the market I’m in is not very early-adopterish - it’s growing, but even 7.33% represents a good few thousand visitors I don’t want to piss off.

18

So the OP is upset that the gecko development team hasn’t put more effort into making their rendering engine duplicate all the errors IE makes in rendering CSS, is that it?

19

Open those projects that look fine in Internet Explorer but look like shit in:

• Safari
• Opera
• Konqueror
I suspect that what you’ll find is that (as others have said) it’s not IE versus Firefox, it’s IE versus everything that isn’t IE.

Internet Explorer rather famously does not play by the rules. It’s widely suspected that MS was hoping to make their rules the standards, thus marginalizing all the other browsers as “incompatible with the WWW”.

20

I know just about nothing about web design, but isn’t there a way to make the website figure out what browser is being used to look at the site? So you could write the page for IE, (let’s say you save it as page1_IE.htm) then once it’s ready, keep it unchanged and make a copy. Then edit that copy to run in Firefox, and name it page1_FF.htm. Then when the user gets to the homepage, some kind of script or something figures out which browser is being used and directs the user automatically to the proper page. I don’t know HOW to do this, but I’m pretty sure you can, right? Or at least you could have the user “click here if you’re using IE. Or click here if you’re using Firefox.”