Tech Talk 11

[GSK]

Originally Posted by Talisan

It's easy to forget that Microsoft pretty much made the market with IBM. And to say they go there own way as an insult is just funny. During the early days of the web, everyone made their own standards and why shouldn't they? The standards that didn't work washed out. To say that Microsoft must conform with others standards is silly... who said they should and why?

Chrispeg didn't say he was going to put Firefox into the browser, he was answering a question and discussing a hypothetical possibility.

It's because times have changed drastically since the early days. There is a general standard that Web Browsers should go by nowadays, and Microsoft's choice to stray from the path creates twice as much work for web designers and developers.

I mean, they didn't even support alpha transparent PNGs until IE7. Not to mention changes in IE8 broke compatibility with several sites, forcing them to display a neat little icon that you click to enable "IE7 Mode."

[PehJota]

Originally Posted by Talisan

It's easy to forget that Microsoft pretty much made the market with IBM. And to say they go there own way as an insult is just funny. During the early days of the web, everyone made their own standards and why shouldn't they? The standards that didn't work washed out. To say that Microsoft must conform with others standards is silly... who said they should and why?

Yes, but from a web design standpoint, multiple standards is a nightmare. Having to write, rewrite, and hack code -- just to get something you already wrote to work in another browser -- is annoying and time-consuming. If you've done a lot of cross-browser web design or programming, you'd notice (and greatly appreciate) that most browsers generally work the same way (in that they follow the W3C standards). IE works very differently in many cases, and some web designers and programmers don't even bother with it.

I don't mean to start an argument on the matter, and I understand your point. I'm just trying to show how, with so many browsers out there nowadays, web standards are invaluable for designers and programmers and non-compliancy is a nightmare.

Originally Posted by Talisan

Chrispeg didn't say he was going to put Firefox into the browser, he was answering a question and discussing a hypothetical possibility.

Yeah, I know he didn't say he was going to. He just said that if it's possible, it would be something worth looking into. I only intended to point out that it is possible and would be a great security (and probably speed) enhancement for AW.



Interesting side story. Firefox actually helped save about half of my college campus from virus infections. My school's website was hacked and included a malicious page within its design structure. Firefox detected and blocked the malicious domain automatically. IE, apparently, didn't. Though luckily for the IE users (and the campus IT department), the virus had been removed from the malicious domain anyway, lol. But if the virus had been there, more than half of the several hundred PCs on campus would have been infected (a nightmare for IT and the whole campus, considering it takes a month or more just to distribute a software update to every computer the campus). The networking department could have been fired. Students and prospective students using IE would've had the school to blame for infected machines.

[Legion]

Originally Posted by PehJota

Interesting side story. Firefox actually helped save about half of my college campus from virus infections. My school's website was hacked and included a malicious page within its design structure. Firefox detected and blocked the malicious domain automatically. IE, apparently, didn't. Though luckily for the IE users (and the campus IT department), the virus had been removed from the malicious domain anyway, lol. But if the virus had been there, more than half of the several hundred PCs on campus would have been infected (a nightmare for IT and the whole campus, considering it takes a month or more just to distribute a software update to every computer the campus). The networking department could have been fired. Students and prospective students using IE would've had the school to blame for infected machines.

This is yet another reason to switch to Mozilla Firefox. Active Worlds continuing use of Internet Explorer as its embedded web browser at this time is quite silly and an invitation to security risks that would plague Active Worlds browser while IE is open as it has for years. I would like to see them drop it and replace it with Mozilla Firefox.

It's not like Micro$oft extorts them to continue using it... or do they? o.o

Legion
Blackmailed....