How to use a Mac with websites that require Internet Explorer

At 13:52 -0700 UTC, on 2009-06-16, Edward Reid wrote:

[... IE 6.0 choking on TidBITS website]

> Of course, TidBITS is seriously at fault here. The home page alone
> throws 85 errors on validator.w3.org [...]
>
> An awful lot of that appears to be simply an incorrect DOCTYPE

That'd probably catch some 50% of the errors, yes. But there are lots of
nesting mistakes too. If any browser shows it in a useful manner, that's only
thanks that browser's ESP engine.

[...]

> I haven't done my own experiments, but from what I've read, IE now
> does an excellent job with standard-conforming HTML (etc). I can't
> recall whether it was v6 or v7 which achieved this status.

Hm... Well, maybe in the minds of its marketeers. IE 8 indeed does seem to
suck a bit less than its predecessors, but it's still quite good at messing
up relatively simple HTML and CSS (that every other browser handles fine).
Making websites work in IE is still expensive.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

> Another option is to install Internet Explorer, as egregious as that seems. Someone above mentioned Parallels and Fusion, but you can install IE without Windows using this: > http://www.kronenberg.org/ies4osx/ > It uses a Windows emulation layer (wine) under X11. If you already have Apple X11 installed, this is a pretty trivial installation. I've used to tame a few bad sites. It would make Parallels or Fusion a tax deduction because it is a requirement to fulfill your tax obligation.

--On June 16, 2009 1:52:13 PM -0700 Edward Reid <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

> An awful lot of that appears to be simply an incorrect DOCTYPE, but
> that's all it takes to dump the browsers into quirks mode.
>
> I haven't done my own experiments, but from what I've read, IE now
> does an excellent job with standard-conforming HTML (etc). I can't
> recall whether it was v6 or v7 which achieved this status. But
> TidBITS needs to fix its HTML before we complain about IE rendering.

IE 8 is the one that defaults to standards mode and implements the most
standards (but very little HMTL 5). "Quirks" mode almost always means
"render as much like IE 6 as possible." So when you're USING IE 6 you are
always in quirks mode no matter what the DOCTYPE is.

IE7 does standards better than IE6, but defaults to quirks mode and still
has a lot of issues even in normal mode.

On Jun 16, 2009, at 16:21, "Benjamin Lowengard" <lowengardmac.com>
wrote:

> Equally annoying is the requirement of using Acrobat....PDF is an
> open standard now- fwiw I don't use MS or Adobe apps in my working
> environment and often convert problem documents from these vendors
> without their software...

I finally just deleted Acrobat Reader from my machine as far too often
my settings were ignored and it opened PDFs instead of preview.app.

My computers now are MSFT and Adobe free.

On Jun 16, 2009, at 16:23, vfrspencer <vfrspencersbcglobal.net> wrote:
> It's not perfect, but it is actually Internet Explorer.

Sort of. It will not solve the problem that usually forces IE, activeX.

On 17/6/2009 7:27 PM, LuKreme at kremelskreme.com spake thus:

> I finally just deleted Acrobat Reader from my machine

I'd love to do that, but I keep receiving PDFs that Preview freaks out on
(invariably created under Windows). Most likely some sort of font issue. The
fascinating one I had recently drew some (not all) of the text as
gradient-shaded boxes.

Grumble.

--
=Nigel Stanger

> --On June 13, 2009 2:56:31 AM -0700 Matt Neuburg <matttidbits.com>
> wrote:
>
>> What I would try first off is having Safari claim to *be* Internet
>> Explorer.

There is one very bad side effect of engaging in this widespread
practice, that ends up effecting all Macintosh users.

Companies that track and report the number of computers using the
Web, and break it down into brands, drastically under-report the
number of Macintosh users on the Internet. Because many of the Macs
are reporting that they are Windows machines.

As a result, it looks like the number of Macs on the Internet is
practically insignificant. That leads folks to the conclusion that
creating Windows-only Web sites is justified. It's sort of a Catch-22.

Randy B. Singer • Mac OS X Routine Maintenance • http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Randy B. Singer<randymacattorney.com> wrote:
> ...drastically under-report the
> number of Macintosh users on the Internet. Because many of the Macs
> are reporting that they are Windows machines...

Though the user-agent string *does* contain a reference to
"Macintosh", "OS X", or some such, so log analysis software *can*
break it out as such.

Does anyone know how much/little this happens in actual practice?

BTW: I don't know when this was implemented, however at least current
versions of Safari revert to the default user-agent string, after the
tab is closed; nice.

I find the "requires IE and Windows" mainly a feature of business intranets which forget that many people simply don't have a similar setup at home.

On 19 Jun, 2009, at 04:45 , David Weintraub wrote:
> The big change is coming from a new browser war that most people
> have never heard of: IE vs. WebKit. It isn't the frontend of the
> browser that matters, but the back end rendering engine. WebKit is
> the engine behind Chrome, the Android browser, the Palm WebOS
> browser, and of course, Safari.


I just ran into on of the stupidest browser situations I've ever
seen. This was at abc.go.com when trying to view a video. I've long
complained about ABC's video player which is quite easily the worst
video player ever developed (one example among many, you cannot undo
full screen mode, and in full screen mode you cannot pause or rewind).

The player works in Firefox and Safari on my Mac. When I tried to
access it on Safari on the PC, however, I was informed that it only
works on IE or Firefox on Windows, or Safari or Firefox on the Mac.

Whaaa?

Some people simply have no clue, and never will.

But there are THREE sides to the new browser war, we have IE on one
side and Gecko/Webkit on the other. Gecko is, of course, the engine
behind Firefox and it is at least as much a player as WebKit is. The
difference is that WebKit is the 'wedge' as it is the engine on the
iPhone. People using FF on their computers can just be told to "piss
off and run IE, you hippie" which is the general attitude of most IT
departments. This does not work when the CEO wants to know why the
corporate site doesn't work on his new iPhone.

Regardless of the reason though, both Gecko and WebKit will come out
winners as companies are forced to abandon their retarded (and often
belligerent) Window-IE-Only stance. (Coca-Cola at one point simply
told me that if I didn't have Windows, I couldn't access their content
as ONLY Windows and IE4 were supported).

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Edward Reid<edwardpaleo.org> wrote:
> Of course, TidBITS is seriously at fault here. The home page alone
> throws 85 errors on validator.w3.org
>
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tidbits.com&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

Glenn took a pass on the code to clean it up again (we'd validated a
while back, when we launched the design, but it had degenerated over
time). There are still some errors, but it looks like they fall into
three categories, one of which is basically an unencoded ampersand and
the other two of which look pretty minor as well.

cheers... -Adam

On Jun 20, 2009, at 5:12 AM, LuKreme wrote:

> (one example among many, you cannot undo
> full screen mode

Use the escape key.

When an ad comes on, command-Tab will simultaneously take you to
another application and take you out of full screen mode.

On Jun 20, 2009, at 5:12 AM, LuKreme wrote:
> I've long
> complained about ABC's video player which is quite easily the worst
> video player ever developed (one example among many, you cannot undo
> full screen mode, and in full screen mode you cannot pause or rewind).

Actually, hitting the esc key will take you out of will take you out
of full screen mode. Having done that, you can pause and rewind easily.

Still dumb, of course. If YouTube and Hulu allow you to pause and
scrub while in full screen mode, and to pause/play by hitting the
space bar, a standard has been set. ABC really ought to do better.

But, to be fair, they are not so dumb as to make full screen mode
inescapable.

--
=Alex Hoffman

On 21 Jun, 2009, at 02:08 , Alexander Hoffman wrote:
> On Jun 20, 2009, at 5:12 AM, LuKreme wrote:
>> I've long
>> complained about ABC's video player which is quite easily the worst
>> video player ever developed (one example among many, you cannot undo
>> full screen mode, and in full screen mode you cannot pause or
>> rewind).
>
> Actually, hitting the esc key will take you out of will take you out
> of full screen mode. Having done that, you can pause and rewind
> easily.

I was not able to get out of FS on the PC until it was at a commercial
break, despite repeated beat-downs on the the escape key, space bar,
return key, f key, control-f key, and several others. Could be my
system I suppose.

> Still dumb, of course. If YouTube and Hulu allow you to pause and
> scrub while in full screen mode, and to pause/play by hitting the
> space bar, a standard has been set. ABC really ought to do better.

Every player I've used allows pausing with the space bar. ABC's player
is simply a bastardized, broken, backwards flash player. They took a
perfectly serviceable player and intentionally set about breaking it.

> But, to be fair, they are not so dumb as to make full screen mode
> inescapable.

Next time, hopefully a long long time in the future, I'll see if I can
get it to work.

At 6/20/2009 02:12 AM -0700, Adam Engst wrote:
>There are still some errors, but it looks like they fall into
>three categories, one of which is basically an unencoded ampersand and
>the other two of which look pretty minor as well.

Minor as in easy to fix, yes (though I don't understand one of them).
Minor in their effects on the predictability of rendering, no. As I
understand it (and I don't claim to be an expert here), even minor
errors throw the browser out of standards mode and into quirks mode.
"Almost standard" is the same as "not standard".

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Edward Reid<edwardpaleo.org> wrote:
> At 6/20/2009 02:12 AM -0700, Adam Engst wrote:
>>
>> There are still some errors, but it looks like they fall into
>> three categories, one of which is basically an unencoded ampersand and
>> the other two of which look pretty minor as well.
>
> Minor as in easy to fix, yes (though I don't understand one of them).
> Minor in their effects on the predictability of rendering, no. As I
> understand it (and I don't claim to be an expert here), even minor
> errors throw the browser out of standards mode and into quirks mode.
> "Almost standard" is the same as "not standard".

Does anyone have any hard information on this "quirks" mode and how
we'd know if our site was causing browsers to go into it? IE6 is low
on our priority list, but my understanding is that our site renders
fine in all modern browsers, particularly those on the Mac.

cheers... -Adam

--On June 24, 2009 12:41:08 PM -0700 Edward Reid <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

> At 6/20/2009 02:12 AM -0700, Adam Engst wrote:
>> There are still some errors, but it looks like they fall into
>> three categories, one of which is basically an unencoded ampersand and
>> the other two of which look pretty minor as well.
>
> Minor as in easy to fix, yes (though I don't understand one of them).
> Minor in their effects on the predictability of rendering, no. As I
> understand it (and I don't claim to be an expert here), even minor
> errors throw the browser out of standards mode and into quirks mode.
> "Almost standard" is the same as "not standard".

Lack of validation doesn't throw the browser into quirks mode (at least
that I can find.) It's trigged by some bugs in the browers and the doc type
(if it exists). But even with that, the bigger problem in designing pages
for IE is its poor CSS implementation. You can validate CSS as well, but
even perfect CSS won't render correctly.

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163763.aspx>
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en/mozilla%27s_quirks_mode>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode>
<http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/>

I am trying how to watch an episode of "The Closer" on TNT.tv

On 26-Jun-2009, at 16:04, Adam Engst wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Edward Reid<edwardpaleo.org> wrote:
>> At 6/20/2009 02:12 AM -0700, Adam Engst wrote:
>>>
>>> There are still some errors, but it looks like they fall into
>>> three categories, one of which is basically an unencoded ampersand
>>> and
>>> the other two of which look pretty minor as well.
>>
>> Minor as in easy to fix, yes (though I don't understand one of them).
>> Minor in their effects on the predictability of rendering, no. As I
>> understand it (and I don't claim to be an expert here), even minor
>> errors throw the browser out of standards mode and into quirks mode.
>> "Almost standard" is the same as "not standard".
>
> Does anyone have any hard information on this "quirks" mode and how
> we'd know if our site was causing browsers to go into it? IE6 is low
> on our priority list, but my understanding is that our site renders
> fine in all modern browsers, particularly those on the Mac.

The Web Developer bar in Firefox will tell you if a site is in quirk
mode (a ~ on the bar) or in compliance mode (a check mark in the same
place). Here's a picture of the bar in both states:

http://home.kreme.com/quirks.html

For the record, TidBITS.com renders in compliant mode.

On Jun 29, 2009, at 6:10 PM, LuKreme wrote:

> On 26-Jun-2009, at 16:04, Adam Engst wrote:

>> Does anyone have any hard information on this "quirks" mode and how
>> we'd know if our site was causing browsers to go into it? IE6 is low
>> on our priority list, but my understanding is that our site renders
>> fine in all modern browsers, particularly those on the Mac.
>
> The Web Developer bar in Firefox will tell you if a site is in quirk
> mode (a ~ on the bar) or in compliance mode (a check mark in the same
> place). Here's a picture of the bar in both states:

Or just use Firefox's built-in Get Info, check the Render Mode under
the General tab.

Here's a possibly universal method I just found. Browse to the page
you're interested in then enter this in any(?) browser's address bar:

javascript:alert(document.compatMode)

If the alert says CSS1Compat, the page was rendered in Standards mode.

I found this looking at information about IE but it works in Firefox
and Safari for OS X.

http://dorward.me.uk/www/bookmarklets/qors/