Re: [PHP] PHP Manual problems

Bob McConnell wrote:
> From: Robert Cummings
>> Lester Caine wrote:
>>> James McLean wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 2:26 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:39:03 +0100, [email protected] (Jochem
> Maas) wrote:
>>>>>> as for using IE6 ... WTF ... you do realise this is essentially a
> web
>> developers mailing list right?
>>>>> The interesting things in my websites go on behind-the-scenes, in
> the PHP, and produce
>>>>> relatively straightforward HTML. I have avoided the well-known bugs
> in IE6, and think my
>>>>> webpages display correctly on any of the modern browsers, but as
> Microsoft delights in
>>>>> rearranging everything in every update, and making the features you
> need ever harder to
>>>>> find, I stick to IE6 for my everyday work.
>>>> Wow. Ignoring the issue that IE6 will soon be EOL (finally), and
>>>> ignoring how bad it is at handling anything even remotely modern,
> your
>>>> workstation must be a haven for virii, spyware and malware... IE6
> has
>>>> just about the worst security track record out there, at least on
> the
>>>> desktop anyway.
>>>>
>>>> If you must have IE6 for whatever reason, stick it on Windows
>>>> installed on a VM and upgrade your main workstation browser to
>>>> something more recent. At least a VM can be backed up at a
> known-good
>>>> point and if^H^Hwhen it gets compromised it can be deleted easily
> and
>>>> replaced with your backup.
>>>>
>>>> I'll make it easy for you: http://www.getfirefox.com :)
>>> Since a large section of our USER base is still tied to W2k and does
> not have 
>>> access to install other software, the call for IE6 to die is STILL
> somewhat 
>>> premature!
>>> What is needed is someone to kick M$ to sort the mess out by at least
> allowing 
>>> IE8 to install on W2k machines, rather than telling hundreds of
> councils they 
>>> have to replace ALL their computers :(
>>>
>>> The alternative is to convince M$ controlled councils that Firefox is
> OK and 
>>> that using it will not invalidate their contracts - but then all the
> work 
>>> currently being done to convert legacy setups to work with *IE7*
> would have to 
>>> be scrapped and reworked on Firefox. Many of my customers have only
> just got 
>>> funds to start an *IE7* roll out! Redoing all that work for IE8 is
> yet another 
>>> problem for which money is not available.
>> Microsoft WANTS them to spend money upgrading... that's the point of 
>> questionable feature enhancement and the breaking of file formats so 
>> that older software can't read it properly. If the councils really
> want 
>> to save money they'd move to Linux. As for "all the work being done to
> 
>> convert legacy setups to work with IE7"... this is the WRONG 
>> philosophy... it should be "all the work being done to convert legacy 
>> systems to work with Standards" with a little bit of "with IE7 
>> compatibility layer on top". The target is standards, that way in the 
>> future they aren't locked in still.
> 
> Our SOP is to generate standards compliant pages, validate them with
> Firefox and the HTML Validator add-on, then deal with the deviant
> browsers. It's a lot less work than trying to do it the other way
> around. There are a few minor issues, such as W3C still refusing to
> allow the autocomplete attribute for forms, while PCI requires it. But
> those are few and far between.
> 
> Bob McConnell
> 
> P.S. HTML Validator is available for Linux, but not from the Firefox
> add-on site. You need to go to the validator home page to get it.
> 

Yep, the validator is a great tool. I also simplify my task for browser 
rendering incompatibilities by adding the following around every page's 
content:

<!--[if IE 7]> <div id="ie7" class="ie7"> <![endif]--> <!--[if lte IE 
7]> <div id="ie7_lte" class="ie7_lte"> <![endif]--> <!--[if lt IE 7]> 
<div id="ie7_lt" class="ie7_lt"> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE 6]> <div 
id="ie6" class="ie6"> <![endif]--> <!--[if lte IE 6]> <div id="ie6_lte" 
class="ie6_lte"> <![endif]--> <!--[if lt IE 6]> <div id="ie6_lt" 
class="ie6_lt"> <![endif]--> <!--[if lt IE 6]> <div id="ie5" 
class="ie5"> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE]> <div id="ieX" class="ieX"> 
<![endif]-->

[[CONTENT]]

<!--[if IE]> </div> <![endif]--> <!--[if lt IE 6]> </div> <![endif]--> 
<!--[if lt IE 6]> </div> <![endif]--> <!--[if lte IE 6]> </div> 
<![endif]--> <!--[if IE 6]> </div> <![endif]--> <!--[if lt IE 7]> </div> 
<![endif]--> <!--[if lte IE 7]> </div> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE 7]> 
</div> <![endif]-->

This allows easy addition of CSS rules right where the main rule is defined:

div.some-class
{
     width: 90%;
}

div.ie7_lte div.some-class
{
     width: 85%;
}

I've never understood the messy practice of having multiple stylesheets, 
one for each version of IE, where the rules are separated from the main 
rule. I also have a script, for the rare instances  where I need to care 
about Safari, that uses JavaScript to insert similar tags as above but 
based on the browser actually being used.

Cheers,
Rob
-- 
http://www.interjinn.com
Application and Templating Framework for PHP