SillyDog701

[Wai_Wai]

Error Report: Firefox 0.9.2 can't show some websites properly

1.
http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html
There is an icon "I accept and process the online registration".
It is clickable. If you click on it, it will go to another page.

However in Firefox, it become unclickable (I can't click on it!).
What's wrong with firefox?

2.
Firefox cannot chose the right character code for a few Chinese simplified websites (eg http://www.flygo.net/wqjs.html).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

[Antony]

Error Report: Firefox 0.9.2 can't show some websites properly

1.
http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html
There is an icon "I accept and process the online registration".
It is clickable. If you click on it, it will go to another page.

However in Firefox, it become unclickable (I can't click on it!).
What's wrong with firefox?

Clearly, that page was written in bad JavaScript. Should report to Lexmark HK. Or use Safari or MSIE to register.

2.
Firefox cannot chose the right character code for a few Chinese simplified websites (eg http://www.flygo.net/wqjs.html).

The web page given in example was NOT coded with language (character set) information.
Neither MSIE would display correctly in Chinese, if your system's default language is set to English.
To get around, choose the Character Set yourself from View menu.

In both examples, not issues of Firefox but examples of bad coding.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.4.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.9

[Gregor]

Error Report: Firefox 0.9.2 can't show some websites properly

1.
http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html
There is an icon "I accept and process the online registration".
It is clickable. If you click on it, it will go to another page.
However in Firefox, it become unclickable (I can't click on it!).
What's wrong with firefox?

Tested with Firefox 1.0 PR: Button clickable and redirected to form page.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040908 Firefox/0.10

[Wai_Wai]

Error Report: Firefox 0.9.2 can't show some websites properly

1.
http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html
There is an icon "I accept and process the online registration".
It is clickable. If you click on it, it will go to another page.

However in Firefox, it become unclickable (I can't click on it!).
What's wrong with firefox?

Clearly, that page was written in bad JavaScript. Should report to Lexmark HK. Or use Safari or MSIE to register.

In my opinion, I don't think we can claim that the page is written in bad javascript (altho I don't know much about it). Since IE can, but it is just can't in Firefox. So that may imply:
- the requirement of javascript format form Firefox is different(?)
- it is more restrictive/sensitive to javascript (so has to be written in good structure in order to make it work)

Why can other browsers do but Firefox can't?
I think Firefox may be able to do something about it.


There're 2 more examples which Firefox fails to display correctly even if I enable Java (special effects).
- http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm ... out_go.htm
- http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm ... ameset.htm

2.
Firefox cannot chose the right character code for a few Chinese simplified websites (eg http://www.flygo.net/wqjs.html).

The web page given in example was NOT coded with language (character set) information.
Neither MSIE would display correctly in Chinese, if your system's default language is set to English.
To get around, choose the Character Set yourself from View menu.

In both examples, not issues of Firefox but examples of bad coding.

Yes, true.
It cannot be displayed correctly even in IE.
So what code is mssing / is written badly?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

[Wai_Wai]

Error Report: Firefox 0.9.2 can't show some websites properly

1.
http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html
There is an icon "I accept and process the online registration".
It is clickable. If you click on it, it will go to another page.
However in Firefox, it become unclickable (I can't click on it!).
What's wrong with firefox?

Tested with Firefox 1.0 PR: Button clickable and redirected to form page.

Hi.
When will Firefox 1.0 be available?

By the way, I wonder if mozilla encounter the same problems too.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

[Wai_Wai]

More Error Report:
There're 2 more examples which Firefox fails to display correctly even if I enable Java (special effects).
- http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm ... out_go.htm
- http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm ... ameset.htm

I don't know if it is the problem with Firefox in Java restriction, or else.
Would anoyne tell me why these Java cannot be displayed in Firefox?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

[akbash]

http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html

This page uses an IE extension that Mozilla have always considered to be an error, and never supported, not until Firefox 1.0. Look in the JavaScript Console for a description of the error. As Gregor reported, this will work in FF 1.0.

http://www.flygo.net/wqjs.html...So what code is mssing / is written badly?

This website should use a charset declaration. I have no personal experience with selecting character encoding. But I've heard these actions are useful when confronted with lazy web pages that declare no character set:

• Send the webpage author a friendly letter explaining how he could write a better website
• Specify a default character encoding in Firefox (Tools Menu -> Options -> General Group -> Languages Button)
• Activate Universal encoding detection (View Menu -> Character Encoding -> Auto Detect -> Universal)
• If all else fails, select the correct character encoding yourself from the View -> Character Encoding menu.

Of course you'll need the Language Pack installed on your machine. But I'm guessing you have that.

http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm_sub/about_go.htm

I can find no Java on this page. The animated flowers displayed in IE are accomplished using JavaScript. This is an especially badly coded website. It distinguishes only two kinds of browsers: Netscape 4 and IE. It's sad that it's such a chore to write anything tricky and compatible with all browsers. But there we are. However the code behind this page is from 1998. We could reasonably expect that it be updated.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040912 Firefox/0.10

[Wai_Wai]

http://www.lexmark.com.hk/reg/NewRegistration.html

This page uses an IE extension that Mozilla have always considered to be an error, and never supported, not until Firefox 1.0. Look in the JavaScript Console for a description of the error. As Gregor reported, this will work in FF 1.0.

Does this work in Mozilla too?
If so, which version?

http://www.flygo.net/wqjs.html...So what code is mssing / is written badly?

This website should use a charset declaration. I have no personal experience with selecting character encoding. But I've heard these actions are useful when confronted with lazy web pages that declare no character set:

• Send the webpage author a friendly letter explaining how he could write a better website
• Specify a default character encoding in Firefox (Tools Menu -> Options -> General Group -> Languages Button)
• Activate Universal encoding detection (View Menu -> Character Encoding -> Auto Detect -> Universal)
• If all else fails, select the correct character encoding yourself from the View -> Character Encoding menu.

Of course you'll need the Language Pack installed on your machine. But I'm guessing you have that.

I'm not sure.
But sometimes IE can display a website with correct language codes, but not for firefox.

Does the difference result from different requirements / structures / code formats firefox and IE have?

I will provide further information when I encounter again.

http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm_sub/about_go.htm

I can find no Java on this page. The animated flowers displayed in IE are accomplished using JavaScript. This is an especially badly coded website. It distinguishes only two kinds of browsers: Netscape 4 and IE. It's sad that it's such a chore to write anything tricky and compatible with all browsers. But there we are. However the code behind this page is from 1998. We could reasonably expect that it be updated.[/quote]


Again does the difference result from different requirements / structures / code formats firefox and IE have?

Why IE can? Firefox not?

And does all these mean IE is more compatible with websites, but firefox is a bit picky relatively to IE?
[Maybe I am wrong. But just make a guess]

I would really like to know why all these happen?
And how to rewrite the codes to solve the problems?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

[akbash]

I would really like to know why all these happen?

It's a complex problem. Every maker of a modern browser understands that the IE way of doing things is the de facto standard and tries to emulate it as best they can. Not everything IE does however can or even should be emulated: ActiveX comes to mind. The web of things that can't in practice be emulated is greatly expanded and fixed by the large body of extant websites, many of them containing code from -- ahem -- 1998, that make unfortunate assumptions about one set of functionality from others.

The choices a browser maker faces aren't clear. For example Mozilla and Opera took different paths to IE compatibility in one area used very frequently in many websites (document.all). Because of this one choice, each browser works on some sites and doesn't on others, but different sites for each. It's a backwards compatibility nightmare, and the world wide web is immovable as a planet. (In recent builds Mozilla has by the way moved closer to Opera's interpretation.)

In the end, there are incompatibilities between browsers, and it's up to website authors to deal with them. Or not. http://hk.geocities.com/wai_wai_sir/htm ... out_go.htm is a fairly simple example that does nothing egregiously wrong. It just needs to understand that the world of browsers has changed a great deal in the last six years. Or not. After all it works fine in Firefox; it's just missing some extra flash.

And how to rewrite the codes to solve the problems?

I see two, maybe three, small problem areas that need to be rewritten. The biggest impediment to most authors is that seemingly all the popular websites offering pre-packaged sample code were written in 1998, and have never been updated. You just have to know what you're doing, and it helps if you have access to different browsers on half a dozen different machines. What a mess, eh?

Does this work in Mozilla too?

I believe Mozilla plans to copy Firefox's document.all compatibility change to the Mozilla 1.7.x effort, but hasn't yet. Note that only from Mozilla 1.7 it could be picked up by some future Netscape build.

Does the [character encoding] difference result from different requirements / structures / code formats firefox and IE have?

Outside my area of expertise, here. Anyone else know?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040912 Firefox/0.10