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Geek Culture / Conspiracy Nuts: Browser Sniffing

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Libervurto
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Posted: 26th Oct 2012 15:30
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I've been using Opera web browser for a while now and it has become my preferred browser. However, after a recent update I've found that many sites don't display correctly and some don't function at all. It appears that browser sniffing is to blame.

I found this short article that gives one explanation, but that issue appears to have been resolved (worked around), so what is causing Opera's current (and seemingly worsening) compatibility issues? Despite making a mess of some sites Opera works very well with others that share similar features, so what's going on?

Theories range from developer complacency to downright sabotage!

Quote: "In brief, sites use browser detection, and many sites use outdated scripts that specifically detect Opera and send it broken code, or they do it on purpose (example: MSNBC.com). If the site had sent Opera the same code it sends to other browsers, it would have worked just fine in most cases."

Taken from here

Andrew Gregory has written quite extensively on the issue of compatibility here. He begins:
Quote: "Opera has a bit of a bad reputation as having poor compatibility with many web sites. Since December 2002 I've investigated many sites (usually in response to queries on Opera's Community Forums) and found that in most cases Opera was doing exactly what the site was telling it to do!"


There is one major question to be answered: Are these compatibility issues entirely out of Opera Software's hands? If the answer is yes, this opens a can of worms regarding the implications for the future advancement of web technology. Even if the idea of a web-cartel is fantasy, is this not an indication that such a agreement could exist and suffocate any outside competition? Do W3C standards need to be upheld by law? I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff but I know enough to realise that IE tends to lag behind the curve; is the relative necessity for IE compatibility (and old versions to boot!) holding back the entire web development industry?

Shh... you're pretty.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 26th Oct 2012 16:02 Edited at: 26th Oct 2012 17:27
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Regarding the ability for a website to detect which browser you are running, some browsers give you the option to change this (since it's the browser that tells the server). Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Your signature has been erased by a mod
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bitJericho
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Posted: 26th Oct 2012 16:49 Edited at: 26th Oct 2012 16:51
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Indeed. If Opera is stressing, they should just add a "compatibility view" button just like IE has, and if pressed, it tells websites that it's the Firefox browser Or some random string or something.

The most egregious thing I've found are the websites that block access until you upgrade IE to a "supported browser". I'm on my work computer. Yes I know I'm running IE8. Yes I know it's unsupported by everyone. Yes I would like to upgrade it but I'm not allowed. Why do you make your site completely unusable to everyone at work, where untold percentages of traffic come from?

Visit my blog http://www.canales.me.
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The Zoq2
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 01:39
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Well, site developers want to use new features, but IE holds them back a lot, like you said, a lot of buisneses still use IE8 or even 7. When not even IE10 can do what the other major browsers do. I started webdesign at school a few months ago, and so far, most problems I have encounterd in IE are completley "pointless". For example, to get HTML to work propperly, you have to write <!doctype html> at the beginning of the document. Even though the document is called .html, and the whole code must be surrounded with <html> </html> tags. One other completley unexplainable problem I was having with IE, was that it automaticaly added a margin to everything, and when it did, it completley ignored any commands to change that, unless you told it to change all at once.

What im trying to say is that the designers of a website arn't the ones to blame, it's the companies that don't upgrade to newer versions if IE, or swap over to chrome or firefox.
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Indicium
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 01:42
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Quote: "For example, to get HTML to work propperly, you have to write <!doctype html> at the beginning of the document. Even though the document is called .html, and the whole code must be surrounded with <html> </html> tags."


Erm, this is true for all browsers?


They see me coding, they hating. http://indi-indicium.blogspot.co.uk/
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ionstream
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 03:35
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Neither Firefox nor Chrome require this for rendering the page, hence the topic being IE workarounds.

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Indicium
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 03:40 Edited at: 27th Oct 2012 04:18
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You'll find you might run into problems with certain methods of AJAX in Chrome and Firefox if you don't declare a doctype. I'm not sure why, but I've had this problem on a site I optimized.

EDIT: Even if what I've just written does turn out to be false, the reason for a doctype is to differentiate between quirks mode and standards compliant in the browser.


They see me coding, they hating. http://indi-indicium.blogspot.co.uk/
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bitJericho
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 06:05 Edited at: 27th Oct 2012 17:56
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Quote: "Well, site developers want to use new features, but IE holds them back a lot, like you said, a lot of buisneses still use IE8 or even 7."


I'm not saying anyone should or shouldn't support IE. Just don't block it completely! I don't mind broken pages at all. I expect broken pages when I'm using a 3 year old version of a browser! More than a few sites block it altogether with a stupid upgrade message. I don't know what the percentages are but I wouldn't doubt if 75 percent of all users on IE =< 8 are forced to use it!

Add to that, it's almost getting stupidly easy to support a wide range of browsers when you utilize Normalize.css and Modernizr together.

Visit my blog http://www.canales.me.
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MrValentine
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 09:33
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Quote: "
Well, site developers want to use new features, but IE holds them back a lot, like you said, a lot of buisneses still use IE8 or even 7. When not even IE10 can do what the other major browsers do. I started webdesign at school a few months ago, and so far, most problems I have encounterd in IE are completley "pointless". For example, to get HTML to work propperly, you have to write <!doctype html> at the beginning of the document. Even though the document is called .html, and the whole code must be surrounded with <html> </html> tags. One other completley unexplainable problem I was having with IE, was that it automaticaly added a margin to everything, and when it did, it completley ignored any commands to change that, unless you told it to change all at once.

What im trying to say is that the designers of a website arn't the ones to blame, it's the companies that don't upgrade to newer versions if IE, or swap over to chrome or firefox.
"


Next step for you is hopefully Web Development...

XML
PHP
ASPX
XHTML
HTML 4.01 [eww]
... [too tired to bother naming others... but you get the message hopefully...]

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Phaelax
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Posted: 27th Oct 2012 14:33
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Before Chrome I used Opera, its a great browser. I wonder if an Opera update fixed some minor issues with their rendering, which throw off any possible pre-existing opera-specific tweaks developers may have used in the past. I wonder if you install a plugin to allow you to set what the browser tells websites which renderer it uses. I used one for FF way back in the day. Tell the sites it's Chrome and see if it renders differently.





Jericho, you mixed up your links.


Quote: "When not even IE10 can do what the other major browsers do."

Such as?
In terms of performance, IE10 has apparently beaten out the others in Google's own benchmark test. Toms Hardware

Quote: "<!doctype html>"

Actually, it was a much longer string than that. You're writing it the new HTML 5 way.
Quote: "HTML 4.01 [eww]"

Hey, what's wrong with that? I'm using it on my current site.

Setting the proper doctype resolves many of the issues with IE, typically leaving only minor problems to deal with.

Quote: "Even though the document is called .html, and the whole code must be surrounded with <html> </html> tags"

If I rename a JPG to DOC, applications can still read the file because it still contains a JPG header. Your HTML files don't have to use an html extension. Plus, those tags and specifying a doctype is the proper way to use the language anyway. Those are the rules, it's just too many people ignore them.

Any website can be made to work in any browser, I've been doing it for years. (i'll slap the guy who says netscape 1.0) But like I said, specifying a proper doctype will take care of most of those margin/padding issues. And minor tweaks you need to make with IE can be easily added to your CSS by prefixing it with *html and that will be ignored by all browsers but IE.


I'm not a pro-IE guy, but I don't think making a site compatible with it is all that difficult. But then most people who use IE are either basic computer users (kids/grandparents) or use a company computer where they are forced to use IE. Many business still enforce IE.

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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