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Web 2.0 Recipes With PHP + DHTML 134

Posted by Zonk from the web-2.0-the-easy-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Take a look at these full simple code examples for dynamic elements for your web apps, including: Ad boxes, Pop-ups, Spinners, and Tabs. Easy ways to show and hide content on the page." From the article: "Incorporating JavaScript into your page makes the page dynamic and creates a more compelling user experience. Users can get more data more quickly, look at information from different aspects, and seamlessly navigate the site -- and the site doesn't have to go back to the server for lots of pages. However, there's also a reason to avoid using JavaScript: browser compatibility. In the early days of flat HTML, Internet Explorer rendered pages differently from Netscape. Those problems were fixed, but when support for CSS was added, new compatibility issues arose. Now most of the CSS issues have been solved, but JavaScript compatibility issues have cropped up. These compatibility problems have no easy solution. You need to weigh the benefit of what the JavaScript is doing against the number of browsers you'll need to test against and support."
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Web 2.0 Recipes With PHP + DHTML More

Web 2.0 Recipes With PHP + DHTML

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  • Hmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05, 2006 @04:57PM (#15273332)
    This will make for some interesting comments. Begrizzled hippies whining about Javascript. Puzzled newbies arguing the merits of PHP. Flamefests over ruby on rails and other frameworks. Etc.

    • Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Intron ( 870560 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @06:07PM (#15273822)
      Us begrizzled hippies used the <BLINK> tag for this stuff.

    • Who the fuck wrote this?! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05, 2006 @06:48PM (#15274055)
      In the early days of flat HTML, Internet Explorer rendered pages differently from Netscape. Those problems were fixed, but when support for CSS was added, new compatibility issues arose. Now most of the CSS issues have been solved, but JavaScript compatibility issues have cropped up.

      Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh. My eyes are bleeding. What the fuck are you talking about?

      In the early days of HTML, Internet Explorer did not exist.

      Only IE and Netscape render pages differently?!

      Most of the CSS issues have been solved?!? What?!

      Javascript compatibility problems are new?@#$?@#$!?
    • ... and is any of this stuff Search Engine friendly, or just something else that can inadvertantly get your site banned from Google?
    • No. Begrizzled hippies would be whining about this newfangled language called "C". Nobody under the age of 60 is a hippie.
    • Forget the arguments over the relative merits of the two languages. I'm just wondering what benefit there is in combining them this way. The author explains HOW you can do it, but not WHY you'd want to or what makes it better than just doing PHP for server-side processing and JavaScript for client-side processing. HTML with JavaScript: 59 lines HTML with JavaScript and PHP: 67 lines Functional difference: Indistinguishable Maybe these are just proof of concept examples and if you're doing a big long pag

  • BAM! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Metabolife ( 961249 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @04:58PM (#15273341)
    "including: Ad boxes, Pop-ups, Spinners, and Tabs. Easy ways to show and hide content on the page." Then you just mix it in the bowl and BAM! You have upset customers and lost respect!

  • Shock (Score:2, Funny)

    by shoma-san ( 739914 )
    Wow, he's using Apple to view/code his site. He might already be riddled with a ton of viruses (I read the McAfee Feigns Fear at Mac Security article). Better not try this at home without McAfee!

  • IE Script Warnings (Score:5, Insightful)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@RABBIT ... minus herbivore> on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:00PM (#15273364) Homepage
    My biggest hesitancy in using javascript is the IE warning bar that makes any page containing script look threatening. It's no problem with Foxfire, but most people still use IE. How many of them would see that warning and just assume something bad is lurking if they click Allow?

    • Re:IE Script Warnings (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tx ( 96709 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:03PM (#15273389) Journal
      For a minute there I thought you meant the bar at the top that says "Microsoft Internet Explorer", makes every website look threatening to me ;)

    • Re:IE Script Warnings (Score:5, Informative)

      by eggz128 ( 447435 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:07PM (#15273421)

      My biggest hesitancy in using javascript is the IE warning bar that makes any page containing script look threatening


      That only happens on XP post SP2 and when the content you are viewing is on a local drive. Once your page is uploaded -- or if you give it "The mark of the web" (Google for it) on your local drive -- the yellow warning bar no longer appears.
      • >>>My biggest hesitancy in using javascript is the IE warning bar that makes any page containing script look threatening

        >That only happens on XP post SP2 and when the content you are viewing is on a local drive.

        The fuck? Shouldn't that be reversed? Or at least the same for both? I'm not sure why on earth you should be more trusting of websites than things on your hard drive.

        • The fuck? Shouldn't that be reversed? Or at least the same for both? I'm not sure why on earth you should be more trusting of websites than things on your hard drive.

          It's more along the lines that you should be more warey of code that is loaded from your local machine and then exectuted -- i's given higher privilages by IE (it's run in the "My Computer" zone rather than "The Internet" zone).

          Code that out on the web is harmless (because IE will just refuse to do whatever the script asks) can be very dangerou

    • I know you meant Firefox. But most javascript that this article sites is not alerted by the yellow warning bar.

  • Wow (Score:5, Informative)

    by aftk2 ( 556992 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:00PM (#15273366) Homepage Journal
    This article's been on the front page for a couple of minutes, with no comments. Perhaps Web 2.0 is tired?

    For me, I really like JavaScript and AJAX when it helps to actually improve the user experience. Dynamic tabs? What's the point? How is it really functionally than just heading to a different page, or using some middleware to control what content is served, after a page reload?

    Now, on a website I built [theportlandscene.com], I've used AJAX (shudder) to create a commenting system that doesn't require the user to initially be logged in. The user can visit a page, submit a comment through the form, and if the user isn't logged in, they're presented with the ability to login right then and there, without losing their comment, and without even being shuttled off to a different section of the site, wondering if their comment will post when they're finished. If they don't have an account, they can create one right there. I think those kinds of tricks make remote scripting worthwhile.

    Plus, I think adding new widgets to HTML through JavaScript is pretty keen - like the sliders and calendar that Yahoo is making available under the BSD license at their developer area [yahoo.com].

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)

      by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:23PM (#15273509)

      Now, on a website I built, I've used AJAX (shudder) to create a commenting system that doesn't require the user to initially be logged in. The user can visit a page, submit a comment through the form, and if the user isn't logged in, they're presented with the ability to login right then and there, without losing their comment, and without even being shuttled off to a different section of the site, wondering if their comment will post when they're finished. If they don't have an account, they can create one right there. I think those kinds of tricks make remote scripting worthwhile.

      Or you could just have the comment submit form include "username" and "password" fields if the user is not logged in, and if you need to go to another page to create an account, move the comment text around in a hidden field. No reason whatsoever to use user-side scripting, just good old PHP / JSP / ASP / whatever.

      • He could also just have the user mail the comment in using the postal system, but that is also not slick.
      • On the other hand, moving comments around inside a hidden field increase bandwidth requirements for a particular site. Offloading that particular part will reduce that, but the dependancy on javascript will cause problems for the simpilar browsers, hence a fallback of using the hidden field/resubmitting comment will need to be done. In the end, both solutions should be present, but that increases maintainence costs. It really comes down to what browsers (I mean, a browser that support/not support javascrip

        • On the other hand, moving comments around inside a hidden field increase bandwidth requirements for a particular site.

          Since we are talking about human-typed text, and only moving it around when creating an account (once per user, presumably), I have a hard time imagining it to cause significant bandwidth usage. Especially since javascript also consumes space, and it needs to be sent every time someone tries to submit a comment without being logged in, since you can't know beforehand if he already has an

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by RomulusNR ( 29439 )
      No, the problem is that Web 2.0 does not equal DHTML, or even AJAX, which is really just DHTML with back-room data loading. The article admits shamelessly it's just about DHTML. The difference between DHTML and Ajax is the difference between Experts Exchange and Google Mail.

      I guess "Web 2.0" will never be defined. Is Web 2.0 "thick client" browsing, or is it providing and soliciting community-enhanced content?

      • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

        by Tim Browse ( 9263 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @09:42PM (#15274745)
        I guess "Web 2.0" will never be defined. Is Web 2.0 "thick client" browsing, or is it providing and soliciting community-enhanced content?

        Defining Web 2.0?

        Well, that is a fun game, to be sure, but I prefer Mornington Crescent. The rules are less nebulous.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ticklemeozmo ( 595926 )
      This article's been on the front page for a couple of minutes, with no comments. Perhaps Web 2.0 is tired?

      I don't think it's that. It's just.. rehashed drek from other websites with a .ibm.com domain name.

      Really, there is NOTHING new in that tutorial that hasn't been done on other beginner websites. Nothing here is really Web 2.0, it's just hiding divs. That was in Javascript a long time ago. There's no backend business, no combining with other technologies. No data being "fetched", no integrati
    • It's fine to do that. But what about people with no wish or ability to use javascript? Did you leave in a backwards-compatible method of posting comments?

    • Re:Wow (Score:2, Informative)

      by fbg111 ( 529550 )
      Perhaps Web 2.0 is tired?

      No, PHP is tired. It's now all about Ruby [ruby-lang.org], Python [python.org], LISP [gigamonkeys.com], and the more obscure but no less interesting Lua [lua.org], Scala [scala.epfl.ch], Qi [lambdassociates.org], OCaml [extremetech.com], among others, and various [rubyonrails.org] derivatives [djangoproject.com] and frameworks [turbogears.org].
      • I see I pissed off the PHP developers. Apologies for the offense guys, but having been one myself I'm fairly familiar with PHP. Taken in aggregate, it's a hack, and was bound to be superseded sometime or another by better languages. It certainly served a noble purpose though, providing a foss alternative to proprietary options like ASP, Java, and Cold Fusion (so did Perl, but PHP was more accessible to noobs, of which there were many in the early web days). And don't fret too much, it probably won't go
    • Having a front-end scripting language that lets you divide application processing between the front end and back end and a good clean data model for the communications between them is a really powerful concept, and it's no surprise that you can do cool things with Ajax.

      But having Javascript as the scripting language (instead of Java or some other decently secure language) is dangerous and nasty for the user who reads your website, because you're requiring the user to turn Javascript on to see your cool st

  • The worst page ever. (Score:5, Funny)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:02PM (#15273387) Homepage
    I wonder - we should have a competition to see who can make the most obnoxious web 2.0 page. Sort of like 1997 web "1" style - "under construction" gifs, flashing text, and scrolling status bars.
    • Oh my friend, this is already being done, as featured in an article on TheDailyWtf [thedailywtf.com].. HyperLink 2.0:

      # a translucent layer (DIV) is placed over the entire page, causing it to appear "grayed out", and ...
      # a "please wait" layer is placed on top of that, with an animated pendulum swinging back and forth, then ...
      # the XmlHttpRequest object is used to call the "GetHyperlink" web service which, in turn ...
      # opens a connection to the database server to ...
      # log the request in the RequestedHyperlinks table and ...
      #
    • I thought I already won that contest.

  • Search Engine Visibility (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fragmentate ( 908035 ) * <jdspilled AT gmail DOT com> on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:03PM (#15273395) Journal
    If you use JavaScript to render content, you're going to have a really hard time getting indexed by the search engines. If you're an individual, not such a big deal. If you're a company... make sure you have an alternative to pure javascript so that the search engine robots can find the content.

    Same goes for Flash...

    I can't believe how many companies spent tens of thousands of dollars on a CMS package, or to a "web designer" that rendered them invisible to the search engines.

    The article does recommend a fallback for unsupported browsers. Take this to heart, because "GoogleBot" is an unsupported browser.

    • If you use JavaScript to render content, you're going to have a really hard time getting indexed by the search engines. If you're an individual, not such a big deal. If you're a company... make sure you have an alternative to pure javascript so that the search engine robots can find the content.

      There's an FPS game map review site [telefragged.com] I used to visit often which has an utterly pointless Javascript 'compression' system behind it, originally coded to supposedly make it load more quickly over dialup connections.

      As

      • The best part about that WTF is how nobody seems to have noticed it's very similar to how GMail handles links. The only real difference is that the WTF actually uses <a> elements and changes the page location, which means it actually works better than GMail for things like bookmarking, the back button, keyboard navigation, etc.

    • I suspect you don't really want Google to index your ads or pop-up definitions, and I think it doesn't ignore content with visibility "hidden", so this code should work the way you'd like.
    • Actually, we (yeah - I work at MacroAdobedia) offer a free SDK for making Flash Search engine friendly in response to customer requests. You can download this from our developer site http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/ [adobe.com] The SDK includes an application named 'swf2html'. Swf2html extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash .SWF file, and returns the data to stdout or as an HTML document. Swf2html is provided as a compiled application, and as a static library for linked library implementation. For co
    • >If you use JavaScript to render content, you're going to have a really hard time getting indexed by the search engines.

      True, on the other hand, it allows some really cool tricks...

      AJAX site: http://www.dutchpipe.org/ [dutchpipe.org]

      Yahoo cache: http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&fr=sf p&p=dutchpipe&u=www.dutchpipe.org/&w=dutchpipe&d=N -xgzEaqMtyR&icp=1&.intl=us [216.109.125.130]

    • Concerning FLASH a potential explanation is this real life experience.

      The CMS was installed and running for weeks but our client was still requesting modifications after modifications on the lay-out. HTML+CSS and nice visual. Nothing really wrong with it. Until that contract, Our lay-outs would only suffer few modifications before being accepted.

      Their profile: a medium interior design company.

      We were about to lose money. We spent more money on the lay-out than on the tool in itself. What's puzzled me is tha

  • Web 2.0 (Score:3, Funny)

    by nstlgc ( 945418 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:03PM (#15273396)
    Stop calling it Web 2.0, you are making a total fool out of yourself. I thought meaningless buzzwords were for managers?
    • Thank god there are others who feel the same way.
      While we're at it, why don't we find a real name for "AJAX" since when did "and" count as a letter in an acronym?
      • Since the cartoon show "Duckman" (Featuring the voice of Jason Alexander) appeared in the mid-90's to shake the adult cartoon world up. His enligthen newphew, Ajax, was made popular among those late-night cartoon watching adults. Many of whom spent hours on the internet...

        Cheers

        [J]

    • Typical Developer 1.0. In this age of outsourcing, developers need to assume more managerial roles, like project management and talking out of their ass.

  • How useful is this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eideewt ( 603267 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:04PM (#15273400)
    Except for the tabs, these all seem like a pretty bad idea. Nobody wants to click all over to get at information that could have just been displayed in the first place.

  • Oh greaaaat... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by radiotyler ( 819474 ) <tyler@dappergeek.BOYSENcom minus berry> on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:05PM (#15273403) Homepage
    "...including: Ad boxes, Pop-ups, Spinners, and Tabs. Easy ways to show and hide content on the page."/i>
    Did we really need php/dhtml ad boxes and pop-ups? What, the good-ol' fashioned ones weren't annoying enough, or was there a strong demand for pretty dynamic pop-ups? This is one of those things that you see, and read the article and think, "Oh boy, I can't want to see this get implemented poorly and exploited." Anyone care to take any bets on how long it takes before this annoying crap is assulting us in ad format on a wide scale - or is it already?

    • Re:Oh greaaaat... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kuzb ( 724081 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:19PM (#15273490)
      Never worked in internet advertising before?

      Trust me, there is a strong demand for this stuff (it is in use already), and advertisers don't care how much it annoys you. In fact, it's been shown in our in-house studies that really annoying ads work better than ones that are not. This means, the more movement it has, and the more noise it makes, the more effective the ad will probably be. The solution? Convince everyone not to click on them. That would make them go away faster than anything.

      The fact of the matter really is that people click on this stuff. More than you probably realize.
      • it's been shown in our in-house studies that really annoying ads work better than ones that are not

        Only in the (very) short term. Sure they get noticed - long enough to make people look for ways to block them - or simply go spend their time (and money) elsewhere.

      • Nah, the only way I come remotely close to internet advertising is the banner ads on my personal website - and 3/4 of those are for friends of mine, the other 1/4 generate the "revenue" (HAHAHAHAHA) and they're all for products and websites that I heartily endorse. No spammy popup garbage for me, but then again I have that luxury of being able to say, "No sir, I don't like it."

        "In fact, it's been shown in our in-house studies that really annoying ads work better than ones that are not."

        I know man, that's

      • Could be why a lot of us never see ads. I haven't for years, that little addition to userContent.css has stood the test of time.

            PenGun
          Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !
    • It's already assaulting you in advert/popup format and has been sitting un-noticed (and working very well) under your nose for quite some time.. what am I talking about? AdSense and Yahoo.. and Casale.. and any number of other ad providers.

      Have you ever seen those sites where some words have double underlines, when your mouse is over them an annoying box pops up with context sensitive advertising (e.g. for 'hosting' some random hosting company advert would pop up). Guess what? JavaScript and Ajax makes this

      • Re:Oh greaaaat... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by radiotyler ( 819474 )
        The double underlines thing drives me freakin' wild, man. The thing that bothers me about that is I think it's (un?)intentionally teaching people that the link that has been inserted into the article you're reading may not be endorsed by the site writing the piece, and getting people a bit paranoid about what they click on.

        Of course, this can all be cured by taking your information from "reputable" websites - but sometimes I like to visit the other side of the tracks, and it just makes me that much more
      • Ok, I don't notice casalemedia very often, but that's because I block them and their spammy popups. Arrrgh...
    • I needed popups for my webapp, or so I thought. Legit stuff, couldn't really fit it into the main page, didn't want the distraction either.

      But you shouldn't be opening windows, it's damned rude.

      I've finally settled on doing something like what lightbox does for pictures. It opens the "popup" on the same page, overlayed on top of what is already there. Sort of a modal dialog box. It looks slick, it's not anywhere near as annoying, and it's closable... you can go back to the main page, and nothing is added, n

  • Urge to kill...rising... (Score:5, Funny)

    by crerwin ( 971247 ) <crerwin@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:11PM (#15273439) Homepage
    Great, instructions for ad-boxes, pop-ups, and spinners (I stopped reading the article before I got to what spinners were, but I'm sure they're obnoxious). This is almost as bad as the fact that Macromedia has a forum on their site dedicated to creating ads. Some people just give humans a bad name.

    Next week: Your first phishing page with php and dhtml in just minutes!

  • this is sad... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jehlon ( 467577 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:18PM (#15273483) Homepage
    I was hoping for some good code, it is from IBM after all, but its nothing more than crappy javascript from '99. Someone buy this guy the DOM Scripting book (http://www.domscripting.com/ [domscripting.com]) and teach him what the seperation of structure (XHTML), presentation (CSS) and behavior (javascript) is all about.
  • Full simple code examples for dynamic elements for your web apps, including: Ad boxes, Pop-ups, Spinners, and Tabs

    Oh god, won't someone please think of the end users?

  • Ad boxes, Pop-ups, Spinners, and Tabs

    Are the biggest reason to not use Java Script most of the time.

    I have a couple PC's. One for trusted sites, and the other for general internet browsing. Some sites display a blank page. Too bad the site doesn't check what the client is running. A blank page does not provide any information including any reason I might want to visit with scripting turned on.

  • Why is this an article specifically? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ahnteis ( 746045 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:31PM (#15273565)
    I ask because there are whole sites ( http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ [dynamicdrive.com] ) that provide many more examples along with compatibility information. There are also huge sites with tutorials about developing your own scripts.

    So why choose this seemingly random PAGE that offers (as far as I can tell) nothing new?
  • is for XULRunner to be released so we won't have to deal with the ugly HTML mess anymore.

  • Stupid code (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:33PM (#15273586)

    IBM's JavaScript articles are usually high quality. But this one is awful. It uses invalid code, it doesn't degrade gracefully, it mixes HTML, CSS and JavaScript into the same file instead of separating them, and it breaks when you try and do things as simple as open a link in a new tab.

    Don't be fooled by the "senior software engineer with more than 20 years of experience" author, this guy doesn't know the most basic, newbie things. I can only imagine that his 20 years of experience was with something other than HTML, CSS and JavaScript. For example:

    • The code doesn't use a doctype line. Not only does that preclude basic QA in the form of validation, but it kicks browsers into "quirks mode", which screws up CSS rendering.
    • The code uses href="javascript:...". This is stupid and wrong [jibbering.com].
    • He just dumps content out wherever he likes, hides it with CSS and then shows it with JavaScript. So much for backwards compatibility. When CSS is not available, you'll just get random bits of content scattered throughout the page.

    That's just the tip of the iceberg. This is an exceptionally poor article.

    • Re:Stupid code (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It wasn't with actual GUI development either, or he wouldn't have called it a spinner. A spinner [eclipse.org] (Already defined by IBM [eclipse.org]) is something entirely different.

      SWT calls what he was doing an ExpandBox and I've also seen them called Accordions.
    • I can only imagine that his 20 years of experience was with something other than HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
      I'd like to meet the guy that has 20 years experience with HTML, CSS and Javascript. Perhaps he could teach me the secrets of his time machine.
    • The code doesn't use a doctype line. Not only does that preclude basic QA in the form of validation, but it kicks browsers into "quirks mode", which screws up CSS rendering.
      It's a good thing this article wasn't about valid HTML coding, then, isn't it?
        1. People tend to copy & paste code from articles like this into their own projects. By using invalid code, he's causing other people to use invalid code.
        2. If he makes basic newbie errors in one part of the code, then it's a pretty good indicator that the rest of the code is crap too.
  • Those examples don't need PHP, they are simple copy and paste jobs. Adding PHP did nothing for the code. Sure, you could argue that using PHP would allow you to add features, but if that were the case, the article should explore possible additions.

  • What the... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Null Nihils ( 965047 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @05:42PM (#15273648) Journal
    *cough* *sputter*

    ... I'm sorry... this isn't Web 2.0, this is Web 1996... this is... this is... I couldn't even cope with TFA, it was giving me horrible flashbacks from back when I wrote IE-only webpages because I didn't know any better.

    Seriously, I'm not trying to troll, I'm genuinely at a loss for words here... how... what...??? ...who are you people, and what have you done with Slashdot?

  • From a practical point of view the information provided by the site in question is useless (not to take away from the efforts of those involved). The focus really should be on the convenient, useful aggregation of content, while providing ease of use for visitors to the site.

    I was roped in by the "wowee zowee" stuff as IE battled Netscape in the 90's. Eventually we all realized that coding to the lowest common denominator was the key to creating a consistent, error free experience for our end users.

    The

  • I would like to be able to click in some part of a comment to hide it and all its responses, so I can read the comments I like and not all the stuff that gets posted.

    Please some of the CSS hackers submiting designs for the new /. take this into account.

  • CSS Issues Have Not Been Solved (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @08:07PM (#15274443) Homepage Journal
    "In the early days of flat HTML, Internet Explorer rendered pages differently from Netscape. Those problems were fixed, but when support for CSS was added, new compatibility issues arose. Now most of the CSS issues have been solved, but JavaScript compatibility issues have cropped up."

    CSS compatibility issues have been worked around; they have not been "solved", and any quick trip through Position is Everything or A List Apart will show you that. JavaScript compatibility issues have also been around since the first days of JavaScript implementation in browsers.

    Neither are going to "be solved", especially if Microsoft have anything to say about it. Right now, as in the past, implementation differences equal a certain degree of lock-in. The truth is that no rendering engine provides a complete, perfect-for-intents-and-purposes CSS2 implementation, and IE is easily at the bottom of that pack. Combined with its field dominance, it is largely responsible for "CSS compatibility issues".

    IE 7 isn't going to provide a better rendering engine than Gecko, KHTML/WebCore, or whatever Opera's engine is called; it will simply address a list of the most important problems, such as the infamous box model fuck-ups. There will not be a "kickass" rendering engine in IE 7, and as much as I hate to say it, that's going to keep us in compatibility hack hell for the near future.

    Now, if you ask me--and obviously you did, right, lol internet_rant--Microsoft have had more than ample time, people, and resources to produce a rendering engine on-par with Gecko and its peers. But that's not going to be the case. Only one reason for that.

    CSS compatibility issues mostly solved? Not even close.
    • Now, if you ask me--and obviously you did, right

      Actually, I did, once upon a time.

      Microsoft have had more than ample time, people, and resources to produce a rendering engine on-par with Gecko and its peers. But that's not going to be the case. Only one reason for that.

      Wrong. They haven't had more. They've had INSANELY MORE time, people and resources. What's it been? 5 years now since the last major update? They're sitting on a warchest of $40 billion... and while they can't spend that on the browser alone,

  • Crap Code Alert (Score:3, Interesting)

    by porneL ( 674499 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @08:26PM (#15274519) Homepage

    This code is crap. Use of <a href="javascript:"> makes it same quality as <marquee><font color="#ggggg">OMG Web 2.0!</td></font>

    Unlike TFA, here are some resources worth reading:

  • Why I left front-end web development (Score:3, Interesting)

    by onlyjoking ( 536550 ) on Friday May 05, 2006 @08:55PM (#15274622)

    I spent years wading through the quagmire of DHTML/CSS/Javascript compatibility issues and eventually realised that it was a full time job getting it right. 'Trouble was the job went largely unrewarded as the end user was only interested in how pretty it looked and it's difficult to get a client to pay you properly for time spent working round compatibility problems. Eventually I got wise and realised M$ had screwed up the CSS and Javascript game beyond recovery and decided to concentrate my energies where my time would be rewarded. I've been working with Perl, PHP, MySQL and PostgreSQL ever since and haven't looked back. For front-end design I keep it simple - basic CSS and no Javascript. That way I can sleep at night and wake refreshed to concentrate on the aspects of web development which add real value to a site. "Web 2.0" won't tempt me back into the fray as IE5/6 issues will haunt web developers for many years yet, regardless of what Vista and IE7 brings.

    One area of web development I think is very much neglected is semi-dynamic web development with Template Toolkit and cron. The content of many dynamic sites only changes periodically so it can often be better to have templates generate static pages periodically from your database with a cron script instead of coding the whole site in PHP, Perl/CGI or whatever.

  • This is new?? (Score:2, Funny)

    by oaksong ( 894169 )
    I was doing some of this dhtml and java scripting 6 years ago. Where have these people been? (Oh! It's IBM. never mind)

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