IE7 Compatibility a Developer Nightmare 416
yavori writes "Internet Explorer 7 has kicked in at last on all MS Windows OS running PCs because of the fact M$ decided to force it's users to migrate through update. In fact this has started a IE7 Web Developers Nightmare. The article actually explains that most of the small company B2C sites may just fall from grace because of IE7 incompatibility. One of the coolest thing IE7 is unable to do is actually processing form data when clicked on an INPUT field of TYPE IMG... which is pretty uncool for those using entire payment processes with such INPUT fields."
Vague FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm gonna grant the author a free pass on the writing since it's obvious English is not his first language. But the rest of the article seems to be vague hand-wavy FUD and anecdotal complaints. To take two of the more cohesive statements:
The truth is that standards were not the first priority of IE7 (they are an evil mega-corporation after all), but they did do an awful lot of work on them. Just take a look at the list of CSS improvements [msdn.com] over at the IEBlog. They acknowledge that there's a lot more work to do, but it's clear from this that they've solved a lot of headaches for CSS developers.
I'm assuming the author means forms won't submit with an <input type="image"> tag. Without even testing it, I can't believe for one second this is true. This is a major backbone of HTML going back to at least HTML 2, and used in millions of websites. If this were broken it would have been fixed during beta. Microsoft may not care that much about web standards but they do care about backwards compatibility, and a lot of their decision making process has centered around not breaking things that worked in IE6.
It's likely IE7 is going to be a headache for web developers, but this article doesn't do anything to support that argument. As a web developer IE7 hasn't really taken any of my time. So far it's been more reliable than IE6, and I look forward to the day when IE7 is the standard and IE6 is an afterthought for picky clients.
Just in case it *is* broken (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just in case it *is* broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree! Fixing IE7 is Microsoft's (only?) good deed (Score:3, Interesting)
Previously, if you told those lazy web developricks, "Hey, your web site doesn't display properly on Firefox, which is a whopping 4% of the market!" then they would answer, "Works fine with my computer --your Firefox must be broken." Well, guess what? Now it doesn'
offtopic, but funny (Score:5, Funny)
Does she know you're telling people this?
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Just what were the developers suppose to do? *NOT* work around the bugs and non-compliance??? Or keep web sites so basic they didn't fulfil their business function???
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by mackyrae (999347) Alter Relationship on Sunday January 07, @09:07PM (#17503698)
(http://www.myspace.com/maco)
Code without hacks. I never used a hack, yet my sites always turned out how I wanted them.
(Emphasis mine)
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Or, at a minimum, use browsershots.org [browsershots.org].
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Tough. If you're tech-savvy enough to disable JavaScript, then you're tech-savvy enough to know better than to use MSIE. If I'm going to cater to IE users at all, I'll cater to the ones who legitimately don't know how to use anything else.
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I wonder if he even gave much thought to it:
Since when was the W3C site representative of the world-wide browser market share?
Re:Vague FUD (Score:5, Funny)
-uso.
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No, I think he meant Links [sourceforge.net], which is a more advanced text based browser.
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Re:Vague FUD (Score:4, Funny)
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You mean like the horrible notion of "meme" which catched up and refuses to die.
In Soviet Russia you use concepts, in memetic theory concepts use you!
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No, the GP was right. Here. [sourceforge.net] And here. [sourceforge.net]
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Re:Vague FUD (Score:4, Informative)
IE does not submit the value attribute of an image input. This makes it a bit difficult to have multiple buttons in the same form with the same name attribute. This means that each image input must have a unique name in order to tell them apart on the server.
Further reading ath tml [cs.tut.fi]
w w.authoring.cgi/browse_thread/thread/aca99089127ac f0f?rnum=1 [google.com]
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/imagebutton.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.w
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So I'd have to assume it's not what the "article" (I have a hard time calling a rant on a blog an actual article) was talking about. If it is then the problem would have been present with IE6 as well.
Then again as poorly written as that blog was maybe they had never tested in IE6 and assumed this was a new problem.
Re:Vague FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
I know IDs must be unique full stop, but I was always under the impression that if something was new functionality it should have a new name.
Re:Vague FUD (Score:5, Funny)
*waves hand* This is not the browser you're looking for.
*waves hand* You should use Firefox for your business.
unprofessional (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:unprofessional (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mod up!! (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, communist icon supports YOU.
BASIC vs. Lisp (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft's first major product was a BASIC interpreter, where a postfix $ designated a string variable. FSF's first major product under its GNU label was a text editor that included a Lisp interpreter, where every subexpression needs a pair of parentheses. Thus, your insult might be (f (s (f))) or (g (n (u))).
Re:BASIC vs. Lisp (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mod up!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Without Microsoft / IBM, we would have had Apple, Acorn, Commodore and many others competing for the desktop market. All of these got GUIs as standard before any Microsoft platform. In addition, I suspect that the lack of a single strong player would have encouraged the widespread adoption of open standards much earlier; how else would you with your Mac be able to work with your customer and his Amiga?
Re:Mod up!! (Score:5, Insightful)
When IBM finally decided to sell PCs, Apple had a damn good run at first-mover advantage. IBM wanted to keep Apple from getting the same kind of lock with the Apple ][ that it now has with the iPod, so they decided to rush a disposable launch-vehicle product into the market, then evolve what it considered a 'good' product once its place in the channel was secure. They gave the job of designing the new product to an engineer who had the good sense to run a production capacity baseline, and realized that it would take something like 18 months to open a factory that did nothing but ship empty boxes. Any product design, supplier contracts, and production setup would have to be added to that time.
Instead, he proposed a radical solution: build the initial product from off-the-shelf parts, using third-party assembly houses for the actual production. That would put the new product in the market fast enough for IBM to build a place in the channel, and would buy them time to work on setting up production for an all-IBM product. Trouble was, that model would be vulnerable to copying, so IBM needed something to keep its proprietary lock on the product.
The result was the BIOS chip. That was IBM property pure and simple, and no computer could run (or at least be compatible with IBM's machines) without one.
The plan was approved, and IBM established contracts with a whole slew of outside vendors to supply parts of the initial system, including a tiny little place in Washington called Microsoft.
Then some bastard from a company called Compaq reverse-engineered IBM's BIOS chip and developed a brutally legal clean-room copy.
That opened the floodgates of commodity PCs. Not anything IBM or Microsoft did by choice. In fact, since the OS was the only thing that made an IBM computer distinct in the market, IBM suddenly found itself needing Microsoft more than Microsoft needed IBM.
And that's how a tiny little company with a crap product came to inherit one of the largest and best organized sales channels in the world, and bootstrapped itself into one of the largest companies of all time.
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Yes, it does.
You have to not only agree to download and install the update (either automatically or by notification), and then you get a SECOND window asking you whether you want to install it, which pops up regardless of whether you have automatic set or not.
The only time it won't pop up is if your network administrator decides to install it across all computers on the network. THEN you don't get a choice, but then it was hardly your choice
Not a useful article, really (Score:5, Interesting)
The upside to this is that the same "forced" upgrade procedure MS are using to roll out IE7 can also be used to roll out bigfixes without user intervention, if IE7 was originally installed transparently anyway.
Anyway, I can't say it a big surprise that IE7 has its own foibles. IE6 was also a developer's nightmare, with the DOM and JS environment behaving differently from Firefox, Opera etc, so it's just another workaround. I'm only disappointed that Microsoft didn't make more of an effort to bring it inline with the competition so we could avoid yet another set of JS and CSS hacks. It's not like they have limited resources!
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I can't see that they've fixed anything very much in IE7. Our IE6 fixes used the "* html" hack, and that was fixed in IE7, but then we found we needed to include all the same fixes anyway. So now we end up having to serve two extra stylesheets.
I ranted about that on our company blog [merjis.com].
Rich.
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Bah (Score:5, Interesting)
And the MOST killer thing was the DISability of IE to submit data through "input type img"
Maybe I'm not understanding what the claim is, but it's easy to demonstrate that this is not true. I just tried with IE7 to submit data on a form that uses an input type of image and see that it works fine.
This article has almost no information and it seems the only reason it was posted here is to stir up anti-Microsoft antagonism. (Now someone will say, "You must be new here.") :-)
In my experience, IE7 is much better at supporting standards than IE6. A huge improvement in CSS support, so that now as I design in Firefox 2.0 and occasionally verify things in IE7, I see that they are very, very close. Most of what I'm doing is working with WordPress blogs so it's very possible I'm not using things that are now broken, but if anything Microsoft should be given some credit for improving their browser.
There's plenty of reason to not like Microsoft, but this article doesn't supply much (if any) ammunition, and it doesn't do the free software crowd much of a service to engage in our own unsupported FUD.
Re:Bah (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bah (Score:5, Funny)
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more than an incomprehensible rant (Score:5, Interesting)
As some have pointed out, this appears to be an incomprehensible rant. The "article" referenced says little and backs up that little with less.
I also notice the "submitter" seems to be the same person as the blogger for the article. Not saying this shouldn't happen, but this usually shouldn't happen... If it's good enough to get "published", it's good enough to be published by someone other than the author.
Completely and 100% untrue (Score:5, Informative)
Jesus, do Slashdot editors actually *do* anything? Seriously. Do any of them actually *read* the articles they're posting, or is it all about pageviews and keywords?
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sure... beta... I hope they'll remove already-selected articles from the list, and will also remove obviously nonsense (eg spam, adverts) articles.
Re:Completely and 100% untrue (Score:4, Insightful)
Check out my uid. I've been here a while. What's frustrating is that Slashdot used to be good. After they went public, the quality of the articles have gone downhill dramatically.
Eh, I've been around awhile myself, and I have to say that this sort of thing went on before. They've never spellchecked, and they've always run some crap-o-rama articles. Hey, at least Jon Katz is gone. :) Everyone complained about quality back then, too.
I think one of the things that makes Slashdot good is the fact that they do have human editors. Human editors mean human mistakes. Granted, sometimes you have to shake your head at the level of stupid mistake, but on the whole, Slashdot is where it is because of CmdrTaco, not despite him. I think replacing the editors would turn Slashdot into just another ranting blog.
Back in my day... (Score:5, Funny)
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Can you honestly tell me that you know at least ONE news outlet for which facts matter? I live in France and used to live in the U.S. and I am still waiting for one.
What a terrible article. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is so True (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, I have this js based terminal emulator. I don't want to edit that package, but just use js to read some fields. This is sexy in Firefox, but no chance in IE 7.0.
if (document.Form1.tsprog.value == 'fibfm' || document.Form1.tsprog.value == 'FIBFM'){
var pwrap = document.getElementById("pbsiwrap");
var cells = pbsiwrap.getElementsByTagName("span");
var item = cells[12].textContent;
document.getElementById ("headspot").innerHTML = '';
}
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The MSIE equivalent of textContent is innerText, and it's been around since before Firefox was even thought of.
Re:This is so True (Score:5, Interesting)
The document.FormName.InputName.value form is not part of W3C standards. Try document.forms["FormName"].InputName.value and see if valid code works.
I would hope that with an up-to-date doctype declaration (strict rather than quirks mode) Firefox would barf on that invalid code too.
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The textContent [w3.org] property is defined in DOM Level 3. Microsoft has never claimed to support that recommendation, and neither Apple nor Opera claim support for it either. Gecko supports it, although the documentation doesn't make it clear that it's from DOM Level 3. If you write code using features supported by only one browser, then you can hardly complain if it doesn't work on other browsers. What you've done is no different from a developer who codes only for IE-specific features, and then whines when the
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For what it's worth, you can use innerText to achieve the same result in your sample case.
Beta testing? (Score:2, Insightful)
TFA was written by a guy who only recently has started porting sites to Firefox, so it's not really surprising he's finding this to be a pain.
Really, the only people this will bite are people who didn't care abo
Breaking news... (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno about this guy... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd take what this guy has to say with a large grain of salt if this is how he treats his sites.
Maybe make your pages simpler? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, firstly, I'd be bloody amazed if the pages in question validate. The guy goesn't give any link to the site, though, so I can't tell.
Secondly... if you're using lots of client side Javascript to make a site work, you're asking for trouble. Google can do this, because they have massive dev and QA teams. If you don't have the manpower to do enough testing (for example, in the beta period) and fix problems, maybe you should make your site simpler.
Every single web application I work on, worked perfectly in IE 7. Even, yes, the ones that use Javascript. This is achieved by:
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Minimising use of Javascript. If Javascript doesn't provide a significant obvious benefit to the user interface, it doesn't get used.
Right on. Furthering that, if it won't degrade nicely, leave it out instead of putting a "this site requires JavaScript", and many sites don't even bother with that message anymore. Nothing infuriates me more than requiring client-side code to generate somebody else's content. If I have to enable scripting to see somebody's page, I probably don't want to see it.
Perfect example is slashdot - if I don't have scripting enabled, I can still read and even participate without ever running a script on my side
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I wish we had done that at the dot com I once worked for.....
News? (Score:2, Informative)
Not A Forced Update (Score:2)
the fact M$ decided to force it's users to migrate through update
While I personally think MS Windows is lame, I do have a work laptop with XP installed. It is simply untrue that an IE7 upgrade is forced. It may be true that most users will end up with it installed because of their upgrade policies or habits, but IIRC it was as simple as not agreeing to the EULA to avoid its installation.
Single Implementation (Score:2)
News? (Score:2)
I realize that what is meant here is probably compatibility between versions of IE, rather than compatibility between IE and other web browsers, but still. Seeing how badly IE does in the latter, I would not be surprised to see it did badly in the former, too.
My website CRASHES IE7 (Score:2)
The page loads a
It w
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Dude, you seriously need to clean up that HTML. There are validation errors galore (object in the head, mis-nested table/form tags and an open option tag, for example. Second, the CSV file has five columns for the header but only four for the data. Third, you refer to the wrong column names in your data fields. And fourth (and this is causing the crash) your data filter is messed up. Remove the filter parameter from the data object and it no longer crashes the browser.
That javascript could use a good going
Complacancy... (Score:2)
And to me the funniest part is that this not only affects actual web content, but also locally installed HTML, help files, and apps that stu
Forced Upgrade? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh really? I still have IE6, although I never use it except when forced to. Who are these people who have been "forced" to upgrade?
Brick And Mortar (Score:5, Funny)
One of the worst things about "Model T" was that it belched out carbon monoxide. Seriously! Compare this to a horse where the worst you have to worry about is methane! For brick and mortar store owners who didn't want to pay once again to upgrade from barns for their customers, this caused all kinds of ventilation issues. People could actually die from this stuff!
Some people say that keeping up with the times is part of the cost of doing business. But where will it end?!
how to hang IE7 (Score:2)
So do something like: var x = document.createElement("div"); document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].appendCh i ld(x);
Do this right after the body tag and viola, IE7 starts having problems.
It does not render the page ( unless they have fixed this ). Instead it tells you that you have a possible network error. Then, IE7 thinking that the network is down, wont access any
English Translation (Score:5, Funny)
Because M$ decided on a forced upgrade migration path, Internet Explorer 7 has finally kicked in on all of their MS Windows OS running PCs. In theory, there isn't much wrong with this, but IE7 has failed to comply with many fo the standards it was supposed to.
IE7 is a nightmare of crossbrower compatibility. I recently needed to rewrite a web site so that it works on firefox... and surprisingly enough, when testing the new and the old site on IE7 I discovered that many elements do not function as expected. And "not function as expected" doesn't really cover it, it was more a question of not working at all.
I found some pretty large incompatibilities in their JavaScript submission systems. While I can understand the behavior migration, some functions did not pass parameters correctly etc.. The worst thing was that they disabled submitting data through "input type img" (which in this case was the entire sites data)... I don't blame the programmers for setting things up this way, but I do blame IE for not keeping with standards again.
So with IE7 we come to a new era of "web developers nightmare." It will cause many smaller websites to need to be rewritten, and therefore will crush some of the associated small companies' business.
And a final tip from me! Try to avoid writing JavaScript without testing it 100% on all of the major web browsers: FireFox, IE7, Opera and Safari.
Just a clue:
According to W3C, the web browser market share of IE7 for the previous month is: 7.1%
and for IE6 is: 49.9%
So with a bit of analyzing as well as some math we can say that IE7 will show a market share of about 60%... which isn't the best picture for us, the developers.
And for those that do like babelfish... English via Italian.
The Internet Explorer 7 has given of soccer to within in end on all the OS of MS Windows that ago to work the PC because of determined the M$ fact in order to force it is customers to migrare through the modernization. The sink really is not much evil with the this here but IE7 has been supposed to more join the champions who what in effects is not to align. IE7 is a cavalla of night for the greater part of the sviluppatori that try to join to the champions for crossbrowsing. Recently I have had to rewrite a Web site so as to it works to firefox equally... and the surprise element was that when examines the new and old place on IE7 I have uncovered that many things does not work as previewed and "the function poichè previewed" it is not the just word for it, it was more one issue than operation at all. I have found that submiting with the Javascript it has some graceful things of uncool that incolpo of the IE but some functions really did not work when no-go gage all the parameters and therefore via. And the GREATER PART of the thing of the assassin was the incapacity of the IE in order to introduce the data through "the type img of the input" that really it was the entire data of the places... Really not incolpo of the programmatori that have made it therefore but of the IE not to still maintain with the champions. Therefore really with IE7 we come to one new was "of the incubus of the sviluppatori of fotoricettore" poichè will demand the EVIL and perhaps DEFECTIVE places therefore of fotoricettore will not be rewritten and this with crushing some of the commerce of the small enterprises. And a final TIP from me! Tests to avoid the Javascript of writing without to verify it 100% on all the browsers used main of fotoricettore like FireFox, IE7, the work and the safari. As soon as for having an indication: According to W3C the percentage of the market of web browser of IE7 for the previous month is: 7.1% and for IE6 are: 49.9% Therefore with a little analyzing to the situation and the facts therefore as to make a sure one for the mathematics we can say that IE7 will show a percentage of the market of approximately 60% according to W3C... which is not the better image for we the devs.
Understand on what you are commenting! (Score:2, Informative)
IE has a problem with: <input type="img" name="button" value="hitme">
I don't understand how this is a problem NOW, as IE has had this problem for a long time. What the above snippet gets you is not "button=hitme", but instead "button.x=15, button.y=10" or something similar. IE returns you the coordinates where you clicked on the image, but not the value!!! Right. There is no value. Who would need that anyway? Doh.
Don't remember exactly when I ran into this bug, a few years ago at
I've had the exact opposite experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone was worried that because of our choices and how heavily we rely on CSS and JavaScript that we would be in for a nightmare. Luckily, not so. However, two of the products we purchased for time tracking and for defect reporting both DIE because they have user agent checks built into their javascript. When they run into the unknown IE7 string they just chirp back a warning message and don't even try to load up. How many times do web developers need to be told "browser detection is bad use object/feature detection" before they'll get it.
I don't think that I've had any problem with any of the normal sites that I use when using IE7 over the last couple of months (banking, news, mail, social). I get the feeling that the author of this article just doesn't know what he's talking about.
Bad math.. Not 60% (Score:3, Insightful)
Web developer here... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Microsoft does suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft does suck (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft does suck (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not necessarily. Web Developers are advised to test against all browsers with more than a 3% market share for their site. If your site has 3% share of IE 5, 6, and 7, then you've got your work cut out for you. Most others don't have that problem.
Just because some academics came up with a "standard" doesn't mean there's a law that says that everyone needs to follow it. They should be called "suggestions".
The wonderful thing about standards, when done correctly, is that everyone can support the standard and get essentially the same result.
In all honestly, if your website can't function fine with the minor variations between browsers, then you've got a bad design. (And let's not even get into how bad your site will look in mobile devices, or without images, or for the blind.)
Re:Microsoft does suck (Score:4, Funny)
I'm guessing it'll look like a series of dots.
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Doesn't this involve buying a separate computer on which to run each web browser, which might be prohibitive for smaller shops? Sure, Firefox and Opera will run on anything, but can IE 5, IE 6, IE 7, Konqueror, and Safari share a computer?
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http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE [tredosoft.com]
(link on that page for standalone IE7, too)
All our developers at work have this installed, plus all the other windows browsers, plus a Mac with a few relevant browsers. In fact if they weren't devout Windows/Linux developers I'm sure they could do the whole thing on a mac using parallels.
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DAMN those people who use non-IE browsers, just making developers lives harder...
(Sarcasm, if you can't tell.)
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My web stats aren't showing much if any IE 5 traffic either.
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In the meantime, and precisely because the Open Source browsers support the W3C standard, developers can support those browsers because they support the W3C standard; and all us
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I like my articles that way... (Score:2)
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However, I have a lot of time invested in the material. The ebooks do not have DRM, because if you gave one copy to a hundred people, they would all work. The only thing I did was turn off the ability to copy and paste from the ebook, but I do allow it to be printed out (and I think that is fair. If they want the material bad enough, they could print it and OCR it). I also custom compile the ebook for each one sold, and embed the purchaser's e-mail address into it.
Let me as
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Judging from your story, it seems it wasn't so easy after all...
This is something we will see a lot in the future, if content owners and users do not start getting a clue about the DRM trap... People will be left with piles of worthless bits.
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I don't think it's really fair to blame the IE Team [msdn.com] for this one; they've gone to a lot of effort to make developers aware of the potential issues during the beta phase, and have provided plenty of solid information, as well as toolkits for testing app compatibility. It sounds like the problem isn't with IE 7, but with the developer(s) of the software you used. They've had over a year to get their reader ready for the switch, but as they haven't even responded to your emails, it sounds like they've abandon
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I see no problem like what you are talking about in Firefox - Everything seems to render fine and dandy. I do see a lot of errors on the page when trying to validate, but most of those are because of your Javascript (which isn't actually a problem). I did see a number of break tags missing the XHTML-Required closing tag, and your forms don't validate.
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