Basic Ajax is easy

[codestryke]

Re: Basic Ajax is easy

Yup, Firebug is a must imho.

Still, like you said, the first time is almost as bad a pulling teeth even with the help of Firebug. Course isn't that with everything.. The first time is killer but after that it just gets easier. Course I'll be the FIRST to admit when it comes to really well coded CSS I am at a loss. I can do the basics, thats it, period. To me, personally, CSS has just way to many "hacks" you have to know to get the most simple thing to render consistently in IE, FF and now WebKit (safari / chrome).

[Floydian]

Re: B:

lol as far as I'm concerned, webkit can either accept gecko or ie's css styles, or it can get lost. With something like 2% market share (comparable to opera's 2%) it just isn't an important renderer IMHO.

My contention is that if one is going to target small niche browser markets, why target some and not all?

For instance, just with safari, there's the Mac, Windows XP, and Vista flavors, then Chrome and all the os's it runs on, Firefox on Windows XP, Vista, probably a few other versions of windows, Linux, Mac, IE on all of it's relevant versions of Windows, Opera on whichever os's it runs on...

 

I for one can't be running a Mac, a Windows XP, a Vista, and a Linux computer and testing every one of those permutations of web browsers...

Just looking at usage statistics on a couple servers I'm seeing this:

tycoonrats.com

Firefox: 47%

IE: 40%

Windows: 94%

phphorizons.com

Firefox: 75%

IE: 19%

Windows: 96%

samples.phphorizons.com

Firefox: 89%

IE: 7%

Windows: 98%

www.w3schools.com

Firefox: 44%

IE: 46%

WinXP------W2000--------Win98-------Vista-------W2003

72.0%------1.8%-----------0.1%--------15.1%------1.6%

www.coveofpirates.com

Firefox: 29%

IE: 61%

Windows: 94%

 

Anyways, that's the market I'd spend most time on. If someone reports a problem in some other browser, and is willing to work with me on the fix (that is if the browser/os combination isn't readily available to me), then I'll toss in something for it, but otherwise, if things look good in ff and ie, I'm satisfied.

[codestryke]

Re: B:

 

lol as far as I'm concerned, webkit can either accept gecko or ie's css styles, or it can get lost. With something like 2% market share (comparable to opera's 2%) it just isn't an important renderer IMHO.

Humm... Well lets see whats the famous quote... Oh yea.. "Those Who Forget the Lessons of History Are Doomed To Repeat It". Firefox didn't start out with the market share it has now, it was *NOT* an easy road traveled and just a couple years ago a quote like that was put out on all the boards as well about Firefox.. If Firefox can't render like IE then screw it I won't bother, even to this day there are STILL major web sites that don't fix there CSS to handle Firefox.

I'm not going to debate what is the better browser because nor you, I or anyone here knows what the future has in store. I will say though in less then, what 4 months, Google has captured 2% of the market share. I can guarantee Firefox did NOT make that kinds of in roads in 4 months, I know because I was there. If I can use a javascript rendering library to make my stuff work on IE, FF, WebKit and Opera then thats what I do. If writing an interface that uses tables so I don't have to fight with how each of those rendering engines handles divs then thats what I'm going to do. I have about the same stats as you do, FF and IE go back and forth depending on the game. What I don't do is discount Chrome (webkit) if I can help it. Sorry Google has been way to good and doing what they do for far to long and IMHO Chrome is not about the desktop at all, its about Android.

Firefox whether you want to believe it is slipping down and slipping fast when it comes to there Javascript engine, right now it is one of the slowest of the browsers. I use FF as my primary browser I love FF but the javascript engine by todays standards is below par at best (I'm really hoping for a turn around with 3.0). We are in the world of Web 2.0, AJAX and all that is reliant upon the javascript engine.

Like I said I've seen posts like this showing web stats for certain sites and what browser they are using.. At one time Netscape was top dog, then IE was top dog, now FF and now even though it's "small" currently we have WebKit. I've been coding and have had web games online for over 9 years now and what I've learned is everything changes and you better be ready for it because the guy behind you already is ;)

[Floydian]

Re: Basic Ajax is easy

We'll see where Chrome goes...

Safari, with all the mac users, has stayed at 2% for a long time. There's nothing to indicate that Chromes 3% share is anything more than novelty at the moment.

Then there's Google's proven inability to be successful in the desktop applications (of which Chrome is one of).

 

So, yeah, it's possible Chrome might take off. I might even switch over to Chrome one day. I did switch from Mozilla, to IE, then Firefox, why not add one more on the end?

I'm in the here and now, and where things are now, Chrome isn't that important, and neither was Firefox when it had 3% market share. Certainly not important enough for a one person developer to invest time testing everything they make in a 3% share browser. The big folks are expected to do things like that, but the little guy has to be wise about how they spend their time :)