Originally Posted by jono1 lol thanks the exam didn't go too badly which was a big shock to me considering I've done no study and almost no work in IT all semester

Haha, that's got to be the only thing I miss from not being at College at the moment... the challenge that comes from getting the gain you need, from as little work as physically possible.

Originally Posted by jono1 I never said I don't believe it's right. It confuses me the way they have implemented it, but then a lot of things in this world don't make sense to me. Such as the fact that the IE dev team recognises W3C standards and has even made press releases to the effect that are endeavouring to bring IE into line with said standards, yet their biggest standards-compliance issue (the box model) is still there in the most recent version of their browser.

Lol, I suppose that is true, there are a lot of things in the world that don't make sense. However, this doesn't make sense and there is a better way to do it that does and is the right way to do it. In the world, a lot of things that don't make sense are the right and only way something works, we just don't understand why it works right. As with the standard it it neither the right way it works or the only way. The alternative is proven to work perfectly, and makes sense. Well I suppose you can always pray it is not in there come the Beta 2 or final release; but I will be content in the belief that it probably will be. Perhaps they have not made that change because they decided a long time ago that the box model that the W3C standard suggests is wrong. The Internet Explorer Team are obviously smart enough to fix what is wrong with the W3C standard, and use what isn't.

Originally Posted by jono1 That's exactly what all the standards-compliant browsers are doing. Pushing out the outdated box-model that IE and IE-based browsers use to bring in a more universally accepted way of doing things.

Haha, I am pretty sure that of all the sites in the universe the accepted way of doing things is the way Internet Explorer does them. What is right is not neccersarily what the W3C says, what is right is what makes sense. You take anybody who doesn't know this problem and tell them to make a box model with padding and a margin. Then ask yourself who is right.

Originally Posted by jono1 At this point in time I'd like to point out two things. a) standards compliant browsers such as firefox, camino, opera etc are rapidly gaining market share. Rapidly. As is Mac OSX which means its browser Safari which happens to also comply with standards is also gaining market share. Hundreds of millions of web users may use IE and IE-based browsers now but people are smarting up.

Rapidly is obviously in the eye of the beholder; much like standards compliance. As far as I am aware Firefox has had... what... they passed 100 Million Downloads last month. That's starting from the first of January let's say. That's 259 Days, up to the 16th which is apparently when they got their 100 Millionth download. That's apparently 386 thousand downloads a day. Now I myself have downloaded Firefox over ten times, so let's half that because a lot of people are going to have done that. What was the number of computer sales this year? I don't know myself, can't find it, but whatever they were way more than 100 million computers with Internet Explorer on them were sold. 100 million isn't even a particularly big number; more people downloaded Microsoft Antispyware than that in its first four months.

Originally Posted by jono1 b) along the same lines, every single person I know (except for you evidently) who uses IE or AOL Explorer (which I'm pretty sure is the result of a partership with Microsoft) only use it because it's what comes bundled with their OS or internet package. You are the only person I have ever met who actually chooses to use IE. This is because people by and large are stupid and mostly just go with what's quickest, even if it means sacrificing security and other basic features like tabs (yes I know IE7 has tabbed browsing but at the moment its on less computers than Firefox). Please note that I'm not calling *you* stupid, you choose to use IE and I respect that.

This is true, got to be said. The bit about Internet Explorer at least, although I am sure more people choose to use it over Firefox than people use Firefox, but overall it is bound to be true and at Firefox's growth I do not imagine it will be true for long. Unfortunately for the world at large people do actually choose to use AOL Explorer, because they have to pay for it. But yeah I get what you mean.

Sacrificing security is a commonly held misconception. People who believe that are still locked in 2004. While people were moving to Firefox, SP2 came out. In the first three months of Firefox being out, more bugs were found in it than in Internet Explorer. As far as I am aware, bugs for Internet Explorer since SP2 and bugs for Firefox version 1 are not that far off each other, even so far down the line. And with upwards of eight times more people using it, that is impressive for Internet Explorer. How many bugs do you think Firefox would have with eight times the users if it has almost as many as Internet Explorer now?

Originally Posted by jono1 ahem. Again, I never said that.

Hmm... maybe not. But you don't think it makes sense, which is just as good.

Originally Posted by jono1 Although I can see where you might get that impression (the W3C site is a visual atrocity), that is a massive assumption with largely no basis. The only reason standards aren't largely accepted is because a couple of years back, around when the whole standards thing started to come into focus, Microsoft pretty much decided to forget about their current software and shift all their attention to Vista. So basically apart from the SP2 update where they finally added a popup blocker (that doesn't work most of the time) nothing has been done to IE apart from the constant stream of security fixes. I can only hope the final release of IE 7 will comply with standards a lot more because they've been spending so much time on it while neglecting what everyone is using *now*.

It is a huge assumption I enjoy them. Actually SP2 is a fantastic fix, and compared to the bugs of 2004 Internet Explorer is fantastically secure. I have seen... five, maybe six security fixes for Internet Explorer since I installed SP2, which wasn't even the beginning of the year, it was early 2004 as a Beta. Firefox on my parents PC has a fix already waiting to install, and I downloaded it a week ago for them. In fact, the Technet Site can show us all the Security Bulletins for Internet Explorer for SP2 within the last year (if you set it for all it seems to pick up updates for all manner of things not connected to Internet Explorer); here. You'll have to set it to the obvious, but if you're interested it is very interesting. I cannot find a Firefox version, but you and I both know over the last year there have at least six fixes for Firefox.

Originally Posted by jono1 the guy working on the what? yes, what a great success DHTML was. And it's not exactly surprising that a Microsoft guy 'wrote the book' on it, as far as I'm aware the only browser to fully support it is IE.

Ok, it is not the point of what it is called, I call it DHTML, you call it the DOM, eitherway, he wrote the Microsoft Book on it. And he writes sites with it.

Originally Posted by jono1 and by bringing in XHTML CSS standards they are bringing the internet into the 21st century, the only problem is the biggest browser in the world seems intent on stopping their efforts.

XHTML is hardly bringing HTML into the 21st Century. HTML has gone as far as it ever will, XHTML is merely a new more strict way of writing it, it introduces nothing that isn't in HTML before it other than new ways of writing things and more standards for doing everything. It is no more functional than HTML 4, and it still needs JavaScript to bring it to life. HTML will not be in the 21st Century until it becomes more feature rich. It is always going to be a markup language, that is the best way to have it, but they need to stop their serious problem which is that they want your sites to look like their's. They want your site to look like Google, or one of the thousands of open source websites that are coded chiselled onto a tablet of stone, in Greek and thrown at the computer in a vague attempt to get it on the Internet.

Originally Posted by jono1 If they're so gammy, why is it that they are still universally recognised as the web's standards body by everyone *including* Microsoft?

Haha, you know what; I do not know? It is one of the universes little mysteries. Let us just thank God that a businessman is CEO of Microsoft and not me.