I hate web front ends

[NickFitz]

That library still has to contain 2 versions of a fair few things though, even more if you have to be compatible pre IE6.



Yeah, things are much better these days, however there are some things that really grind my goat, like IE not supporting the border-spacing CSS tag, meaning that you have to have a mix of attributes & CSS for tables.

Yes, that's annoying, although in theory things will get better once IE 8 achieves sufficient penetration.

Unfortunately many big organisations are so useless they still use IE 6, despite the major security improvements in IE 7. Personally I regard that as prima facie evidence of sheer incompetence, as by insisting that their users use decrepit rubbish like IE 6 they are directly jeopardising the security of their corporate network. Heaven only knows when we'll manage to get these dullards on to IE 8

I once started a gig and found that their standard "web developer" OS image included IE 5.1 and a beta version of Netscape 6 from several years previously Portable Firefox was the only thing that allowed me to get any work done for the month or so it took to drag their IT people out of the Nineties

[r0bly0ns]

Yes, that's annoying, although in theory things will get better once IE 8 achieves sufficient penetration.

Really? Last I looked into it (just after IE7 was released) Microsoft said that they had no plans to include border-spacing in CSS as they believed the W3C were wrong and it shouldn't be in there

Not like Microsoft to backtrack on anything....

[dang65]

I imagine that most of the good web front ends are corporate internal things that never go near the actual internet. So are most of the bad front ends, many of which are laughable/cringeable.

But using AJAX for pretty much everything, as someone else said, is making a lot of new front ends very slick indeed. I'm doing one just now which can switch languages and currencies instantaneously, with no browser reload, as well as doing all the usual filtering on select boxes etc. JavaScript can do a hell of a lot more these days than it could when a lot of people "learned" it (i.e. pasted a few bits of code from a geek forum somewhere).

[darmstadt]

What happened to the EU trying to force M$ not to ship IE with Windows?

Until that happens it's like asking someone not to use their own hands. Only those that wish they were terminator bothers with Firefox or other alternatives.

They never quite went that far but you can get XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N, where "N" stands for "not with Windows Media Player." Don't know where though

[NickFitz]

Really? Last I looked into it (just after IE7 was released) Microsoft said that they had no plans to include border-spacing in CSS as they believed the W3C were wrong and it shouldn't be in there

Not like Microsoft to backtrack on anything....

The IE team are pretty good at backtracking these days

They've committed to support CSS 2.1, with parts of CSS 3 that have good support from other browsers - including border-spacing

[max]

I imagine that most of the good web front ends are corporate internal things that never go near the actual internet. So are most of the bad front ends, many of which are laughable/cringeable.

But using AJAX for pretty much everything, as someone else said, is making a lot of new front ends very slick indeed. I'm doing one just now which can switch languages and currencies instantaneously, with no browser reload, as well as doing all the usual filtering on select boxes etc. JavaScript can do a hell of a lot more these days than it could when a lot of people "learned" it (i.e. pasted a few bits of code from a geek forum somewhere).

I've been using this...after not doing web f/e's for 4 years.

http://extjs.com/

Works a treat. Works the same in all modern browsers and looks very slick.

When used with spring MVC and JPA...it's the mutt's

[r0bly0ns]

Finally

The IE team are pretty good at backtracking these days

They've committed to support CSS 2.1, with parts of CSS 3 that have good support from other browsers - including border-spacing

[dang65]

Here's some Web 2.0 gone mad: New Sky TV Listings

Draggable, in Google Maps fashion, and can be filtered, searched, bookmarked etc etc. Plus it has remote record built in if you have one of them Sky+ box things. Which I don't.

[bogeyman]

Here's some Web 2.0 gone mad: New Sky TV Listings

Draggable, in Google Maps fashion, and can be filtered, searched, bookmarked etc etc. Plus it has remote record built in if you have one of them Sky+ box things. Which I don't.

It's like an IFRAME on steriods.

[DodgyAgent]

I prefer a nice gooey front end

arse