Stupid Developer Tricks

[Adrienne Boswell]

Sorry, couldn't think of a better subject line, but I thought you all
might get a kick out of this.

I have a client who wanted to add a "plug-in" to his existing site so his
visitors could access an online store. Okay, got the snippet from the
provider. The provider says that it must be XHTML - okay, and so I serve
it as application/xhtml+xml for supporting browsers and html for others.

Oh shit! The damned snippet is wrong because their markup is foobar
(link element in the body, mal-formed comments, etc.). No problem, fix
the markup, start testing again.

Opera, good to go. IE good to go. Firefox good to go. Chrome - yikes,
z-index/javascript issue, no links can be accessed. Safari - same thing.

Email supplier, advise supplier that the markup needs to be fixed, and
links are inaccessible in Chrome and Safari.

Got an email back from the supplier, and I quote it below:
"Good Morning,
Currently, we do not support Safari or Chome. The only browers we endorse
are IE 7,8, and Firefox. We will look at expanding to Safari in the near
future."

This is amazing to me. I can see if this were a bank, or an Intranet or
something, but this is for the general public - a shopping site for
&Deity's sake!

So, I'm doing server side browser sniffing (Safari and Chrome only), and
redirecting to a nice page that gives another link that does work.

Anyway, enough ranting - on to other projects.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Opera, good to go. IE good to go. Firefox good to go. Chrome - yikes,
z-index/javascript issue, no links can be accessed. Safari - same thing.

So that means they are doing something that webkit doesn't like we can
safely add Konqueror to the list.

Email supplier, advise supplier that the markup needs to be fixed, and
links are inaccessible in Chrome and Safari.

Got an email back from the supplier, and I quote it below:
"Good Morning,
Currently, we do not support Safari or Chome. The only browers we endorse
are IE 7,8, and Firefox. We will look at expanding to Safari in the near
future."

This is amazing to me. I can see if this were a bank, or an Intranet or
something, but this is for the general public - a shopping site for
&Deity's sake!

And what is really lame is that I'll bet they do not really have any
good reason for using XMTML except "...because it is *advanced*!"
(obscure Invader Zim reference)

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

And what is really lame is that I'll bet they do not really have any
good reason for using XMTML except "...because it is *advanced*!"
(obscure Invader Zim reference)

I love that! Never heard of it before, have to catch it in reruns or
something.

 

[Neredbojias]

Sorry, couldn't think of a better subject line, but I thought you all
might get a kick out of this.

I have a client who wanted to add a "plug-in" to his existing site so
his visitors could access an online store. Okay, got the snippet
from the provider. The provider says that it must be XHTML - okay,
and so I serve it as application/xhtml+xml for supporting browsers
and html for others.

Oh shit! The damned snippet is wrong because their markup is foobar
(link element in the body, mal-formed comments, etc.). No problem,
fix the markup, start testing again.

Opera, good to go. IE good to go. Firefox good to go. Chrome -
yikes, z-index/javascript issue, no links can be accessed. Safari -
same thing.

Email supplier, advise supplier that the markup needs to be fixed,
and links are inaccessible in Chrome and Safari.

Got an email back from the supplier, and I quote it below:
"Good Morning,
Currently, we do not support Safari or Chome. The only browers we
endorse are IE 7,8, and Firefox. We will look at expanding to Safari
in the near future."

This is amazing to me. I can see if this were a bank, or an Intranet
or something, but this is for the general public - a shopping site
for &Deity's sake!

So, I'm doing server side browser sniffing (Safari and Chrome only),
and redirecting to a nice page that gives another link that does
work.

Yep, agreed. I'm more into specialized and "personal" websites myself,
but anything commercial should be as "general" (-i.e. compatible) as you
can make it. Not supporting Chrome and Safari (-and even Ie6 if such is
the case) is unforgivable. ...And, as JL indicated, the xhtml is silly.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I love that! Never heard of it before, have to catch it in reruns or
something.

Don't feed your kid any sugar before watching, just a warning! ;-)

The reference is the explanation by one of the supreme alien leaders to
the underachieving alien invader why his robot assistant is "special".

BTW I just love the soul-sucking teacher Miss Bitters.