Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

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volomike
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Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by volomike »

Something you might not have noticed is that the latest Firefox (FF3 and up), Safari, and Opera browsers now all convert plain jane controls for HTML buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, and popdown listboxes, and they style them with a 3D glossy effect, rounded edges in the case of the buttons, with rollover highlighting. But with FF2 and less, this isn't the case. And Microsoft in all their infinite wisdom -- they haven't gotten the memo and IE7 still shows plain jane buttons and other form controls and you have to do your own CSS styling.

So, remember all that fancy styling you were doing with your CSS on your HTML form elements? As soon as Microsoft gets the memo on this and makes IE8 or IE9 support automatic styling if no CSS is used on these components -- we might never need to style these form elements again except every once in a great while. That saves time and effort and still looks great. So let's hope that Microsoft gets the memo on this one and makes that change in their crappy browser.
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jaoudestudios
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by jaoudestudios »

Microsoft will sort it out, probably by IE 15 and by then all the none techs will have caught on and be using FF, so we wont even be styling for IE anymore (we can hope :D )
jmut
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by jmut »

Ok, I don't get it. Till yestreday everyone was complaining why M$ takes styling from you and assumes some stuff, doing some styling etc. Today it's them again doing something wrong......cause they let developer do whateve he/she wants with it. :roll:
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volomike
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by volomike »

jmut wrote:Ok, I don't get it. Till yestreday everyone was complaining why M$ takes styling from you and assumes some stuff, doing some styling etc. Today it's them again doing something wrong......cause they let developer do whateve he/she wants with it. :roll:
You know, you make a very good point here. I just don't know where I stand on it yet.

The whole reason we styled forms was because they looked like they were made for the 1990s (think Windows 3.11). But now that the new forms are out with almost a consistent look across Safari, Opera, and FF3 on how they are handling these plain form elements, I don't know if in a decade we can improve on that styling in our tastes and whether we will need to customize the look. I mean, the new styling almost seems timeless to me.

It's also still slightly dangerous now to rely on this feature without doing conditional comments and load CSS to style forms for the browsers that still don't automatically style these elements.
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by nickvd »

volomike wrote:It's also still slightly dangerous now to rely on this feature without doing conditional comments and load CSS to style forms for the browsers that still don't automatically style these elements.
This is exactly why these kinds of things do nothing more than cause us less work on one side of the equation (less styling needed for ff/etc), but more work on the other (extra styling/cc's for IE)...

We have internationally recognized standards for nearly everything in the world, why not browsers (not talking html, the browsers themselves)??
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omniuni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by omniuni »

All the newer browsers do is apply the standard buttons of whatever theme you are using.

CSS is used to style forms that you want to match your web page. On, for example, FF3, or Konqueror, the buttons are then adapted using CSS when it is provided.

In other words, while the browser does make the unstyled forms look better, it also abides by the CSS provided.

I have never had any problems with this, save styling the file-upload form, and since I have no clue what theme a person might be using when viewing my website, if I want my buttons certain colors or sizes, I will definitely use CSS.
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Sindarin
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by Sindarin »

Well Vista is supposed to display nicer glossy controls, and Microsoft is assuming most people use Vista by now, I believe that's the case they don't care. :lol:

What I find idiotic is Firefox still being unable to style scrollbars. 8O
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jaoudestudios
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by jaoudestudios »

Thats microsoft's down fall, they assume everyone is going to use them and assume that everyone will upgrade their hardware to use their <span style='color:blue' title='I&#39;m naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> resource hungry software. Where if done properly the new operating system does not need to consume twice as much resources as the previous and people wont need to buy new hardware!

Use linux it can do much more fancy 3D stuff and only use a quarter of the resource required by Vista.
A few good points here...
http://www.forum.jaoudestudios.com/view ... hp?f=3&t=4
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omniuni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by omniuni »

Scrollbars are not supposed to be styled. Period.
If ever in doubt, check W3C before complaining about a browser.
(Sorry, but seriously, I checked this long ago and it's an old IE thing that uses non-standard properties.)

And I agree.... use Linux. It is superior. 8)

Also, amazingly, IE7 is supposedly somewhat fixed so that the form controls are actual HTML elements and can be styled appropriately. No guarantees here, I can't check, but it's what about 10 minutes of Googling yielded.
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Sindarin
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by Sindarin »

Scrollbars are not supposed to be styled. Period.
If ever in doubt, check W3C before complaining about a browser.
As far as I know, it's because of a dumb W3C accessibility standard that we can't style those in Firefox.
Since every control can be styled and make a site difficult for a user to navigate, in that notion, we shouldn't be able to style any controls!
And I am okay with not styling the browser's scrollbar, but what about the div scrollbars? Why should I be obliged to accept a hideous gray scrollbar in my e.g. red themed website? It will look awful. And why do I have to resort to javascript or Flash just for Firefox's sake?
And I agree.... use Linux. It is superior.
Firefox needs to be fixed, it's not an OS problem.
Use linux it can do much more fancy 3D stuff and only use a quarter of the resource required by Vista.
Seriously , I don't know why people are bashing on Windows Vista. I have used it, have played games with no lag (In fact my laptop runs faster/smoother on Vista than in XP), I have used programs with no crashes. I still use Windows XP because I am used to it, but I like Vista. (The only downside is UAC, but thank God it can be deactivated.)
Windows, OSX & Linux are good operating systems. The user will choose one of them and we have to respect everybody's choice.
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omniuni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by omniuni »

As far as I know, it's because of a dumb W3C accessibility standard that we can't style those in Firefox.
Since every control can be styled and make a site difficult for a user to navigate, in that notion, we shouldn't be able to style any controls!
And I am okay with not styling the browser's scrollbar, but what about the div scrollbars? Why should I be obliged to accept a hideous gray scrollbar in my e.g. red themed website? It will look awful. And why do I have to resort to javascript or Flash just for Firefox's sake?
W3C is an international standards organization for a good reason. As a web developer, we should acknowledge that they spend hours of careful research to decide what is a standard and what is not. If you're going to colorize or style a scrollbar, they would need to figure out how to incorporate that without breaking other HTML/CSS guidelines. Firefox would need to be fixed if there is a bug.

Adding to a browser a capability that it is NOT supposed to have, is NOT A FIX.

You should not have to resort to JavaScript or Flash, for ANY browser's sake, but deal with the fact that Microsoft added a non-standard capability, and that you can't use it. Design around it, or find another way to achieve your goal. Also, in Firefox for me, the scrollbars are thin, light gray, and marble-textured, themed currently with KDE4's excellent Oxygen Widget Style which lights them up aqua on mouse-over. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KDE_4.0RC2.png)

I fully understand complaining about browsers not following standards, but if you want something like theming scroll bars, don't blame the browser for following standards! Go and kvetch to the W3C - they're the ones that make the decisions.

Then, go and ask Microsoft to use their considerable influence to get something like scrollbar theming in the standards before allowing it to be used like a standard part of HTML. When it's a standard, and Firefox isn't following it, then complain. Until then, I'll take an 71 on the Acid 3 over Internet Explorer's measly 18 any day! (Numbers based on IE8 beta, which does better than IE7, and Firefox 3 as it is currently on Ubuntu Linux)

-OmniUni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by pickle »

Firefox and Safari (and probably Opera) only apply their glossiness to otherwise unstyled form elements. As soon as you change a property, they snap back to their 1990's appearance.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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omniuni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by omniuni »

This is because of W3 Specs. They will keep their styles for things like padding, color, and font attributes, but beyond that, they will HAVE to default to a rectangle, as this is what CSS is able to style. FF3, however, fixes many of these niceties that were missing in FF2 by using native widgets, so make sure when you compare that feature, you are on FF3.
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volomike
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by volomike »

I think what we need is to just call up Microsoft Corporation's main offices, ask to speak to the Business Manager in charge of Internet Exploder, and ask if they can please add the feature in IE8 that makes the buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, and popdown listboxes -- unstyled -- to look just as they do in FF3, Safari, and Opera (which all look roughly about the same, with Apple being slightly more exotic).

Who wants to make the call?
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by ghurtado »

Sindarin wrote: Why should I be obliged to accept a hideous gray scrollbar in my e.g. red themed website?
So that users that want to use the scrollbar to scroll can actually find it because it looks the same as every other scroll bar in their browser and operating system; instead of being confused because you decided to colorize and camouflage those scrollbars just because Internet Explorer made you think you could. The scrollbar is part of my computer, even when I use it to scroll through your beautifully "designed" site, so stay off it! I also don't need you to "style" (liberal use of the term in this topic) my status bar, bookmarks pane, or window close buttons.

Fsck the control you think you have over how my browser looks!
Sindarin wrote: And why do I have to resort to javascript or Flash just for Firefox's sake?
Because the color of that scrollbar is so very important to your oversized designer's ego that you would go to any lengths to change the color of the damn thing, including fully preventing certain users from using your site altogether (those without javascript or flash, or with the wrong versions of them).

By the way, I am a designer too, just one with more common sense than ego.
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