IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

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JAB Creations
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IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by JAB Creations »

I just spent at LEAST ten frigin hours on coding some fixes to my site's site editor just for Internet Explorer. Surprisingly all the fixes that I tested in the last IE8 build (late December 2008) work as far back as IE 5.5 (though 5.5 and 6.0 really need some CSS fixes but I'm so not in the mood right now).

Any way besides making my editor work in IE I've also added a couple nifty options which will let you really see the difference in the performance of whatever browser you test this with. Once the editor loads up (give it like ten seconds in IE8 LoL...) go in to the advanced options (third drop-down select menu from the top) and check both the keypress and mouseover options. If you test Safari you will have to go in to Safari's Advanced options and put a check for "Press tab to highlight each item on a webpage" to get tab to work. You may also have to click a nearby form element and tab in to the editor or otherwise Safari will choose to go elsewhere. Anyway pressing tab and holding it down (except in newer versions of Opera because they removed the on repeating onkeypress when holding tab down) will really show what a browser's JavaScript engine is made out of. :mrgreen: So feel free to fire up the big four: IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. I recommend loading up Safari 3.2 and maybe the 4.0 developer build if you can get your hands on it as well as Opera 9.6 and 10 alpha 1. There's not much difference between Firefox 3 and 3.1/3.2 and you'll know why once you load up 3.0. :wink:

http://www.jabcreations.com/blog/?promp ... 1&sounds=1

Oh and this isn't a critique, I don't care about the design criticisms of my website. This post is more about the pain of dealing with IE.

- Having to run Virtual PC for IE 4, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, and 7.0 since 8.0 is my real system install.

- DOM Objects and methods not being supported but instead having JScript equivalents.

- JScript equivalents that are not only NOT DOM equivalents but work differently and less effectively!

- Events are the actual (X)HTML attribute names, not the correct DOM names so the "click" event is "onclick" while the "keypress" event is "onkeypress".

In example when applying a CSS (selector) rule I had to do a for loop for IE! Didn't have to do that for any other browser! :roll:

There's plenty more to complain about though I'll leave it at that. Thank goodness for JavaScript object detection! :)
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daedalus__
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by daedalus__ »

your website's design is glorious.
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Chris Corbyn
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by Chris Corbyn »

It really is. I think I need to sit down for a moment to recompose myself 8O
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JAB Creations
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by JAB Creations »

I wonder how well KHTML renders this though I recently read Linus switched from KDE to GNOME. I just downloaded IE8RC1 and it's CRAWLING with the onmouseover option.

Opera 10 is much faster then Opera 9.6. Opera 9.6 if you turn the mouseover option on and just move it around slowly you'll see the hover selector actually slowly follow your mouse cursor around...so it honors every mouseover...just at a modestly slow rate. I expected Safari 3.2 to be a bit faster, it skips a little bit. Firefox 3 is simply fast! Firefox 1.5/2.0 are also slow, the new JavaScript engine is really something in 3!
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by jmut »

Well, not really sure what glorious is supposed to mean but it looks pretty weird to me.
Anyhow....you're running virtual PC for each IE version? 5 virtual PCs ?
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Looks pretty weird on FF 3.0.5 on linux
Looks pretty weird on FF 3.0.5 on linux
JAB-Creations.png (146.2 KiB) Viewed 2734 times
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JAB Creations
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by JAB Creations »

jmut, you've got referrers disabled. :roll:

One copy of XP on Virtual PC running IE6 system, IE 4, 5.0, 5.5, and 7.0 as standalone. That's as minimal the number of copy's of XP (two) you can run to support IE6+.
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by josh »

I agree, I think its quite busy, needs white space, too dark for my tastes / hard to look at
Also:
Microsoft has just pushed live its Release Candidate for Internet Explorer 8, the latest update to the world’s most widely used web browser. You can download it here. Unfortunately the release is only for Windows Vista, XP, and Server - if you’re trying out Windows 7 you’ll have to wait for the next OS update to try out the RC.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/26/mi ... e-is-live/
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Chris Corbyn
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by Chris Corbyn »

Not to de-rail this topic, but your website made my eyes do weird things. I didn't know where to look and it completely disoriented me. There's way too much going on, all text sections appear to blend together, it's hard to see where one block of content ends and the next starts since it's all the same color. Also, the sheer number of boxes with scrollbars threw me (you must have overflow: scroll or something on many of those boxes at the sides?

Have you considered changing the colors so that the sections become a little more distinct from one another? Perhaps try spacing things out a little more too. Some relatively small changes could make this a lot more accessible and eye-friendly.

Pardon the off-topic comment if you're not interested however :)
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JAB Creations
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by JAB Creations »

I don't mind going off-topic if it's civil...

Version 2.8 still relies on third party modules (mostly what you'll see is a highly modified version of WordPress). It's already a mangled enough mess however I like some of the ideas you guys have mentioned.

I tried applying a hover effect for the scrollbars which worked nicely however it will take an overwhelming effort to get the keyboard support to work correctly and I'm big on accessibility...so I'm going to look at WordPress and see if I can apply a JavaScript trigger to change the style with a script I have though only on the first anchor. If I can make that happen then I can implement the hover/focus support for overflow: auto and the normal state to overflow: hidden. I've also considered adding opacity to the sidebar items but that would be excessive right now considering I'm not really that interested in continueing to design and develop Version 2.8 as I've been working on Version 2.9 for months now. Heh wait until you guys see how far the chat room has come. :mrgreen: Any way I'll look in to the WordPress issue for the latest news links and if I find what I need I'll implement that today.

Getting back to the topic why do you guys think I built this in the first place? :twisted:

For step 1 choose "Secondary Set" and change the background-color to something brighter. Really if you just play with the editor for a while you'll notice just how powerful it is. In the advanced options you can alert the selectors when you choose a new "set" of them...Firefox and Opera (but not IE or Safari) you can SELECT the text in a JavaScript alert. You can mod the CSS selectors individually in the browser itself. For now the editor does everything I want it to do before my serverside skills and modules make it live in Version 2.9. Also in advanced mode you can add your own colors and see the hexadecimal values so if you guys have any useful suggestions please let me know. :D Heck if you guys make a theme I'll put it on for other people to check out. :twisted: I made a constant effort to make sure the whole site (including the images) are transparent and will work with the editor.

Version 2.9 will include theme sharing so it'll take the editor to a new level just on that merit alone.
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by josh »

JAB Creations wrote:For step 1 choose "Secondary Set" and change the background-color to something brighter. Really if you just play with the editor for a while you'll notice just how powerful it is
I admire your efforts, however sometimes this concept doesn't work in practice. I can't just tell my users if they would just learn to program in assembler their own webserver + webapp they'd notice how powerful it is, its not that they don't understand, its just that they don't care :lol: Maybe before giving control at the micro level you should implement something at hte macro level like a theme switcher. Before you do that I'd suggest practicing making more readable themes. Your site is very cool, if I didn't have to make a living I'd do fun stuff like that all day but realistically that stuff isn't terrible usable. Instead of trying to run your own website on it why not make it an opensource project, then I'm sure you'd get more attention for it too! Just some constructive (i hope ) criticism
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by JAB Creations »

jshpro2 wrote:Maybe before giving control at the micro level you should implement something at hte macro level like a theme switcher.
That existed in Version 2.7 though I didn't give it any attention in Version 2.8 at all. As I'm working a lot more with forms since I'm replacing almost all third party modules (the blog and forums in particular except things like DHTML libraries which are optional any way) I'm still working on perfecting the theme. The main issue is when I start adding more themes I'm not going to desire having to constantly update selectors and such in the editor. This works for now as I don't care about pleasing my site's visitors with numerous themes just because they don't like the default.

As far as being open source the vast majority of it already is: clientside! :twisted: I actually have been thinking about making some modules of my site open source such as the chat room I've been working on but I seriously need a solid platform that does not rely on any third party modules. That is what Version 2.9 is all about. Oh and you could with enough time rebuild my site more or less if you scour this site and WebmasterWorld enough. It's not like I'm doing anything too crazy with PHP and MySQL right now. :P

I've been working on a replacement for the WordPress last ten latest blog post bit. It works and I can implement the keyboard accessibility events on the first and last anchors...the rest of those insets (as I refer to them) won't be any trouble and aren't dynamic. Here's the code if anyone is curious...

Code: Select all

<?php
include("header-00.php");
 
$result1 = mysql_query("SELECT post_date, post_name, post_title FROM wp_posts WHERE post_name != '' ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 0,10");
if ($result1)
{
 $row_count1 = mysql_num_rows($result1);
 $i = 1;
 while($i <= $row_count1 && $row1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($result1))
 {
  echo ' <div><a href="http://www.jabcreations.com/blog/'.$row1['post_name'].' tabindex="3" title="'.$row1['post_title'].'">'.user_date_mysql($row1['post_date'], "M d").', '.$row1['post_title'].'</a></div>'."\n";
  if ($i == '1') {echo '<div>1</div>';}
  if ($i == $row_count1) {echo '<div>end</div>';}
  $i++;
 }
}
else {echo '<div>Error</div>';}
?>
http://www.die.net/earth/
I think looking at this unless Chris stays up late he might not be able to see the changes I've implement later on until his today becomes his tomorrow or whatever it is. :mrgreen:
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by Eran »

Back to the original subject of the post - I put this meta tag in all the sites I develop:

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
Which forces IE8 into IE7 compatibility mode (hopefully)
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JAB Creations
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by JAB Creations »

I just implemented the scrollbar enhancements for both keyboard and mouse support. Move your cursor over any of the scrollable parts of the sidebar and the scrollbar will appear. If you tab through it then when you tab to the first anchor the scrollbar will appear and onblur on the last anchor of the applicable parts of the sidebar will not only make the scrollbar disappear but also automatically scroll back to the top of that divisible element. :twisted: Chris when you regain consciousness let me know how that looks please. I'm not sure about lightening up the secondary color. jshpro2, how many colors do you see on the image below? With my screen set the way it is I count 23, how about you? :P

Image

8O

*clutches his chest*

pytrin...said...tag!

*dies*

Seriously though, aren't you using conditional comments? See the third link in my sig please pytrin.
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Re: IE8 still sucks + test cross-browser DOM performance!

Post by josh »

27 in each row on my main monitor, which has a 5000:1 contrast ratio.
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