[Techtalk] cross-platform, cross-browser testing

[Kai MacTane]

At 2/20/03 12:31 PM , Mary wrote:

>IE6 has a fairly sophisticated renderer and normally pages that work on
>Mozilla work on IE6, so you *may* be able to just occasionally test on
>IE6.

I recall I had a recent testing issue with something that rendered just 
fine on (I think it was) Mozilla, but barfed horribly in IE. [rummages 
through wetware memory for a while...] Got it. It was a page someone I know 
had done. It involved one large table (about 2x2, IIRC), with each cell 
containing a smaller table of roughly 6x4 cells (varying numbers of 
columns, but pretty much always 4 rows).

The page had been created in Netscape Composer (this person isn't a heavy 
HTML person, or a geek at all; she runs a jewelry- and bead-making 
business, and simply has the Web site to sell her stuff). Practically every 
<TABLE> and <TD> tag had a WIDTH attribute, and a few of the WIDTHs were 
greater than 100%. Also, some WIDTHs were percentages, while others were 
absolute pixel values.

Having a Mac and Netscape, she tested in that. It looked fine. It also 
looked fine in Mozilla on Windows 98 (my default Web platform). In IE 5.01 
for Windows (and presumably for Mac, and possibly other version numbers), 
however, it was a bleeding wreck -- the page tried to expand to a few 
thousand pixels wide, everything was out of place.

When I found the problem, I was kind of surprised that it had rendered at 
all reasonably in *any* browser, honestly. But I thought I'd throw it out 
there as an example of something that would display fine on one platform 
(of Mozilla/IE only), but not on the other.

Also, it was a bit weird -- I thought Mozilla was more picky about compliance?

                                                 --Kai MacTane
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"And when I squinted/The world seemed rose-tinted;
  Angels appeared to descend..."
                                                 --Depeche Mode,
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