So, the first beta of IE8 is out... Looks no different to IE7 but apparently it passed the acid test and it's standards compliant!1!11 WOW!!1! So obviously I had to try it and review it just like I did for IE7.
Well first of all I can't spot any of the old CSS bugs (OMG I can't have been looking properly, seriously) but there are a few general bugs. If you view this site in it, the title of the page or blog entry kind of jumps when you hover over the navigation. Also, dropdown menus can't seem to decide whether they are as wide as the text inside them or as wide as the CSS says they should be. It seems if you click the menu, it is the correct width (i.e. that of the CSS) but if you click inside another field, it goes back to the width of the text inside.
Other than that, I couldn't find anything majorly wrong. I highly doubt I tested it fully, but still: could this be the end of IE hacks and having to make a separate stylesheet for IE because it interprets everything differently? Well, that certainly seems like an exciting prospect. The only thing I wonder is why Microsoft haven't done it before now.
Oh, and it has a handy "emulate IE7" button which is good only really for cross-browser checking... Can't easily install more than one IE on a computer so that's kind of useful. :P
So the first public IE7 beta has come out (source). Of course, I had to download and try it straight away.
...And guess what, I'm disappointed. Why? Because Microsoft haven't fixed half the bugs that IE6 had. I was reorganising this site's CSS earlier to get rid of IE hacks since IE7 doesn't like them (yes, that was the reason for the red text. Sorry if I blinded you) and these are the mistakes I found IE7 still to have:
display: block; without specifying so in the CSS (and likewise for some inline elements)#id element when #id > element was also specified - even when the former was written afterwards. In Firefox/Opera/Safari, it doesn't matter whether you write it as #id element or #id > element - if the former is written after the latter, it will override it (I think? I actually haven't tested it! >.< ).There are more, but I can't be bothered to list them. In short, I had hoped the old peek-a-boo thing would be resolved but it hasn't been, neither have the weird floating problems or width/padding/margin bugs. Blah. Oh, and they (Microsoft) completely ripped off Firefox with their "new features". Tabbed browsing? Live bookmarks? Damn, IE, where have you been?!
/geeky subjects
And now I must go and install a new guestbook on a site I've done for someone because hey guess what, it's being spammed to death. The site's been up for 2 years and only in August did I allow it and my brother's site to be listed on search engines. Now look what happens, spam! Part of the reason why I think this site's been rather lucky in terms of comment/form spam is that it's not indexed by Google or any other major search engine. It's listed, but definitely not indexed (that I'm aware of). Any sub-domains are spammable since they don't have the robots.txt file in their root directories. I did try putting some in, but hostees kept deleting them thinking they were spam or something and anyway it didn't seem to work. The whole disallow / part seemed to make the bots think I meant / of my domain rather than the subdomain and indexed it anyway. So yes, I'm prepared to sacrifice search engine listings for having less spam. Grrrrr. Think I'll go for another installation of Jem's BellaBook. Hopefully blocking some common words should mean stupid porno spammers keep the hell out. Having said that though, they leave "genuine" messages with no specific keywords. Katy blogged about this a while ago - "normal" messages such as:
Hello admin! your site it is so great and useful! I have definitely bookmarked it and will come again! Great work!
...are too similar to genuine ones and are therefore almost impossible to block. ARGH.
Grrrrrr. I officially hate Internet Explorer.
My entire site validates as XHTML 1.1 and works... in all browsers except MSIE6. So I have to keep it at XHTML 1.0 (strict) until Microsoft finally realise they need to update their browser. It might have 93% of the market, but it has nowhere near 93% potential. I have no idea why they don't update it, if they still want to be market leader they have to be the best, right?
Well, they're not... simple as that. The only reason anyone uses IE is cos it's built into Windows. I highly doubt people would use it otherwise.
Aaaanyway. Enough rambling. I'm not that fussed about my coding anyway... No... Well, not really.
*Cough*get firefox*cough*
Hmmmmm did I say that? XD