Re: off the subject...
Re: off the subject...
- Subject: Re: off the subject...
- From: Richard 23 <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 05:38:09 -0700
>
Does anyone write Javascript for the Mac? I'm trying to make a (poorly
>
coded???) page work in Mac IE5 (works great in Windows) and having no
>
luck. This is a page belonging to an outside vendor. We want to use it
>
at the university but we have lots of Mac users... help??
Certainly. There's even a freely available scripting component called
JavaScript for OSA from hardworking Mark Alldritt and Late Night Software
that enables you to develop and debug JavaScript without being bogged down
by the necessity of continually reloading a browser window.
<
http://www.latenightsw.com/freeware/JavaScriptOSA/index.html>
It's a fairly simple matter to simulate basic client-side js objects which
can help with debugging outside of the browser paradigm. I've yet to
encapsulate the objects I've written and used for developing client-side
js in JS OSA. It's on the list!
However this is JavaScript and not JSCRIPT which are similar but by no
means 100% compatible. EcmaScript is supposed to be the standard...I'm
not sure which, Netscape's or Microsoft's is closer to Ecma but that's
not really too important when trying to get a workable solution.
Also there are a number of proprietary features available only in the
WIndows version. Your unspecified problem may be related to this fact.
Also word on the street is that the Mac version has a number of
differences
from its Windows counterpart, some go as far to say it's a completely
different application.
One thing I do know is that making a complex script written in JavaScript
compatible with JSCRIPT can be a real pain. Case in point: the "December"
update of my own site which I never put online due to inconsistencies
between the two implementations. Couple this with the helpful manner in
which IE (Mac version anyway) reports JavaScript errors in external
JavaScript files: it reports the wrong line number, offering to show the
error location in the source document. Clicking OK opens the html
document
(not the js document) with a bogus selection.
The poor coding to which you refer may reside in IE and not the page.
Where do you want to go today? Somewhere else.
To be fair, at least IE does a fairly decent job with CSS, Netscape Nav 4
is absolutely repulsive, repugnant, odious and just plain smells when it
comes to CSS implementation very often completely misunderstanding basic
CSS1 or uncerimoniously crashing (yes minor one or two character changes
in a style sheet can crash Navigator). I've even found that something as
simple as a </p> without an opening <p> has caused it to crash.
I completely understand why they lost market share to IE.
Now if I could just get a browser which uses Netscape's JavaScript, draws
tables and rules like Netscape and does CSS and dynamic html like IE
perhaps
using the memory footprint of iCab...that would be a killer app. Mozilla
looks almost hopeful but as Windows is to Pentium boxes so is IE for the
herd of internet "surfers". Oh for a truly standards compliant browser.
R23