Why do people dislike Dolphin?

[Derek Broughton]

Art Alexion wrote:

> On Thursday 06 November 2008 2:08:11 pm Derek Broughton wrote:
>> but really it's not a browser-developer's job to
>> ensure that as much as it is a page-writer's job.
> 
> We'll that may be an ideal assessment of the situation, but it fails the
> practicality test.  A computer is a tool box of sorts, and its browser is
> one
> of its tools.  I want a tool that allows me to use it on as many projects
> as I encounter.

True - but it's (I hate to use this after the argument's with Emanoil
but...) "stupid" programming to either make it work on only one browser, or
to write user-agent checks.  The first costs me (or my client) business,
and the second makes _me_ do more work.  Much simpler to just write code
that works in (almost) all browsers the first time.

> If only every web developer cared about standards and wrote for them.  But
> they don't, and just because they are poor web developers doesn't mean I
> am not interested in the content of their pages.

Well _that's_ certainly true.   I've come across some very important pages
written _very_ badly :-) 

>> I don't write pages that check for specific browsers - because that's too
>> much trouble - and I don't write pages that only work on IE, because
>> that's bad business.  So I use toolkits that are browser-neutral - and to
>> make sure that _they_ don't just check for specific user agents, I test
>> with something like konqueror.  But I'd really prefer to be able to test
>> with a pure _test_ browser, and have a konqueror that worked.  Sort of
>> like running either IE or Firefox in "Standards-compliant" mode (what a
>> laugh!).
> 
> Well this is a good practice, unfortunately followed in decreasing
> frequency. 

I assume you mean the test-bed browser business.  Using browser-neutral
toolkits, like prototype.js, is getting more common.  There's no excuse not
to.

> And finally someone points out that limiting pages to specific 
> browsers is bad for business.

Well, Dotan's comment about changing banks because he couldn't do his
banking via konqueror at least implicitly points out it's bad for business. 
I beta-tested my bank's first attempt at web banking.  Actually it was
pretty good, fortunately, because it turned out they really weren't
interested in hearing from me...

> But surely, you aren't suggesting that Konqueror is purely a test bed
> browser?

Not at all.  That's the problem.  I use Konqueror for everything, so I'm
more disappointed than many when I encounter pages it won't render.  I
don't even care if it renders badly written pages badly - it's the not
rendering them, or worse not responding to actions in them, that bug me. 
I'd love to be able to tell it to do it's best, _or_ to be strictly
compliant - preferably on a page or site basis.
-- 
derek