Mozilla Firefox

[GooRoo]

I have just downloaded and installed Mozilla Firefox (web browser) in order to see what the Forum looks like under that browser. Some things I notice right off the bat (using it as I am posting):

• There is the default background color (green) behind the Welcome Box
• The Gruntz background is now 'tiled' and locked to the Forum Board
• The bottom (AD area) also has the green background
• Loading was much faster than with IE6
• Some animations run faster than under IE6
• Firefox does not support 'alt' text for the images (as, the menu buttons)
• The reply box cursor is different (plain vertical bar ... very thin)
• The list dingbat is a filled diamond in Firefox, filled circle in IE6
  • The UBBC buttons (as ) insert code at the bottom, not in place
  • The second level list dingbat is an open diamond, insteadof a circle
• The middle mouse button does not control the main scrollbar (in reply, at least)

I have had less than 5 minutes experience with Firefox as I am writing this, so would like a bit of feedback from anyone who uses both Firefox and IE6 regarding the differences. I believe I can take care of the background, making it stay in place while the Forum 'floats' over it, as in IE6. I know that there are a number of codes (some that I may be using right now as IE6 only) that now have a cross-browser version. I will accept any and all suggestions about possible changes so that Firefox users will see (nearly) the same thing as IE6 users.

[GooRoo]

I am now using a more browser-independent method of 'fixing' the background image, and it works with Mozilla, at least. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about the green background (to the background image!) except to reduce the size of the browser window. Right now, I have about a 1/16^th inch border left and right, and about 3/16^th inch border top and bottom. Yes, re-sizing the window gets rid of the borders!

Now if only there were some way to have Mozilla generate the code from the UBBC in place, instead of at the very end of the post, I could be happy with using Mozilla all of the time. (I am very much biased against Microsoft products, you see.)

[GooRoo]

There is one more oddity about Mozilla; for some reason, it does not process the scrollbar code at all, but apparently makes an attempt to do so. The result is that the screen momentarily centers without the scrollbar, then adjusts as the scrollbar is added to the right edge. I do not like "jumping" displays ... did you notice how quickly I removed the New Year's message? That 1/2 inch jump was very annoying to me (clicked the wrong box a couple of times, when the 'jump' occurred), so I removed the animation early in the afternoon on the 1^st.

Edit: I keep noticing differences (to me, they are 'oddities') about Mozilla Firefox. In IE6, a script I use displays a series of messages in the lower left corner of the browser's status bar. Mozilla does not show it. Instead, it displays messages there about the status of whatever it is doing. There was about a 5 to 7 second delay, and the status bar showed something about "downloading data from BraveNet.com" (the source of the visitor and page counters). Somehow, I doubt that I will be able to find a cross-browser version of the status bar display script anywhere. Oh well.

[GooRoo]

Yet another script that works fine in IE6, but has errors in Mozilla:

0 Guests, -209 Members, 0 Global Moderators, 1 Administrator [Staff List], 61 Global Moderators, 44 Administrators [Staff List], 61 Global Moderators, 44 Administrators [Staff List]

Not a very accurate display of the visitors to this Forum!

[GooRoo]

I promise that I will never, ever use Mozilla Firefox again to try to update this Forum's scripts! Since there are so many scripts that it does not process correctly, it managed to mess up scripts that worked perfectly under IE6, and I may be spending quite a bit of time making sure that everything works (once again) after I attempted to make a very simple change under Mozilla.

I elected to download this free browser since the ProBoards Support Forum volunteers recommended it highly as a 'last resort' insurance policy to fix problems that stymined IE6. (It allows one to get in and remove everything from the scripts ... something it seems to do very well, by default!) Oh well, live and learn!

[FriedGruntzaholic]

If any of the scripts that you use in IE6 use ActiveX, then I believe that Firefox is going to have a difficult time processing those scripts, if they process at all. It is my understanding that Firefox does not (or is incapable of) process anything that uses ActiveX. ActiveX seems to be one of IE's greatest weaknesses as "evil computer geniuses" seem to be able to take advantage of holes and flaws in ActiveX for their own evil purposes.

[GooRoo]

If there is any ActiveX involved, it is in some invisible manner. Everything that I am using on this Forum is either style (CSS) or complete Javascript/HTML with no links to external code. Mozilla simply is not 100% compatible with Internet Explorer's implementation of Javascript/HTML, making its use a flaky proposition, it seems. I get vastly different results when I do a 'View Source' in the Mozilla browset from what I get with IE6 ... far more source shows up in Mozilla, meaning that it must have a PERL component parser. There are nice features, in that Mozilla has its own NotePad replacement, that color codes the various parts of source ... links, paired de-limitters, etc. My one experience today was very negative, though, when I went to save a one line change (expanding an URL from "/...gif" to the full "http://...gif"; it bolloxed both the main headers and footers, and completely deleted the headers for the Frequently Asked Questions Board. I cannot afford a 'tool' that gives me results like those!