Flashes of Panic

In my Wednesday post about Use a Better Browser, I mentioned my frustration trying to develop websites for a browser with uneven standards support, like Internet Explorer. You wouldn’t think this would be an issue, would you? After all, HTML is HTML, right?

Here’s one problem: starting in the mid-90s, web developers learned they could pop open new browser windows, and commercial sites started using this technique extensively so they could link to outside sites without “losing” the customer to a link. I used to deliberately open new windows if I wanted to come back to the source page (right-click or command-click, open link in new window.) I’d wind up with a screenful of open browser windows. (My supervisor still lives in this world. Every CD or site I do, he comes back with a list of links that should, in his opinion, open in new windows.)

Then, along came tabbed browsing, first in Mozilla, then Chimera (now Camino), then Safari. Now everyone (except IE) has it. I open a single browser window with a slew of tabs. And I get annoyed when a link opens a new window: if I wanted a new window, I’d open one. Otherwise, let me open it in a tab. (Yes, I recognize that’s an issue on this site. Many of the links still use the Movable Type default behavior, and I haven’t made changing them enough of a priority that it’s actually happening.)

I thought about this when I was reading Dan Cederholm’s latest SimpleQuiz, which is about what you do when someone insists you open a new window with that link. One of the suggestions in the comments was a technique explained on youngpup.net, which deals with exactly the frustration I had. Still, reading the comments on Dan’s entry shows how complicated such a simple thing gets.

Meanwhile, on the “petulant web developer wishes the world would change to make his life easier” theme, one of the comments to the Wednesday post (which is threatening to set a Flashes of Panic record for comments by people I don’t actually know) led me to DASDUA, “Developers Against Standards Deficient User Agents.” Now, here’s a whiny organization. It reminds me of the point, somewhere in my age-group soccer time, when I thought to myself, “This game would be a lot easier if the other team wasn’t here.” Well, yeah…

Now playing: Bring A Gun from Seven by James