Web surfing with Linux increasingly useless

Hi:

It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
*needing* Windows to surf.

I maintain a VMware install of Win2k only to run a very small portfolio
of programs like Autocad, my Xilinx CPLD/FPGA tools, and some corporate
web apps at work. Internet activity I've done exclusively on Linux for
almost a decade.

Now I am collecting a growing list of web sites that just don't work
with Mozilla or Konqueror. They are sites I simply can't live without.
This is really depressing.

In the past I used to send polite emails to webmasters to consider
testing their sites to work better with Mozilla (Netscape). A few would
respond favorably, but most didn't care.

After a while you get to a point where you just simply can't boycott
participation in the mainstream, or spend hours out of your workday
testing sites with a long list of browsers and writing lengthy emails.
In other cases the priority of the site is simply greater than
philosophical concerns. Consider my stock brokerage, for instance,
which just doesn't work without IE. And consumer product oriented sites
are just increasingly hopeless without IE.

Then sadly, increasing numbers of technology oriented sites either are
unuseable or seriously compromized without IE, for instance:

http://www.linear.com
http://www.liteon.com

Others that are unuseable or almost unuseable (they may seem fine on the
surface, but once you attempt to use more involved features, you get
stopped):

http://www.mellesgriot.com/
http://www.national.com/
http://www.panasonic.com/flash.html
http://www.diodes.com/products/catalog/search.php#
http://www.ramprg.com/en/index.aspx


I haven't tried Firefox yet, as I like the integration of Mozilla. I
wonder if Opera would work with these? I don't care about commercial
vs. free software, I just want to use Linux.

This just really sucks, folks. After nearing *10 years* of using Linux
as my primary desktop OS for 95%+ of my computing, the situation of
interoperability with the rest of the computing world is still hanging
precariously by a thread.


Will this horribly broken anticompetitive software marketplace ever be
repaired?


Good day!



--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
(E-Mail Removed)
SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

Chris Carlen regaled us with the following:

>
>
> Will this horribly broken anticompetitive software marketplace ever be
> repaired?
>
>

Not as long as the vast majority of consumers of these sites (both techies
and non-techies) continue to use IE and Windows and as long as M$ is the
primary tech company calling the shots on both the hardware and software
fronts...

Don't hold your breath...

Consider, why is it so difficult to author a fully-functional
cross-browser-compatible site...???
Could it possibly have anything to do with IE's inability to "play
nice"...??? Hmmm...

--
Skorpion [skorpion at suespammers dot org]
"Don't attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity."

Chris Carlen <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>Hi:

>It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
>sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
>that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
>*needing* Windows to surf.

>Then sadly, increasing numbers of technology oriented sites either are
>unuseable or seriously compromized without IE, for instance:

>http://www.linear.com
>http://www.liteon.com

And what is wrong with them under Mozilla and Linux? Look fine to me.


>Others that are unuseable or almost unuseable (they may seem fine on the
>surface, but once you attempt to use more involved features, you get
>stopped):

>http://www.mellesgriot.com/
>http://www.national.com/
>http://www.panasonic.com/flash.html
>http://www.diodes.com/products/catalog/search.php#
>http://www.ramprg.com/en/index.aspx


>I haven't tried Firefox yet, as I like the integration of Mozilla. I
>wonder if Opera would work with these? I don't care about commercial
>vs. free software, I just want to use Linux.

>This just really sucks, folks. After nearing *10 years* of using Linux
>as my primary desktop OS for 95%+ of my computing, the situation of
>interoperability with the rest of the computing world is still hanging
>precariously by a thread.

And I put up sites for my students, and IE does not work worth a damn, and
I have no idea how to make it work-- and that is with simple pdf files.

Bill Unruh wrote:
> Chris Carlen <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
>
>>Hi:
>
>
>>It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
>>sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
>>that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
>>*needing* Windows to surf.
>
>
>>Then sadly, increasing numbers of technology oriented sites either are
>>unuseable or seriously compromized without IE, for instance:
>
>
>>http://www.linear.com

Some stuff that didn't work at LTC's site a few days ago, now works.
Perhaps they are getting some internal or external feedback guiding them
to straighten things out. When they first unveiled their site's
redesign a few months ago, it was a real mess for Windows and Linux
users alike.

>>http://www.liteon.com

LiteON is unuseable, and rather poorly rendered, at least on my Mozilla 1.6.

Click "Products & Services" then run your mouse over the column of
categories on the left. I get hovering submenus that are dislocated
from the toplevel category, so that I can't possibly click on the subs.
But since the only way to get to a product is by clicking a submenu, I
just can't proceed from this point.

Using Konqueror, I can't even get the submenus to appear.

> And I put up sites for my students, and IE does not work worth a damn, and
> I have no idea how to make it work-- and that is with simple pdf files.

Well that's what you get for writing what is likely generic standards
compliant HTML. ;-)


Good day!



--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
(E-Mail Removed)
SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 19:12:22 -0800, Chris Carlen wrote:

> Hi:
>
> It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
> sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
> that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
> *needing* Windows to surf.
[snip}

All the sites you mentioned look fine to me while navigating deeply into
them with Firefox v1.0 and VectorLinux V5.0.

Larry Gagnon

Chris Carlen wrote:
> Hi:
>
> It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
> sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
> that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
> *needing* Windows to surf.
>
> I maintain a VMware install of Win2k only to run a very small portfolio
> of programs like Autocad, my Xilinx CPLD/FPGA tools, and some corporate
> web apps at work. Internet activity I've done exclusively on Linux for
> almost a decade.
>
> Now I am collecting a growing list of web sites that just don't work
> with Mozilla or Konqueror. They are sites I simply can't live without.
> This is really depressing.
>
> In the past I used to send polite emails to webmasters to consider
> testing their sites to work better with Mozilla (Netscape). A few would
> respond favorably, but most didn't care.
>
> After a while you get to a point where you just simply can't boycott
> participation in the mainstream, or spend hours out of your workday
> testing sites with a long list of browsers and writing lengthy emails.
> In other cases the priority of the site is simply greater than
> philosophical concerns. Consider my stock brokerage, for instance,
> which just doesn't work without IE. And consumer product oriented sites
> are just increasingly hopeless without IE.
>
> Then sadly, increasing numbers of technology oriented sites either are
> unuseable or seriously compromized without IE, for instance:
>
> http://www.linear.com
> http://www.liteon.com

Would you please elaborate a little: What does not work?

I visited the sites with the following set-up:

- Debian Woody
- kernel 2.4.27
- Mozilla 1.5 / 20031007
- libflashplayer.so 6.0r79
- Java Plugin 1.4.2_02-b03

and had no problems whatsoever.

--

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 20:49:53 -0800, Chris Carlen
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>>>http://www.liteon.com
>
> LiteON is unuseable, and rather poorly rendered, at least on my
> Mozilla 1.6.

> Click "Products & Services" then run your mouse over the column of
> categories on the left. I get hovering submenus that are dislocated
> from the toplevel category, so that I can't possibly click on the subs.

You can also get to the categories by clicking on products in the dumb
little flash panel in the middle.

Anyway, the sub-menus seem to work fine in Firefox 1.0. Several of them
say "under construction" and nothing more. Perhaps they should have
done the pages instead of the flash thing.


> Using Konqueror, I can't even get the submenus to appear.

Me neither, with Konq 3.3.2.


--
-| Bob Hauck
-| A proud member of the reality-based community.
-| http://www.haucks.org/

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 19:12:22 -0800, Chris Carlen wrote:

> Hi:
>
> It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
> sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
> that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
> *needing* Windows to surf.
>
> I maintain a VMware install of Win2k only to run a very small portfolio
> of programs like Autocad, my Xilinx CPLD/FPGA tools, and some corporate
> web apps at work. Internet activity I've done exclusively on Linux for
> almost a decade.
>
> Now I am collecting a growing list of web sites that just don't work
> with Mozilla or Konqueror. They are sites I simply can't live without.
> This is really depressing.
>
> In the past I used to send polite emails to webmasters to consider
> testing their sites to work better with Mozilla (Netscape). A few would
> respond favorably, but most didn't care.
>
> After a while you get to a point where you just simply can't boycott
> participation in the mainstream, or spend hours out of your workday
> testing sites with a long list of browsers and writing lengthy emails.
> In other cases the priority of the site is simply greater than
> philosophical concerns. Consider my stock brokerage, for instance,
> which just doesn't work without IE. And consumer product oriented sites
> are just increasingly hopeless without IE.
>
> Then sadly, increasing numbers of technology oriented sites either are
> unuseable or seriously compromized without IE, for instance:
>
> http://www.linear.com
> http://www.liteon.com
>

I've just visited these two with mozilla running on my Gentoo mini-itx
system (with flash and pdf plugins enabled) - I wish you could tell me
what doesn't work - they looked fine to me.

> Others that are unuseable or almost unuseable (they may seem fine on the
> surface, but once you attempt to use more involved features, you get
> stopped):
>
> http://www.mellesgriot.com/
> http://www.national.com/
> http://www.panasonic.com/flash.html
> http://www.diodes.com/products/catalog/search.php#
> http://www.ramprg.com/en/index.aspx

Again, no apparent difficulties - I wish you would tell me what I'm
supposed to be having problems with.

>
>
> I haven't tried Firefox yet, as I like the integration of Mozilla. I
> wonder if Opera would work with these? I don't care about commercial
> vs. free software, I just want to use Linux.
>
> This just really sucks, folks. After nearing *10 years* of using Linux
> as my primary desktop OS for 95%+ of my computing, the situation of
> interoperability with the rest of the computing world is still hanging
> precariously by a thread.
>
>
> Will this horribly broken anticompetitive software marketplace ever be
> repaired?
>
>
> Good day!

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 20:49:53 -0800, Chris Carlen wrote:

> Bill Unruh wrote:
>> Chris Carlen <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>>
>>
>>>Hi:
>>
>>
>>>It is getting to the point now where a large enough proportion of web
>>>sites are simply unuseable with Linux browsers Mozilla and Konqueror,
>>>that I have to face for the first time ever the horrid reality of
>>>*needing* Windows to surf.
>>
>>
>>>Then sadly, increasing numbers of technology oriented sites either are
>>>unuseable or seriously compromized without IE, for instance:
>>
>>
>>>http://www.linear.com
>
> Some stuff that didn't work at LTC's site a few days ago, now works.
> Perhaps they are getting some internal or external feedback guiding them
> to straighten things out. When they first unveiled their site's
> redesign a few months ago, it was a real mess for Windows and Linux
> users alike.
>
>>>http://www.liteon.com
>
> LiteON is unuseable, and rather poorly rendered, at least on my Mozilla 1.6.
>
> Click "Products & Services" then run your mouse over the column of
> categories on the left. I get hovering submenus that are dislocated
> from the toplevel category, so that I can't possibly click on the subs.
> But since the only way to get to a product is by clicking a submenu, I
> just can't proceed from this point.
>

OK, I see what you mean. Just tried 'epiphany' on my Mandrake system and
it does the menus the way you'd expect. galeon also seems to work, so
we're now about two for four.

Just tried, and mozilla on my Mandrake 10.1 system also handles the
submenus properly. Very curious. Have you tried this on a current
distribution?

Bob Hauck wrote:
> You can also get to the categories by clicking on products in the dumb
> little flash panel in the middle.

That's what I would expect from other pages that had similar problems.
In this case, Mozilla 1.6 fails to give any response when clicking on
the category links. Nothing. Can't get there from here.

> Anyway, the sub-menus seem to work fine in Firefox 1.0. Several of them
> say "under construction" and nothing more. Perhaps they should have
> done the pages instead of the flash thing.

Interesting. I wonder if the new codebase for Firefox is receiving the
testing, with Mozilla shriveling on the vine.

>>Using Konqueror, I can't even get the submenus to appear.
>
>
> Me neither, with Konq 3.3.2.

Yes.


--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
(E-Mail Removed)
SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5