I have just spent four hours of my life and limited energy trying to
get my blue background fixed in both MS Explorer and in Firefox, and I
can't get it done properly without major difficulties, that mostly are
Microsoft's design, for it refuses to keep to all the agreements on
browser-compatability and html, which it does to keep people buying
its products. (*)
So... having lost over the last 10 years months of my
life trying to have some sort if compatability between the two main
browsers - Firefox and MS IE - and using the MS html-editor Frontpage
for the purpose of maintaining my site, I've definitely had it with
MS:
No more MS IE for me - I won't use it, I don't want
it, and I won't spend more time of my life to try to make MS products
behave as they should and easily could, if only MS were a
decent company.
On the moment - after 4 hours of work, in an MS
product, trying to achieve something that should be very easy - the
title of this text may still be outlined under "Nederlog" in MS IE
whereas it is in the middle in Firefox, anyway a VERY much better
browser, that you also can use to block lots of shit that MS IE doesn't allow
you to block, in spite of the dangers (viruses, dataminers, trojans
etc.)
But the background p r o b a b l y is fixed now in
both Firefox and MS IE, and I've spend two hours on getting the text
color of the datum black (should be very easy, but not if you use MS
products) and trying to put the title of this text in the middle
without doubling the cell's height (should be a piece of cake, but not
if you use MS products: Frontpage shows it in the middle, MS IE preview
shows it outlined under the title) - and I have definitely had it with MS
Explorer.
So I put the title also in the opening of my site,
and that's it:
If it doesn't display well in MS IE damn MS and do get
a proper browser - Firefox is very much better, very
much safer, and free software and open source, as software should be,
perhaps with a few exceptions. (**)
Indeed, if my health is up to it, I may review my
whole site for another html-editor than Frontpage, but alas that's an
if on the moment, although I do have the intention to redo my site to
better html for quite a while now, and also to change some of the format.
As it is: Firefox is much better and safer and more
pleasant to use than MS IE, wholly apart from this site, so I strongly
recommend you to switch to it, which in fact is not at all difficult,
also for those who don't know much about computers, and I will no longer try to make things
work or look as I want in MS Explorer, since it doesn't allow me to do
even some of the simplest things without extreme difficulties.
I'm sorry: I don't have the health, and I also don't
have the patience to put up with these intentionally created quirks
and difficulties to keep MS rich and powerful.
For more on these lines see
"A strong free software movement focused on the
principled issues of software freedom — and a strong FSF in particular
— will determine what freedoms the next generation of computer users
enjoy. At stake is no less than the next generation's autonomy."
(*) In case you want to know this little piece of html-arcana:
MS IE introduced somewhere around the time if MS IE 4, if I recall
rightly, the ability to keep a background image fixed in place,
while the text that uses it as backgound can be scrolled and paged
up and down. That's convenient and looks a lot better, but is (or
at least was) not standard html - for which reason it doesn't work
in Firefox with my site.
There is a cure for it though,
namely a bit of css code, that you can see if you care if you view
the source of this page, and you can find explained at various
places if you search with "background image fixed in Firefox".
(**) For me computing is applied mathematics,
and mathematics, like natural language, is a human form of
communication and understanding that should be free in principle,
and accessible to all. Things like the calculus or algebra should
be as free from patents and commercial sales as neologisms and
conversations. But I do agree that there may be programs -
applications, 'if you like' - that may cost money, because
programmers also have to eat and pay the rent, but not as a
commercial matter of of course, and especially not as Microsoft or
Adobe do it. In principle software that is of use to many should
be free or cost little, and should be open source, so that its
users can understand and control what they have on their computer,
instead of depending on an intentionally obscure and secret mess
of anything that may be used for any purpose by commercial
institutions selling it or hackers who cracked it.
