Since my previous post about mobile browser testing I’ve had four days in Düsseldorf to play with mobile phones, and I’ve once again unearthed quite a few problems that mobile browser testers will encounter. So this post is mostly about how the situation is even more complicated than we thought.

You can look over my shoulder while I’m testing, as far as I’m concerned, as long as you remember that every bit of data is provisional and may change radically without warning.

If you’re interested in real-time raw test results, follow me on Twitter. I regularly post my findings there, and it’s already delivered me some excellent feedback.

In this entry we’ll look at first-line and second-line browsers, mobile support for basic CSS, Opera’s two modes, the failure of @media handheld, Vodafone “content adaptation,” the Nokia keyCode problem, and we’ll close off with a few fun browser facts.

The crucial question of the moment is: who asserts supreme control over the way a website looks on a mobile phone? Currently I’m arguing the author should, but Opera and Vodafone assert vendor control, with Opera also giving the user a modicum of control.

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About a month ago the software department of Vodafone Internet Services, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, asked for my help in creating mobile widgets according to the W3C Widgets specification. In particular, they’d noticed there are differences between browsers even on mobile phones (imagine my surprise), and decided they needed advice from a specialist (that would be me).

Better still, it quickly turned out that they were willing to pay me for doing serious mobile browser compatibility tests and publishing them on this site. The payment thingy is quite unusual, I can tell you (though not entirely unique).

This is easily the best job offer I’ve gotten in my entire freelance career, so I hurried to accept it. Meanwhile I’ve done mobile tests for five days; enough to offer some guidance for setting up a doctrine for mobile browser testing.

As far as I’m concerned you can look over my shoulder while I’m working, but please PLEASE remember that everything I say may change radically without notice after I’ve tested the same browsers on other devices.

Right now I’ve only done a few tests of functionality that’s basic to the mobile experience, and even these basic tests will likely have to be expanded. Besides, right now getting a general feeling for mobile testing and its manifold problems is more important than running lots and lots of tests.

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There’s some browser news to discuss, and I thought I’d bundle it all in one entry. Maybe I’ll even do this more often; it seems a good feature for this blog. But I’m not promising anything!

This weekend I started testing some new browsers, and meanwhile I’ve updated the HTML and CSS tables. There were no surprises. I’m continuing with the Events tables, but they’re so large and sometimes so complicated that I’m not sure when I’ll finish.

In this installment we’ll take a look at IE8RC1 and some reactions to it, Safari 3.2, Chrome’s lack of a “Check for updates automatically” feature and Opera’s antitrust complaint.

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Last Friday a press release announced that the European Commission has sent a “Statement of Objections” to Microsoft. This is a formal notice that the EC is investigating objections made to Microsoft’s trade practices; in this case the tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system.

The latest EC vs. Microsoft fight has entered its second round. Since browsers are involved, this conflict is important to web developers. If Opera gets its way, new Windows computers in the EU will have either zero or five browsers installed on them.

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In case you’re wondering why this blog is updated so rarely; I’m taking a slight break from web development, and I’m working on a major upgrade of my Dutch politics section. It’s not ready yet; I’ll let you know when it is.

However, while working on it I found a few browser peculiarities, and I thought I'd let you know. There’s one IE bug; one case in which IE does the right thing and the other browsers don’t; the third is a Chrome peculiarity (not a bug); the fourth is an undocumented property in Opera.

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During my Ajax Experience session I talked about browser detects and how almost nobody knows how to do them right. I’d like to repeat the main outline of my solution here.

I’d also like to ask you to participate in a little research project by spending two minutes of your time on checking whether your stat package or farm reports any Google Chrome hit. It should, by now. If it doesn’t, it’s likely broken or badly maintained.

This little test will allow us to distinguish between good and bad stat packages/farms.

Please participate. It takes about two minutes. Thanks.

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Just downloaded Google Chrome and did some very brief tests. Rendering engine seems equal to Safari 3.1, as expected. There will be a few minor differences somewhere; I’ll let you know when I find them.

Feels light, quick.

It features a quite slick-looking Firebug clone that includes a YSlow clone. Right-click and select "Inspect element" to access it. Haven’t tried to actually debug with it yet, but it looks promising.

The important points in the Google Chrome story, however, are not about DOM and CSS compatibility, and not even about debugging tools.

John Resig and Alex Russell discuss some ways in which this release could be the start of a new browser war. (Contrary to what Opera states, it hasn’t quite started yet.) I also have a few points to make, but that’ll have to wait for another time.

In order to find out which effect on the market it has, Chrome’s share will have to be measured. Updated browser detect. Detect it by searching for Chrome in navigator.userAgent.
Note to Google Chrome team: please make navigator.vendor read "Google" instead of "Apple".

Which version number does it have? I can’t put a browser without a version number in my Tables. navigator.userAgent says 0.2

Come to think of it, I haven’t yet found any way of disguising it as another browser to get around browser detects written by clueless web developers.

Come to think of it, I haven’t yet found a Preferences menu.

0.2 sounds about right.

But it’s definitely a promising start.

Right. Now that IE8b2 has been out for five entire days, it’s time for a round-up. Exactly what has the progress been? Any regressions? And what about the <meta> switch. How exactly does it work?

All in all I’m quite happy with the progress being made. In addition to a few stunning JavaScript additions, there’s gradual progress across the spectrum. CSS and DOM support has become better; not stunningly so, but still quite important.

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IE8 beta 2 has been released. Go get it; let's see what works and what doesn't. See also the release notes.

I'm currently downloading it; more news when I have it.

Update: CSS compatibility table updated. I'm especially enthousiastic about the support for box-sizing without the -ms- prefix.

Update 2: Core, HTML, and CSS OM View tables also updated. Analysis will follow later, but I'm quite happy with the progress.

Yesterday I walked into the local phone store because the “Temporarily Unavailable” sign had been removed from their “Get your iPhone here” poster. To my utter surprise they had six (6!) entire iPhones for sale, and no, there was no waiting list. I walked back home with a shiny new gadget, impatient to start testing it.

Meanwhile I’ve done some tests; now it’s time for a report.

Before we continue, let’s get the bad CSS news out of the way: Safari on the iPhone does not support position: fixed. Certain Other Browsers were ridiculed for this lack; Safari won’t be.

I’ve updated the CSS Table, the Core Table and the Events Table. In this entry I’m going to talk about JavaScript events on the iPhone. They’re — interesting.

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Sometimes browser vendors are appallingly insensitive. Despite my clear announcement that I’d be on holiday for two weeks, all four vendors saw fit to release major updates or important news items exactly in that period. Now I have to scramble to keep up with all the news, and the worst part is that I don’t really have any time until after An Event Apart Boston.

So this entry is mainly meant as a quick summary for myself. Without it I’d probably remember less than half of these important developments when I’ll restart my testing in a month or so.

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Currently I'm working on a big revision of the Events Compatibility Tables. And no the new table is not yet online because I'm not ready yet.

Testing event support is really awesomely complicated. I've been working steadily for two weeks now, and I still find new bugs and oddities daily, and twice on Sundays.

In any case, I discovered something remarkable when I studied the mousemove event. It sheds light on the way browser vendors keep track of each other's implementations nowadays, and on things that can go wrong.

Update: The bug described in this entry is an OS problem, and not a browser bug.

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As everybody and his dog know by now, Microsoft has made IE8 beta 1 available. First impression: decent progress, but a lot of work remains to be done. And, in all fairness, this is merely a first beta, and its main purpose is to show where Microsoft is headed, and not to get every little thing right on the first try.

There's a lot to be said about its CSS and JavaScript support, and I'm going to say it all. My readers, as well as the IE team, expect that.

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Just now the IE team announced that it's reversing its policy on the default behaviour of IE8, which shows that it has been paying close attention to the discussion of its versioning proposal. I admit that I hadn't expected this reversal, but I welcome it.

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Even clinically dead web developers will by now have seen the announcement of IE8's new versioning switch, and many bloggers I read have already reacted—most of them negatively. See the IE page of my linkblog for an overview.

All in all I am in the Yes camp, and in this entry I'd like to offer a few arguments in favour of the current default of the switch. In my opinion, defaulting to IE7 in the absence of a switch is the correct behaviour.

I won't be offering practical arguments, since these are not received too well right now. Instead, I'm hoping to appeal to our collective sense of honour.

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Now that the versioning switch debate is in full swing (see the IE page of my linkblog for a partial overview), I'd like to move attention from lofty goals and aspirations that may or may not be trampled by the new switch to everyday practicalities.

So here's a quiz for you. Please assume that at some point in the future the following will be the case:

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The announcement of IE8's new versioning switch is generating heated debate—and nobody could have expected otherwise. Whether you feel this is a great or a terrible idea, it will change the way we web developers work. I encourage everyone to form his or her own opinion on this matter.

However, there's one point that has to be made right away. Eric Meyer already touched on it in his opinion piece, but repeating it won't hurt.

One argument used by detractors of the new switch is that it's nothing more than a browser detect. This comparison is factually false and it shouldn't be allowed to cloud a debate that promises to be complicated enough even without false arguments.

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Well, I've been using Safari Windows for a few weeks now, and I though it's time for a report. This report is only about the Windows version, because I can't install the Mac one. Why not? Because I don't have the right OS X version.

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Yesterday I downloaded Safari 3.0 Windows as soon as I found out it was available. It looks fine. Below you find a list of CSS changes, as well as a curious bug that appears on a minority of Windows systems.

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The MSIE team has asked for input on features that the next version of Internet Explorer should support. Please take a moment to help them out.

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Recently Erik Arvidsson lamented the lack of JavaScript progress in IE 7. Strictly speaking he's right, of course: there are few JavaScript bug fixes in the new release, because Microsoft has made CSS fixes its priority. Microsoft has done what it's promised, and it never promised us JavaScript fixes for this release.

That said, everybody knows there are a few things lacking in IE's JavaScript support. The point of this entry is to start creating a list with specific wishes for JavaScript improvements in IE. When it's done and when Microsoft starts thinking about the next version we can present it.

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In a project I'm currently working on I encountered an Explorer bug that depends on the window you open a page with.

I post it here because I know that MSIE team members occasionally read my blog, and I have the faint hope that can they solve this bug, especially since it's messing up one of my projects (and, after all, what in the world is more important than my projects going smoothly <grin>, particularly when I have another important and exciting project that should be finished quickly but is held up by this bug).

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Yesterday Microsoft released a new beta version of IE 7, confusingly called "IE 7 beta 2 preview - released on March 20th". I wish they'd named it beta 3.

Download it here. I haven't done any tests yet and I don't know when I'll be able to.

Despite being terrifyingly busy I found the time for some basic IE 7 beta checks this weekend. In general all CSS issues that Microsoft promised to solve have been solved, with the partial exception of the [attr] selector. The beta refuses to honour p[align=right] {font-style: italic;}. I updated my CSS compatibility table for the second time in two weeks.

I also went through all Explorer Windows bug reports and determined whether they were solved in the beta or not. I found that 58 old bugs have not been solved. See the Explorer 5-6 Windows and the Explorer 7 beta 2 category pages for more information. I also took the opportunity to remove a few reports that were orphaned for more than two months.

Finally, in JavaScript nothing much seems to have changed, although the crash on the normalize() method has been solved. I haven't yet done the rigourous DOM tests, that'll have to wait for another time.

The release of Explorer 7 beta 2 has raised some questions, especially about maintaining the various IE versions you may have on your computer. Basically the beta overwrites IE 6, and Joe Maddalone's Multiple IE instructions don't work, but you can uninstall the beta quite easily and IE 6 is restored to you.

I suppose I do a few people a favour when I write down clear installation and uninstallation descriptions and instructions. Here it goes:

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Explorer 7 beta 2 seems to be available. I'm currently downloading it, so I have no test data yet.

I added an "Explorer 7 beta 2" category to the Bug Report. Please report any bug you find; the MSIE team needs you.

One of my minor irritations with Mozilla is that it doesn't support a few DOM methods and properties that, though not officially a part of the spec, are nonetheless extremely useful and supported by all other browsers. I'm especially thinking of the contains() method and the children[] nodeList. While going through the more abstruse parts of the Level 3 Core spec today I found a way to add contains() to Mozilla.

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iCab 3.0 is a surprisingly good, independent Mac (OS X and 9!) browser created by Alexander Clauss. It has good (though not perfect) CSS1 and DOM1 support, and to my surprise it even contains a speech browser. More than enough reason to recommend iCab to all Mac users that read my site, and to update my CSS compatibility table.

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In a recent article on the IE Blog, Justin Rodgers talks about further CSS improvements in the ever more impatiently awaited IE 7 beta 2. His message is that CSS hacks will start to break in IE 7, and I fully agree.

Nearly two years ago I warned against the excessive use of CSS hacks, because I envisioned a situation like this. Web developers who rely on CSS hacks are going to have serious problems.

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Apple just released Safari 1.3.1 without fuss. I found one important improvement over 1.3: the unload event, which was badly broken in 1.3, is now restored to its ancient reliability.

I didn't find any other significant updates in the CSS or JavaScript handling, but I did only a few very quick tests. If you found a change, please leave a comment.

Update: Safari used to download images with display: none only when they, or their parent element, were toggled to display: block. Unfortunately version 1.3.1 (and maybe 1.3) reverted to downloading the images anyway. Test page.

As everybody and his dog know by now, IE 7 Beta 1 has been released. Read Chris Wilson's entry over on the IE Blog for the details. Since I do not have a copy of it, I will not discuss it in detail. It is my strict policy to discuss only browser features and bugs I've actually seen for myself. Expect a full report as soon as I've got it installed on my computer, but not before.

The MSIE team seems to have used my site for bug testing, although almost all discussed bugs come from Position is Everything, and rightly so, since Big John and Holly Bergevin have far more interesting and detailed bug reports than my own CSS section.

Meanwhile this good news is being overshadowed by an apparently quite vicious campaign against Molly Holzschlag, who seems to have had the temerity to suggest that the IE 7 beta is actually good news for web developers and the standards movement in general, a message that encounters quite a bit of resistance among web standards fascists.

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Over on the IE Blog Chris Wilson gives a few details on the upcoming Explorer 7 beta.

Two months ago I said that I didn't expect the Explorer 7 beta to contain solutions to CSS problems. Clearly I was wrong: Wilson announced support for alpha PNG channels and a solution for the Peekaboo and Guillotine bugs, and he indicated more goodies are to come.

So the Microsoft team is taking the opportunity to not only beef up security, but also CSS support. I'm curious, for one. Expect a full report on this site when the beta is available; and let's hope the CSS solutions we found for the Peekaboo and Guillotine bugs won't misfire in the new Explorer 7.

Opera 8 has been released. I tested it and found no differences with the beta I studied earlier.

Two days ago Apple's team launched Safari 1.3, being part of the OS X.3.9 upgrade (once again named after a fierce predator, but I forget which one). Despite numerous bug fixes, the new release is marred by extremely serious onunload problems.

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In an interesting post in the IE Blog, lead program manager Chris Wilson explains the current state of affairs in the touchy realm of "IE and standards support". It's an interesting read, and he makes a few cogent points. He also calls for specific requests about standards IE should support, and I'm happy to oblige.

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Today Microsoft, in fact Bill Gates himself, has officially announced Explorer 7, the fabled successor to Explorer 6 that everybody seems to have been talking about since 2002. Before jumping in the air from joy, let's see what Microsoft says and what it doesn't say.

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I did the W3C DOM tests in Mozilla 1.75 and Opera 8b and updated the tables. Mozilla doesn't show much progress (then again, it doesn't have to show much, it's already the browser that supports the W3C DOM best). Opera is on the move again.

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I just downloaded Opera 8b (from this location), and since I now have two new browsers I updated a few compatibility tables.

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I just downloaded and installed Mozilla 1.7.5, which, as far as I was able to determine, is the latest non-beta release. Over the next few weeks I'm going to go through the unenviable chore of updating all compatibility tables yet again. You may note that I did not download Firefox. In fact, I've downloaded it months ago and within a few minutes decided it's not going to become my default browser.

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I thought I'd give you the current visitor stats for this site, gathered through the Reinvigorate system. Of course these figures are only valid for this site, and should never under any circumstance be used for any other site.

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