Nasty bugs and features

Which browser are you using?
Did you ever wonder if the designer of a web page really had in mind what you see, when he created the page?
Why is it so hard to implement the rules, recommendations and standards of the W3C committee in the existing browser technology?
Will there be the ONE bug-free and secure browser - at least in the 21st century?
(and remember this gives the engineers the whole year 2000 to fix all the problems, because the 21st century begins on Jan. 1st 2001 !!!)

   I'm sorry, but I'm not able to answer these questions. I just have some suspicions...
It is my opinion when I look at the browsers that are on the market today (that is: Microsoft IExplorer v4.01, Netscape Communicator 4.6, Opera 3.6) are the product of modern software engineering. Together with all the other software around the core of these programs was written in some dark past of computer technology (that refers to the last decade) and every new version is not much more than a bug fix of its predecessor. If new ideas were developed in the area of web design, the new ideas were hacked into the existing code - which nobody really understood any longer. The result is that complications between the older core and the new features are unavoidable - making a soon new release (or bug fix) neccessary!
I recently heared from Stefan Münz (the author of the great, German language HTML guide SelfHTML) that Netscape is going to completely reprogram the display engine before their next major release (v5). Let's hope so!

Now to a list of specialties in some common browsers:

 
• Internet Explorer v3.02
• Internet Explorer v4.x
• Netscape v4.5
• Netscape v4.6
• Netscape v6
• Opera v3.50
• Opera v3.60

• Javascript has been implemented but
  • the navigator object which might be used for browser identification is empty
  • the screen object is not defined - causing script execution to abort

• Javascript has been implemented but
  • the navigator object which might be used for browser identification is empty
  • the screen object is not defined - causing script execution to abort
  • the window.location.search property is not defined - a call to a HTML page with "URL?command_string" does not cause an error but the command_string simply is ignored by the browser

• CSS style sheets are implemented but
  • nested elements like <P><UL><LI>"TEXT"</UL></P> confuse Netscape - especially when the CSS definitions of the elements include margin settings
  • borders around inline elements like the <IMG > tag are not draw around the element but rather after or under it
  • a lot of CSS-1 recommendations are still not implemented

• CSS style sheets are implemented and seem to work
• the "nowrap" option in table rows is ignored
• the browser identifies itself as Mozilla 5.0

• Javascript has been implemented but
  • script execution aborts silently on errors, no warning
  • the indexOf method of the string object class is not defined - causing script execution to abort
  • the screen object is not defined - causing script execution to abort
  • the document.lastModified property is empty - thus referring to Jan. 1st, 1970
  • the window.location.search property is not defined - a call to a HTML page with "URL?command_string" causes an error, the referred page is not loaded
  • Opera disguises itself as Netscape in the navigator.appName property

• Javascript has been implemented but
  • script execution aborts silently on errors, no warning
  • the screen object is still not defined - causing script execution to abort
  • Opera disguises itself as Netscape in the navigator.appName property
  • browser identification in the navigator.userAgent is inconsistent and differs much from release to release
  • the window.location.search property is not defined - a call to a HTML page with "URL?command_string" causes an error, the referred page is not loaded
• CSS style sheets are implemented but
  • borders around inline elements like the <IMG > tag are not draw around the element but rather behind it
  • a lot of CSS-1 recommendations are still not implemented

So much for this page! If you are missing something OR have some own experiences you would like to share, just send me a mail!