IE8 is comming out, FireFox 3 is comming out, When's my duplicate comming out?

Holy Cow! I know this isn't new news.  IE8 and FireFox 3.. Acid 2 tests, heck Acid 3 tests. When is it going to stop?!?

 As some know, I'm writing a very complicated vehicle tracking system that is all web based. It can track up to 200 vehicles at once (in one browser instance), draw them on the map, and give you all the nice tid-bits of information about them. This application is very heavy CSS and JavaScript. I pretty much took most of .NET out of the application except for 3 web service calls.

 However, To make applications like the one I'm developing work in a real world environment, they need to be efficient. That means that if I'm going to be doing collision detection on vehicle labels (so they don't overlap) I would rather use a few extra bits of memory to remember the answers from complicated math (storing the values that are returned by using COS / SIN calculations) than to have to calculate them each time. If you didn't know anything done using COS, SIN, TAN etc.  are extremely expensive.

 So back on topic, I have my application, It's as efficient as I can make it, and now I have to test the efficiency in not 4, but SIX browsers. And to top it off, those browsers have tweaked Javascript engines. WHY WHY WHY! I already tried my app in these 2 new browsers, and they "do" work, but not as well as I would've hoped.  Come on, when can a Guy run a simple <div> collision detection script that checks over 100 divs and repositions them in a self expanding circle every second? Why does it need to take 3.2 seconds?
 
I know... to better humanity and all other species on this earth, new web browsers are pertinent in order to form an electronic self sustaining ecosystem. Anyways, WHY! I already have 4 browsers to test (IE7, FireFox 2.0, Opera, safari... stupid Safari), and now I need to test on 2 more? You know, the day when those 2 browsers (or days) get released I'll forget to test on them and I'll get over 100 emails in my inbox stating that my website broke the internet (if that were true then I'd really have something to blog about).

Can we invest more money in holograms like on Star Trek so I can get a duplicate to do the testing? I know testing is the bestest most funnestest thing ever and that programmers everywhere are running at the opportunity to test... but I'll sacrifice my ego and let my hologram clone do it for me.

 
Ok I'll stop whining now.
 


 

4 Comments

  • You aren't testing IE 6 as well?

  • I feel your pain. Getting JS/CSS to work across browsers is always a nightmare.

    You might be better off using Sliverlight or Flash :-)

    Raj

  • If it's an intranet application I'd limit the browser selection; something like "it only works with IE7 or FF2" anything else: get lost! :)

  • @ Joe Chung
    Our application requires IE7 / FireFox 2.0. There is way to much scripting and information being processed and IE6 just cannot cut it. Seeing it is an actualy web application, and not for public use, it was a good call to make.

    @rajbk
    Silverlight is something I do want to look at. The only problem is the plugin they have to install. Some of our customers can't even download a .txt file from the internet without having an admin breathing down their shirts.

    @Peter
    AMEN!

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