Yeah they well might need to take into account more than one browser. :D

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3680942.stm

Oh and just to echo, i second what you say about them, it's great to know two such influencial/popular services recommend Firefox.

Any inside scoop in their interest in mozilla for a browser then Asa? :D

Well, possibly the browser they're thinking of releasing is going to be Gecko based, and so they want users to be testing things in another gecko browser as kind of pre-announcement testing of their product.

"The developers of those Google products have worked hard to make all of their great features work equally well in the major two browsers, Firefox and IE, as well as trying to give solid support to the alternative browsers like Opera and Safari."

I'm sorry, but Firefox is still an "alternative browser," and as long as IE has 90-something percent marketshare, it's not one of the "major two."

That said, recent changes delight me (and by some counts IE may even have less than 90), but I still think we're being over-Firefox-centric when we say that it's one of the "major two." :-)

One day. But not right now.

Robert, I disagree. Firefox has about ten times the marketshare of all of the alternative browsers (safari, opera, konqueror, etc.) combined. Firefox and Gecko-based browsers overall are a significant player. Major sites like c|net are reporting that Gecko is up to 18% of their browser traffic this month. That was before the record-breaking Firefox 1.0 PR release had a chance to reach millions of new users -- which should bump that figure up over 20%.

With Opera and Safari combined hovering around the 1% mark, I'd call them "alternative" browsers. Firefox was an alternative browser a year ago when Phoenix 0.5 only had only a couple percent market share, but is in the mainstream now. That the most powerful internet company around, Google, is optimizing for Firefox and IE with other browsers following later, provides substantial support for my argument.

--Asa

Firefox is not a major browser yet, but it is the major alternative to IE. Also Cnet News.com loves to stick it to Microsoft. Allmost all articles contain something that stabs Microsoft one way or another, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. They report the traffic for news.com, not for the whole cnet network.

I love firefox but I sense serious level of arrogance among developers and some supporters. Every new firefox version change something in a significant way (even the name of the product). The new firefox dialog is one that really annoys me. It is completely inconsistent with all the find dialogs in all applications. When you complain about this, nobody wants to listen. I don't think firefox and mozilla developers really listen to consumers. Yes, firefox is better than Internet Explorer now, but it is because Internet Explorer is not updated yet for a while.

"Yes, firefox is better than Internet Explorer now, but it is because Internet Explorer is not updated yet for a while."

Windows XP SP2 springs to mind with a brand new popup blocker and enhanced security. It's nothing compared to Firefox.

So... when will Google News validate?

Greg, does google news uk not work as expected in Gecko and IE? It look pretty much exactly the same to me in Firefox, IE, and Opera. If the page works as expected, who cares about validation?

--Asa

Haha Asa...
When will Google.com validate??? How hard would that be? Geez..

Joey, I'll ask you the same question I asked Greg. Who cares whether or not it validates? If they make it work for everyone that visits the site, what does validation add and why is it worth even a minute of effort?

--Asa

Nice article about Firefox, Opera and Safari on Reuters today: http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=reutersEdge&storyID=6333652

The more the merrier!

Ugh. Displaying relatively uniformly across major browsers is a good thing, but so is either validation OR near validation but compliance with the standards' general spirits. It makes it easier for the browser. It takes away guesswork. It's better for smaller devices without processing power or memory to try to correct "mistakes." Combined with semantic markup, which is just as important, it's more accessible. The standards exist for a reason. Not that we would even know which Google News is supposed to be using because . . .

Google News doesn't even have a doctype, and on my check a minute ago (UK page, but I can't imagine the others being too different), it had over ONE THOUSAND (yes, that's 1000) errors. A few would be understandable, but how do you explain a thousand?

Quoting attributes looks like it would help a little (anything, but especially things like "100%"), as would escaping characters that need escaping. I don't have time to go through the rest.

It's amazing this thing works in *any* browser.