JSWare - About Problems With The Menu

Sorry for the inconvenience...
but there may be no menu for your browser.
   Did you arrive at this page because you had trouble with the JSWare menu and clicked the link on the home page? Maybe the menu did not function or was not visible? Are you using Internet Explorer with script disabled, or are you using an older browser?

• For all browsers except Internet Explorer

   The JSWare main menu has worked for a number of years in all of the major browsers: Mozilla 1+, Netscape 7+, Firefox, Opera 7+, Konqueror 3.1+ and Safari 6+ are all adequate. If the submenus do not show when hovering the mouse over the main menus ("Software", "Code and Utilities", "Info and Diatribes", etc.) then your browser is probably many years old and needs to be updated.

Note to Opera users:
   If you use Opera it may be "pretending" to be Internet Explorer online. Opera was designed to send an IE userAgent string (which identifies the browser to the website) in order to avoid display problems. Unfortunately, that can cause as many problems as it solves. You can change the userAgent string in Opera settings. If the string includes "MSIE" your browser will be mistaken at jsware.net for Internet Explorer, JSWare will give you the IE version of the main menu, and you will find that the menu does not work.

• For problems with Internet Explorer

   This website is designed to work with Internet Explorer (IE), but Internet Explorer is grossly outdated in its support for web standards and its ability to process webpage "style" code (CSS). The last notable IE update was in 2001, and the last major update to IE's ability to display webpages was in 1998 with Internet Explorer 4.

   Due to Internet Explorer's limitations, IE requires its own simplified version of the main menu, with some features removed. The IE version of the main menu also requires script to function. If you have script disabled in Internet Explorer the main menu will not work. The menu may not even be visible.

   Although JSWare.net is a script-free site for all other browsers, if you want to access the JSWare website using Internet Explorer you must enable script. Sorry for the inconvenience, but the rest of the Internet cannot be held back by Microsoft's decision to ignore web standards and neglect their browser.

We recommend switching to another browser, for 3 reasons:

1) Internet Explorer has had numerous security-related problems, the vast majority of those relate to the use of script, and Microsoft has historically been slow to fix the bugs. So it is not advisable to enable script in IE.

2) Internet Explorer is outdated and incompatible. IE is the only browser that has not been designed to be compatible with internationally recognized web standards. It is the only browser that needs special treatment. If people would stop using Internet Explorer then webpage display problems would be virtually eliminated.

3) Internet Explorer has been effectively discontinued as a major browser. (See explanation below, under the "Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9" heading.)

Other Browser Options
K-Meleon and Firefox:

   Other browser options include:

• Firefox
• K-Meleon
• Opera

See the Browser Tips page for more in-depth information about browser options.
Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9
   If you are not familiar with webpage design it is difficult to explain the unique problems caused by Internet Explorer. All browsers except Internet Explorer will dependably display a given webpage in pretty much the same way. Internet Explorer does not. (That includes browsers such as Avant and Maxthon which are actually just "wrapper" interfaces around Internet Explorer.) Worse, each version of IE is different from the last. That means that websites need to have one webpage for all non-IE browsers, plus several other versions to accommodate each version of IE. (The versions of IE currently in use are 6, 7, 8 and 9.)

   While each Microsoft browser breaks compatibility with the last, each one is also more limited than the last. IE8 only runs on Windows XP with Service Pack 3, or on Windows Vista/7. IE9 will only run on Vista/7. It will not even work on the majority of Windows PCs! And of course it won't work on Macs, Linux, or any other operating system.

   JSWare is forced to provide a specially-designed webpage for IE because about half of the people online are still using some version of IE. But we are not going to provide 3 or 4 versions of webpages for IE. And we are not going to spend time testing webpages on a browser so limited that it will only work on Windows Vista/7.

   Our solution is a compromise: We design one version of our webpages specifically for IE, and one version for all other browsers. The IE version will work reasonably well in all versions of IE. No matter what version of IE you have, webpages at JSWare will be displayed as they are in IE 6 (circa 2001 style), but you will have to enable script for the JSWare menus to function.

   For full functionality and script-free browsing at JSWare.net, use any browser except Internet Explorer.

• Click here for the JSWare home page.