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. And the IE version of the main menu 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. (See explanation below, under the "Internet Explorer 7/8" heading.)

Other Browser Options
K-Meleon and Firefox:

   • You can download the safer, more up-to-date Firefox browser. The download is only about 6-7 MB and Firefox is free software. Another alternative is the K-Meleon browser. Both Firefox and K-Meleon are based on the basic Mozilla browser. The main differences between the two are in their graphical interfaces and the customizing settings that they make available. (Both K-Meleon and Firefox use the Netscape-style prefs.js and user.js files that provide the ability to change a large number of settings by typing "about:config" into the address bar.)

   K-Meleon is less polished than Firefox, but it also lacks the dubious "feature bloat" of Firefox. Mozilla.org, the makers of Firefox, get most of their money from Google/Doubleclick. The result of that has been bloat and pointless "features", and a design that favors the business interests of Google/Doubleclick over the interests of the online public. Examples:

• The "phishing filter" that, if enabled, sends all of your browsing history to Google/Doubleclick, yet is basically useless. The phishing filter checks with Google/Doubleclick to ensure the site you are currently visiting is not on a list of malicious sites. If that were not silly enough in itself, malicious sites could easily monitor the "bad site list" and change their URLs accordingly. So actually, the only notable function of the phishing filter is to report your online actions to an advertising company.

• 3rd-party image blocking to block ads. Firefox used to provide that option in its settings. K-Meleon still does. But once Google/Doubleclick got involved with Firefox the 3rd-party image blocking setting disappeared. What's more, the Firefox people came up with a lame excuse to change how that setting works in prefs.js and user.js, with the result that even "advanced users" have difficulty blocking 3rd-party images. (Google/Doubleclick has become primarily an advertising company. A vast number -- probably the majority -- of webpages online use ads from Doubleclick that are loaded as 3rd-party images from the Doubleclick server. That allows Doubleclick to also set and retrieve its cookies on most websites. As the saying goes, you do the math.)

Opera:

   The Opera browser also works well, and is also free.
Internet Explorer 7 and 8
   Internet Explorer has been discontinued with version 6, for all practical purposes. While Microsoft has released what they call versions 7 and 8 of Internet Explorer, those will only run on Windows XP SP2/3 and Windows Vista/7. In other words, IE7/8 are not actually updates to IE6. They are only mis-named Windows XP SP2 patches.

   Internet Explorer 7/8 cannot be used on the vast majority of PC operating systems. They cannot even install on any of the following:

Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows NT4
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP (only partially supported)
Apple Mac (all versions unsupported)
Linux (all versions unsupported)

   In addition to the limited support from Microsoft for Internet Explorer 7/8, the HTML rendering (webpage display) has been inconsistent across recent versions. And as of mid-2009, there are 3 different versions of IE in popular usage: 6, 7 and 8. (Many people -- even people using Win XP SP2 or later -- seem to prefer IE6 over IE 7 or 8.) But the three IE versions work differently. In short, supporting Internet Explorer has become an unworkable mess. But there is one saving grace: Microsoft have designed their later versions of IE to behave like older versions unless special code is used in webpages that indicates specific IE7 and/or IE8 support. In other words, IE8 displays the same way as IE5/6 unless a given webpage has been specifically designed for IE8.

   Given the above, any current or future changes to IE are no longer relevant to the Internet at large, or to webmasters in particular. Working with later versions of IE would require that web designers create several versions of every webpage, each with different, Microsoft-specific code. So JSWare webpages for Internet Explorer are designed to be backward-compatible, displaying properly in all versions of Internet Explorer, from 5 through 8. But unfortunately, that means script is required for the menus when visiting JSWare.

   For full functionality on JSWare.net, use any browser except Internet Explorer.

• Click here for the JSWare home page.