Firefox/IE/Hotmail

[Leeza]

I would like to use Firefox more than I do, but I have one problem that I'm picky with. I use Hotmail all the time and when I click on some mail to delete when I'm in IE I get my whole line highlighted in blue and this I like because I then don't have to keep doublechecking to see whether or not I'm deleting the right stuff.

When I'm in Firefox I get nothing but a little tick inside the box. Is there anything that I can do to get the whole line highlighted while in Firefox?

[Leeza]

*double posts*

[Dr Unne]

I would have to see the source code, but very likely there's nothing you can do. It's likely that Hotmail uses ActiveX controls or some IE-specific code to make the page render nicely in IE. Interestingly, IE has in the past purposefully broken MSN pages' code so that it's not even usable in non-IE browsers (Opera specifically). I'd view the fact that Hotmail actually works at all in Firefox as a minor miracle.

[crono_logical]

I know the highlight thing is possible, since I get it in Yahoo under Mozilla (or used to until I blocked some of it's servers in hosts ) So yeah, it's Microsoft deliberately shoddily coding it to force you to use it's own buggy products if you want the best visual output

[Baloki]

It works in netscape if thats any consolation and help to discover the reason...

I shall go install thsi firebird to test my site with....

[Dr Unne]

If someone can post the source code to the site, we can look at it and see what's going on. I don't have a hotmail account, so I can't get there to check.

[Baloki]

Code attached

[Dr Unne]

You may want to un-post that code, in case it has information that could let someone break into your account. Sorry. I just wanted to see the code for the checkboxes.

There are some external javascript source files loaded by that page (http://hotmail.com/cgi-bin/dasp/EN/h...90815000014.js and http://hotmail.com/cgi-bin/dasp/EN/h...9080000001F.js in case anyone wants to see) and a CSS file (http://hotmail.com/cgi-bin/dasp/EN/h...9080000065.css). The code for that page almost causes me phyiscal pain to read. MS's way of naming CSS classes is like something I did when I was in 10th grade (.A through .Z, and then .AA, .BB, etc.) Every single javascript function and variable has a name like CA, MOL, SQP. I guess that's what code looks like that isn't meant to be read by humans though. It's an absolute mess.

I found a javascript function that's called when a checkbox is checked, but all it does is check the "Check All" checkbox for some stuff. I don't see anything in the code that would highlight a table cell upon clicking a checkbox. Maybe I'm not looking at it well enough though. I honestly don't know. None of the javascript will function when I open the page locally from my browser, so what I'm looking at likely isn't even representative of a real Hotmail page loaded in Firebird. I'm not signing up for a Hotmail account just to check this. Sorry.

[Leeza]

I didn't think that there was much that could have been done anyways, but thank you for trying.

Would the source code be the same whether it came from IE Hotmail or from Firefox Hotmail? The one from Firefox looks easier to read because it has colour.

[Baloki]

They should be the same as their from the same source, unless Microsoft check what browser your using and give you a different page for different browsers.

[Dr Unne]

It is possible to detect browser version and give different source.