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Microsoft has pages and pages of explanations about filters and transformations. If you want the nitty gritty, you can find it here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/s...o/DXTidemo.htm
This is a page of samples that show what the filters do. Best of all, at the bottom the actual code is provided for the sample you choose. Granted, you have to do some tweaking for your page content, but it's easy and quick. There's even a button that will copy the code to the clipboard without doing the C&P routine.
If you want to know all the technical aspects, Microsoft's tutorial starts here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ions_entry.asp
Be prepared to read for an hour or two.
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I forgot to say....the filters and transformations are great on SMALL areas of a webpage, like a box or photo. I wouldn't recommend them on the whole page, though.
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These are really cool, thanks! I just wish they worked with other browsers. A lot of people use Netscape, FireFox, or Mozilla these days instead of Internet Explorer and of course these proprietary Microsoft codes don't work in those other browsers. All we can do is hope that the alternate browsers begin implementing support for some of these fancy/handy codes.
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I think that as fast as the other browsers start implementing MS tricks (*if* they do), MS will come out with more. It's part of their campaign to keep everyone using IE.
I used to implement cross-browser support in all the pages that I did, but a year or two ago, I took a look at what it was costing me. At that time, IE use snuck up over 90%. AOL had killed Netscape and there wasn't a good alternative.
Given those facts, I discovered that I was spending 60% of my work time coding for 90% of my viewers. The other 40% was spent on 7-8% of the viewers. I decided the potential loss of customers wasn't worth the 40% of my time. I stopped supporting Netscape, et al.
With the release of Mozilla/Firefox, I may have to rethink that.
Do you have any stats about usage of different browsers? I'll have to see what I can find.
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Originally Posted by jayne
Do you have any stats about usage of different browsers? I'll have to see what I can find.
I can definitely post some stats here for you when I get a minute, but I'll have to post from various sites because all sites are going to be different. For silly example, a site for elementary school kids will probably show a much lower user of Mozilla as compared to a site for college students. I'll see what I can dig up for you though.
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hey, I found some.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Mozilla is up to 17%. That's impressive!
The stats on OS and screen resolution are interesting too.
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One of the stats programs I use on my servers for my web hosting customers is called "AWStats" and it's extremely accurate & thorough system. What I did here was I took screenshots from the basic browser stats from 3 domains hosted on my servers - 1 is from my main hosting site, and the other 2 are from customer sites. I've added a description to help understand why different sites with different content and demographics will attract varying percentages of alternate browser types. These stats are for the month of October so far.
1. This is from a customer's site based in the UK, and the primary content of the site is based around a popular rock band. The average age group ranges from 23 - 38 at this site, and the majority of the visitors are based in the UK:
http://www.MyEasyPics.com/is.php?i=2...mg=vkstats.gif
IE: 59.9%
Opera: 10.3%
Mozilla: 6.7%
FireFox: 3%
Safari: 1.4%
Netscape: 0.4%
2. This next one is from a customer's site based in the US, and the primary content is based around general discussions that are mostly about political issues, the arts, and daily life issues. It is a tight-knit community message board and the average age group ranges from 25-40, the majority of the visitors are based in the US:
http://www.myeasypics.com/is.php?i=2...mg=dfstats.gif
IE: 57.1%
Mozilla: 24.1%
FireFox: 10.9%
Safari: 3.1%
Netscape: 2.8%
Opera: 1.3%
3. This last one is from my web hosting service, not myeaspics.com image hosting, but rather my actual web site service saratogahosting.com. Since it is a "service based" site I have no idea what the average age range is, and the visitor locations vary greatly:
http://www.MyEasyPics.com/is.php?i=2...mg=shstats.gif
IE: 77.3%
Mozilla: 6.2%
Netscape: 3.9%
FireFox: 1.4%
Opera: 0.7%
Safari: 0.6%
So knowing that some of the sites I host are getting as much as 43% visitors using non-InternetExplorer browsers, and going over the stats for the past year has shown a significant rise in that figure from last January to now, designing cross-browser compatible pages has become a requirement for me, not a preference. Also, looking over the stats for all domains hosted on my service in just the past 3 months, FireFox and Mozilla are showing the most significant rise in popularity. Times they are a-changin', and MSIE is losing it's "monopoly" grip on the market. Unfortunately the people who are going to suffer are designers and developers, especially freelancer's who are designing for a paying customer who wants a site that displays properly to everyone.
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Thanks so much for looking those up. That's a real eye-opener for me.
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You're welcome Jayne, I'm kind of in the same boat as you - I want to use a lot of cool new features that I find, but I'm very frustrated with all the extra time it takes me to test everything out in all browsers. Installed on my system I have MSIE of course, plus 2 versions of Netscape, a recent Opera, and the latest Mozilla & FireFox. When I start a design for a customer nowadays the first thing I have to do is test the initial layout in all of those. I can't very well charge a customer extra money to have their web site be as compatible as possible, so sometimes it ends up being extra hours that I have to "eat" so-to-speak.
One feature that I *really* want to use that still has some issues on other browsers is "iframe". iframes can really help create a very cool layout for a site, but there's always that small (yet significant) percentage of users who still run a browser that does not always play nice with them.
I just keep hoping and praying that someday there will be a set of standards that apply to *all* browsers. Probably just wishful thinking though...
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For the last year, everything I've done "on the job" had been for my company's intranet. We are completely MS, so I don't worry about other browsers. My there comes from SQL.
As for my personal internet stuff, I guess I've gotten lazy.