Start.com currently runs in the latest versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer (although there are some bugs in some versions). We've received feedback questioning why we don't support additional browsers. The browsers we support is currently a technology driven decision. We want to support additional browsers, but not all browsers support the necessary standards. I am going to explain a few technical issues we have faced that are critical to us expanding Start.com's support.
First, the browser must support the DHTML event and object model. I am not going to list the specific standards, but assuming a browser can meet the following three requirements, the remaining support will most likely be sufficient.
Support for dynamically downloading code
We download most scripts by dynamically creating SCRIPT tags. Unfortunately, we have found some browsers do not expose any events or properties that we can use to detect the script has been loaded. Specifically, we have not found an appropriate onload event or readystate-type poperty in Safari.
Support for adding custom properties to base DOM objects
Our goal is to avoid writing browser specific code within our application implementation. To accomplish this, our framework equalizes the object models and even extends built-in behavior by extending the prototypes of the base DOM objects. For example, we add properties to the base HTMLElement and Event objects. Specifically, we have not found a way to do this in Opera.
Support for parsing and retrieving xml tags
We embed custom tags into our documents. These tags need to be properly parsed into their appropriate tree. For example, in the HTML document we may have tags such as:
<web:binding selector=".list" type="Demo.List"><web:defaults></web:defaults></web:binding>
We need to be able to query and extract these elements, their associated attributes, and any child elements.
These represent the typical requirements that have blocked us from running on a larger set of browsers. If you represent a browser that does not run Start.com, we would appreciate any help resolving these issues. You can reach me directly via the e-mail address listed in my profile, or you can contact the start.com team directly. For the rest of you, we are working hard at enabling Start.com on the widest array of browsers and devices.
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