Opera 6 and Netscape 6 not playing ball

[MV]

Hi,
I want to try and get a lottery type script to run in these two
browsers before i put it on my site.

It runs OK in I.E.6 and my friend says it works in netscape 7 so i
can't see the problem with 6, they're both fairly modern - aren't
they?

I'm not looking for someone else to do the legwork, just point me in
the right direction. It looks like it's down to some browser-feature
thing? But i want to read up on what i need to know before i attempt
anything.

This is what i've got.
http://www.btinternet.com/~kurt.grigg/javascript/lottostats.html

Thanks - Mike

 

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

I want to try and get a lottery type script to run in these two
browsers before i put it on my site.

It runs OK in I.E.6 and my friend says it works in netscape 7

A good webauthor/-programmer never relies *only* on what other
people say, not even friends. Test and debug for yourself.
Bug reports are a useful resource but nothing to depend on.

so i can't see the problem with 6, they're both fairly modern -
aren't they?

Depends. Netscape 6.x was released from 2000 to 2002 and based on
Mozilla/5.0 m18 to rv:0.9.4.1. Netscape 7 was first (P-)released May
2002, based on rv:1.0RC2. v7.1 is the latest (in every sense, since
development was stopped by AOLTW, firing the rest of the Netscape
programmers working on Mozilla), released June, 2003 and based upon
rv:1.4. Latest rv of Mozilla(.org)/5.0 is 1.7a, released February 23,
2004, latest stable release is rv:1.6 of January 15, 2004. Decide for
yourself what you consider "fairly modern".

You see that because there were versions of Netscape 6.x that did not
even base on a Mozilla/5.0 release but only on a milestone, there are
big differences in what v6.x and v7.x support, even in what v6.0x and
v6.2x support. The differences include not only features, but also
bugs, and you may have found one. Only the JavaScript Console (or a
well-polished crystal/magic-8 ball ;-)) can tell for sure. See
<[email protected]>.

It is known that Netscape versions prior to 6.1 were pretty unstable
since they based upon rvs to 0.6 *and* Netscape did a lousy job making
an end-user app from the Mozilla code. Do not be astonished if your
mouse bites you if you use those versions ;-)

I'm not looking for someone else to do the legwork, just point me in
the right direction.

Install as many user agents as you can and test with each of them.

http://www.btinternet.com/~kurt.grigg/javascript/lottostats.html

FYI: WFM. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7a)
Gecko/20040221 Firefox/0.8.0+

I get a bunch of warnings in the JavaScript console, though, like:

| Warning: reference to undefined property nums[j]
| Source File:
| http://www.btinternet.com/~kurt.grigg/javascript/lottostats.js
| Line: 147
| [...]
| Warning: assignment to undeclared variable z
| Source File:
| http://www.btinternet.com/~kurt.grigg/javascript/lottostats.js
| Line: 190

I suggest you declare your variables and use the "typeof"
operator to check for undefined array elements before.


PointedEars

 

[MV]

Thank you Thomas.

I've never been impressed with Netscape 6. For instance, dynamically
changing div content. Some times the new content isn't displayed
properly but if i open and close something over the browser window,
the content IS displayed properly!

Should I dump 6? What other browsers should i checkout?