Navigator/Explorer 3.0 Incompatibility List

This lists differences in how Internet Explorer 3.0 responds to Perl/CGI and Javascript code developed and tested for Netscape Navigator 3.0.

• In Navigator, clicking Reload on a page containing HTML forms raises a prompt with an option to resend the form contents. Under Explorer, no such prompt appears and form contents are (apparently) discarded. This is fatal to CGI scripting as far as I know; no workaround is presently known.

• Explorer doesn't interpret as the name of the topmost frame. Navigator does. This is fatal to reliable frames handling insofar as I know. No workaround is known.

• Netscape's Navigator Dynamic Frameset Javascript example doesn't work under Explorer, suggesting additional undocumented Javascript incompatibilities.

I've spent no time diagnosing these differences and workarounds may exist for some or all. Although I like Explorer and wish I could support it, undocumented differences in its behavior make CGI program development nearly impossible.

As far as I'm concerned, the browser wars boil down to this. Netscape provides documentation I can count on and trust. Microsoft doesn't.