While web programmin', I'm finding that Mozilla might be a tester's best friend. I'm quite impressed with how well behaviour of a particular build works across platforms. Does it work in Windows? Well then you can nearly take it to the bank it'll work the same way on MacMoz or UNIX, which also makes you feel pretty good about being able to get your "advanced dhtml functionality" to the maximum users. Heck, Moz even runs on Mac OS 9. I'm almost to the point that I'd stop testing Moz xplat and know I've got something working, but that's a pretty big no-no even to a lazy feller like myself.

Here's one place where a little dhtml code shows that the browsers are still on different platforms (and any change in behaviour is good to spot). This is a javascript function that I'm using to change the way a cursor looks on a web page when something's loading.

function changeCursor(menuOff)  {
  if (document.layers) {
    daMenuOff = document.layers[menuOff];
  } else if (document.all) {
    daMenuOff = document.all(menuOff).style;
  } else if (document.getElementById) {  // DOM1
    daMenuOff = document.getElementById(menuOff).style;
  }
  
  //alert(daMenuOff.cursor);
  
  if (daMenuOff.cursor == 'wait')  {
    daMenuOff.cursor = 'crosshair';
  }  else  {
    daMenuOff.cursor = 'wait';
  }
}

Half-way expected the wait cursor to be an hourglass in Moz on Mac (like it is on Windows), even though Mac IE 5 shows a watch, like a "good Mac should". Nope. Moz is making a native API call in both builds. Interesting. Wonder how they wrap those calls in an xplat API -- or if they do? Also makes you wonder what other, less innocuous native calls are going on in other places...

Anyhow, just a reminder that you write once, test everywhere, write again, keep testing everywhere.