My current assessment of just how "cross-browser" (and cross operating system) Asciiroth is. Please note that cross-browser support isn't a key goal for me: my bottom line is Firefox 3 and Adobe AIR. I have very limited access to Linux and Mac machines.
The biggest issue has been font support. Help with this would be appreciated. Once a game has started, hit F7 to get a table of symbols used in the game. The first column is the symbol as rendered; every browser has some way of showing "this is a symbol I can't render" (often a square). The second column is the string value of the symbol and there's also the name. A list of symbols that don't render, as well as your browser, browser version and operating system, would be quite helpful.
| Display | Persistence | Keyboard | Fonts(1) | Performance | ||
| Windows | IE | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Fail (7) |
| Firefox 3 | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| Safari | Pass | Fail (2) | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| AIR | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| Opera | Pass | Fail (2) | Pass | Pass | Pass (6) | |
| Mac | IE | |||||
| Firefox 3 | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| Safari | Pass | Fail (2) | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| AIR | ||||||
| Opera | ||||||
| Linux (RHEL4) | IE | |||||
| Firefox 2 | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| Safari | ||||||
| AIR | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| Opera | Pass | Fail (2) | Pass | Pass | Pass (6) |
(1) By using a more conservative set of glyphs, it appears everyone can render the game using the simpler set of fonts, and there's a toggle to use the extended set.
(2) No Gears support. Eventually may implement with native WHAT 5 support, if implemented by browser.
(6) Slow to load scripts, but then runs fine.
(7) IE is unusably slow to load scripts and open dialogs, although it otherwise works. On the right machine with IE8, it might be playable.