Website display difference in Firefox to IE - Why?

[David Smithz]

Hi there,

take a look at this website in both Firefox and IE.

The wording which are stored in layers in the bottom right of the image are
at not correct in Firefox. How comes?

I cannot see anything wrong with the code and when the code is put into
dreamweaver, dreamweaver displays it the same as how it appears in IE.

Any comments?

Kind regards

Dave.

 

[David Smithz]

Whoops,

Would help if I provided the website link:

http://www.eduardohouth.co.uk/

Thanks

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Whoops,

Would help if I provided the website link:

http://www.eduardohouth.co.uk/

Thanks

Looks the same to me...but all this absolute sizes and positions! In
Firefox press 'CTRL +' a couple of times and see the flaw in your DW design

 

[David Smithz]

"Jonathan N. Little"

Looks the same to me...but all this absolute sizes and positions! In
Firefox press 'CTRL +' a couple of times and see the flaw in your DW
design

Are you sure they look the same? They do not to me. In IE the text and job
description do not show on the same line. (Yes they are different layers,
but this should not matter as they are positioned the same).

Even when I use the CTRL +, it just makes it worse but I did this did not
reveal any flaws to me. Am I missing something?

Thanks

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

"Jonathan N. Little"



Are you sure they look the same? They do not to me. In IE the text and job
description do not show on the same line. (Yes they are different layers,
but this should not matter as they are positioned the same).

They are not on the same line in either for me and that underscores what
I am talking about. My default font and size may be different that yours.

Even when I use the CTRL +, it just makes it worse but I did this did not
reveal any flaws to me. Am I missing something?

All your 'layers; are both positioned and sized in pixels, change the
fonts and font sizes and your design breaks, badly. ('CTRL +' in Firefox
increases the font size)

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, David Smithz quothed:

Whoops,

Would help if I provided the website link:

http://www.eduardohouth.co.uk/

You have ...<div id="Layer3"... more than once. Same id on same page is
no-no. Also, you <p> "Photographer and Poet" but not "Eduardo Houth",
and IE handles formatting of <p> differently than FF, anyway.

 

[David Smithz]

You have ...<div id="Layer3"... more than once. Same id on same page is
no-no. Also, you <p> "Photographer and Poet" but not "Eduardo Houth",
and IE handles formatting of <p> differently than FF, anyway.

OK right. This led me to look deeper and I had lots of problems. I had a
nested Div tag (within another div tag) was the main problem but I also put
right all the duplicate id names etc.

Thanks for pointing this out, all is well now.

 

[josh]

The text resizing is still a big issue I would address (or be aware
of). Even more so when you get to the page with more text. In Firefox
and IE 7 (beta...but plan ahead yeah?), the text overlaps and is
unreadable if the user has their text size larger than your given
values.

 

[David Smithz]

of). Even more so when you get to the page with more text. In Firefox
and IE 7 (beta...but plan ahead yeah?), the text overlaps and is
unreadable if the user has their text size larger than your given
values.

OK, probably good to start thinking ahead from now on. There must be an
awful lot of websites our there that will suffer this problem don't you
think. Not that, that is a justification for ignoring it as a problem, but
even some big websites seem to have the same problem.

Bearing in mind that ideally I want my fonts to be displayed at a certain
size generally, what should I start using to prepare for the ability to be
able to resize fonts for the future.

Thanks.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

OK, probably good to start thinking ahead from now on. There must be an
awful lot of websites our there that will suffer this problem don't you
think. Not that, that is a justification for ignoring it as a problem, but
even some big websites seem to have the same problem.

Many do but your does not have to. I can see the desire to control the
basic placement of the text on your splash page. Use pixels for the top
and left dimensions but the containers dims should expand with the text,
use em not px.

Bearing in mind that ideally I want my fonts to be displayed at a certain
size generally, what should I start using to prepare for the ability to be
able to resize fonts for the future.

On your bio page I can see no reason for the absolute positioning. If
not needed don't use it.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Bearing in mind that ideally I want my fonts to be displayed at a certain
size generally,

Bearing in mind that many of your visitors will not have the same visual
acuity as you do, why not design your site to be flexible? If you set
your own browser to the size you like, you will then have won the game.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

OK, probably good to start thinking ahead from now on. There must be
an awful lot of websites our there that will suffer this problem
don't you think.

A lot of pixel-oriented "designers" have decided that the web isn't
meant for what it was invented for, but merely as a canvas on which
they can live-out their pixel-perfect conceptions. That it doesn't
really work is none of their concern - if they can show it to their
sponsor and collect their fee, the end users of the web site are of no
interest at all - indeed, any of them who complain can be told that
the fault is with their own browser. It's nonsense, of course - but
as long as the "user support" staff work together with the "designer"
to mouth this party line, the end user doesn't stand a chance.

You don't have to follow that path. *They* still repeat this lie that
WYSIWYG, when anyone who has the remotest clue about the web knows
that WYSINWOG (what you see is not [in general, anyway] what others
get), or WYSIJOPR (what you see is just one possible rendering).

Not that, that is a justification for ignoring it as a problem, but
even some big websites seem to have the same problem.

Ain't that the truth, and, now that the pixel-exact merchants have
discovered absolute positioning, their broken pages don't merely fall
apart (which was unsightly, but not actually unusable) - they even
overlap their parts, meaning that important content disappears from
view, and some users may be unaware that it's there at all.

Bearing in mind that ideally I want my fonts to be displayed at a
certain size generally,

Stop "bearing that in mind", and start thinking that *you* want your
web pages to be seen in the way that best meets your readers' various
needs. A central axiom of web design is that web pages aren't meant
*for* the designer, but *for* a web audience. Read up whatever you can
get on "flexible design" or "fluid design" for the web context. The
plan doesn't stop your mainstream users from getting the visual
results that you were aiming for yourself, but it means your pages
adapt themselves much more comfortably to other needs.

good luck

 

[josh]

There must be an
awful lot of websites our there that will suffer this problem don't you
think. Not that, that is a justification for ignoring it as a problem, but
even some big websites seem to have the same problem.

Yeah, it seems that most professional websites (not saying they are
good) using css decide to go with a inbetween tactic; using a layout
that will have problems at some point during text resizement, but not
at the first couple of increases from the default. I guess they are
just too lazy to think of a way to implement their design using a
totally flexible (or rather totally accessible) way.

I personally think that css is a wonderful alternative to the past ways
of creating websites, but it still has very bad design flaws like the
one we are talking about.