cooercing IE to display my page something like properly

[Jim Higson]

Please forgive the one-off crossposting (only 2 groups though!)

Man was I naive!!

Just write a W3C standards complient site, I thought, and then tweak the odd
thing when it came to browser testing. Although I don't have a Windows
computer, I can pretty-much sort-of run IE in Wine (www.whinehq.org), but I
mostly tested in Firefox Opera and KHTML.

Take a look at http://www.masmodels.com/inspiration.en.html in IE and any
other browser. I don't want to turn this post into an anti-MS rant, surfice
to say it's disapointing when browser bugs trash my work

Now, I think the next step should be damage limitation. To start with I want
to use css make a stripped-down but non-broken version of the site for IE,
and then think about getting some of the eye-candy back again.

I've seen [if IE] mentioned in a few places, but can't get it to work in my
stylesheet (http://www.masmodels.com/site_style.css). Can this only be used
for inline styles, and if so is there a .css file equivalent? I tried /* */
comments.

Thanks to everyone for reading.

 

[Jim Higson]

I've seen [if IE] mentioned in a few places, but can't get it to work in
my stylesheet (http://www.masmodels.com/site_style.css). Can this only be
used for inline styles, and if so is there a .css file equivalent? I tried
/* */ comments.

I just found this page, which seems to be what I wanted:

http://www.virtuelvis.com/archives/158.html

I don't really like including proprietry code (even in comments), but I
suppose I have to.
I can't begin to say how few up I am with IE right now. I'm tempted to just
block all IE users until they upgrade their browser to, say, Firefox. Of
course, I won't, but it's tempting!

 

[PeterMcC]

Jim Higson wrote in

Please forgive the one-off crossposting (only 2 groups though!)

Man was I naive!!

Just write a W3C standards complient site, I thought, and then tweak
the odd thing when it came to browser testing. Although I don't have
a Windows computer, I can pretty-much sort-of run IE in Wine
(www.whinehq.org), but I mostly tested in Firefox Opera and KHTML.

Take a look at http://www.masmodels.com/inspiration.en.html in IE and
any other browser. I don't want to turn this post into an anti-MS
rant, surfice to say it's disapointing when browser bugs trash my
work

<snip>

I can't see any significant difference: Opera/Firefox/NN7/IE6 though it's a
bit all-over-the-place with NN7, but isn't everything?

Does it make any difference to the problem if you use a strict doctype
rather than transitional?

 

[PeterMcC]

PeterMcC wrote in

I can't see any significant difference: Opera/Firefox/NN7/IE6 though
it's a bit all-over-the-place with NN7, but isn't everything?

NN4.7 - it's a bit all over the place with NN4.7 - it's me that's all over
the place with NN7

 

[Matthias Gutfeldt]

I've seen [if IE] mentioned in a few places, but can't get it to work in
my stylesheet (http://www.masmodels.com/site_style.css). Can this only be
used for inline styles, and if so is there a .css file equivalent? I tried
/* */ comments.

I just found this page, which seems to be what I wanted:

http://www.virtuelvis.com/archives/158.html

I don't really like including proprietry code (even in comments), but I
suppose I have to.

In a comment it's not really "code", it's just a comment .

I can't begin to say how few up I am with IE right now. I'm tempted to just
block all IE users until they upgrade their browser to, say, Firefox. Of
course, I won't, but it's tempting!

If they can't see it your way, they may not see it at all? That is SO
last century! Good to hear you're not actually planning to do it.


Matthias

 

[Webcastmaker]

Man was I naive!!
Just write a W3C standards complient site, I thought, and then tweak the odd
thing when it came to browser testing...

This is where you have to make a decision. Since 80%+ of your
visitors will arrive using IE, Which will it be? The lady or the
tiger?

Does IE suck? Sure, but that is irrelevant to your visitors. If
your page does not look good in IE, 80% of your customers may walk
away.

 

[Jim Higson]

Jim Higson wrote in

<snip>

I can't see any significant difference: Opera/Firefox/NN7/IE6 though it's
a bit all-over-the-place with NN7, but isn't everything?

Hmmm... that's odd. I've posted a desktop screenshot of what I see here:
http://www.masmodels.com/images/mas-ie.jpg (200k or so)
The box around the thumbnails is broken in ie, but is fine with the browser
on the right. I think because it is weak with ordering floats and doesn't
centre elements whose left and right margins are auto.

Does it make any difference to the problem if you use a strict doctype
rather than transitional?

I'll try this. I think HTML tidy put the transitional in for me because of
some tags I'm using. The page was originaly strict.

 

[PeterMcC]

Jim Higson wrote in

Hmmm... that's odd. I've posted a desktop screenshot of what I see
here: http://www.masmodels.com/images/mas-ie.jpg (200k or so)
The box around the thumbnails is broken in ie, but is fine with the
browser on the right. I think because it is weak with ordering floats
and doesn't centre elements whose left and right margins are auto.

Dear &deity; - I swear I flicked back and forth between all the flavours of
browser looking at every detail, I swear it. Never noticed the corners.

My advice would be to ignore any advice that I might have on this topic.

Sorry if I started you down a false trail there.

Um... I like the models...

 

[Jim Higson]

I've seen [if IE] mentioned in a few places, but can't get it to work in
my stylesheet (http://www.masmodels.com/site_style.css). Can this only be
used for inline styles, and if so is there a .css file equivalent? I
tried /* */ comments.

I just found this page, which seems to be what I wanted:

http://www.virtuelvis.com/archives/158.html

I don't really like including proprietry code (even in comments), but I
suppose I have to.

In a comment it's not really "code", it's just a comment .

If it's parsed by the browser I think it's a bit code-ish. If 'compiler
directive' had any meaning in this contect that's what it'd be.

And at least it's proprietry 'code' that other browsers don't have to go out
of their way to support or ignore. As long as it stays just for IE I don't
mind it, but I'd hate to see a sutuation where more browsers parse comments
and we end up with a buch of browser-specific sub-languages.

A long time ago I used 'extended' languages where 20% of the code was
comments.

If they can't see it your way, they may not see it at all? That is SO
last century! Good to hear you're not actually planning to do it.

No, just venting really. I believe in cross-browser compatibility, even on
browsers that don't. I could point at a 'W3C complient' button all day long
shouting "It's your browser's fault, not mine!".

PS, the worst is the uk lottery site, which tells me my OS is not secure
enough, but if I 'upgrade' to Windows '95 (amongst others) I'm fine. Yeah.

 

[Jim Higson]

I'll try this. I think HTML tidy put the transitional in for me because of
some tags I'm using. The page was originaly strict.

OK. I've put up a ie-specific css and changed it to XHTML strict (only one
attribute was stopping it from being anyway). That should do for now, I
just need to work out how to center the thumbnail images on ie.

 

[Jim Higson]

Jim Higson wrote in


Dear &deity; - I swear I flicked back and forth between all the flavours
of browser looking at every detail, I swear it. Never noticed the corners.

My advice would be to ignore any advice that I might have on this topic.

Sorry if I started you down a false trail there.

S'ok. You did give me false hope for a moment though.

Um... I like the models...

I'll pass on your complement to the maker (I'll see him in the pub tonight)

 

[Jim Higson]

OK. I've put up a ie-specific css and changed it to XHTML strict (only one
attribute was stopping it from being anyway). That should do for now, I
just need to work out how to center the thumbnail images on ie.

even got that working now, with:

<!--[if IE]><div style="text-align: center;"><![endif] -->

around the thumbnail frames.
Doesn't look too bad in IE now. I still think [if IE] is a nasty hack, but
it's a nasty hack that removes the need for far nastier hacks.