Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/05/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 5/10/01 10:44 AM, George Hartzell at hartzell@cs.berkeley.edu wrote: > I haven't had time to look through the content much, but something on > the front page caught my attention: > > --->This site is optimized for viewing in Internet Explorer 5. > ---> Netscape browsers may not display content correctly. > > It sent a bunch of thoughts swirling around my noggin' (in decreasing > order of rationality): > > - what features did you use that break non-IE browsers? Tables. Plain, ordinary vanilla bloody tables. Netscape 6 has a bug that makes tables display inconsistently. They display one way and then you reload the SAME page and they display another. It proved impossible to work around this. I checked the pages that broke N6 in iCab with strict HTML 4.0 compliance turned on, checked the log, and there were no errors that could explain it. I was stuck with either not putting a notice on the front of the site, and having N6 users think I'd lost my mind, or putting a notice on the front and having chaps like you think I'm a Microsoft Nazi. hmm. The pages in question are the image pages, ie the pages that display individual images in the portfolios. It's inconsistent, but they display okay the first time they load, then when you reload them they look as if the table has been stretched downwards... ugly and screw up the layout completely. > > - any problem w/ Mac IE, or will either version work? The site displays well in any genuinely HTML compliant browser. I have personally checked IE on Mac and PC, Opera, iCab, and Netscape 4.7 and 6. N6 is the only one that has a problem. It's just a fact of life that it looks best in Internet Explorer (see below for explanation). > > - do you have stat's from your site that give you a handle on how > many folks you've abandoned (<-- uh oh...) no unfortunately westhost does not offer a browser-type analysis of hits. > > - are you using hand-coded html, or are you stuck w/ this > restriction because of your authoring tool's restriction? see above. I use Adobe GoLive to code and tweak it by hand. I keep the settings pretty restrictive. I allow Netscape and IE special features but like I say everything gets checked in four different brands of browser and anything that breaks them gets changed. The site looks best in IE simply because IE displays HTML closest to the way it looks in GoLive. > > - <rant>How could you abandon the noble goal of cross-platform > compatibility???</rant> Seriously, I'm interested in what > motivated/drove the decision. I didn't! Like I say it WASN'T a decision. It's just a statement of fact that Netscape browsers may not display content correctly. Maybe I should reword it. Incidentally, did you get beyond the front page, and did it work? - -- Johnny Deadman http://www.pinkheadedbug.com