is there anyway around this?

3

3l3m3nt

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2003
Messages
353
I've finished up a website using frontpage and it looks great in IE... but if your using firefox or netscape it is all messed up.... is there anyway to fix this rather then redoing the whole site? Any code I can put in the beginning of the index to make it so the site opens up in IE?
 
No. The most you can do is provide a message saying that the site will be displayed properly in IE. Fix your code.
 
so is there code that I can provide which will show up when people go to the site using netscape explaining the site will work properly in IE?
 
3l3m3nt said:
so is there code that I can provide which will show up when people go to the site using netscape explaining the site will work properly in IE?
Click to expand...

Yes, you could use a script to determine what browser is being used, and display a message accordingly. Google it.
 
yeah I found a redirection script, but nothing about opening the page in IE
 
No offense intended, but you're displaying laziness. (Of course, I might be cynical because the desk I just bought and put together is too big for the space it's in, and the chair I bought isn't the one I wanted, but I digress.)

To imply that you only want the site to look good in one browser is rude to those of us who shun IE because of its craptastic nature. In effect, you're saying to us, "You're not important enough for me to provide a site that's viewable to you."

Imagine if you went to a restaurant, and 90% of the people were dressed in green. You arrived in a blue shirt, since it fits better and has more pockets, only to be told by the waitress that you'll need to go home and change shirts...even though the restaurant next door allows green and blue shirted people to dine as equals.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you're going to design a site and you want it to look good, that means much more than just getting it to work in IE and then telling other people why they suck.
 
carl67lp said:
No offense intended, but you're displaying laziness. (Of course, I might be cynical because the desk I just bought and put together is too big for the space it's in, and the chair I bought isn't the one I wanted, but I digress.)

To imply that you only want the site to look good in one browser is rude to those of us who shun IE because of its craptastic nature. In effect, you're saying to us, "You're not important enough for me to provide a site that's viewable to you."

Imagine if you went to a restaurant, and 90% of the people were dressed in green. You arrived in a blue shirt, since it fits better and has more pockets, only to be told by the waitress that you'll need to go home and change shirts...even though the restaurant next door allows green and blue shirted people to dine as equals.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you're going to design a site and you want it to look good, that means much more than just getting it to work in IE and then telling other people why they suck.
Click to expand...

I was going to say something to that effect, but let's face it, he's using Frontpage.
 
I must admit I've had problems with Mozilla and Netscape when rendering certains styles, and then it's often something simple like centering. And it works fine on IE. Plain, bog standard CSS. And no, I don't use cold fusion or frontpage or homesite or anything like that. Hand-typed, hand-optimised markup using Notepad and Delphi 7. That's it.

I'll say it straight - IE has the best rendering engine out there, and accusing the thread started of laziness isn't fair - other browsers aren't up to scratch on standards, and that's that. I've lost count of the number of times I've ground my teeth in frustration with trying to get pages to render correctly using Mozilla. Some of us actually do this for a living and time spent working around browser defects means money down the drain.

It's a pity IE has so many security holes. It's a really good browser.
 
PhyberOptik said:
I'll say it straight - IE has the best rendering engine out there, and accusing the thread started of laziness isn't fair - other browsers aren't up to scratch on standards, and that's that. I've lost count of the number of times I've ground my teeth in frustration with trying to get pages to render correctly using Mozilla. Some of us actually do this for a living and time spent working around browser defects means money down the drain.
Click to expand...

Buh?

IE's rendering engine is actually NOT up to W3C standards. It does a lot of things wrong. I've spent time reading large parts of the CSS specification in an effort to figure out problems and better understand what I'm trying to do, and it's pretty well obvious that IE implements significant parts of the CSS standard improperly, as well as having many rendering bugs of a non-CSS nature.

That said, I have no problems making a lot of my stuff look about 99.8% the same across Mozilla/IE (fuck other browsers). If need be, I just make two separate style sheets, and throw in a little Javascript to select which one to use based on the browser being used.

More to the point of the thread, Frontpage is a Microsoft product, so it's geard toward working with other Microsoft products. If you want something that's going to allow you an easier time with cross-browser compatibility, go get HTML-Kit, and use that to preview your page one step at a time in each browser, figuring out what works and what doesn't. Learning (X)HTML/CSS without the use of an editor like that is worth the time it takes, which shouldn't be long to get working pages.
 
Our vowelless friend (twyztyr) has it all right. IE sucks, plain and simple. To imply, or flat-out state, that it is a good browser that renders everything correctly is not only wrong, it's ignorant. The statement ignores several important problems with IE, and refuses to see that other browsers do a much better job in all aspects of the browsing world.

A good, professional Web designer will design for Mozilla/Firefox, since that's where the rendering is best and the most standards are properly adhered to, and then imply hacks to get IE to work. Yes, I said "hacks," because that's exactly what you have to do to get IE to work right.

Go read about the IE box model hack as an excellent example. Just about every time I do anything with margins, padding, or borders, I have to make doubly sure that IE doesn't completely screw up the layout. More often that not, because my job is only 15% Web development, I have to be content with not-quite-pixel-perfection in IE, just because IE refuses to go with the flow.

And yes, FrontPage is Microsoft, and while it's gotten significantly better (or so I've been told), it's still a Microsoft product. MS has never been one to go with the standards--or if they do, it's the opposite: they take an accepted standard, rewrite it to fit their needs, then say it's the way to do things. IE is a good example: by sheer numbers of people who use the browser, designers cater to them, thus making a "standard" that persists to this day with certain sites. Just the other day I visited HP's Web site to look at an LCD monitor, and reached a page that informed me that my Firefox 1.0 browser was unsupported. Of course, IE worked, but this left me with a sour taste in my mouth. And when I signed up for a free trial of Yahoo! Greetings (e-card service), then later cancelled, the auto-reply bot scanned my note and saw that I was using Firefox and promptly informed me that my browser was out of date!

This mentality will not push the Web forward, and won't even keep it where it is; it will only serve to move us backward.
 
IE is in no way, no how a superior browser by any stretch of the imagination. however, it IS the default browser of 90% (and shrinking) of the world. and since it has had such dominance, web developers have to code for it. also, over the years IE has fostered some really, really bad coding behaviors that have been misinterpreted as being "proper".

the reality is, there is a lot of very powerful features that could be implemented on the web that have been in place for years now in other browsers (like FULL CSS2 support), but kludgy old IE simply doesn't know how to render them. So we are forced to code crappy workarounds or simply not implement any of the newer features at all.
 
maw said:
the reality is, there is a lot of very powerful features that could be implemented on the web that have been in place for years now in other browsers (like FULL CSS2 support), but kludgy old IE simply doesn't know how to render them. So we are forced to code crappy workarounds or simply not implement any of the newer features at all.
Click to expand...
3rd option (which I haven't pimped for a while) is to use a JavaScript patch for the IE engine, such as IE7. I now swear by this method, as I can do a single valid design that works for IE 5+ as well as everything else.
 
carl67lp said:
A good, professional Web designer will design for Mozilla/Firefox, since that's where the rendering is best and the most standards are properly adhered to, and then imply hacks to get IE to work. Yes, I said "hacks," because that's exactly what you have to do to get IE to work right.
Click to expand...

Not true. I am a professional web designer and I design my sites to the audience. In my case, the people that view my sites are complete computer idiots, so I will design it towards IE for the most part, since 90% of my audience uses it. I do make sure that it works in Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape only because I want those few people that do use other browsers to be able to use the site also.
 
I concur with the 'design for Mozilla, make it work in IE' statement.

Sadly, most of the time, I wind up having to make sacrifices to my code in order to get IE compliance. :mad:
 
For those who think they only need to code for IE, consider this: As Mozilla and other browsers that follow proper standards gain in popularity, you're going to start hearing more and more complaints about incompatibilities on your websites. It wasn't too long ago, say all of six months ago, that IE had over a 95% share of the browser market, now it's under 90%, and still falling.

Also, you can be pretty certain that the next version of IE, if and when it comes out, will more than likely follow standards more closely, so the days of coding solely for today's IE are numbered.
 
KRiTiKuL FX said:
Not true. I am a professional web designer and I design my sites to the audience. In my case, the people that view my sites are complete computer idiots, so I will design it towards IE for the most part, since 90% of my audience uses it. I do make sure that it works in Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape only because I want those few people that do use other browsers to be able to use the site also.
Click to expand...

Pfft. I stand by my statement. I've designed several Web sites for my University since becoming a Web standards nut, and even though my logs tell me that 90% of our visitors use IE, I still stand by designing for Mozilla first. I mean, think of it this way: If I design for IE, what are the chances that Mozilla, or Opera, or Konqueror, or Safari will suddenly say, "Shit! This standards stuff is just too standardized. Let's render like IE!" I think it will surely be the other way around, where IE will finally see the light and render properly. When (or if) that happens, my site will be ready--since it was already coded properly to begin with.
 
Why do you guys have to steal this thread away from the guy? Start a new thread called
"IE Sucks, Use Mozilla/FireFox" and flame IE all you want in there. When I go to a forum it's usually to find an answer, and the fact that he's coming here to Hardforums to ask a question about web-design, already tells you that he's not quite right in the head, but that doesn't mean that you can treat him like crap and put him down. This thread should have ended about 15 mins after it start and I wouldn't have to get off my high-horse and push around a bunch of arrogant geeks because their picking on a ignorant [H]arder. I dare any of you to start an IE sucks thread, I can find 2, count them, 2 problems, rendering or otherwise, to every issue you bring up with IE, for any other browser. Enough said the challenge has been wade, now we do you guys stand? Go for it, Make my day, punk!


Anyways, here's a simple javascript example of how to choose between different redirection based off Browser Types.

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">
<!--
var browserName=navigator.appName;
if (browserName!="Microsoft Internet Explorer")
{
<!-- Insert Redirection code here, for non IE browsers -->
}
else
{
<!-- Insert Redirection code here, for IE Browsers -->
}
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>

edit: God, I don't sound nearly as threating when I misspell so many simple words,. Oh, well, I was never good at English...
 
arken420 said:
I dare any of you to start an IE sucks thread, I can find 2, count them, 2 problems, rendering or otherwise, to every issue you bring up with IE, for any other browser. Enough said the challenge has been wade, now we do you guys stand? Go for it, Make my day, punk!
Click to expand...
I'll refrain from commenting on the garbage above this (such as the blanket insult to every contributor here), but here you go. You called down the thunder... Well now you GOT IT!


IE rendering bug list
Gecko rendering bug list

Here's a real example of the positioning flaws:
Exhibit 1: Uses the IE7 patch above to fix IE's rendering suckage.
Exhibit 2: Same page, no patch (which itself is invoked by an IE parse flaw, incidentally). Please note that Gecko renders both pages identically and correctly.

And that's without touching on IE's all-but-complete lack of CSS2 compatibility, versus Gecko being about halfway to CSS3 implementation:
Selectors: Good / Bad
Pseudo-*s: Good / Bad
 
You shouldn't really design for any certain browser, but in addition to checking in other browsers like Opera , you definitely want to check them in Firefox.

Check your pages in good, non-ancient browsers and then see how they look in IE. Chances are, IE will choke.

Gecko follows the W3C specs better than any other html/xhtml/xml rendering engine IMO. However, not everything the W3C defines makes sense. The Mozilla developers don't always evaluate a spec before following it.

In some situations, Firefox appears to be in the wrong because it renders things in a way that wasn't intended. That's usually a case of Firefox exactly following a spec where other browsers may ignore the spec partially and use something that makes more sense or ignore the spec for other reasons. (The Opera developers definitely evaluate specs before implementing them and won't follow a spec if it doesn't make sense.).

IE doesn't even support application/xhtml+xml.
IE doesn't even support the proper mime type for javascript. (You have to use the improper type="text/javascript" for scripts to work in IE)

And as already said, although great in its time, IE's css support and dom support is ancient.

"This site is best viewed in non-ancient browsers". :p

If you are using IE as a benchmark for your pages, then you are just causing yourself problems.

The only thing you can do, is read and follow the specs when creating your web pages. Then check them in different browsers and don't hold on to ancient browsers like IE.

@3l3m3nt

You'll definitely be better off composing your pages in a text-editor; especially if you are a n00bie. We can always give you a template to start you off.
 
carl67lp said:
Our vowelless friend (twyztyr) has it all right. IE sucks, plain and simple. To imply, or flat-out state, that it is a good browser that renders everything correctly is not only wrong, it's ignorant. The statement ignores several important problems with IE, and refuses to see that other browsers do a much better job in all aspects of the browsing world.

A good, professional Web designer will design for Mozilla/Firefox, since that's where the rendering is best and the most standards are properly adhered to, and then imply hacks to get IE to work. Yes, I said "hacks," because that's exactly what you have to do to get IE to work right.

Go read about the IE box model hack as an excellent example. Just about every time I do anything with margins, padding, or borders, I have to make doubly sure that IE doesn't completely screw up the layout. More often that not, because my job is only 15% Web development, I have to be content with not-quite-pixel-perfection in IE, just because IE refuses to go with the flow..
Click to expand...

Psst...y is a vowel sometimes ;)

That said, I don't really agree with "professionals" designing for one browser before another. I always aim for maximum compatibility when designing for someone else, because that's what I'm being asked to do. Since I've gotten back into designing, I've been getting bombarded with requests ffrom people to do their stuff too. A professional designer does what he's paid to do...he does not grind his axe at the expense of mass usability.

When I'm designing for myself, however, I have been known to be a real asshole, using a little Javascript to redirect IE users to www.mozilla.org (I know I can't be the first one to think of it, but it's funny to me). I like Firefox in almost every way better than IE, but that's irrelevant. My personal stuff may be geared more toward that browser, but unfortunately, my commissioned work will have to be as cross-compatible as possible, my personal agenda be damned.

I totally forgot about that IE7 hack. I remember finding it a while ago, but never used it. I may play with it. There are a bunch of neat tricks I want to try that I can't do with IE, even with hacks.

I still maintain, back to the original point of the thread, that ditching Frontpage and learning to code by hand is almost guaranteed to solve several of the standing issues. After learning the actual language, then using an editor might be quicker, and you'll be able to go into code view and tweak things here and there. If you're wanting to do this for a living, a lot of companies (that I've seen in my job hunting) want you to have some knowledge of Dreamweaver and/or Frontpage, so they're good to know, but not at the expense of a valid understanding of what's going on behind the scenes.
 
twyztyr said:
... lots of good points ...
Click to expand...

Sure, sure, "y" is sometimes a vowel, I'll grant you that. :)

I'll still be stubborn and say that a Web designer should target Mozilla then tweak the CSS for other browsers. To me, that's the easiest way to do it, as I allude to in my earlier reply to KRiTiKuL FX. But you do make some excellent points in general, most of which I agree with

And since arken420 got all pissy and whiny, then I'll even make mention that there are certainly ways to address the original topic at hand, but that's not the point here. I've never, ever looked at the HardForum as a place to ask a question and get an answer. I've been known, in fact, to yell at people who start a thread with, "How do you do X?" then reply to it with "Never mind, I figured it out!" and nothing else. To me, that's not in the spirit of the forum. It's not about parroting responses; it's about getting the how and the why and the reason behind something.

We'd be doing a disservice to the OP if all we did is give him the bit of JavaScript to do what he wanted. That would not make him a good Web designer. Instead, all it does is encourage bad coding practice. Why would we want to make a person a bad designer?

But hey, arken420, if that's what you want--a world of craptastic designers--then go right ahead and do it. It'll make it easier for us good designers to get the good jobs. :D
 
I just wanted a discussion about the flaws of IE to have it's own thread. And I care more about getting to the bottom of things than you think. I figured that having a thread with a title of "IE Sucks" or the like would draw a much more varied audience than this one. I figured that having a dedicated thread would spark a much more lively and intelligent discussion with like minded people. Also, for the record anyone who is serious about web designing, or doing anything for that matter, is going to do their homework and research. The fact that 3l3m3nt hasn't posted anything means, he's(generically) probably moved on, or just gave up. I'd be very surprised if he's doing this professionally, and if he is then god help whoever is going to profit from his work. I'm not trying to defend him, nor am I trying to ...

Screw it, I just thought that a discussion about IE could benefit from it's own thread. Which was the point of my post, if not in a very nice way, and one that was completely lost. Oh, well.
 
arken420 said:
I just wanted a discussion about the flaws of IE to have it's own thread. And I care more about getting to the bottom of things than you think. I figured that having a thread with a title of "IE Sucks" or the like would draw a much more varied audience than this one. I figured that having a dedicated thread would spark a much more lively and intelligent discussion with like minded people.
Click to expand...
Except that virtually every "arrogant geek" who is apparently not worth asking about web design, because hey, this is a hardware forum, already understands what's wrong with IE from the web design perspective. The only "discussion" is seeing who can come up with the most egregious errors, and I figured it was easier to condense that into a single post.

But you're probably that 3l3ment has gotten what he needed from the thread, so let's evolve it. I'm looking forward to the 2-for-1 error special you promised.
 
lomn75 said:
I'm looking forward to the 2-for-1 error special you promised.
Click to expand...

You leave me no choice, but to comply. Before I post my 28 mozilla issues, I would like to point you to bugzilla's page for mozilla. There's a niffty search feature that allows you to search for open bugs with a specific keyword. I put in CSS and it returned 200 issues that are still open. That's just for CSS stuff, we haven't even gotten to portability issues and that sort of stuff. Don't get me wrong, I use FireFox, but not for it's rendering, I use it because I hate Microsoft and like the tabbed feature it has. So for brevity, I'll post this link that lists those 200 issues with CSS . If you want me to pick 28 of them, I can do that. If you'd like me to find issues that more closely coorespond with the IE issues page you sent me to, I can do that also, but it'll take me a while to find them. Anyways, I hope this stays pretty civil, I've gotten a good night's sleep and am in a good mood, so lets keep it friendly,.

Also, on a side note, I am sorry for lashing out and being pissy before. I was not very clear on what point I was trying to make and would just like to retract my earlier statement that some people on this forum are arrogant geeks.
 
perhaps we should compare to IE's bugzilla page ... DOH!

also, not all of the bugs/issues pertinent for this argument.
 
arken420 said:
Also, on a side note, I am sorry for lashing out and being pissy before. I was not very clear on what point I was trying to make and would just like to retract my earlier statement that some people on this forum are arrogant geeks.
Click to expand...

no problemo arken420. we all get a little passionate around here sometimes :) i personally took no offense.
 
arken420 said:
...
Also, on a side note, I am sorry for lashing out and being pissy before. I was not very clear on what point I was trying to make and would just like to retract my earlier statement that some people on this forum are arrogant geeks.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we're not arrogant!

carl, I do know IE has plenty of problems displaying things properly. But in my field I have to design things to the majority of the people, and make tweaks for those small percentages that venture out into the light and use something compliant (in my field, not too many people understand the word 'compliant'). I work for a mortgage company designing and building many different web apps. Compliance to the LOs means "I'll do business anyways and hope I have a license." So I seriously doubt too many of my audience ever use anything outside of IE/AOL (which is basically IE).
 
If there is a mathematical equivilant of taking a shit into the internet, frontpage is probably the toilet.
 
bullshens. If you are building a desk, and make one side 30" tall and the other side 34" tall, you're not going to expect the top to be level. Why should that kind of shit be acceptable in the world of Web? It is in IE.

PhyberOptik said:
I'll say it straight - IE has the best rendering engine out there, and accusing the thread started of laziness isn't fair - other browsers aren't up to scratch on standards, and that's that. I've lost count of the number of times I've ground my teeth in frustration with trying to get pages to render correctly using Mozilla. Some of us actually do this for a living and time spent working around browser defects means money down the drain.
Click to expand...
 
Whatsisname said:
If there is a mathematical equivilant of taking a shit into the internet, frontpage is probably the toilet.
Click to expand...
you just want to get into someones sig :D

but funny
 
it's also worth noting that my above examples aren't "IE vs Firefox" -- they're "IE vs every modern browser."

Gecko, Opera, Galeon, Konqueror, Safari... all fine with code through XHTML + CSS2. IE? Not a chance.
 
From my experience, whatever works in IE, acctually does not work. Interpret as you wish. Do not use IE to test your site. Avoid frontpage, if you do not like getting laugh at.
 
Thanks for the links, lomn75. I've been using IE7 recently, and I'm very happy with the results, though I get a ~.2-second flicker after page load. Hopefully this will be acceptable to the client, since that will generally be dwarfed by the download time. I have a relatively complicated, CSS2-dependent layout that works nearly perfectly in Firefox, Konqueror, and Opera (the only problems are a couple of very large fonts that are slightly off in Konqueror and Opera). The site is completely mangled and unusable in IE without IE7, and IE7 plus only a few CSS tweaks (font sizes again) make it virtually indistinguishable from Firefox's rendering.
 
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