Developing cross browser

[lindsayanng]

So where do you draw the line?? I have the website looking the EXACT way i woul dlike it to.. YAY for me!! my only issue is that it only looks the right way in IE 7 and 8 but not 6 and below.. I know that 6 is still SOMEWHAT used, but not too much.. So its not like it am not going to TRY to make it better.. but really.. when is it going to be somewhat standard.

 

oh yea... and the issue in IE 6 isnt a functionality issue, but the main content gets pushed below the left column (which actually is in the header now) but its still browsable for the time being.. You can see it here

Visit My Website

[♥kymation]

That probably depends on your customers. Are you selling high-tech items popular with early adopters? Then you'd be better off designing for Firefox. Are you selling to people who are likely to be inexperienced at using the Internet? Then you had better make it work for every ancient browser out there, including AOL, IE 4 and 5, etc. If your customers are a mix of experienced users and newbies, it needs to work in every browser. Good luck with that one.

 

I tend to check IE 7 and 8 and Firefox and leave it at that. My designs are pretty conservative anyway, so the sites tend to work reasonably well for every browser I've tried (IE 5+, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.)

 

Regards

Jim

[lindsayanng]

I dont sell a product like a typical e-commerce website would.. we are a photography website.. and we only sell to people whom we shoot.. so our brides and grooms and SOMETIMES their families.. but usually just the brides and grooms..

 

I guess we have a good mix of techie and grandmas.. just wish there was some type of validator PER BROWSER.. is there one??

[♥kymation]

No validator that I know of (and I would love to have one) but there is a browser archive where you can find old browsers to test with. You can also run your pages through the W3 validator; that will help a lot with standards issues that may affect one browser and not others.

 

Regards

Jim

[lindsayanng]

yea.. did all of that.. SOMEONE needs to try and come up with a browser validator. Oh welll...

 

Heres something curious.. Not that long ago, I ran my site through validation and there were a few errors (which i pretty much was already aware of just didnt have time to fix) but NOW I am having an error that says that it is NOT ABLE TO VALIDATE!!!!!!!!

 

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 194 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

 

The error was: utf8 "\x99" does not map to Unicode

 

Does that mean on 192 of the index.php code?? or 192 of the source code?

 

The only "charactor" that I can think of that is not really standard is the for trademark

[♥kymation]

That means Line 194 of the HTML as displayed by the browser. The trademark symbol should be included as ™ and not pasted in; that could cause problems if your encoding is UTF-8.

 

This could also be the result of a corrupted upload.

 

Regards

Jim

[lindsayanng]

alright.. i will temporarly remove the trademark and see what happens there.. THANKS

[Eirik]

OK.. my two cents. Yes you design for your audience, but in today's internet marketplace there is such a variety of browsers and mobile gadgetry that can view web content your site is going to get viewed in a hundred different ways you would never have thought of. It was the same argument do you design for 800x600 because some old ninny in a house somewhere still uses windows 98? So anyway here is my last cent.. if they are still using IE 6 and things don't look totally right they are probably used to it.

[Eirik]

Oh one more cent, your blog isn't linked right Lindsey. Should be http not htpp :)

[lindsayanng]

thanks for pointing that out.. I have been doing that a lot lately.. I will do the htpp instead of http - maybe i have a touch of dyslexia

 

thanks for making me feel better.. i also struggled with the 800px res monitor issue and felt the same way.. they are probably used to having things look off in their browsers

[Guest]

thanks for making me feel better.. i also struggled with the 800px res monitor issue and felt the same way.. they are probably used to having things look off in their browsers

As far as screen widht issues go, I design for 1024 setting using a fixed width. The amount of people using 800 I think is such a small amount now. However the amount of people using larger screens and res of higher than 1024 is growing pretty fast so I guess I will have to adapt to that pretty soon too.

[lindsayanng]

thats pretty muchhow i felt.. they might end up with a scroller bar, but it will not effect the placement of my layout.. although with divs for a while, the smaller the screen, the more out of whack the whole thing went.. pushing them down or on top of each other.. i fixed that thankfully!!!

 

i made the site to be 950px.. i figure that kinda works for everything.. doesnt look TOO empty on a large screen, but also doesnt cut half of it off on the smaller ones

[MrPhil]

just wish there was some type of validator PER BROWSER.. is there one??

 

Looking for a boulder to push up a mountain? :blink:

 

You can validate against WWW standards, but how would you define validating on different browsers? That is, how would you define "right" or "wrong" display and function? Even for a given standard, no browser implements it perfectly (some are far worse than others). What looks fine in IE6 can be a disaster in IE8 or FF, and vice-versa. You'll never come up with nontrivial code (HTML, JS, CSS) that works exactly the same in all browsers (except possibly for some very simple pages).

 

I suppose you could have a "kind of" validator that would warn you that given code constructs might cause trouble with specific browsers, but even then, it could be highly subjective. And I don't think Microsoft's legal department would sit idly by as this validator condemns their products... So for now, I think the best you can do is write code for a reasonably standards-compliant browser such as FF3, and then tweak it to look and work "acceptably" on other browsers that your target audience is likely to be using (including IE6).

[lindsayanng]

you're right..i t is wishful thinking.. But yes, i was thinking more along the times of something that says "Hey, these two elements will not display this way!" etc.. for instance, there are CSS elements that just DONT work on IE and it would be nice to have something explain that to you as you build (or validate) Take the issue of OPACITY for instance... there are two completely SEPARATE ways of doing it for each browser.. just becomes a pain.. there should be STANDARDS.. ahem - microsoft!

 

The best thing i have found to help me with these issues is FireBug.. I am currently on the hunt to see if there is anything like firebug for IE.. because if ANY BROWSER should have it.. its IE.. Firebug has been the BIGGEST help to me when redesigin the tables in osc.. they are so all over the place, that seeing in it firebug made it a million times easier to understand.

 

I think my site is close to being ready for feedback.. yay

[steve_s]

you're right..i t is wishful thinking.. But yes, i was thinking more along the times of something that says "Hey, these two elements will not display this way!" etc.. for instance, there are CSS elements that just DONT work on IE and it would be nice to have something explain that to you as you build (or validate) Take the issue of OPACITY for instance... there are two completely SEPARATE ways of doing it for each browser.. just becomes a pain.. there should be STANDARDS.. ahem - microsoft!

 

The best thing i have found to help me with these issues is FireBug.. I am currently on the hunt to see if there is anything like firebug for IE.. because if ANY BROWSER should have it.. its IE.. Firebug has been the BIGGEST help to me when redesigin the tables in osc.. they are so all over the place, that seeing in it firebug made it a million times easier to understand.

 

I think my site is close to being ready for feedback.. yay

 

I use this website

http://www.htmlvalidator.com/ scrool down and will find where you can enter your website page and it will tell you if html is wrong missing or wrong way round

[lindsayanng]

ehhhh.. no.. I use the W3C validator.. same thing, but its standard and free