CSS & Internet Explorer

[Grey Fox]

Why is it that a validated perfectly fine page looks exactly as expected in Firefox but when looking at it in Internet Explorer 7 it looks entirely messed up.

Anyone know who is the lead programmer on IE? I want to find him and punch him in the face!


@Microsoft: Scrap your code and pride. Use Mozilla as base for the next IE or make Firefox the default browser of Windows 7.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Cos IE sucks. And tries to write their own standards.

 

[Cutlass]

Oddly, IE is still the standard most web pages are designed to be used in....

 

[Zelig]

Oddly, IE is still the standard most web pages are designed to be used in....

No it isn't, any good webpage is coded to actual web standards first, and then hacked up to display nicely in IE afterwards.

 

[warpus]

Anyone know who is the lead programmer on IE? I want to find him and punch him in the face!

warpus' log, 9:50pm: annoying image that ruined the upper half of the first page of this thread removed

 

[Padma]

Okay, Grey Fox, by now you're aware that MS and their IE team do not concern themselves overmuch with conforming to established standards. When IE7 was released, while they said they were more standards-compliant than IE6 was, They are on record as saying that they were less concerned with making it standards compliant, than they were with adding new IE-specific "features" to "improve the user's experience" (read: lock them tighter into MS, so they can make more money).

I have to maintain a web-based "Programmer's Guide" at work. I develop it to xhtml-1.1 compliant, except that it has to be forced to '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">' in order to be read at all by the IE browser that is the *official* browser at work. (True xhtml1.1 is content="application/xhtml+xml".) I also have a special CSS file full of IE hacks, that is read if the page is being viewed in IE.

I don't care if they base IE on Mozilla or not, but they could at least make it standards-compliant!

 

[Turner]

IE 8 is supposed to be a step in that direction. Of course, we'll see when it actually gets here.

 

[Aramazd]

IE 8 is supposed to be a step in that direction. Of course, we'll see when it actually gets here.

IIRC, IE8 has CSS 2.1 support.

Cos IE sucks. And tries to write their own standards.

No, it just implements them incorrectly and incompletely.

 

[warpus]

I am a web developer (I don't think that this title really explains what it is that I do very well.. but the powers above have given me this title because.. well.. because I do develop things, I suppose, and they are for the web.. Sounds kind of silly that I'm disagreeing with the title given what I just said, but design constitutes less than 5% of what I do. A big chunk of it is database design and programming. Having said that, I interact with CSS all the damn time when I'm playing with either html or javascript.)

Ok, let me try this again:

I am a web developer. Something that is always in the back of my mind when I'm working (and sometimes even when I'm not at work.. like right now!&!$& goddamn you people!) are the various differences between 1. the standards 2. internet explorer 7 3. internet explorer 6 4. firefox 5. etc..

I build websites and online tools for an entire school that is a wing (I guess you could say) of a large University. I am only one guy... but there is a lot of stuff going on and a lot of ways that a database-driven web application might help speed up a process here or there.. Which is pretty much my job - the envisioning of these online processes, their creation, maintenance (sort of), testing, upgrade, training, etc, etc.

There is a point here!

Since I am only one guy and there is a lot of stuff to do, I have to always compromise between the number of people who can view the website I've built in the way I've envisioned it and how fast I want to roll out whatever I'm working on.

Now.. this is a unviersity and everything has to obviously be professional, so great care is taken that everything that is seen by any of our clients (students, faculty, people who give us money, etc.) is awesome and works amazing in at least the top 3 browsers.

Anything internal though, and there are far more compromises there.. (and yes, I am finally getting to my point..) I mean, often I am forced to design for the latest internet explorer, and then fix any bugs that come up in firefox.

I mean.. in an ideal programmer's world you design for one platform, and that's all you have to worry about! Since my roots are in programming (I was coding in c, c++, java, pascal, assembler, lisp (ugh), cobol (i was young) before I made the move to the web) I am used to this. Now, when you program for the web, you have to keep in mind this one extra layer of abstraction.. which makes everything a hell of a lot more annoying.

It's like having 5 different compilers, each based on a different yet similar language.. It's annoying because it doesn't have to be like this, and most of the problems do lie with internet explorer. (this particular point doesn't seem to be under debate, so I'm not going to list any examples)

 

[kcwong]

The most important thing to remember is what "ML" stands for in HTML: Markup Language.

HTML is not designed to describe what a page looks like - it's designed to describe the data.

To describe the look and layout, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) should be used.

But then you also need to remember, it's not CSS doing the rendering of the page. CSS is only describing what the page should look like.

What the page really ends up look like, is the business of the user agent (i.e. browser).

IMO the wrong concept is to want the pages rendered identical on all user agents. It's just not possible for HTML+CSS. You use Flash for that.

The advantage of HTML+CSS is that the user can choose how he/she wants the page to be rendered, by configuring his/her user agent. Most people won't want to do that, I guess, but some do. Like when you have bad eye-sight, color-blind or blind - i.e. Accessibility. The user agent will deliver the page's content to the user just the same, if the HTML+CSS is properly done according to W3C's specifications, and the user agent supports those standards. When a feature is not supported, it falls back gracefully.

... that's what W3C hoped, at least. In the real world user agent support sucks (and lags far behind the specs), not all web developers follow the specs, and practically no bosses and users get the idea.

 

[warpus]

kcwang, I agree with everything you said.

I know that the point of web design is not to make a page that looks the same across all browsers - but that makes it easier to train people how to use the stuff you build .. and that is especially true in my case.. I mostly build web-systems (I'm not sure what else to call them). They'll process data, build pdfs, send emails, produce graphs and reports, accept registrations, etc.

So yes, kcwong, all the layers you describe exist for that purpose - but sometimes you end up in an environment where corners have to be cut. You view the different layers as tools and use them in unique ways..

Add the fact that there exist annoying incompabilities between the major browsers, and web design can be a real headache sometimes.. but you do get to be creative, which is why I like it so much.. maybe that's why I don't even mind working in such a faced paced environment where new ideas often win over the boring way you made your last project work.

 

[Grey Fox]

I don't care if the website doesn't look exactly the same across the browsers. But I need the layout to work in all. It's not ok when the right column collapses below the left or the menu disappears in IE. I kinda know why it does now (just haven't gotten everything fixed yet).

And yes kcwang, the idea with css on this website is not only for the layout but to make the website more accessible. And also to make it sort of a template for people to change later with some sort of CMS.

 

[Grisu]

No it isn't, any good webpage is coded to actual web standards first, and then hacked up to display nicely in IE afterwards.

you're using different standards..he said most sites, you said good sites....unfortunately, most sites aren't good ones

but yeah, I agree with you, this is the way it should be done, and not the other way around.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Also, CSS can be Content Scrambling System, DVD copy protection, but let's not get into that.

Anyways, the only way to get it to look exactly the same on all computers is to make it a PDF. Or even a graphic.