In my previous post, some of you reported difficulties viewing this website on IE6. The problem is best explained as a simple, two-step process.
In my latest stylesheet, I specified a 1 pixel dotted border to go on the right side of my blog. In well-behaved browsers such as Netscape 6 and 7, Mozilla and Opera, it works.
In IE6, however, problems arise:
1) IE interprets ‘1 pixel dotted’ as ‘1 pixel dashed’. That’s one bug in itself. And it only happens when it’s 1 pixel wide [I remedied this by making it 2 pixels dotted, but it doesn’t look as pretty].
2) Next, IE renders pages in a certain way such that the dotted / dashed vertical line (created from the dot-to-dash bug) also prevents the text along it from displaying properly. There was a really profound article I read last year but I can’t seem to find it now.
In short, it’s all Microsoft’s fault. Dig? That’s why you can’t read this clearly and lose text when you scroll this page.
Zeldman says pretty much the same thing, but since he’s famous and his latest book has become a bestseller at Amazon even before its release date, I’m sure this statement of his will be meaningful, if rather abrupt.
In the same spirit, I’d like to say to Hell with bad browsers! or design a page that messes things up, such as the World Wide Web consortium’s very own CSS page (the official primer).
But … seeing how everyone, save for anal, compliant-crazed designers like me (about 0.001% of the online population) uses some version of Internet Explorer, I promise that my next redesign will not use CSS-specified dots, dashes or any other shenanigans that may disrupt your viewing pleasure 😉
Comments
I built my own site using tables, some css, and no dtd 😉 Seems to work well in most browsers.
My belief is that web development/design is indeed becoming more and more difficult. To have a valid and accessible site you really need to invest quite some time to do it right (and know the workarounds for the browsers – box model hack anyone?).
I may switch back to xhtml and such at a later stage, but not today.
That is increasingly true. Gone are the days of HTML 4.0 … now every web page has to be politically correct, yet adaptible to different browsers.
In fact, has anyone noticed how
1) websites on accessibility aren’t always pretty (visually handicapped people probably don’t mind anyway, as long as it can be read out)
2) usability sites aren’t always compliant, pretty or usable themselves?
3) most ‘designer’ websites are pretty, but neither compliant nor usable?
Nobody is perfect!
Good summary. The day when mere mortals can produce sites such as http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=017/017.css is going to be a very nice day indeed.
And another thing.
Pop up eliminators like AdSubtract Pro prevent the comment box from …..’popping up’.
Re popups – I think almost everyone using Movable Type will be leaving that feature as it is…
Chris – I’m sure it will have the options to allow popups from certain domains? I’m using popup cop and it’s working great.
And yes, Opera works great 😛
Sorry for double comments. It just wouldn’t show if I have posted. Funny though…
Not to worry, I’ll remove the repeat comments. More often than not, when it hangs, your comments would have registered.