HTML Forum

**chemman** · 04-08-2005, 04:42 PM

Ah **** - I've been struggling with this **** layout for over half a year. No joke, I've even taken care of it being strictly compliant with XHTML 1.0 transitional and fully compatible with the listed CSS specification.

Works on every browser I've viewed it in, except IE.

The layout seems broken, I don't know why. Maybe it's because IE can't even work wth standarts properly.

I give up guys, I'm openly asking for help, more, even quite close to begging for it. I've struggled for half a year and am completly clueless about why that (***...***) of a browser can't get it right.

Although there is a large Get Firefox banner, I can't just leave users with that and a horrible page. Some people may not have the knowledge about browser wars and why IE is crap, some might be running on user privilidges, et cetera. I must make it compatible with IE as well.

Here's the link to the site. It shouldn't load too long. If you wish, you may validate it, it's correct. Look into the source, hack it, break it, I won't mind anything, even taking that layout for yourself and taking my copyrights for it for yourself if you help me solve my IE problem.

The site

For all kind souls who'll help me I'll be eternaly grateful.

Edit: Isn't censoring the 'mythical' place that satan lives in a bit rough?

**chemman** · 04-08-2005, 05:11 PM

Next question:

I'd base my site off a CMS, though I don't know which CMS can I integrate with this layout. Could you reccomend anything except Textpattern? It's too... bloggy... for the site, tried it and don't exactly like it either.

**Minaki** · 04-09-2005, 09:08 AM

Try giving it a valid DOCTYPE:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

**chemman** · 04-09-2005, 10:37 AM

I tried that allready. Originally, the doctype was valid, just what you entered, however it still didn't work. One of the hacks I've seen to work was replacing it with this doctype, supposedly working for IE. It doesn't however.

Thanks for your post anyway, I'm still struggling with it. If anyone knows why does IE refuse to display it correctly, please post here. I've got to finish the page this weekend.

**chemman** · 04-09-2005, 12:34 PM

Please, if anyone knows either what's the cause or even how to solve it, please tell me. I don't know how to fix it, neither no I know how to find out.. if anyone knows anything what might help me, please post it.

**chemman** · 04-09-2005, 01:51 PM

Thanks danm it for helping me out, All_People-Minaki. :P

Anyways, maybe someone helped me, or maybe I've done it myself, but I've managed to kill one error, beside clean the site up a bit.

http://mso.home.pl/pub/temp1/str.htm

Here's the link to it.

For some uknown reason, one image was being blown up in size in Internet Infector, blowing the table up. Eliminating it from a stylesheet using the conditional if IE tag may not be pretty, but it sure is better than destroying the whole layout. And it works the same under mozilla too.

Now, still the problem of menu items remains. Anyone, if you could post anything at all about it, I'd be grateful.

**0beron** · 04-09-2005, 03:07 PM

Chemman - have a little more patience. No one on this site is obliged to help you, we do it out of the goodness of our hearts.

Have you ever managed to create a stylesheet that works in IE but maybe not in other browsers? If so you can use a tiny bit of PHP, ASP or perl or similar to detect the browser type and give a different, tailored stylesheet to IE.

**CannonBallGuy** · 04-09-2005, 03:28 PM

The reason it won't work in IE is because IE is a Microsoft product.

I myself have an almost pure CSS layout that works perfectly in EVERY browser except IE.
I cna fix it for IE< but then it will be wrong for everything else... So I'll just boycot IE.

As for you site :P,
It seems the only difference is that in IE, there is no margin at the top of the page...
Is that it? Or is there something else?

**0beron** · 04-09-2005, 05:34 PM

If you can fix it for IE, you can use scripting to give that stylesheet ONLY TO IE, meaning every other browser gets your beautiful layout and renders it nicely, whereas IE users get the corrected stylesheet and can see your nice layout too without it breaking the other browsers. When coding CSS, Opera is the browser I've had most trouble with, not IE. (Might be my bad coding that does it !

)

**Minaki** · 04-09-2005, 05:49 PM

Quote:

The reason it won't work in IE is because IE is a Microsoft product.

I myself have an almost pure CSS layout that works perfectly in EVERY browser except IE.
I cna fix it for IE< but then it will be wrong for everything else... So I'll just boycot IE.

That's the dumbest thing I've heard all day. And I just cleared out my SPAM box.

If you -really- can't make something work in IE, do as 0beron said - put it in a different stylesheet and dish it out to IE only. You can do that with a server side scripting language, or there's even conditional comments which IE understands so you can still do it even if your ISP doesn't support any type of server side scripting.

**chemman** · 04-09-2005, 06:44 PM

Yeah, sorry for being impatient, got most figured out though. This is the first out of six forums when I get more than 2 replies not made by me, so I must say I like this place.

As for conditional, server side is not needed. Since M$ well knows that their product is worthless when it comes to standarts, they did include a special conditional tag that may be hidden in a comment. That's what I did for making the table work and not blow up. Look in the min code near the top and you'll see.

Now though I must see why menu items are separated and so huge - in firefox they are quite small with no spaces between them, while on IE they are over 2ce as large and have gaps between them.

Dreamweaver tells me of min-height property not being supported, though that's not important here, as it isn't that element.

**0beron** · 04-09-2005, 08:51 PM

What about any elements that enclose the menu items? Or other items that firefox may make larger to satisfy min-height, meaning the menu is squashed to size, whereas in IE the min height element collapses and the menu is huge?

I'm guessing here, I'll have to have a proper read of your code when it's not 2am.

**chemman** · 04-10-2005, 05:02 AM

Actually, in IE the menu items are huge, in ff small.

The min height applies to the main text holder, which has nothing to do with the menu.

Thanks for your time though.

**chemman** · 04-10-2005, 09:02 AM

Read the code of the site!

Code:

<!--This is a semi-official message to anyone who reads this code - WE HATE Internet Exploder. Samoobrona
uses firefox, though this hack is necesary for the poor IE souls out there.-->
<!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css">
img#breakcolumn {
	height: 1px;
	width: 1px;
}
<![endif]-->

Maybe you'll find more intresting things if you look in there. No server side too.

**0beron** · 10:09 AM

Sorry chemman, I know about the IE conditional comments, but CBG asked about doing it with browser sniffing so that's what I explained. This has gone slightly off topic to your original question, so I'll split this topic into two so CBG can get a more in depth explanation, and we can get back to your CSS problem also.

EDIT: Thread has been split, CannonBallGuy, you can find the discussion on browser detection and css here: http://www.webmaster-talk.com/showthread.php?t=27472

I'll take a look at your code Chemman, but I'm no expert in css so I'm not sure how much help I can be.

**0beron** · 04-10-2005, 10:56 AM

That's really odd - changing the border widths on the #menudiv a class doesn't seem to have any effect.

Since your layout is fixed width, why not just put a width: in pixels for the menudiv, forcing the links to be that width too?

**chemman** · 04-12-2005, 08:57 AM

Thanks 0beron, I'll try that in a second and say it it works.

**thevirus** · 04-12-2005, 11:56 AM

Well sir it looks b.e.a.uuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful in firefox, and I have had similar problems with internet explorer in that my website does not look correct but I just left it...

**Jared** · 04-12-2005, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Have you ever managed to create a stylesheet that works in IE but maybe not in other browsers? If so you can use a tiny bit of PHP, ASP or perl or similar to detect the browser type and give a different, tailored stylesheet to IE.

This can be done with javascript as well, however I would do the perl or php method if possible simply to avoid more compatability problems. I just thought I'd suggest it in case it seemed more practical.

navigator.appName will return the value of which browser they are using.

HTH

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