So, it’s been a while since I’ve tested this site in Internet Explorer on a PC. This morning, thanks to a tip from a friend, I found out that I do have some anomalies.
The header and footer images are slightly off from the body of the page. That’s not too big of a deal, I could live with that. The real problems are in the sidebar. The image on the left is how the sidebar looks in IE6 under Windows XP Pro. The image on the right is how it looks under Safari 2.0 under Apple OS X 10.4. Notice a difference?
The weather icon is a png file with an alpha channel. I totally forgot that IE doesn’t really display png w/ alphas very well. Why, I do not know. You would think Microsoft would be able to do that by now, png’s aren’t exactly a new thing.
Next, the spacing between the menu items is obviously a little off in IE. Why, I don’t know that either. It seems to display properly in every other browser, on both platforms. I think it stems from Microsoft’s inability to conform to CSS standards. I know that’s why the dividing line between the weather information and the search field is missing in IE.
Lastly,Why oh why can’t Microsoft make IE anti-alias the text on a web page (make text look smoother)? IE on the Mac was able to do this… Maybe it’s a general shortcoming of the Windows Operating System?
All this leads me to one question… Why does Internet Explorer suck so bad?
If your on a PC, and you’re using Internet Explorer… please STOP! There are much better browsers out there, like Firefox, or Mozilla. They will improve your web-viewing experience. Better yet, just switch to a mac. All your friends are doing it.
Thanks for the heads up Todd.
UPDATE (a little while later): OK, I replaced the png files with jpegs, and I fixed the spacing between menu items. There’s still some spacing issues, but at least it’s presentable now. Damn IE!
I’m not at all defending IE, it’s rubbish, but I can say that it is capable of displaying smooth text, well it’s not, XP is, and that’s where it needs to be turned on from, anyway, I use Ubuntu and when I DID use windows it certainly wasn’t with IE.
http://dyndns.asxtrader.com:82/images/firefox_emulatedie_compare.jpg
Thanks for the info, Nicholas. For those of you who don’t know, Ubuntu is an Linux based operating system.
I had this great idea: using grayscale transparencies in PNGs to build an entire site, so that the color scheme of the whole site could be altered dynamically, even randomly, by assigning BGCOLOR tags on the server side. This worked great in several browsers, and I thought it would be way-cool. Even IE 5.2 on Mac worked great. Alas, IE 6 and greater REMOVED this feature, and no longer renders PNGs correctly. NO transparencies, or even accurate color. Apparently MS refuses to embrace any standards that are developed or managed by anyone else! If it isn’t general knowlege, I recently learned that Macromedia developed and evangelizes the PNG format. Now, I’m a PS guy, but Freehand->FireWorks->DreamWeaver is really pretty smooth with PNGs. Unfortunately, FireWorks is quirky as hell, and PNGs aren’t an option in the real world if the evil empire says “no.” Dammit.
Hey Jason, Yep, IE is always the browser that throws a wrench in my development time, whether it’s my sites or sites for my clients. I haven’t played with the beta release of IE7, but from what i hear it’s even worse. It breaks things that currently work under IE6.
How do you get the search box to be a standard Apple style input box?
Hi Ron,
I started seeing that on various sites too, and wondered how to do it. Luckily, Melvin at AllForces.com was nice enough to give me the answer, so I’ll share it with you too.
Usually a search field will have an input type of “text”, simply change the input type to “search”, and it will show up like an Apple text field. Unfortunately, this only works in Safari. Other browsers still display it as a standard rectangular box.
I tried to post the actual code here that I use, but wordpress doesn’t seem to like having that much code in a comment. It was getting all hinky. If anyone wants it, email me and I’ll send it to you.
Give Microsoft a break! They’re awesome and make great products.
INTERNET EXPLORER HAS ALWAYS BEEN INFERIOR AND WILL ALWAYS SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!I HATE IT.
I loath Internet Explorer like no other when it comes to developing.
IE just cant get it straight, one iteration works with something you make after spending time going thru the hoops, then, BOOM! new IE version, new problems. What worked fine with now 9 doesnt even do what 6 did, I give up
IE will never get it right. The newest version (IE9) comes with a flurry new problems. None of my sites display properly in IE9 – if they display at all … usually they just hang and freeze the browser – but of course they work just fine in every other browser. IE9 seems to want to align my site to the left-though in every other browser it`s center aligned.
Whatever – i give up on IE.
Yes, IE sucks! Anyone that likes it has obviously not done any real web development or design for that matter. In many ways, IE is holding web developers back.
Everytime I build a site, it works perfectly in Chrome, Firefox and Safari, but IE often times has some wacked out issue keeping me from finishing the projects on time. And they’re usually caused by some small little css discrepancy that IE doesn’t understand. Why can’t Microsoft just get it right and abide by the universal coding standards and get their browsers up to date with the rest of the web world? And what kills me is that so many people still use that stupid browser.
Microsoft specializes in operating systems, so they should leave browser development to mozilla, safari and the like.
That’s what I think anyway.