June 2, 2000

9:30 AM

This redesign looked swell on my Mac, but the tables are all screwy when I look at it through Windows (at work). Explorer 5 ain't the same on both platforms. Argh!! Not a hard fix, but what do you do when your 'blog looks like ass and you can't fix it for a whole day!! I know it's uncool to link to oneself - I'm not just trying to generate pageviews. I'm genuinely pissed off about all these web standards problems!
posted by aladfar (11 comments total)

It looks good in IE5/Mac. Don't have a Windows box handy to see why it "looks like ass" in IE5/Win.

Have you tried removing the font face tags and typing in a doctype at the top? If you use the loose/transitional doctype, the display will be the same in IE5 Mac/Win. If you use the STRICT doctype (if it validates), the display will be the same in Nav 6 and IE5/Mac (and close in IE5/Win).
posted by Zeldman at 9:40 AM on June 2, 2000

quick peek but I think valign="top" in the cell with test_r2_c1.gif oughta do it.
posted by Mick at 9:50 AM on June 2, 2000

If you're pissed about web standards, go to www.webstandards.org! I'm they'd appreciate the support.
posted by vitaflo at 9:55 AM on June 2, 2000

I'm looking at it right now, using Explorer 5/Win 98, and other than the fact that the white font on the gray background is hard on my eyes, I don't see a problem.
posted by grumblebee at 10:52 AM on June 2, 2000

Obligatory: "I don't think this should be on Metafilter."

That said, my comments don't really waste anymore space, so...

As for looking like ass? As grumblebee said, the white on gray is no good. Also, all the broken images don't help. But other than those points, which I doubt would appear much different on the Mac, it's hard to say what's wrong without knowing what it's supposed to look like...
posted by daveadams at 11:14 AM on June 2, 2000

Sorry about the gratuitous post - I rather meant to discuss web standards rather than spark a discussion of MY site. Reading over my post it doesn't look that way - it won't happen again.

It's just that I've come across a number of different solutions to the problem, and apparantly the page looks OK on Mac, and *sometimes* OK on Windows.

I post my dilemma here because I feel like I've walked into a crowded room without my pants on. I went to bed at night thinking that I'd put together something decent, and woke up to a site that isn't functioning properly on 90% of desktops (my fault for using a Mac, I guess).

What does this mean for people who aren't designers, but who want to share their thoughts with the world?

What's the point of creating a web log when you're not sure people are going to be able to see it the way it was intended (unless you've hired someone like Zeldman to design your site)?

The lack of standards creates another technology gap - the web shouldn't be the playground of those select few with an encyclopedic understanding of HTML.

I reckon I'm preaching to the choir here on MetaFilter. Thanks for the feedback.

I apologize again about the self referencing link - I probably should have found another example that illustrated my point. It's just that I've rarely come across a site that looked so different on the SAME browser across two different platforms.

It just doesn't seem right.
posted by aladfar at 11:52 AM on June 2, 2000

And it won't ever be "right" until we make someone king of the internet. Then the king can force everyone to use the same standards. Not that I'm advocating this. I like the anarchy of the net, but when the cat's away, there are certain prices to pay.
posted by grumblebee at 4:54 PM on June 2, 2000

Tell me about it. The problem is, though the html standards have been around for yonks, companies refuse to code browsers which live up to those standards. MS is doing a better job than anyone else at the moment. Netscape sucks arse. But you can't ask a million people to just drop their browser.
Or can you...?
STOP USING NETSCAPE, FOOLS!
posted by Neale at 5:18 PM on June 2, 2000

Doesn't look great in Linux either.

Oh, and Neale...try telling Linux users to stop using Netscape, and see what kind of reaction you get. Be sure to mention how great IE is. :-)

Me, I'll never be an IE user. I just don't like using it.
posted by Succa at 5:40 PM on June 2, 2000

I used to feel like Succa did, until a month where I couldn't go more than 4 hours without Netscape singlehandedly killing my system. I kicked it to the curb and begrudginly tried MSIE. And I found out that I liked it. And it worked better. And had some nice bells and whistles. I was using Mozilla builds at the same time to see how that project was coming along, and was greatly dissapointed when AO(hell) put out Netscape "six" (aka, netscape 5) - version numbers as a marketing ploy... ugh.

oh, netscape 6 PR1 is even less stable than 4.08 or 4.73. Mozilla milestones behaved better in some cases. At least six can render frames correctly.
posted by eljuanbobo at 11:11 AM on June 3, 2000

I'm not so choked that I have to design with all browsers in mind, or that I have to stay on top of what-supports-what... but it's when I spend weeks (or months) designing a leet page layout and I find out there is *NO* way of making it work on another browser... Well, then I work around it... A resonsible web designer uses a universally compatible layout, or makes multiple versions. That's all there is to it.
If it means ditching that leet DHTML nav bar because >LAYER> is nonstandard, than so be it.
What's wrong with you people?
Whatever.. anyways...

Lately I've been hearing a lot of people bitching about NS6(5) and how much it sucks, and how buggy it is, and so on and so forth; but c`mon people! they rebuilt it from scratch!!!
I've used every major version of netscape since 2.0 and I can't say it was really going in a good direction... it's slow and bloated and ugly, and personally I've thought of switching.. but the new version supports alpha channels in PNG's... so fuck it. That's *ALL* I care about.
Personally, I don't mind the wait.. if they decide to say.. "We're gonna delay it another 4 months so it fully supports CSS2" than I'm all for it...
What's wrong with quality assurance? If it's buggy now, I don't care.. but if it's buggy when they release it, *THEN* you can bitch about it.

Whatever; that's my $.02 (which is $.03 canadian)

As for aladfar's site, might I suggest changing the table's bgcolor to #9F9F9F so it matches the background of your gifs... either that or give `em trans. bg.'s...
Oh, and at the bottom, the left column doesn't reach all the way... it's off by 350px or so in Navigator 4.07. Other than that you've got it working, and a half-decent layout too.
posted by Bane at 2:04 PM on June 3, 2000