h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What really bugs me is that a site - or even your user page at h2g2 - can look so different depending on what browser you're using!

Why can't they all agree on a standard?

I grumble every time I check a page of mine in IE, and Netscape, and Opera - only to discover that it doesn't look good in one of them - and then spend some more time trying to figure out a way to make the page look good in at least those three browsers (currently the only ones I have access to or have installed)

...and what about marquees?!

Oh yes I hate those too. I also hate that some of the Editor tools only work in IE. Not many, in fact one. But I hate that. Cos I hate IE.

And the other thing I hate? Pop-ups. I love h2g2, but I can't stand it's ing pop-ups. Some of them can be forced to open in the main window, but not all. And again, it's some of the Editor tools.

But I wouldn't give it up of course.

I love marquees - but hate it that they only work in IE!

And as for browsers, I hate Netscape - only use it at w*rk, because there's an internal application that only works in Netscape - but it keeps crashing on me, and it doesn't understand all the shortcut keys that the other browsers do, and it's slower too (probably because of the applications)!

I hate marquees on anything!

I use Netscape for work occasionally, and IE, but only because it saves me logging in and out of different accounts all day. Although IE is the very, very last resort!

I have found Netscape really quick actually, although sometimes it decides to sit there doing nothing until I shut the window and start it again. Why does it do that?

*lowers her voice*

It's probably a male browser... no further explanation needed, I think...

*falls off chair*

Hey!

I use Opera for everything now, since it's far more standards-compliant than IE. What does annoy me though is the number of websites that specify javascript, style sheets or other content only for IE or Netscape; Opera can handle them fine, but only if Opera identifies itself as IE. Which means that as a webmaster, I can't tell how many of my visitors are using alternative browsers, as they all identify themselves as IE.

It's interesting that you feel IE is not very compliant - and on a number of counts you're probably right, but ironically I hit a problem once because IE had actually become VERY compliant! It'd been letting me get away with something up until version 6 at which point I had to amend my pages. Can't remember quite what it was, something to do with table layout I think...

I sympathise on the Opera front. I believe, although I don't do so myself, it's quite common for a site to effectively have 2 different sets of its pages, one for Netscape, one for Explorer - but as you say, that's dependent on the browser IDing itself as one or the other. Presumably Opera uses an IE identifier as a default, just in case sites don't have some sort of "other" setting? Plus, of course, most sites tend to be "optimised" for IE, so I can understand the dilemma if Opera can do everything that IE can do...

I use Mozilla and there's a setting to stop webpages opening "unrequested windows". I tried it and I've not seen a popup for months. Almost forgotten that some of the websites I goto actually have popups.

That, combined with the ability to block images from a certain server, means that I don't really see advertising of any kind. Banners or popups.

Which popups on h2g2 are you talking about btw, I wasn't aware there were any?

On a different subject, one thing that does annoy me is websites telling ME that my browser isn't suitable to view their webpage and that I should upgrade to Internet Explorer 6. I think not. Also, when a website tries to detect if I have flash installed, which I do, then tells me that I don't have it so I should go and upgrade otherwise they wont let me view their site. All because I'm not using IE.

I think one the the basic things any web designer should bear in mind is that they whould write _valid_ code. They need to realise that this is not the same as code that happens to work in IE.

If the code is valid then the information it is intended to convey will be accessible through any compliant device whether that's a conventional browser or a screen reader, now or in the future. Code can and should be validated (see http://validator.w3.org/).

I read with interest the diferent experiences with diferent browsers.

I notice that nothing has beeen mentioned about diferent browsers work and look diferent on apple and Pc platforms.

As you all say writing code to operate on all the various systems is a nightmare.

Funnily enough I was once asked by a Mac user to tweak something on my site, but I think that was more because he was using Opera than because it was a different machine as such. That said, I'm sure there are all sorts of little quirks between versions of browsers so if you can, it's best to try out a site on more than one browser before you put it out in the public domain...

Don't talk to me about browser compatibility

Have been doing some work on our external website and it's driving me nuts! Mac IE (yes it exists) insists on ignoring the co-ordinates specified for the drop down menus, Mac/PC netscape wont acknowledge they're links and until about 2 hours ago, PC IE refused to admit there was a drop down window at all As for Opera, they don't work at all, but then the original set didn't either

Mel

I do as much as I can possibly achieve with server side scripting... thus the critical code is unaffected by browser quirks. At the server end, I try to stick to strictly compliant XHTML and CSS2 - even if some browsers aren't completely compliant yet, it shouldn't produce too many problems if it's scripted correctly, and they should be compliant in the future.

Our entire site is done through Dreamweaver, all the code is generated from there

Mel

Yeah, well, Dreamweaver and other such designing programs are wonderful for quickly knocking up nice looking sites, but if you want to tailor it to different platforms it's a bit more difficult. I entirely use handmade code, tedious sometimes (and harder to learn) but encourages better practices

I have to admit to tweeking the dreamweaver code a lot more than I should!

Mel