****ing msie-6 and CSS

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

If you have any normal web browser (mozilla, firefox, etc) then you’ll notice that http://javagamesfactory.org/views/developers has a navbar down the left and the content on the right.

If you have the ****-*****ing piece of **** from Microsoft, you’ll notice that it arbitrarily dumps the navbar in the middle of the page, and that on the games page it deletes all content that is repositioned outside of its margins.

Why oh why do Microsoft persist in making the tens of thousands of people who work with websites SUFFER just like we had to in 1996? Everyone else has either cleaned up their act or got out of the business, everyone except MS, who continue to provide the World’s Worst Web-browser, riddled with major bugs that should have prevented it shipping.

Sometimes, their “products” drain me of the will to live…

PS: any ideas on how to write a website using 100% legal formatting WHICH WORKS IN MICROSHT EXPLORER* would be greatly appreciated. Currently, I’m thinking I’ll have to:

  • use TABLEs everywhere, making maintenance a nightmare
  • and also remove all the “clever” formatting which those evil ****ers at Microsoft have completely broken through sheer incompetence.

Incidentally, this page ( http://www.javagamesfactory.org/views/view-game?name=AlienFlux ) also looks considerably different in a “normal” web browser. Microsoft’s morons don’t know how to write parsers to save their scrawny little pathetic lives, even when the W3C kindly TELLS them what the order of precendence is (even including an entire section of the specification on this one topic. Sheesh).

#2

Followup:

Microsoft parses:

-right: 30px

as:

right: -30px

contrary to the specification and for no obvious reason. Removing that text makes the navbar appear on the left, at least…

#3

yeah… its a bitch… I had to fight when getting my new site up using CSS for it to appear very close with msie and all the other well behaving browsers. One last thing that is a minor nag is that msie does not inherit border link colors for pictures through CSS. Border colors in msie surrounding pictures are the generic blue/purple instead of what I intended it to be; things work fine in Firefox, etc… There is a work around, but it requires a little bit more silly code. Presently I don’t care…

#4

I recommend using tables. The HTML-contains-no-layout concept is a noble one, but one which isn’t going to be with us for many years to come. Sad, but true.

The one I always find amusing is that the W3C use totally different stylesheets for IE and non-IE… on their Cascading Style Sheets page! If the W3C can’t get things to look correct on the very page explaining how to use it, there’s no hope for the rest of us.

#5

[quote]I recommend using tables. The HTML-contains-no-layout concept is a noble one, but one which isn’t going to be with us for many years to come. Sad, but true.
[/quote]
That’s the way things are heading, indeed. I’ve asked for help on the css-d mailing list (seems to be the main centre for getting CSS help) a couple of times and just got a brush-off and the odd sneering “if you want to do that, you are wrong” type responses. Pointing out that tables let you do it (whatever is failing to work in CSS), and it’s a standard layout design from DTP, only gets you funny looks, like “what? You mean there’s a world of layout outside of the things I personally like to use?”.

Sadly, there are some neat things you can do with CSS which I’m getting attached to, which can’t be done with tables without writing a perl script or similar to generate the HTML source (because you’re getting close to the complexity of painting with pixels).

For instance, a simple example is the navbar I’m trying out on the developers page: in mozilla etc you get a border floated behind the elements, making them look like tabs on a string. In MSIE, you have to HACK the css source and even then all you get is that the “string” is shunted as far to the right as possible. you can reproduce this with background images, but you have to make the image, lots of fiddly tuning of positioning (where the CSS version has 2 simple explicit positioning commands) and of course you can’t change the colour, style, etc without making a whole new image. And you can’t simultaneously have a background image of any other kind…

#6

Have you tried IE7. A set of “behavours” (javascript files) for MSIE which makes it work better, but slows the inital loading of the page (for IE users, but who cares about them :slight_smile: ).

I’ve found the best way to deal with IE is hide under the table, until it goes away. ;D

#7

That looks like an excellent tool - except that the author states explicitly you shouldn’t even consider using it on a real website until it reaches beta status (and it’s now only at alpha). Unfortunately, it also doesn’t cover the problems here (there’s an awful lot of msie bugs to fix >:(). But I’ll definitely keep my eye on it and see how it goes, thanks.