ManWithAPlan

I'm working on a new site, and someone pointed out that it was hidesously not compatible with browsers other than IE, i am trying to fix this right now, and i almost have it all smoothed out, however one little thing... my content is not centering properly on Mozilla browsers (netscape, opera, firefox), but it's fine on IE.

if someone could take a look at it: http://kbirger.no-ip.org/kir/kb2k4/
it's in beta, that means all the admin stuff is out in the open because i didn't make a login system yet, but i trust you people here won't do anything harmful =).

it's dynamic content by the way, on asp.net... so i just put the control that loads the content into a <div align="center> tag...

thanks in advance

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In the end we are but wisps

MontanaXVI

Mozilla in the house and it looks fine to me, dunno what the problem is you are having. Nothing near a programmer or techie here, just a web surfer.

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Spank you very much

ManWithAPlan

well look at http://kbirger.no-ip.org/kir/kb2k4/d...spx?p=editnews on IE and on Mozilla simultaneously.

aside from the fancy filters on the buttons and the scrollbars, notice how the listbox and the textbox is centered on IE? and how it's not on mozilla?

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In the end we are but wisps

noodles

IE is the devil. it renders things differently than every other browser and against web standards.

yes, it looks a little differently. don't have time right now to pull it apart and help you make it cross-browser compatible, though. maybe later today.

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ManWithAPlan

thanks noodles. i know IE is the devil, that's why i switched to mozilla, but currently my page displays properly in IE and not mozilla (not to mention that mozilla doesn't support width and height attributes for text fields / listboxes unless you use a style tag or give the number of rows and columns)

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In the end we are but wisps

RelaX

While you're using tables for layout instead of CSS you might as well add align="center" to the tds... that fixed it for me (example).

Man... with a topic title like that though... I have never had to restrain myself so much from flaming...
Actually, it wasn't hard to fix (less than 5 mins) because of an ultracool FireFox plugin Webdeveloper and the DOM inspector, so if Mozilla is the devil, then color me evil .

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The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
- Nathaniel Borenstein

ManWithAPlan

thanks

i tried to do more stuff with CSS, i'm just not good enough with it, for example i'd have no idea how to make that layout work with layers or whatever with css

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In the end we are but wisps

RelaX

Hell, I've only used CSS-P once, and on a very simple page. But that is not the point.
{IMHO}
The point is that, if you have the time, you should learn about stuff like this. Because that's how you get better, not by reading books or collaborating with someone who already knows everything about it, but by doing it... and screwing up.... and tearing your hair out over why the hell it isn't working. And ripping designs from others that are totally incompatible from yours, but making them work anyway.
Because, like it or not, XHTML and CSS is the future and actually the current standard in web development. And any HTML 4.0, riddled with tables and non W3C compliant site, will quickly be obsolete and will ultimately gain you nothing. Unless it's a quick hackjob, I would never use HTML 4.0 with no CSS, even if I had to start learning XML and XSLT (something which I would actually love, but that's beside the point ). Simply because that will only benefit what you have to make, a good goal, but ultimately YOU will get nothing out of it.
And some day, you will have fallen so far behind that you will be FORCED to learn about the 'new stuff' and you will have to begin anew all over again... and I don't know about you, but I hate being a newbie

And while I'm giving my unadulterated opinion, please consider removing the 'fading' stuff. Sure it looks cool.... on first glance. But if there's one thing I've learned it's that functional elements in a site have to be highlighted instead instead of faded. Cool effects are for non-functional elements. Stuff that a person could look at once, think it's cool, then simply ignore, because that is what they will do. Only, with the faded part on the functional stuff, they are forced to deal with it and will loathe it in the end, because it makes their every day experience more difficult. Something people in general DON'T want.
Okay, so maybe I am exagerating here, I mean... what does it matter?
Problem is that I do something like this for a living (I love saying that ) and I have learned the hard way how users detest 'fancy stuff' that makes their experience with the site more difficult... or worse, they will make YOU hate it by constantly contacting you about how they 'can't quite read that button' or how they 'can't find their way'.
And I know how much easier it is to unlearn these things in the beginning then to have to do it at a later date.

{/IMHO}

Also, you should try centering the entire thing... that would make it easier to navigate, plus it would be a 'Cool Effect' (TM).
Love your color scheme BTW, that's one thing I have never been good at... color schemes... I guess I'm just not much of a visual artist.

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The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
- Nathaniel Borenstein

strcrssd

Wow, this is not a flame (I'm trying really hard to make this not a flame, but the topic, as mentioned above, does make it difficult).

1) Please don't use .NET for anything until its proven stable and useful. Using a new technology that doesn't have a standards body behind it is suicide. Microsoft, despite wanting to be, does not count as a standards body.

2) Please use w3c standards. They exist for a reason. As someone who's had to develop a web crawler, I can safely say that the sooner we get rid of HTML 2, 3, and 4 the better. Once any significant portion of the web goes to XHTML (and they are, rapidly), some crawlers (mostly ones developed for academics) will stop indexing HTML 2, 3, 4 because its so bloody difficult to parse.

3) CSS is a wonderful tool for abstracting content and presentation. Use it. Make your web site accessable by console browsers, screen readers, and braille terminals. This is important if you ever want to develop for the government and not get in trouble for ADA compliance.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." -- John Cage (1912 - 1992)

asshopo

Sorry, I know it's your opinion and not fact, but my opinion is that .NET is a wonderful tool. I'm not even going to get into the holy wars of it, but it's just a tool, a very very good tool for Windows development, be it desktop or websites.

Standards are good, yes, but I doubt that search engines are just going to stop indexing pages because they arent XHTML+CSS. There billions of web pages and I am willing to bet that the majority of them are not XHTML+CSS. Search engines have written parsers for years to deal with all versions of HTML and I doubt they will just not use those filters out of no where.

That might be, but getting it to actually work the same way in all browsers is complicated as hell. Atleast tables works the same across all browsers. Lynx can even view tables just fine, imagine that!

Sorry, but most everything you just said is opinion, not fact.

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Patterns have a habit of repeating themselves.

RelaX

Text-to-speach browsers, such as those used by the blind or poor sighted users render tables horribly.
I had to do a course for work where we had to browse as a blind person browsed... you have no idea how frustrating pages with tables can get if you have never viewed a page that way.

Google (and most search engines) index pages with less table (and style) clutter higher, right?

Tables are a bitch for your browser to render, therefor take a long time to load.

Tables scale horribly... and using tables in any other media or special way (PDA? Print version?) screws up everything

Those are cold hard facts. Google it if you like.
Don't give up on something because you can't do it cross-browser with CSS if you can use a table, but I would advise to keep tables only as a last option.

__________________
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
- Nathaniel Borenstein

strcrssd

Yes, almost all of what I said is opinion, not fact. It is my opinion that any non-portable language is a horrible thing to waste time learning. (especially one that may end up having only one interpreter).

It is my opinion that many /academic/ web crawlers (like google was when it was first developed) will stop parsing old HTML when a significant amount of data is available in XHTML. And yes, I doubt the big indexers will stop parsing old HTML, but you could sure make their lives easier (and all your readers) by using something that meets w3c specs.

I'm just stating my opinion and trying to offer guidance based on my experiences tutoring future Computer Scientists.

I'd also like to add that, in my experience, those that end up coding for windows only are typically much poorer programmers than those that learn standards and cross-platform toolkits. I don't have any scientific studies of this, just my experience.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." -- John Cage (1912 - 1992)

noodles

true. this is opinion.

false. this is not opinion.
XHTML+CSS is the web standard because the w3c is trying to make all browsers render things the same. this will eliminate the cross-browser compatibility issues and make webpages modular. ignoring this is not a wise choice for any web developer. you CAN still get away with programming in HTML, but there will come a day when you won't be able to anymore. how many people do you know that program in B?

false. this is not true.
tables render differently in IE than every other browser. maybe not the basic table elements, but if you're trying to build a page with table-based design, the problems will rear their heads.

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asshopo

I have never been in that postion, so I will have to trust your word on it. Not everything is perfect and I'm sure it has it's problems with XHTML as well.

Don't know, I haven't done anything special and my sites are found in search engines with keywords that my sites are related to. Maybe I'm just lucky (no sarcasam, seriously)?

Never noticed a difference. Perhaps if I had a nanosecond stopwatch I could tell.

You got me there, but I'd say more than 95% of your viewers will be in a standard browser.

I didn't make it clear that I DO use CSS for styling, but I use tables because when you tell it a certain width or to vertically align center with unknown heights, it works.

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Patterns have a habit of repeating themselves.

asshopo

I guess my whole career is based on a waste of time. All 7+ years of it. I started out of VB (ya, I know, laugh) & Sql Server, moved on to ASP and finally to .NET (c#, still not c++ but it's not VB either). Considering developing for windows (websites and desktop acpplications) has paid for everything I have since I have been on my own, it is not a waste of time. Microsoft isn't going anywhere, despite it's horrible business practices.

I'd like to see them do this and not have half the web get upset at them. I can't see geocities, tripod, comcast, etc with a "wysiwyg" browser based web site development tools that are wc3 (XHTML+CSS) compliant. Then again, I doubt those people care about search engines, I guess the point is moot.

Thanks for your opinion based on your experiences, but mine have differed greatly from yours.

Oh, and thanks, you have opened my eyes and made me realize that programming in a MS environment FOR a MS environment automaticly makes me a poor programmer. [/sarcasam]

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Patterns have a habit of repeating themselves.

Stug

Tables for layout is generally considered by Web Designers & Developers as a big 'No, no!', as it is clearly an abuse of their intended use.

Back in the days of NS4 and IE4, tables were the only way to ensure cross-browser visual consistency and this was the point that lead to such widespead use. However, this is no longer the case. Unless visual consistency in ancient browsers is required, tables for layout should be avoided.

In most cases, proven layouts such as the CSS float-and-margin 2/3 column layout (http://www.fu2k.org/alex/css/layouts...NN4_FMFM.mhtml) should be used. These layouts work today in today's browsers and will become the standard (if they haven't already).

On the flipside, some people say don't use tables at all. This is "wrong". Tables should be used as they are intended - for displaying tabular data. Don't take my word for it, read what people are saying about tables for layout! http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...ayout%22&meta=

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and so ends the thought process for another day...

RelaX

I don't believe any of this was meant as a flame to M$ developers or people who use tables.

It's easy to get self righteous and go with MS vs. non-MS and tables vs.CSS-P

The real issue is 'It Just Works' (TM) and 'It goes the extra mile'.

Tables work... and they do the job... and they sure are easier to understand and work with than CSS-P. But eventually... tables will fall behind.
And saying MS 'isn't going anywhere' might be true (at least in the long run... you know they said the same thing about IBM a few years back, remember?) but limiting yourself to any one particulair piece of software or way of thinking is.... well... limiting.

Truth is, tables are on their way out, one way or another, as long as it takes. They may do the job right now, but CSS is already offering points over tables and with newer versions it will leave table-driven designs in the dust. So you might as well catch the train as it's leaving the station, because it's a helluva lot harder when you have to play catch-up.

Just like MS developers using their kewl MS specific stuff to code fast and dirty. I mean, someone who has been in the industry for 7+ years should know that there are people out there who don't care for standards and guidelines and think varialbe names like 'a1' and 'b2' are 'good enough'. But when you have longer projects, projects that you have to maintain for an extended period of time, you learn the fallacy of this.

So saying to use CSS-P instead of tables is like saying to use OOP and document your code. It may make things harder in the beginning and take longer, but eventually it will pay off big time.

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The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
- Nathaniel Borenstein

Stompy

Hm, not really. The project I'm on now... it would be a complete waste of time to try and memorize CSS in such a manner that would allow me to account for every ridiculous workaround that would simply take a few seconds to do in tables. Plus you have to memorize everything about IE vs Firefox vs. Opera... etc.

Maybe if a site had 1000 pages but.. 20 pages or so... I can deal with using tables. There really isn't much of a difference at all.

CSS has a long way to go before it's anywhere near how people treat it. It's current design is hideously flawed. Go ahead, try and vertically align something with an undefined height without coming up with some asinine workaround with unnecessary divs. Most things in CSS are done only with some complicated workaround that... really shouldn't be to begin with.

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I love lamp.

spindles

back to the original question...

why do you have the div tag in the middle of all that table stuff at all?

you'd get what you want adding an align="center" to one or more of your tds.

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who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

cd13

i don't really feel like dissing your website, but I can't really say i like the graphics there... anyway, this solved my problem :

asshopo

So... using IE is polite? Certainly not to the end user.

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Patterns have a habit of repeating themselves.