I hate Internet Explorer!!!! (this is not a fanboy entry)

07-07-2007


This has been said a thousand times before and will be said a thousand times again by web site developers the world over: I FUCKING HATE MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER!!!!

The problem with it is that it is just cock! A debate on the uselessness of this browser can be covered elsewhere by people better informed than little old me. But the main reason I hate this poor excuse for a browser is this: it takes the fun out of web site building. Okay, okay, somebody in the back there probably just shouted "Nerd!" or "Geek!" or something, and it would be valid. But seriously, web site building can be fun. You get to have a blank canvas before you and then litter it with whatever you fill like. It is possibly the one great thing about the internet, next to porn and torrents of course (although porn torrents would rank high maybe??). You can go off and make your own little corner of the web and have it look and feel exactly (more or less depending on your code skills and willingness to dedicate time) as you want.

Then I-fucking-E enters the scene and fucks up your day.

In my few years on this planet I have designed and created a few webpages, been paid to make them and my first job out of college had me making two sites as test platforms for various projects. Being a Linux convert (is it possible to get the "Blue screen of Death" in Linux??) I gravite towards the Firefox side of things when it comes to browsers. It is just one of those things, it can't be explained. So when I start to code web sites I would be booted into Linux and testing things in Firefox. Css, javascript, php - whatever. Get the blocks, slap them down, preview in Firefox til everything looks pretty. Sadly though, not everyone has converted away from Microsoft and cross browser issues arise, as anybody will tell you. There are a few folks out there that use Firefox in Windows no doubt, but due to great levels of laziness the majority use IE. Which means you have to make sure your site works in that.

And of course it won't, not unless you made it specific to IE FIRST and then tweaked it so that it would look just as good (actually better) in Firefox. Because that is the nub of the problem. IE and its numerous issues with following the rules the rest of us have to follow. When you make web sites for a living you will try to abide by the codes of conduct that those who went before you have laid down. If you stick to these things rigidly you will make great sites, that will only work in IE 90% of the time. No matter how good you write that CSS file, it will need some adjustment to work at all in IE.

So why rant? Well just to get it off my chest really. I had spent a while making funky glowing logos for my site (this one we now are on) and went to show the site to my dad. But IE just would not load up the logos, because I had saved them as PNG files with a transparent layer. So I had to go off and do the logos again, but not glowing, which is really fucking annoying.

It really isn't hard to see how Bill Gates has so much money, he saves cash by not testing anything that his company produces. Except for the wads of shit that gets flushed down the bog.

Here are a few things that might save people time when running into issues with IE. It is highly likely there are better work around than the ones below, but for quick dirty fixes they will do.

1) If you are using images with transparent layers in them, better save yourself some time and just save them as GIF. It is true that IE will support a PNG file with transparent effects on them, but they have to be saved in 8-Bit format and can look awful. Save yourself the hassle, just go with GIF from the start.

2) If you are using images as links to pages IE is a bit picky.

This here:



Will work just fine in Firefox, image gets clicked - page loads up. But in IE it will do nothing.

This is how you would do the same job in IE:


The second one works in both IE and Firefox (because that's the way it should be). Of course you need the hyperlink tags around it, but you knew that anyway.

3) If you are placing things with css and find it a pain in the ass to get things lined up just right in both IE and Firefox, this little bit might help.


#menu
{
position: absolute;

top: 220px!important;
top: 210px;
left: 245px;
}


The line with the word "important" in it will be read by Firefox and used to position the div. The line without "important" will be read by IE. Two different settings for the one variable, but read correctly by the two browsers.

4) My final little trick to make things look nice between Firefox and IE (yes there are other browsers that I am nothing touching on but whatcha going to do) is this. If, like me, you have decided to have three divs to form up your site you may come across this little issue. This page has a curved image in a div at the top, a block in the middle, and a curved one in the end.
In Firefox they all line up nice and even and look like one large image. For some unknown reason IE felt the need to add a gap of 10 pixels or so between the end of the block and the start of the curved bottom. This was very annoying, since it stood out like a sore thumb.

After playing around with the style sheet for a few minutes I tried this little trick and it worked, lining up everything in IE as it should while not changing anything in Firefox.

In the div that is pushing away from the others (in this case my footer div) add these lines:

border-bottom: 0px;
border-top: 0px;
clear: both;

This will tighten things up for you and leave everything as it should be.

Blue_jester