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iluvmypowerbook · Oct 18, 2004, 02:42 AM

I've been told that it is important to test your Mac created website on a windows platform using internet explorer to ensure that it is working correctly. Is this true?

I have VPC but have not installed it cause I hate the way it grinds when it's running.

Oisín · Oct 18, 2004, 04:09 AM

It's only important if you care that people running Windows (and using IE) view your website as it's supposed to look, and not as some screwed up mess with hair on it's back.

IE for Mac has many weird bugs. IE for Windows has many weird bugs. Unfortunately, very few of these many weird bugs seem to be the same.

In other words, yes, it is true.

skalie · Oct 18, 2004, 04:33 AM

Originally posted by iluvmypowerbook:
I've been told that it is important to test your Mac created website on a windows platform using internet explorer to ensure that it is working correctly. Is this true?

IE for windows still accounts for most page hits on most websites, forgive the less than accurate figures, but I can remember seeing some stats recently where 90% of the hits were from IE, followed by Firefox I believe, with Netscape down at 1%.

Millennium · Oct 18, 2004, 04:58 AM

Usually it's a good idea, simply because you're almost guaranteed to run into at least one problem. IE/Win just plain sucks that much.

PurpleGiant · Oct 18, 2004, 05:07 AM

^^What those guys said. Yes, be sure to test in Windows, as any semi-complex site will surely have small things that render incorrectly in IE/win. Also, to stop VPC 'grinding' so much, you will need more RAM. VPC loves RAM.

iluvmypowerbook · Oct 18, 2004, 07:15 AM

That's what I was afraid of.

Thanks everyone.

Millennium · Oct 18, 2004, 08:15 AM

Originally posted by iluvmypowerbook:
That's what I was afraid of.

Thanks everyone.

Sorry we couldn't be more helpful. Note that many of IE's CSS issues are very subtle, and you might decide that you don't care about the problems you find. Heck; sometimes you'll get lucky and the "bugs" actually look pretty good themselves.

Even if you don't care about IE issues, though, it's good to know what they are, because inevitably you'll run into someone who does care, misguided though they may be, and you'll need to be ready to discuss that..

iluvmypowerbook · Oct 18, 2004, 08:30 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
Sorry we couldn't be more helpful. Note that many of IE's CSS issues are very subtle, and you might decide that you don't care about the problems you find. Heck; sometimes you'll get lucky and the "bugs" actually look pretty good themselves.

Even if you don't care about IE issues, though, it's good to know what they are, because inevitably you'll run into someone who does care, misguided though they may be, and you'll need to be ready to discuss that..

What kind of bugs are you referring to?

mdc · Oct 18, 2004, 12:27 PM

my site has fixed a positioned image block at the top of the page and a transparent .png image with a random .jpg behind the transparent .png.

one of ie's 'bugs' is that it does not support some of the css features. fixed positioning is one of them. i got ready to play with ie and get it working with my fixed block. as it happened ie, for some reason, did not display the transparent .png and it scrolled the fixed block.

luckily i did not have much to change on that one.

for me the two biggest ie problems i run into are:
no fixed positioning
.png transparency (can be fixed with sleight but does not work in all cases)

MacMan4000 · Oct 18, 2004, 03:08 PM

Originally posted by mdc:
for me the two biggest ie problems i run into are:
no fixed positioning
.png transparency (can be fixed with sleight but does not work in all cases)

sleight is terrible compaired to PngBehavior.htc. Png behavior work wonders... check it out on my website... everything is a png with transparent corners (click my sig).

Turias · Oct 18, 2004, 03:20 PM

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
sleight is terrible compaired to PngBehavior.htc. Png behavior work wonders... check it out on my website... everything is a png with transparent corners (click my sig).

I can see the corners of your images using: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041004 Firefox/0.10.1

Does PngArtifact do that for all browsers? Or is what I am seeing different than what you see?

skalie · Oct 18, 2004, 03:40 PM

me = confused

I see on the site (IE 6 windows) corners (gray) for a bit, then what you screenshotted, which btw looks round and normal, like.

Turias · Oct 18, 2004, 03:42 PM

Originally posted by skalie:
me = confused

I see on the site (IE 6 windows) corners (gray) for a bit, then what you screenshotted, which btw looks round and normal, like.

The actual site looks slightly worse than the screenshot I posted. Maybe the jpeg compression of the image is making it look better than it actually is?

mdc · Oct 18, 2004, 04:34 PM

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
sleight is terrible compaired to PngBehavior.htc. Png behavior work wonders... check it out on my website... everything is a png with transparent corners (click my sig).

i tried that also. if you go to my site (click sig) you will see a top banner (transparent .png) with a random image behind it. to get this working on ie i had to drop the transparent .png. and replace it with a .gif (no drop shadow).

sleight and pngbehavior worked, they got the image transparent. with my site you can switch style and color themes. with sleight/pngbehavior working it would not swop out the image it made transparent when you switched styles.

oh well.

MacMan4000 · Oct 19, 2004, 05:59 PM

well crap. I tested in VPC )windows XP) and at school (Windows 2000) and both looked fine, as did every browser i could think of for mac...

is it bad enough to make a re-do necessary? Man I really hate windoze... and all Microsoft programs... and all employees of Microsoft... and all there family members...

Turias · Oct 19, 2004, 08:53 PM

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
well crap. I tested in VPC )windows XP) and at school (Windows 2000) and both looked fine, as did every browser i could think of for mac...

is it bad enough to make a re-do necessary? Man I really hate windoze... and all Microsoft programs... and all employees of Microsoft... and all there family members...

It's noticeable, but it doesn't look that bad. The image above pretty much sums it up.

Just curious, though, since there is no drop shadow, why didn't you just go with a gif?

skalie · Oct 20, 2004, 04:23 AM

browser and os stats

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Millennium · Oct 20, 2004, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by iluvmypowerbook:
What kind of bugs are you referring to?

The box model is generally considered the worst of IE's problems, but there are also many aspects of CSS that IE just plain doesn't do at all, even though every single other browser on the market today does.

A lot of this can be remedied by Dean Edwards' IE7. Despite the name, this isn't a new browser; rather, it's a set of JavaScript routines which can be added to any page. The results are nothing short of miraculous.