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Thread: IE6 makes me cry

  1. #1
    Flower Child stytagm's Avatar
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    Unhappy IE6 makes me cry

    For years I've only ever developed pretty simple html and css, (I'm a back end code monkey by employment, we have much better guys to do the front end). So I've always been slightly closed to the complaints about IE6, but now I feel your pain (my pain), it is very real.

    We've got a shortage of UI developers at work, so I've just spent a week living and breathing CSS to come up with a beautiful layout for an online tool. It's a closed tool, it'll only be used by our clients, not the public, but I still went to great trouble to make it compliant and accessible. And, if I may say so myself, it's damn good. And it renders perfectly in Firefox, IE7, Opera and even Safari, I tested each of them as I went along.

    But in IE6 <sobs> It's a complete disaster. My dog could do better (and it looks like he's eaten it, and shat it all over IE6 just to prove his point). And I've just been told that our biggest client has got about 200 terminals, all need to use this tool, and all of them are running IE6 on Windows 2000 <more sobs> It's just not fair <bawls like a little girl>

    Sniff - anyone know of any good sites with tips on how to salvage the site in IE6 without breaking it on any of the others?

    At the moment I'm tempted to dynamically force a different style sheet for IE6, and just start again from scratch <ugh> There has to be a better way?
    They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them.

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by stytagm View Post
    At the moment I'm tempted to dynamically force a different style sheet for IE6, and just start again from scratch <ugh> There has to be a better way?
    fraid not

    take a look at the approach i took on my website, apebox.org - try it in a web browser, then try it in ie6

    a previous site, i did the browser-sniffed-stylesheet-selection approach, and it sorta worked. just a pain in the arse
    Last edited by directhex; 21-09-2007 at 04:36 PM.

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    The LHC rulez! DataMatrix's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Try validating your site at http://validator.w3.org/ and http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

    If any errors pop up, fix them and it should render properly.

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by DataMatrix View Post
    Try validating your site at http://validator.w3.org/ and http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

    If any errors pop up, fix them and it should render properly.
    that's not a useful answer

    IE6 does not & cannot render valid HTML/CSS, which stytagm is already writing

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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    what does it not render correctly as if something works in ie7 it is generally not too hard to get it to work in ie6.

    also try changing yout doctype to a strict 1.
    Last edited by cougarslam; 22-09-2007 at 11:39 PM.

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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    If timescale is a factor liberal use of the if ie6 predicate and the !Important tag can help, if you don't want to/can't take the time coming up with somthing better.
    To err is human. To really foul things up ... you need a computer.

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    Flower Child stytagm's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    take a look at the approach i took on my website, apebox.org - try it in a web browser, then try it in ie6
    Very nice I'm not sure I can get away with that though! (For those of you can't see, here's a screenie of apebox through IE6)

    From what I've picked up through Google, I think the biggest problem I have is that I float a lot of items and use a lot of background colours and background images, which apparently cause a lot of problems.

    I also have a few elements which are just coming out a few pixels bigger and not fitting into their containers. I think that means I'm not getting strict mode as isn't this the IE6 box model bug?

    The only other problem is a minor one, I'm using a few PNGs with transparency, but I think I can replace them with gifs without too much trouble.

    To be honest though, I'm going to beg at work and try and get one of the UI guys to sort it for me, this is their bread and butter after all, and I can get back to something I'm good at (making coffee).
    They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them.

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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    There's a piece of javascript out there that will aid you with displaying transparent PNG's, unfurtunately it will invalidate your CSS if you implement it in its standard way.

    If you want to do frontend beware of the issues that browsers have beforehand, you will find that saves a lot of time. But as I said, use of <!--[if IE 6]> and !important should help you if you don't mind its utter hackishness.
    To err is human. To really foul things up ... you need a computer.

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    Flower Child stytagm's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Right some progress has been made, but it's always one step forwards, another step back.

    Anyway, it turns out I wasn't getting the box-model bug, I was getting the float-Double Margin bug. Which I managed to work around only to introduce new and exciting problems.

    I'm now making use of selective comments to serve a style sheet to IE6 and below using <!--[if lte IE 6]> which works well up to a point.

    The latest problem I'm having is with a "popup" div, (effectively a hidden div, revealed when a user clicks on it) which displays underneath some elements it should be on top of, no matter what z-index I set. Apparantly it's because some elements are not drawn on the html graphics layer, but are actually drawn as windows over the top (in other words, why should IE bother to render something like a text box on it's own graphics layer, when windows can drop one over the top much more easily). Linky and the same again According to Microsoft

    The good news is that one of our UI guys has offered to have a look in the morning, and is confident he can sort it with a little tinkering. I'll update if he finds anything interesting.
    They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them.

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    Ah, Mrs. Peel! mike_w's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by stytagm View Post
    Anyway, it turns out I wasn't getting the box-model bug, I was getting the float-Double Margin bug. Which I managed to work around only to introduce new and exciting problems.

    I'm now making use of selective comments to serve a style sheet to IE6 and below using <!--[if lte IE 6]> which works well up to a point.
    Doesn't the fix on the website (using display:inline) work without having to use any sort of selective comments?
    "Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."

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    Flower Child stytagm's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by mike_w View Post
    Doesn't the fix on the website (using display:inline) work without having to use any sort of selective comments?
    Nearly

    It does get rid of the double margins I was having trouble with. But I had all my content centred using a big container div with a fixed width and with the left and right margins set to Auto, and the fix seemed to wipe out those margins in all browsers!

    So on all the decent browsers, I didn't want it, but on IE6 it was better to have my content laid our correctly, but rammed against the left hand side than strung out vertically. (Anyway, I've designed the page for 1024x768 which is the screen resolution used by our client, and it won't show because there will hardly be any margin at all on their systems.
    They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them.

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    Get in the van. Fraz's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    I probably won't help you right now, but maybe you'd find it satisfying to beat Bill Gates to death with some weighty Web Standards tombs...

    I'm sure a lot of people would want to shake your hand afterwards.

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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Float is an absolute pain to get to work in IE6, mainly cos IE6 doesnt know what to do with it, I truly cant wait until IE7 becomes widespread enough for web designers and developers to justify not making sites IE6 compatible.
    I know this isnt much help as its a float related issue, but for any other IE related issues, I always find that the $ hack is a pretty useful tool. It works like this, if for example a css property is displaying differently (eg wider) in IE than in firefox, if you set the css property to your desired value for firefox then set the same property again with a $ in front and give a different value, IE will read both properties and use the second value whereas firefox will ignore the one with the $ infront. Sorry if that doesnt make much sense, Ill try and illustrate it
    #main {
    width:300px;
    $width:290px;
    }

    Fire fox will read the 300 and ignore the second value, IE will read both and choose whichever comes last.

    Hope that helps

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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Never really have much problem with frontend stuff for sites, depending on how rich the interface is. As for web standards, MS was infact a founding member of the W3C.
    To err is human. To really foul things up ... you need a computer.

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by yamangman View Post
    Never really have much problem with frontend stuff for sites, depending on how rich the interface is. As for web standards, MS was infact a founding member of the W3C.
    so which w3 standard do ms actually follow today, since it was founded in 1994?

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    The LHC rulez! DataMatrix's Avatar
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    Re: IE6 makes me cry

    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    that's not a useful answer

    IE6 does not & cannot render valid HTML/CSS, which stytagm is already writing
    Funny you should say that because I have written valid HTML/CSS sites only to have them work properly before (and after) I migrated to IE7.
    Last edited by DataMatrix; 27-09-2007 at 12:08 AM.

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