So we're getting ready to launch some redesigned stuff on Yahoo! Finance and are taking the CSS plunge (finally). Even ignoring the ancient Netscape 4.x browsers, it's not easy. Looking at Galeon/Mozilla on Linux and Mozilla/IE/Opera on both XP and Mac OS X (oh, and OmniWeb on the Mac) highlights a lot of places where they don't agree. I wish I had the time to take screen-shots of each and post them. Hmm. Maybe tomorrow.
Yikes, I guess we ought to look at Konqueror too. What other browsers GUI are we missing? Yeah, I know about lynx, links, and w3m. Let me know if we're missing some.
How do others deal with this? Fall back to the tried and true table-based layout for some of the tricky items?
Oh, this will also be one of our most visible "live" uses of MySQL. More on that later.
If you'd like to see the layout in your favorite browser (one we haven't tested, maybe), let me know. Your help would be appreciated--especially if we can get a screen-shot out of the experience. (I'm way behind on the rest of my life this week as a result of all this stuff. Maybe I'll blog that story someday too. There are some important human lessons buried in this experience.)
Update: It's almost 3am again. I should really get to bed. *sigh* So much mail to catch up on...
Posted by jzawodn at August 08, 2002 01:18 AM
Opera on linux - very different from Opera on Windows..
AOL browser.
We basically use the minimal HTML allowed by law.. tables, tables, tables.. Javascript helps a bit with this as well (if netscape do blah, else do blah, default scream for help, etc).
Or, you could just make it work with IE, and be happy with %90. Then you'd have time to get the %DV dosage of sleep.
> Or, you could just make it work with IE ...
if it's anything like the place I do work, then most of the developers use Mozilla so that has to be supported too. =)
Once in a while I also use links; it's actually a pretty good browser.
hi,
www.wrongwaygoback.com and www.bluerobot.com were helpful resources when I decided to design a CSS only website.
Mine isnt 100% cross browser compliant.
But it does do away with tables and makes my code easier to read and tweak when I so desire.
Hope you find the links useful.
.::new2unix
Jeremy,
This is obvious but just in case ... I'd strongly recommend that you just look at the user agent fields in the logs for ONLY Yahoo Finance and see what the preponderance of user agents is. Are there enough occurrences beyond these:
* IE 5 on PC
* IE 5.5 on PC
* IE 6 on PC
* IE whatever on Mac
* Netscape whatever on Mac
* Mozilla
* Galleon
* AOL*
to matter? Sure someone will always, always complain if you don't support their browser but, fundamentally, this is as much an economic decision as anything else. Testing is expensive and sometimes you have to cut your losses.
You are definitely right though -- it's hard and the browser standards don't seem to help that much if you want it to look really good.
Scott
Quote:
Looking at Galeon/Mozilla on Linux and Mozilla/IE/Opera on both XP and Mac OS X (oh, and OmniWeb on the Mac) highlights a lot of places where they don't agree. I wish I had the time to take screen-shots of each and post them. Hmm. Maybe tomorrow.
Why bother? It doesn't matter if it looks identical in each browser - so long as it's readable. This isn't print media...
A tough call. The problem is exacerbated by the demand for screen-oriented pages that look pixel-perfect in all browsers.
It may help to instead visualise the end result as a document that may be viewed in a browser, printed, indexed by search engines, pulled down to a PDA etc.
In my opinion, the problem has another side.With css2 it is possible to create pages lighter (half or 1/3 of the page)than traditional html.
This means faster pages, in particular on 56k modem.
This pages works on Ie5+, Mozilla,Netscape 6+,Opera 7+.
The question is: is better to support Netscape 4 and other non-standard browsers (punishing the users of all the other browser..90%+)or just let them die?
I think that there is no more a reason to use Netscape 4. Mozilla is better and works on all the O.S. if you don't want to support M$.Opera 7 is a very good browser too.And both of them are close to the W3C standards... no more bug and tricks to make the things works...almost paradise :)
