To all web designers, when you're making a site, do you make it strictly standards-compliant or give it those little hacks for it to make it print correctly in Internet Explorer? I ask this because I just finished a site for the company I work for and had a really hard time deciding whether or not I should bend over the IE's poor support or make a stand for the standards.
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The IE predicament
- Thread starter beefcake
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I would say that it depends on your intended viewers. Are they the general populace using $300 Wal-Mart PCs? Make sure it works with IE. But if they are a more web savvy group, or Mac users, screw IE.
i think for a business site it would be suicide to not have IE support.
But it is sad that IE has such bad support for standards and it won't be updated till longhorn/'2007+
.
Oh well, Microsoft has monopolized the browser world. Quite a shame.
scem0
But it is sad that IE has such bad support for standards and it won't be updated till longhorn/'2007+
.Oh well, Microsoft has monopolized the browser world. Quite a shame.
scem0
Actually, I recently (about a week ago) heard that MS are planning on releasing a new version of IE by the end of the year.
With the vast majority of users running IE, it would be foolish not to ensure your website also looks correct in that environment. That being said, there are not too many hacks needed to make sure that your css works across the board. The general ones are with layout, if you just create a border around your Div's temporarily while you set it up it should go pretty quickly.
Nermal said:
...along with all the windows source code? you and my jet propelled pig farm.
imagine if they fixed the box model padding width stuff. that would be nice.
kettle said:...along with all the windows source code? you and my jet propelled pig farm.
imagine if they fixed the box model padding width stuff. that would be nice.
The problem is that not all users will update, there are still a ton of people out there running pre IE 5.0 versions, and NS 4.... I didn't believe it either until I checked our page stats, we have something like 7% using IE 3!!
At my new job I've been learning how to best design a site using standards compliancy with valid XHTML and CSS and still not use IE hacks. We avoid using hacks and separate style sheets at all costs. Just a couple days ago I mocked up a site that I had no doubt that it would not work in IE... turns out that it came up correctly not only in IE6, but also IE5 and 5.5. I was very excited when I found the pages looking EXACTLY the same in all browsers.
So basically... If you are making a site for a client, then you should avoid using hacks so that once you are done making the site, someone down the road can understand what you have done a lot easier.
So basically... If you are making a site for a client, then you should avoid using hacks so that once you are done making the site, someone down the road can understand what you have done a lot easier.
nermal said:
Can you remember where you saw that article? I'd like to read it, given that MS has made no secret of it's plans for IE over the last year - want IE7 (or IE.net or whatever), then you have to buy Longhorn when it comes out.
With regards to authoring for IE as opposed to authoring for everyone, I always take the "everyone" route using XHTML+CSS. Going back to 2000, it might have maybe been good business reasons for authoring IE-centric sites. At that time, Netscape 4.x was losing share hand-over-fist and it was a terrible browser to author for, even in the simplest cases. Today, the best case can be made for XHTML+CSS because of it's widespread support, ease of authoring, ease of maintenance, forward compatibility, and lack of dependence on a proprietary rendering engine. It always confused me as to why a designer/developer would want to code strictly for IE, as that's requires more time and effort.
Done right as well as using the most commonly accepted CSS properties, worst case is that IE would only require minor tweaks. Done spot on, as mnkeybsness has said, no hacks are necessary.
Obviously the site works in IE. I actually didn't have to separate style sheets at all, and usually just had to recode everything a few times, often making the code cleaner. However, there would be little things that if I changed would make the site look a little better in IE but break the site in Safari or Firefox. Mostly things like fonts and very small positioning issues, but I couldn't bring myself to throwing standards out the window to make a heading rise 5 pixels to where it should be in IE.
beefcake said:
In cases like that, here's what I would try, based on having an H1 right after a DIV - hack-free and completely legit:
Code:
//this is for IE 5+ and other browsers that support the CSS1 core
#divname h1 {
margin-top: 10px;
blah;
blah;
}
//this is for rendering engines that really support CSS like Gecko and KHTML
#divname>h1 {
margin-top: 15px;
blah;
blah;
}You can take advantage of the 'cascading' part of CSS to meet your needs. The first declaration caters to a lower level of support, and the second declaration takes care of mostly everyone else. Also, the second declaration is both more specific (giving that dec priority to the rendering engine) and not recognized by this generation of IE browsers. In the anxiously awaited event that MS upgrades MSHTML to be more like Gecko or K, the second dec will kick in and override the first.
Give it a shot and PM me if you want to take it futher!
kgarner said:
Seems very strange to me that MS would go so far as to say "No more standalone versions of IE" back in June '03, then say "Hey, we were just pulling your leg, really. We didn't change our minds because people are starting to realize that there are other better browsers out there. Seriously."
But anything's possible.
And don't hold your breath waiting for IE6/Mac.Back to the topic at hand, I'd recommend Peter-Paul Koch's QuirksMode for some hack-free methods of getting around IE's CSS support.