This design approach only works in IE

Any suggestions for a fix?

[eggy ricardo]

Hi,

Im only an ameture at making websites so please be gentle with me.

I discovered today that a site i have designed (and am redeveloping) for a friend doesnt and wont work on anything other than IE (not Netscape or Opera or Mozilla etc).

My first question is this... roughly how much of my audience am i cutting out at the moment whilst this problem website is still online (eg how many people dont have IE).

My second question is this... my site is basically designed as a large flash movie containing all the navigation etc with an Iframe layed over the top of it to provide the content which is written as html.
Is there a better way to do this without...
a) losing the benefits of frames (such as targeting etc),
b) losing the flash (because it is essential to other areas of my site),
c) and losing the html written pages (eg i would rather not embed them all as flash text or whatever because i feel this would be difficult to do and update).

Any suggestions?

Many thanks
eggy_ricardo

[tedster]

The browser stats for a website will vary with each audience - but you can get a decent idea of trends by checking these publicly available numbers at the W3Schools website:

[w3schools.com...]

Looks like 18% of their audience is not using IE, and that lines up well with the stats I see. Some sites I work with are as high as 24% non-IE. Safari, Mozilla, and Opera are all growing rather nicely in market share recently. Some members here with an academic audience still see double digit percentages for Netscape 4 alone.

As for your design approach, I strongly encourage you not to use Flash for navigation, no matter how good it looks.

1. It is a major impediment to search engine crawling.

2. You've described this as a "large flash movie containing all the navigation". How long does it take before a dial-up visitor has active navigation? Sounds pretty rugged to me.

[vkaryl]

I hit one of those "large flash movie" sites last night. I was in the middle of something else at the time, so I just let it load. I have dial up. I don't have any boosters. My normal speed is 24.0 - I also live on 25 year old phone lines, and share my connect line with voice phone, so these results not only aren't dial-up optimal, but they're not even "normal" probably - at the time I was connected really "fast" for me, 26.4. That site wasn't loaded within 30 minutes. It wasn't locked up, mind you, it was still "loading". Add to this a gig of RAM and a 1 meg cache plus as much "soft-RAM" as windows wants to use - shouldn't have been a problem from that angle.

I have no idea how large the flash movie was. I just shrugged and went elsewhere....

[Caveat: it wouldn't necessarily matter if I had broadband rather than dial up - I DON'T like flash for site mechanics, and wouldn't wait on it for even a few seconds if it's the only site-nav method offered - and goddess forbid you throw a flash movie at me as a "splash" page! The only reason I let the stupid site play at loading for that long anyway was because I was otherwise occupied, and willing to allow it as a test.... Normally, when the first thing I see on a site is the "loading" line or whatever they use to signify a swf file in process, I leave posthaste.]

[eggy ricardo]

Hiya,

Thanks for the stats.

I guessed i would get that kind of response about flash. I didn't help by wording myself poorly. By large i mean it is has larger dimensions than the iframe that sits on top of it yet the file size is infact rather small.
Can anyone suggest how to get this working as this is what my friend wants and it is needed for other areas of the site although i do understand about these huge disadvantages.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
eggy_ricardo

[smokeyb]

I'm guessing that your flash file isn't enormous as it only handles navigation... which begs the question: why use it at all? If the majority of your site is html, why not create something fancy (graphically speaking) and use good old fashioned html/css for the navigation area. I assume you are using an iframe to avoid reloading issues, and I had the same sort of problem once. What I eventually did was create a DW template with flash buttons (6x3kb) and the rest of the nav area with good graphics. It looked great and one load did all. Before anyone shoots this method down, the site was more like a glorified business card and only meant to impress a few select people. And it worked well in all browsers, so long as they had the plugin.

[eggy ricardo]

It does handle navigation but that isnt the only thing. It also works as the page titles etc and mainly as a shell music playing device kind of thing so you can continue to view the site whilst listening to the music. This music is linked externally so it doesnt affect the swf size. I thought this would be the easiest way to do this as it incorperates it all in one and also protects my music a little better than just offering it as direct links.

[tedster]

About the cross-browser issue, check validation at the W3C first. That should give you a solid beginning. Often when your HTML has errors, IE forgives them but more standards compliant browsers do not.

[validator.w3.org...]

[vkaryl]

eggy_ricardo: I don't know about using flash to limit downloading of your music, but if it works that's great! I'm a MAJOR proponent of stringing copyright-material-thieves up by something they treasure....

I would suggest that you stop in mid-stream here and make sure your site works in a Mozilla-based browser FIRST, then go back and see what you can do to make it right in IE. I was an IE-lover for all the years I was online.... until about a month ago.... I have seen the light, and its name is Firefox....

Anyway, IE is actually easier to backwards-shoehorn than the others are.

[eggy ricardo]

Ok thanks for your input, if you have any more suggestions keep them coming. It looks like im in the need of a redesign then. Ill have a look at the validators and then try tackling my problem another way to make it more browser compliant.

Thanks again
eggy_ricardo

[tedster]

That's a great attitude and it should take you far. It can't be fun for you to contemplate a redesign. But you swallowed the bitter pill, instead of hanging on to your previous work.

Nicely done.

[eggy ricardo]

Ok, so before i redesign completely ive had a tinker around with the code. Now ive got Netscape and IE both working but it doesnt look hopefull for Mozilla or Opera for some reason. Are there any other browsers that are becoming popular to design towards other than the 4 mentioned?

<edit>Perhaps i should have mentioned that im currently using Mozilla Firebird 0.7 but upgrading to Firefox 0.8 now. Are they the same program? </edit>

Thanks

[tedster]

Other browsers? Be sure to check IE for Macintosh (6% to 8% for some of my sites and definitely its own thing) and Safari, the new Mac browser.

[eggy ricardo]

Is there a way of testing on these without actually owning a Mac as i don't plan on buying one?

[R1chard]

When you say Netscape is different from Mozilla, what version of N? If it's 7.0, it should be very similar to Mozilla...

As for Safari, if it's just static screens you want, try:

[danvine.com...]

[eggy ricardo]

Ive got Netscape 7.0 and the latest version of Mozilla Firefox. My problem is that because I have an iframe overlaying a page with a flash movie in (using z-index etc to position them) in IE and Netscape the flash displays properly (under the Iframe) but in others (mozilla and opera) it covers it.