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Small issue but big problem with Netscape N...

A site developed by our company but client is annoyed(WYSIWYG not follow)

         

meenu

11:19 am on May 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



hi every one

Our company <snip> developed a site <snip> in IE it displays perfectly right, but when u move to NN all table borders automatically come out in solid black color...

Client says to rectify this error.
Any one have any sugessions how to rectify the same.

Thanx in Advance

regards
Meenu

[edited by: BlobFisk at 11:27 am (utc) on May 18, 2004]
[edit reason] Personal URLs and Sigs are against the TOS. [/edit]

BlobFisk

11:39 am on May 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Welcome to WebmasterWorld, meenu!

How are you assigning the borders to the table? In the HTML or via CSS?

choster

2:26 pm on May 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



What version of Netscape? What color are you trying to display? What is the color depth on the display in question?

isitreal

3:10 pm on May 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



When you say NN are you talking about netscape 4x, or mozilla netscape?

If you are talking about nn 4 then you can't make colored borders, they will all be black or not there at all. The only way to get colored borders on netscape 4 is to use colored table cells of the border width.

I kind of suspect you are talking about ns4, since mozilla/netscape has no problem with table cell/table border colors.

meenu

5:50 am on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanx for yor reply

The site is developed in Microsoft Frontpage(XP) and Macromedia DreamweaverMX
No Style Sheet have been used for tables...

My client see this in the following browser and annoyed...

Netscape 7.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

This version supports high-grade (128-bit) security with RSA Public Key Cryptography, DSA, MD2, MD5, RC2-CBC, RC4, DES-CBC, DES-EDE3-CBC.

DrDoc

6:19 am on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Does your CSS validate? [jigsaw.w3.org]
Also, does your markup validate? [validator.w3.org]

You may want to check your pages in the most common browsers (such as IE5/5.5/6, Mozilla/Netscape, Opera, IE/Mac, Safari [if you have access to a Mac]) to ensure future embarassments ;) That way you will notice any discrepancies before the client does.

[edited by: DrDoc at 6:24 am (utc) on May 19, 2004]

normaldude

6:23 am on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member




The site is developed in Microsoft Frontpage(XP)..

Since Frontpage is a Microsoft product, it will produce code that will deliberately blow up in non-IE browsers.

Same deal with MSN/Microsoft affiliated websites, and how they sometimes blow up in non-IE browsers.

Microsoft, of course, wants everyone to use IE.

So if you want to produce cross-platform websites, you should stay away from products like Microsoft Frontpage.

DrDoc

6:26 am on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



That's not completely true. It is completely possible to create cross browser compatible sites using the recent versions of Frontpage. Just avoid WYSIWYG/Design modes in general.

Still -- nothing beats testing in multiple browsers.

normaldude

6:33 am on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



That's not completely true. It is completely possible to create cross browser compatible sites using the recent versions of Frontpage. Just avoid WYSIWYG/Design modes in general.

Well, if you're not using the WYSIWYG mode, why bother using bloatware like Frontpage or Dreamweaver? If you're going to handcode (which I recommended), just use a text editor like Homesite or UltraEdit.


Still -- nothing beats testing in multiple browsers.

I agree. In fact, I even test all my pages with Netscape 3.0. If a website looks ok in a recent IE, recent Mozilla, and Netscape 3.0, then it will work with 99.999% of the browsers out there.

DrDoc

3:02 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If a website looks ok in a recent IE, recent Mozilla, and Netscape 3.0, then it will work with 99.999% of the browsers out there.

...you need to test in Opera as well, or it may well break in that browser.

normaldude

5:32 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member




...you need to test in Opera as well, or it may well break in that browser.

I have Opera on my laptop, and sometimes test with Opera just for fun.

However, I have found that if a webpage looks good in a recent IE, recent Mozilla, and Netscape 3.0, then it will look good in virtually ANY browser.. including Opera, Safari, etc.

I have yet to find an exception to that rule.

isitreal

6:03 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



and Netscape 3.0, then it will look good in virtually ANY browser..

this is a really interesting idea, can you explain a little bit more how you code pages? I assume you are using tables for the basic layout, but how much css do you use?

The idea of making websites that will always work is getting increasingly attractive to me, Opera 7.5 broke the display on one of my sites, positioning problem, bottom:x% in this case. this is getting very old, I'm not into doing subtle css stuff that will break either on some current browser, or on some new release. Just a few examples: ie 5.5, overflow:auto works perfectly, IE 6, scrolling problems on blank parts of page, firebird 0.7 overflow:auto works with wheelmouse, firefox 0.8 it doesn't. Etc. It's starting to look to me like full bug free css support on all modern browsers is never going to happen, at least not while I'm doing this work.

normaldude

6:38 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



this is a really interesting idea, can you explain a little bit more how you code pages? I assume you are using tables for the basic layout, but how much css do you use?

If you want a copy of Netscape 3.0, you can get it here:
[wp.netscape.com...]
[browsers.evolt.org...]

When I test webpages with Netscape 3.0, I have javascript off. So I test..
- Recent IE (JavaScript on)
- Recent Mozilla (JavaScript on)
- Netscape 3.0 (JavaScript off)

The only thing I use CSS for is for removing underlines from some links, and the occasional hover effect.

Some of my recommendations for working with tables..

1) I recommend hand coding with a text editor like UltraEdit or Homesite. Develop a few table templates that you can copy & paste for future pages.

2) Commenting your <table> tags.. where a particular table starts and ends. Like:


<!--- START:blackborder --->
<table width="30%" bgcolor="#000000" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1"><tr><td>
<table width="100%" bgcolor="#ffffcc" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10">
<tr valign="top">
<td align="center"><font size="-1">
<b>Some text goes here</b><br>
lajdflskdasdf a fkjdlsafas<br>
asdljf kalsjd asdjkf
</font></td></tr></table>
</td></tr></table>
<!--- END:blackborder --->

3) Generally, only set a pixel width for your outermost table. Like <table width="700">. For all interior tables & cells, set them as a percentage. That way, if you decide to make outermost table bigger/smaller, everything on the inside adjusts automatically.

4) Only specify the column widths for the the first row of cells. That width will propagate down to all the rows beneath it. Specifying the column width for every cell in every row is unnecessay, a waste of bandwidth, and makes future adjustments a pain.


<table width="50%" bgcolor="#ffffcc" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10">
<tr valign="top" align="center">
<td width="30%">some text</td>
<td width="70%">lots of text</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top" align="center">
<td>some text</td>
<td>lots of text</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top" align="center">
<td>some text</td>
<td>lots of text</td>
</tr>
</table>

5) If you have a characteristic that all cells in a row will share (like align="center"), place that attribute in the <tr> tag, instead of every <td> tag. Again, saves bandwidth, and makes changes simpler.

6) Vertical Padding (creating space above/below). There are two ways that will work for all browsers.

Method I: Copy & paste this..


<!--- vertical spacer ---><table height=10 border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr><td></td></tr></table>

Method II: Add another row, and set its height using something like.. <td height="20">. Note: setting the height at the <tr> level doesn't work with all browsers.. better to set that vertical height at the <td> level.

7) Horizontal Padding (creating space on the sides).

Method I: use columns like <td width="1%" nowrap><nobr>&nbsp;&nbsp;</nobr></td>.. and just add more &nbsp; if needed.

Method II: <img width=120 height=1 border=0>. The blank img tag just serves as an invisible strut. Note: you don't actually need to specify an image src.

If you design that way, your layouts will look the same in all browsers. Even Netscape 3.0.

DrDoc

7:34 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The only thing I use CSS for is for removing underlines from some links, and the occasional hover effect.

If you design that way, your layouts will look the same in all browsers. Even Netscape 3.0.

Obviously ;) Your HTML still doesn't validate. Plus, you can't compare old-skool design with CSS in terms of compatibility. Sure the old-skool layout is going to work better in old browsers... but it will be really hard to create some of the really stunning Web site effects. Plus, what about maintenance? ;)

Ever taken a look over at CSS Zen Garden [csszengarden.com]?

isitreal

8:18 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



normaldude: I just downloaded ns3, that's a good idea, turning off javascript is critical or it will crash on almost all sites, but it's interesting to test sites on that, I never thought of doing that, I've always cut it off at ns4/ie4, I wouldn't go as far as you've gone in terms of using all html attributes for styling, but I'm beginning to have some doubts about using complex css for page construction, it's just not stable at all, and as I noted in my above post, you can't count on correct css / html rendering correctly either now, or in future versions, this is a serious problem if you are using complex css, and it's not trivial in my opinion, and is without any question (to me anyway) why large sites are staying away from it, especially the more radical stuff like position bottom, right, float right for page layout, ul for navs etc, none of which render very reliably cross browser.

The css I am increasingly distrusting is float, that one seems to be furthest away from long term reliability and page layout stability, but there are several other positioning things that just are not ready for prime time, no matter how enthusiastic css supporters are.

normaldude

9:25 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Your HTML still doesn't validate

I look at successful, market leading websites Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and Google. What do they have in common?

1) They ALL fail to validate with the W3C validator (validator.w3.org).

2) They ALL look fine in all browsers down to Netscape 3.0.

I think it's better to focus on 99.999% browser compatibility than to try to validate to an idealistic standard.

but it will be really hard to create some of the really stunning Web site effects

99.9% of websites don't need "stunning web site effects". Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Google all do just fine with simple, functional, cross-platform designs.

In the case where you're designing a flashy website (like for a movie website), then just make sure you accomodate for non-flash browsers (for example, I surf without flash).

Plus, what about maintenance?

Try to reuse code on the server side. Assemble your content on the server side, and feed the client simple HTML.

Plus, a good text editor can help you do global replacements on multiple pages.

[edited by: normaldude at 9:32 pm (utc) on May 19, 2004]

MatthewHSE

9:26 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Just a few examples: ie 5.5, overflow:auto works perfectly, IE 6, scrolling problems on blank parts of page, firebird 0.7 overflow:auto works with wheelmouse, firefox 0.8 it doesn't.

That's an interesting observation. I use FireFox 0.8, and overflow:auto works fine with the wheel-mouse. Maybe it just has to do with different FireFox installations? It's the best browser out there, but still a little buggy from one installation to another.

isitreal

9:41 pm on May 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



mathewHSE, sorry, my mistake, it's Mozilla 1.6 that doesn't support overflow:auto by scrolling at all, not firefox, I mixed the two up since they are both gecko rv 1.6 products, same problem though, version to version different support, the IE 5.5 to 6 error is particularly annoying, since IE was the first to implement the feature correctly, and then first to break it again, I've had at least one report from an IE 6 user of full failure to do overflow:auto, don't know why or how.

Personally I use firebird, too lazy to upgrade to firefox since I installed too many extensions in the wrong folder and can never remember which I'm supposed to install them in to use multiple version and which not. I agree these are the best browsers out there, although the Opera 7 fans wouldn't, but they don't seem to be very picky about their css rendering, for example 7.5 for the first time will do mouseover overflow scrolling after clicking in the overflow space, not what I would call impressive personally, 6 had zero support for that, don't know how that inspires that much enthusiasm personally... is very fast though, but that speed is reached through rendering compromises, hard to spot but definitely there when you push it, firebird/fox have hands down the best css rendering out there from what I can see, definitely bugs in the stuff around gecko, but gecko itself is very impressive (by the way, saw my first 1.8a the other day...).

I've seen suggested here now and then the idea that all further development in css support is stopped completely until all browsers fully support current css 1 and 2, consistently and without any major bugs, but since this will never happen these bugs will just keep rolling out version after version, I have to admit that the Opera 7.5 bug was especially annoying, since it wasn't there in 7.23, but I saw bugs in 7.1 that were fixed in 7.2 too, all in all pretty much impossible to do advanced css and ever expect to see it rendered safely I'm beginning to think.

MatthewHSE

1:08 am on May 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Personally I use firebird, too lazy to upgrade to firefox since I installed too many extensions in the wrong folder and can never remember which I'm supposed to install them in to use multiple version and which not.

I put all extensions in my profile folder, which supposedly means you can upgrade seamlessly. But I always create a new profile anyway . . .