Just in case we haven't had enough threads on NS vs. IE . . .

[Mandi]

Anyone want to tell me why I can make the left black border line up in NS, but not IE:

http://www.roverjon.com/


Arrrggghhh!! My hair is too short to keep ripping it out like this!!

[sheila]

Mandi:

I hate to tell you, but in NS 6.1, the black border doesn't line up.

What NS were you viewing it under?

[sheila]

Suggestion:

After viewing the source of the page...

Have you considered setting the alignment tags in the <td> cells of your table? Like
align="left"

???

No, wait, on closer look, I see that you have set the align on the long black line to left. But that top table cell doesn't have an alignment tag.

I wonder what would happen if you set alignment on the top cell to left?

[Mandi]

NS 4.76, the last actually stable NS I trust on my laptop LOL . .

Okay, I've added align=left tags everywhere. I also added a "content coming here" <td> to the same row as the nav tags and black line, just for disclosure . . . I don't think it affected the left alignment.

[Deb]

Currently in NS4.5 and IE5.0 the line is lined up correctly ;)

[Mandi]

And just to really make me crazy, it DID all line up in IE, when I just had 2 graphics:

http://www.roverjon.com/index-test.shtml

All I did was split off the black line to it's own file, and then encountered the misalignment. It's gotta be something about the tables.

Of course, I want to split up the index.shtml version graphics even further (particularly that overhead graphic,) I am sorta working backward to that.

[Bob]

Talking about going crazy :QTcrazy:

I have looked at the Original page mentioned, and now the second, in IE6, IE5.5, NS4.78 and they all look exactly alike to me.

Here is a screen shot from IE6
http://www.wolfstalks.com/imageSP4.JPG

What am I missing ?:QThuh:

-Bob

[sheila]

OK, both pages now line up beautifully in:
NS 4.61
IE 5.0

However, in NS 6.1, you get the black-line border not lined up on the page with the "Coming Soon" text.

:\

[PaulKroll]

Just whipped up http://www.paulkroll.com/mandi/

This is w/CSS, and IE 5.5 and Mozilla 0.9.5 both see it just fine, but I would guess NS 4.7x would not deal with it at all... but NS 4.7x is NOT as stable as Mozilla past 0.9.2, and hasn't been as stable as IE for a long, long time. Delete it. Destroy. DESTROY! %)

Someone else will need to confirm/deny it working in IE 6 and, of course, the Mac. :)
(Edit: OF course, only after I post do I notice a ridiculous flaw, so go ahead and belittle me relentlessly... :) )
(Edit: Fixed. Whew. Got it before the belittling began!)

[Bob]

Well, In viewing Paul's creation in NS4.78, while it does deal with it :P it is broken.

However viewing with IE6 on my system, Win 2000 800 x 600 this is what I see, (same results as in Netscape)
http://wolfstalks.com/imageNEJ.JPG

So maybe this could be a combination of a browser issue as well as individual settings, which, as Deb will let you know, was a major problem in the development of the current FutureQuest web site.

-Bob

[PaulKroll]

I hate browsers. :)

Mandi, if you're going to be using JavaScript anyway, you could use a bit o' JS to figure out if the browser is one of the ones that needs a "spacer" graphic, or does not, and then use JS to insert said graphic... or not.

[Melissa]

Hi Mandi,

Not sure if this has anything to do with your troubles or not...you know how browsers can get about table tags.

It appears you have an extra closing cell tag:

<td width=536 valign=top align=left><font size="+2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, Sans Serif">Content Coming Soon!!</font>
</td>
</td>

[Mandi]

Melissa, thanks for spotting the extra tag, I've removed it. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to help the alignment issue.

Obviously it's a bit more complex than simply leaving out something critical somewhere . . . I am sure detecting browsers would be the best solution, but this is just my husband's hobby site (he's the Rover Jon in question - he's a Land Rover enthusiasist . . . that's his Range Rover in the photo montage.) I just wanna get the darn thing up and running for him.

Solution = Remove vertical stripe! Voila . . . no more alignment issues. I am gonna bite the bullet and do the CSS thing, though . . . Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to upload and tweak the page to your own site, that was very thoughtful. You even uploaded my mouseover graphics, wow!

Thank you for all the advice, everyone :)!

[Justin]

I haven't looked at the source, but I've found that in most cases, browser-detection is not the answer. Almost always, with some tweaking, it can be fixed without resorting to that. If the HTML is completely standards compliant, almost all browsers will render it the same. They just all handle errors or odd code differently.

My suggestion is to try first removing all unnecessary white space, most notably from within any <TD></TD> and things like that. Also make sure you specify absolute pixel widths where appropriate on table cells...

Of course, it looks fine in 'lynx', so I don't understand the problem :P When I was your age, we didn't have graphics and... er, nevermind :)

<EDIT>
And on that note, something really odd has happened here in the forums on Mozilla: the tables are now lined up properly! I'm not sure if the forums changed or if something changed in 0.9.5, but for the first time, VBulletin looks great in Moz :)
</EDIT>

[PaulKroll]

You're very welcome. :)

You even uploaded my mouseover graphics, wow!
Oh no, I just (well, software I used did this automatically) aimed the image tags at your site, even though the test page was on mine. I don't know if Mozilla did this when I saved the page or Editplus when I imported it, but it worked out well in either case.

I'll delete the /mandi/ page at some point in the next couple of weeks, so if you're going to use it and/or style1.css as a base, please pull it down soon. (If I don't delete it in the next couple weeks, then two years from now I'll be looking at it for 20 minutes going "What in blazes is this here for...?" %) )

[Mandi]

Oh, right . . . that'll teach me not to read source before I make big excited pronouncements :o . . . thanks nonetheless :D!

I grabbed the .css, go ahead and blow away the example :)!

[Jeff]

And on that note, something really odd has happened here in the forums on Mozilla: the tables are now lined up properly! I'm not sure if the forums changed or if something changed in 0.9.5, but for the first time, VBulletin looks great in Moz

Wow!

I'm glad you pointed that out as it was really bothering me in moz .94 that this and my own vbulletin were not lined up well at all (columns all over the place in relation to eachother). I was about to try and force this by adding a unnecessary td code or maybe even spacers, but just downloaded moz .95 and all is lined up.

Still not as good as IE 5.5 or 6.0, but Mozilla is definately getting better.

[sheila]

Originally posted by Justin:

<EDIT>
And on that note, something really odd has happened here in the forums on Mozilla: the tables are now lined up properly! I'm not sure if the forums changed or if something changed in 0.9.5, but for the first time, VBulletin looks great in Moz :)
</EDIT>
I am noticing the same thing. They must've fixed something in Moz.

[Justin]

I don't think the problem was in Mozilla -- I know Moz seemed to fix it, but I still think the actual problem is in the way VBulletin mixes percentages with pixel widths on tables.

Moz probably just went ahead and added some non-standard extensions to deal with it, since this type of HTML abuse is very common (because IE shows it the way the author thinks it should, rather than the way the specs say it should)...

Of course I'm not positive that this isn't valid HTML, but I was pretty sure mixing percent and pixel widths was against spec... but it's possible that it was a bug in Moz...

Either way, it's a heck of an improvement viewing the forums now...

[sheila]

Either way, it's a heck of an improvement viewing the forums now...

Yeah, verily.
:y

[Jeff]

Moz probably just went ahead and added some non-standard extensions to deal with it, since this type of HTML abuse is very common (because IE shows it the way the author thinks it should, rather than the way the specs say it should)...

Of course I'm not positive that this isn't valid HTML, but I was pretty sure mixing percent and pixel widths was against spec... but it's possible that it was a bug in Moz...

First, who agreed to make "the spec" the spec? I would think that it should be democratic (majority rules) and in this case the majority of browsers and users have the ability to mix percentage and pixel width in a table.

Second, I can think of many cases when you absolutely need the ability to mix percentage and pixel width when you want a page to display well at resolutions from 640 x 480 to 1280 x 1024 and beyond (for example when I want the contents to stretch but the menu or a search box or graphic should remain fixed since the menu text or border graphics will not expand and thus there is no reason to waste space).

It irritates me to hear people say "well Netscape has this behavior which almost everyone finds undesirable but it's not Netscape's fault - it's the other browser's fault for going "beyond" spec." If this is the case, then the problem would seem to be a spec which is too limited and not up to date.

The spec should always be at least as good as Internet Explorer - it should be a plan which looks forward not backward. If Internet Explorer can do something nice, I would be more than willing to jump though a few hoops it if the spec provided a clearly better way of achieving the same thing. I don't think it's acceptable to have a backward-looking spec which lacks capabilities, is not as easy to implement, or which requires significant re-coding for no clear gain now or in the future. And I especially don’t like using adherence to either a minimum spec or a deficient spec to say that something which does not work as well is somehow ‘better’.

/end rant

[PaulKroll]

First, who agreed to make "the spec" the spec?
As shown here, http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List, that would be AOL/Netscape and Microsoft, among many others.

[Justin]

I really wasn't trying to start an argument or anything, and as I said I wasn't sure whether it was a spec issue or not.

I have no problems with advancing the spec as appropriate. Where I have a problem is when one company "embraces and extends" a spec for their own needs, making the spec-compliant browsers look broken in some way. Not to mention adding these things to their own page editor, further making sure other browsers seem broke ("if Front Page created this code it must be valid and IE shows it fine... so Netscape is broken").

The whole point of specifications is to make sure browsers from any vendor on any platform will properly display web content. It was not intended for each company to secretly introduce new things so the other vendors have to reverse engineer and play catch-up.

Once again, I don't know the spec inside out, and it's possible that this particular case (percent/pixel) is not a spec issue. But my points still stand for many other areas...

Finally, you can very easily get around the percent/pixel issue. Many sites looked fine in Moz/NS/IE without having to do this; transparent GIF images can do this, and while not the most perfect solution, are 100% within spec either way.