eCommerce site login

[scottybwoy]

Hi peeps,

 

I have set up an eCommerce site, but some customers have been having trouble setting up an account.

 

In IE7 apparently some users receive readonly input fields.  Others mention that the whole form has a stupidly wide width, that makes them have to scroll.

 

Can people please have a poke around, in particularly the account area, and let me know if you receive these same issues, what browser and resolution you are in, and possibly how to fix it.

 

www.klickshopping.co.uk

 

Thanks, any other critique welcome.

 

[Fadion]

From a quick look, i encountered two problems with two different browsers.

 

In Firefox3, the sidebar (on the left that contains "categories" and stuff) gets out of the screen (to the left) if i view the page maximized. I'm on a widescreen 1440x900 resolution, but that shouldn't matter. I can see you have a mix of tables and divs. Keep in mind that tables are *evil*.

 

In IE7 the sidebar problem doesn't exist, but i get those 1.000.000px wide input fields. They are so wide that i can barely see the scrollbar, its 1 mm thin.

 

You can easily test your sites on different browsers, so i'm wandering why you haven't tested it still.

[JasonLewis]

Yes when registering for an account in IE7 I get the long scrollbars. If FF3 for me, it looks fine though.

 

Just imagine what it would look like in IE6.

The only problem is for testing, if you're running Vista like myself, it's very hard to test on IE6. "

[ardyandkari]

try making the main table width 800px.  i completely lose the sidebar in ff when i click on some of the links....

[scottybwoy]

Well I am using IE6, so I know it works fine in that.  What is the best way to dual install IE6 and 7?  I read that you can with some registry changes, but apparently it does effect how IE6 and 7 work.  Another way was to run a virtual machine, but that seems really long winded.  Any other ideas?  I have not actually looked but can u run FF2 & 3 together as I have some really helpful plug ins that I will lose in FF3.

 

Thanks for your help.

[JasonLewis]

I tried for hours to get IE6 and 7 to run side by side but it wouldn't. The only good way I could see was running Virtual Machine but the IE6 copy for VM was like 800meg. Ridiculous...

[burn1337]

I'm using epiphany, I only get oversized input fields.. I would suggest using % instead of px for your width, % is more versital and dyhnamic could help ya a bit.

[Fadion]

Well I am using IE6, so I know it works fine in that.  What is the best way to dual install IE6 and 7?  I read that you can with some registry changes, but apparently it does effect how IE6 and 7 work.  Another way was to run a virtual machine, but that seems really long winded.  Any other ideas?

 

If you're on IE6, it means you're on winxp, right? Then just install IE7 by windows update and download a standalone version of IE6 from here. It's quite small (around 3.5MB) and works greatly as I use it myself. On Vista then, you've got to run it on Virtual Machine as suggested above, but generally I would stay away from Vista.

[scottybwoy]

Thanks for that GuiltyGear, will install that now.  I agree, we do have Vista on a machine downstairs, but XP is less bulky for general web building.

 

Also my input fields are already using % widths.  The reason why it has mixed <divs> and <tables> is because I used OsCommerce, which is pure tables.  I know tables are evil, which I why I switched most of it to <divs> but it's template engine is a bit complex and I didn't go so far as to change that bit.

 

Thanks for all your help any way.  But do keep the suggestions coming.

[burn1337]

hhmm I don't see how you say tables are evil... personaly I don't care for divs, I do my layouts/templates with tables as well. for me its easier the layout is much more customizable or at least with my experiace so far it has been.

 

Anyways if your using divs then I would suggest using css to control your input sizes, instead of % try just the size property within the input tags instead of the width property... It's worked for me before, it could help you.

[Fadion]

hhmm I don't see how you say tables are evil... personaly I don't care for divs, I do my layouts/templates with tables as well. for me its easier the layout is much more customizable or at least with my experiace so far it has been.

 

It means that you aren't aware of the advantages of css and table-less design. It is a bit of a complex subject and a google search will give you a lot of answers, but just to give you the idea:

 

- Tables are ugly and spam the html with garbage code.

- Tables are slow. More code loads slower.

- Tables are not semantic and accessible

- Tables are hard to maintain. Presentation is not separated from code.

 

And those are just to name a few, the advantages are unlimited. But if you don't trust my word and think I am just being a fan-boy, take a look at what the real guys think: W3 Tablesless Layout HOWTO. Quoting just a few lines:

 

It has been advocated many times that tables shouldn't be use in HTML for layout purposes.

The table tag should then only be used to format data into a table to relate columns with rows.

Besides the fact that it breaks the meaning of HTML, it doesn't help either in various cases that we could summarize by the difficulty to parse or render a table in some context (disabilities, view port restrictions, ...).

 

I guess that is enough to convince you that tables are not *evil*, are a lot more then that 

[scottybwoy]

Well done, for shedding the light on that one GuiltyGear.  By the way that sites great!  I now have both versions running and can do much more testing, I wish I found it before going live .  However, does the standalone version not support sessions?  Are their any settings for this?

[nrg_alpha]

Ever since I learned how to build tableless websites, I will NOT go back to using tables for such purposes ever again. GuiltyGear lists very good points. Heck, doing a simple google search on 'CSS vs tables' yields some great results..

 

by example: http://www.chromaticsites.com/web-design-blog/2008-04-03/13-reasons-why-css-is-superior-to-tables-in-website-design/

 

(much of this info is also backed by knowledgable authors who have published books on CSS and as a result have demonstrated CSS's capabilities quite nicely).

 

I feel CSS is simply too clean and flexible to give up. It's relatively easy to work with, and when employed properly, it offers plenty of site-wide modification with respect to things like layout and fonts for example. Tables is far too rigid. They work good for tubular data (and even on that front, many developers would arguably support the use of divs and CSS instead). I personally view tables and CSS as being compared to gas guzzling, smoke spitting engines vs. clean electric ones respectively (both get you from point a to b [as in, they do the job], but one is more efficent than the other). If you haven't yet embraced tableless development.. I think it would be pretty beneficial to do so.

[scottybwoy]

Ok I have installed FF3 and IE7,  I think it should now work in Ie7 (does on mine), but I thought that FF2 and FF3 would be quite similar, but I do have that behaviour (left menu disappears to the left) in FF3.

 

Does anyone know how to get the "A List Apart - Holy Grail" to work in both ff2 & 3?

[Fadion]

Take a look at this article. It's from the guy who made the "Holy Grail" technique at A List Apart. Hope it helps.

[scottybwoy]

Cheers GuiltyGear,

 

My problem is no longer with IE 6/7, on my development machine it seems to be displaying as it should for both.

 

However it only seems to be apearing correctly for the front page in Firefox 3.  I used the code from that page you sent but it does not correct the issue.  It displays fine in FF2.  FF3 sems to display it differently for each page, even tho the html markup is the same and so iss the css?  Any ideas?

[nrg_alpha]

In my experience, when my code doesn't produce the results I want consitently across multiple browsers, it leads to one of two things..

Either my code is improper, or the newer browser interprets things differently (perhaps it was doing so incorrectly originally, but is now 'rectified').

 

I find that I have to recode certain aspects to have it behave properly on most common browsers (don't even get me started on IE lol). So perhaps you have to revise your code so that it behaves.. and I would definately make sure your site validates. As is, your homepage by example doesn't. I try to ensure my design validates prior to making adjustments to make sites work on other browsers.

[burn1337]

I never ment I couldn't do tabless design. I've done it, no I'm not particularly great with it. I prefer tables simply because I'm more used to them. Plus it works great when you have a site thats still running in beta basically. For instance I use tables in my sight cause again I'm used to them, when I'm ready, and I have alot of people constantly visiting my site, then yes I would decide to change.

 

Scotty-boy,  I hope you got your problems fixed by now.