compatable?

[gerkintrigg]

The new website: http://challicearchitects.co.uk/test/contact_us.php seems to be fine in all browsers I'm testing but the client says that in I.E. running under windows 2000 makes the right hand boxes misalign. Can you please critique the website, with particular reference to this and if you know how to solve it, that would really help too.

[sKunKbad]

Windows 2000 had IE6. Have you tested this website in IE6 on any other computer?

 

When testing websites, I test with:

 

Win XP (IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 3.5, Opera 9, Safari 4, Chrome)

Windows Vista (IE7)

Windows 2000 (IE6)

Mac OSX (Opera, Firefox, Safari)

Ubuntu (Firefox)

 

but even when testing, there are sometimes little differences that can't be solved, or can't be solved easily. I would tell your customer that it is normal for IE6 users to not have a good experience on the internet, and why should your site be different? Should you also accommodate 640x480 monitors? What if he had Windows 98 with IE5? What would you do then? At some point, you have to explain to customers the way that content will be seen on screen depends on browser capabilities, and that old browsers don't support CSS, or don't have good support for CSS. Show him some browser usage statistics and tell him that developing with these old browsers in mind is going to cost him extra.

 

This reminds me of a customer that told me that his dad had a Mac with OS9 and he couldn't see the site I made him using IE5.5. I just told him I wouldn't do anything about it. I told him to get his dad a new computer.

[TheFilmGod]

Windows 2000 had IE6. Have you tested this website in IE6 on any other computer?

 

When testing websites, I test with:

 

Win XP (IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 3.5, Opera 9, Safari 4, Chrome)

Windows Vista (IE7)

Windows 2000 (IE6)

Mac OSX (Opera, Firefox, Safari)

Ubuntu (Firefox)

 

but even when testing, there are sometimes little differences that can't be solved, or can't be solved easily. I would tell your customer that it is normal for IE6 users to not have a good experience on the internet, and why should your site be different? Should you also accommodate 640x480 monitors? What if he had Windows 98 with IE5? What would you do then? At some point, you have to explain to customers the way that content will be seen on screen depends on browser capabilities, and that old browsers don't support CSS, or don't have good support for CSS. Show him some browser usage statistics and tell him that developing with these old browsers in mind is going to cost him extra.

 

This reminds me of a customer that told me that his dad had a Mac with OS9 and he couldn't see the site I made him using IE5.5. I just told him I wouldn't do anything about it. I told him to get his dad a new computer.

 

Clearly you don't design websites for companies. Because you would know that IE6 isn't "outdated" or "obsolete". Nearly 30% of the market share still use it. And in this particular situation, the client may actually be using IE6 on one of the company computers! I do recommend fixing the IE6 bug. Besides that, don't accomdate 640 monitors or IE5.5.

 

The website is very plain. I don't like the gray color tone. Maybe something lighter. The table layout isn't working for me either. I hate when people design a website using 1990 techniques and get paid to do it. It hurts the professionals in the market, who do it the correct way.

[sKunKbad]

Clearly you don't design websites for companies. Because you would know that IE6 isn't "outdated" or "obsolete". Nearly 30% of the market share still use it. And in this particular situation, the client may actually be using IE6 on one of the company computers! I do recommend fixing the IE6 bug. Besides that, don't accomdate 640 monitors or IE5.5.

 

The website is very plain. I don't like the gray color tone. Maybe something lighter. The table layout isn't working for me either. I hate when people design a website using 1990 techniques and get paid to do it. It hurts the professionals in the market, who do it the correct way.

 

It's funny that you say you hate when people design a website using 1990s techniques, but if the company is using Windows 2000 with IE6, they'd feel right at home.

 

I always make sure my designs work in IE6 (for now), but IE6 users can't expect to have everything (except for maybe some viruses and trojans!), and certainly can't expect to use IE6 forever. 12 of the last 500 people that came to my website were using IE6. That's 2.x%, and on a good day, when all of the senior citizens get on the internet, it might be as high as 10%. At some point, depending on the site, it doesn't make sense to support IE6. In the OP's case, maybe it's the only browser he/she needs to worry about designing for?

 

Part of what I have learned over the years is get the project requirements before starting the job. OP should have known to test in multiple browsers / operating systems in the first place. I've never had to design an internal application for a company that used IE6, but it would be a sad day if I had to accept such work.

[gerkintrigg]

The table layout isn't working for me either. I hate when people design a website using 1990 techniques and get paid to do it. It hurts the professionals in the market, who do it the correct way.

 

Perhaps it would help if you looked at the source code... I did do it the "right way". This isn't table layouts. It's all CSS and divs.

 

Any constructive feedback about this layout issue?

[Dorky]

infact you did use tables and a lot of other overkill code like this <span class="Bold_Text">Email:</span> instead of a simple <b>Email:</b> . all of that redundant overkill makes it hard to look for the syntax error that most current browsers overlook but the older ones will not. also i suggest using a list <ul> then float the entire thing to the left. then put the text in a <p> and float right with text-align:left. or just look for the syntax error. ie6 shouldnt have a problem rendering a table, overcoded or not.

<li><img><p></p></li>

[TheFilmGod]

The table layout isn't working for me either. I hate when people design a website using 1990 techniques and get paid to do it. It hurts the professionals in the market, who do it the correct way.

 

Perhaps it would help if you looked at the source code... I did do it the "right way". This isn't table layouts. It's all CSS and divs.

 

Any constructive feedback about this layout issue?

 

I did provide constructive feedback (which was entirely correct) and you failed to take me on it.

 

I recommend scrapping the whole project and starting over. Here are some red flags:

<span class="bold_text">text...text</span>

 

Why would you use this when a tag exists exactly for this purpose? <strong>

 

<div class="text">... some content</div>

 

This div has no style and does nothing for the layout. Why are you using an empty div tag.

 

<div></div>

 

An empty div that does nothing but adding height/padding to the top header. Why don't you just add padding to the main navigation div.

 

Table layout in general.

 

Yes you are using it. If you need help transforming it to css the "right-way" of coding it, I will be more than willing to help.

 

It seems to me that you have zipped through web semantics 101. I don't want to come off arrogant and entirely one-sided, but learning proper web semantics is more important than css or html combined. What good is it to know css, when you are using <p> tags for headings, and using empty divs that could be replaced with more advanced css.

 

Semantics helps your design by cutting down production time by ten fold and increasing your text to html ratio.

 

[Dorky]

expanding on what i said is not only uncalled for but shows a pack mentality i see way to often on here. he read your post the first time. it is not helpful to beat a dead horse and i do not graze in a pasture go find your own herd to follow.

[TheFilmGod]

expanding on what i said is not only uncalled for but shows a pack mentality i see way to often on here.

 

infact you did use tables and a lot of other overkill code like this <span class="Bold_Text">Email:</span> instead of a simple <b>Email:</b> . all of that redundant overkill makes it hard to look for the syntax error that most current browsers overlook but the older ones will not. also i suggest using a list <ul> then float the entire thing to the left. then put the text in a <p> and float right with text-align:left. or just look for the syntax error. ie6 shouldnt have a problem rendering a table, overcoded or not.

<li><img><p></p></li>

 

How was I expanding on your points? I mentioned <span class="bold_test"> because your explanation and suggestion was entirely flawed.

 

I quote from: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_html_tag_to_use_b_or_strong.html

While functional designers would use "<strong>" and "<em>" for words that should be emphasized or "stronger", a presentation designer would eschew it completely and use "<b>" for bold and "<i>" for italics.

 

You should not use <b> to bold text. This does nothing but make the text bold. This is not the purpose of bolding text!! You bold text to EMPHASIZE, and as such, you use the <strong> tag. Search engines have algorithums to rank these words more importantly. A designer could then easily use css to style the strong tag as he wishes, color, bold, underline, etc. The <b> tag doesn't add "emphasis;" it only adds a css style inline. Styling should never be done like this in the current designing era.

 

Then you go on to say he should put everything in a list, enclosed wtih paragraphs? This isn't a good idea because SEMANTICS refer to the pure html. If we were to turn off ALL styling (inline and extrenal stylesheets) the browser should be able to display the infromation in an easy to read manner. Creating a list in this situation is overkilling semantics. The code would bloat up and the images in the list would make it look awkward without styling. This is how I would do it:

 

<strong>Heading</strong>

<img />

<p>Info</p>

 

Better:

<h2>Heading</strong>

<img />

<p>Some info</p>

 

BEST:

<h2>heading</strong>

<img />

<dl>

  <dt>Telephone:</dt>

      <dd>##-##-###-####</dd>

</dl>

 

I wouldn't call this "beating a dead horse." These are pointers and though it is up to the OP to decide whether or not he would like to implement these, this post may one day help other web developers in the future.

 

Back to the website critique. Overall, the theme seems to work. I like the color blending. You should add padding to the footer, add a little bit of whitspace ont he homepage for the main links, and make the right toolbar expand (even when there is no content - faux columns).

[Dorky]

 

It seems to me that you have zipped through web semantics 101. I don't want to come off arrogant

how is this cunstructive?

[TheFilmGod]

Dude I don't know what your issue is: Here is my full quote.

 

It seems to me that you have zipped through web semantics 101. I don't want to come off arrogant and entirely one-sided, but learning proper web semantics is more important than css or html combined. What good is it to know css, when you are using <p> tags for headings, and using empty divs that could be replaced with more advanced css.

 

That  is entirely constructive. On the other hand what you said earlier is not. Full quote from several posts earlier:

 

expanding on what i said is not only uncalled for but shows a pack mentality i see way to often on here. he read your post the first time. it is not helpful to beat a dead horse and i do not graze in a pasture go find your own herd to follow.

[Dorky]

sorry GOD, didnt intend to question your omnipotents. really, blending offensive statements into a suggestion surely makes it ok.