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Learning to live with IE

ercatliercatli
edited September 2006 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
This isn't really a Vanilla question, but I hope one of you legends can help me please.

This forum has discussed many times the difficulties of working with IE, and how we'd all rather nobody uses it. But they do, so we have to make our pages look OK on IE. I'm having a problem with a horizontal row of JPEGs. I have set up a division in my CSS to cover the full width, and then a separate division within that for each JPEG. Each division has margins so they all line up from the left with a gap between them. Looks fine on Safari and Firefox, but IE puts extra spaces in somewhere and the line of JPEGs runs over width.

The problem seems to be a text box at the beginning of the JPEGs - IE makes a 10px margin 20px wide. My question is, does anyone know anywhere where IE anomolies are recorded, so I can figure what I can do to get the margin right again. Thanks.
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Comments

  • Try this page at positioniseverything.net: Explorer Exposed!
    Perhaps it is the "Doubled Float Margin Bug"? Check that link.

    There is also an easy hack to feed a value just to IE: The Underscore Hack
    Note: Validators call underscores as an error, but it's kosher.

    Both of the above sites are great sources of information.
  • WOW!! I didn't know about the underscore hack! thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou
  • pbear,

    That is awesome, it looks like exactly what I need. I have already made the change, but not having IE myself (or only an outdated Mac version that doesn't reflect what happens on Windows) I have to wait and get info in from someone else. But I'm sure it will do the trick. "thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou" x 2.

    * resists the urge to rant about Microsoft and its bloody-minded attitude, why does anyone use their crappy stuff, etc, and goes quietly *
  • I think the hack is a recent discovery. I've been perusing these issues for years and only heard about it this spring.

    Up till then "hack" meant something (to me) like the box-model hack... voice-family\{/\;/etc, etc. What a mess!

    The underscore is simple. Neat. Direct. Only targets IE.
    You can see exactly where you have hacked your CSS.
    Takes fewer bytes than CSS conditional comments.

    We can only hope IE7 behaves like a normal browser and ignores all the stuff that used to have to be targeted to it...



    Or a meteor could hit Redmond. I'm impartial.
  • hacks are nasty, here is something that isn't nasty: selector { height : auto !important /* Browsers should use this */ height : 1%; /* But IE is a moron, and uses this */ } You should also check out position is everything, they have a listing of browser bugs: http://www.positioniseverything.net/
  • Rowan, vanilla.css has something like that in there IIRC. Maybe it's not applied globally (or not globally enough).

    Just curious, but how would you change vanilla.css to take advantage of your css rule?
  • edited September 2006
    learning to live with IE is like learning to live with spam its time to just say no ;-) I won't even go as far as doing an IE hack in my CSS can't view the pages in IE ? no problem download firefox, IE is a filthy word in my house lol
  • Yup, pbear, mostly solved :) tho still a couple of small anomolies :( Thanks again.
  • I'm to the point where I don't even bother with more advanced stuff on my websites due to IE's flaws and how no browser will display a page the same way. The easiest and most compliant thing in my opinion still is the use of tables. Tables look the same just about anywhere. CSS is a pain in the %#^ when it comes to browsers displaying pages the same way. I don't know why so many people are in love with CSS layouts. Just this weekend it took forever to get something to look right in multiple browsers.
  • @CLRAdmin - I would propose that if you think the use of tables is still better for handling the 'more advanced stuff' that you likely need to get a good book on standards, then read and re-read. Designing with standards merely presents a different set of problems than designing without does. Perhaps you find tables easier because you've already learned to handle the problems of tables.
  • people are in love with CSS because it validates and people love to feel validated when they click on the validation button
    @being sarcastic,

    the only thing CSS has over tables is the ability to change the look and layout on the fly which you can't do with tables and yes it validates as standard compliance whoppee other then this its just another option to use, I prefer CSS because it makes design so much easier,
  • Not to mention it renders faster than 63 nested tables.
  • Plus it's more semantic and degrades better on things like mobile devices, and will continue to in the future.
  • the only thing I find challenging about CSS is the surgical precision needed just to position anything and then there's one item effecting another item then your pulling your hair out from frustration ;-) the CSS manuals are like medical text books long and boring
  • bugsmi wrote: "then there's one item effecting another item then your pulling your hair out from frustration"

    Have you ever actually designed with tables before? They can be equally problematic. FYI I use CSS extensively and I've never read a book. I simply have the spec sheet.
  • The proof of the CSS pudding is that a dummy like me, with no books and more ignorance than knowledge, can do a passable job of designing a web page - EXCEPT ON IE. 99% of the frustration comes from IE, no, be fair, 100%.
  • I remember first starting to dabble with HTML... It took me months to figure out how to remove all the extra whitespace in table cells when adding sliced up pictures. :P
  • ercatli wrote: "99% of the frustration comes from IE, no, be fair, 100%."

    Have you ever tested pages using CSS2 specs in Safari? I'd be willing to attribute Safari with 5% of standards design grief. However, Safari doesn't really even matter. Nobody uses it.
  • Fraid I'm nobody! :)
  • @ ercatli - I am attempting to touch you through the internet, to see if the blood of a mortal courses through your veins.
This discussion has been closed.