Nvu, Firefox and Internet Explorer

[Martin R. Howell]

Could someone please tell me how to get the same font, size and layout for
pages of my website when using both Firefox (my default browser) and
Internet Explorer? I am using Nvu as a WYSIWYG editor. I had no idea that
Internet Explorer does not duplicate the published screen as shown on
Firefox. Why don't they look the same? How do I correct this?

No matter what font and size I use when composing, IE just will not execute
the choices.

The website is at www.theastropost.com

The homepage is a good example. . .other pages reflect some different
things I tried in an effort to get agreement (to no avail) between the two
browsers.


--Martin

 

[CharlieDontSurf]

Could someone please tell me how to get the same font, size and layout for
pages of my website when using both Firefox (my default browser) and
Internet Explorer? I am using Nvu as a WYSIWYG editor. I had no idea that
Internet Explorer does not duplicate the published screen as shown on
Firefox. Why don't they look the same? How do I correct this?

No matter what font and size I use when composing, IE just will not execute
the choices.

The website is at www.theastropost.com

The homepage is a good example. . .other pages reflect some different
things I tried in an effort to get agreement (to no avail) between the two
browsers.

It's bad markup, really bad markup that's causing the problem. There's a
melange of code that's sending conflicting signals to the browser. For
example, in just the Welcome to the Astro Post block, you've got a whole
string of SMALL tags nested within a string of BIG tags, inside FONT
tags, between styled SPAN tags. And all that is stuffed inside a TABLE.
It's the equivalent of saying go 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, go
right, wait no... go left.

I can't tell you how to fix it apart from hand-tooling the markup, since
I don't use NVU or any other HTML editor, but I can give you some advice
and perhaps you'll know how to get the editor to do what you want.

Don't use any presentational markup. That is, stay away from tags that
have the purpose of affecting the look on the screen -- BIG, SMALL, B,
I, FONT, CENTER, and the like. Don't use presentation attributes within
tags either, ie, ALIGN="CENTER" or BGCOLOR="#FF0000". Use only tags that
describe the content of the webpage -- DIV, SPAN, P, BLOCKQUOTE, H1...6,
etc. Stick with designing the look of the page through CSS only and
you'll have near parity between browsers.

 

[Wald]

Could someone please tell me how to get the same font, size and layout
for pages of my website when using both Firefox (my default browser)
and Internet Explorer? I am using Nvu as a WYSIWYG editor. I had
no idea that Internet Explorer does not duplicate the published screen
as shown on Firefox. Why don't they look the same? How do I correct
this?

Welcome to the world of web development, where no two intentions are the
same.

No matter what font and size I use when composing, IE just will not
execute the choices.

The website is at www.theastropost.com

Wow. That's some nasty code over there! Are you sure that NVU spits out
things like this? I would expect it to be better than that...

I took a quick peek at the code and here are some first thoughts:

* your main page consists of a few big tables. Modern web development
tries to avoid tables for page layout, and relies on stylesheets (CSS).

* lose the <font> tags! They may look like a quick way to achieve
results, but it makes your page utterly unmaintainable. What if you want
to change the font from "Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" to something else?
You'll have to hunt a lot of font-tags in your code!

* validation of your HTML code is problematic. Validation checks if the
HTML code complies with web standards, and it doesn't. Use this address
to check up on your code:

http://validator.w3.org/

Anyway, if I had a lot of time on my hands, I'd give you an example of
how to restyle your page using simple HTML + CSS. My suggestion: read a
few tutorials on XHTML and CSS, and start building the page by hand-
coding in a good editor. You'll learn a hell of a lot more about web page
functioning, and improve every aspect of your website.

Regards,
Wald

 

[Vegard Krog Petersen]

It's bad markup, really bad markup that's causing the problem. There's a
melange of code that's sending conflicting signals to the browser. For
example, in just the Welcome to the Astro Post block, you've got a whole
string of SMALL tags nested within a string of BIG tags, inside FONT
tags, between styled SPAN tags. And all that is stuffed inside a TABLE.
It's the equivalent of saying go 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, go
right, wait no... go left.

I can't tell you how to fix it apart from hand-tooling the markup, since
I don't use NVU or any other HTML editor, but I can give you some advice
and perhaps you'll know how to get the editor to do what you want.

Don't use any presentational markup. That is, stay away from tags that
have the purpose of affecting the look on the screen -- BIG, SMALL, B,
I, FONT, CENTER, and the like. Don't use presentation attributes within
tags either, ie, ALIGN="CENTER" or BGCOLOR="#FF0000". Use only tags that
describe the content of the webpage -- DIV, SPAN, P, BLOCKQUOTE, H1...6,
etc. Stick with designing the look of the page through CSS only and
you'll have near parity between browsers.

I addition, the different webbrowsers will almost never show exactly the
same. Because they have different rendering engines (trident i IE and
gecko in Firefox/mozilla).



--
Vegard Krog Petersen - Norway

http://vegard2.no -
Solitaire MahJongg guide, Sarah Michelle Gellar Solitaire,
Freeware Logo & symbol, Halma & Chinese Checkers,
Pachisi & Ludo, Freeware Solitaire, My fishy site (fishing
games), a.c.f.g information, Fredrikshald Havfiskeklubb
18+ sites: Firefoxy, Adult Solitaire, Fishy Pictures,
Sexy Chess, Sexy Librarians, Sexy Football
---------------------------------------------------------

 

[John Fitzsimons]

Could someone please tell me how to get the same font, size and layout for
pages of my website when using both Firefox (my default browser) and
Internet Explorer?

< snip >

Different browsers render different colours differently. To avoid that
sort of thing use "colour safe" colours. Also use fonts that are
commonly found on visitors systems.

This page could be a start for you ;

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/colors.html

Keep to only those colours and most of your rendering problems will
vanish.

Regards, John.
--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[dszady]

Could someone please tell me how to get the same font, size and layout for
pages of my website when using both Firefox (my default browser) and
Internet Explorer? I am using Nvu as a WYSIWYG editor. I had no idea that
Internet Explorer does not duplicate the published screen as shown on
Firefox. Why don't they look the same? How do I correct this?

No matter what font and size I use when composing, IE just will not execute
the choices.

The website is at www.theastropost.com

The homepage is a good example. . .other pages reflect some different
things I tried in an effort to get agreement (to no avail) between the two
browsers.

Hi Martin,
Go here:
http://dszady.com/neutral.css
It renders ALL browsers neutral. In other words any browser, to begin
with, is the on the same "playing field" as any other. The "*" is a
universal selector.
Write markup for Firefox and then <sigh> write Conditional Comments, if
needed, for IE.
This should help: <.http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html>
Never write markup for IE first. It's the one that you have to write
around.