Browser test

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

I’m curious what this looks like. I’m using a template from glish.com, heavily modified by yours truly. It’s not quite the design I originally envisioned but I think it’s close enough. It’s dark. It’s readable. It’s a little edgy. It’s me.
You can customize the text size (and font) with buttons on the left and it’ll set a cookie so the change stays persistent. For the feature to work right, it needs cookies and javascript enabled.

I do want to modify this to use relative rather than absolute text sizes so it won’t override IE’s default. That’s an incendiary issue among Web designers, but this site looks fine in huge fonts (partly by design) so I’m willing to make the concession. Besides, I know not everyone keeps cookies and javascript enabled.

Assuming this thing doesn’t just completely fall apart in IE6, I’ll move the old HTML files over (so people’s old bookmarks don’t die suddenly) and flip the switch on my router. At this point I don’t want to put any more work into it until I’m certain it’ll work fine for those using the browser I won’t touch with someone else’s 10-foot-pole.

So, Konqueror and IE6 users–how’s it hold up?

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12 thoughts on “Browser test

  • May 18, 2002 at 11:02 pm
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    I use IE6, looks good. I question whether silicon really is cheaper than steel, though!

  • May 18, 2002 at 11:08 pm
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    At work I’m on a Win2k box and have Mozilla 0.9.9. The box also has IE 6.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.75.

    With just a quick test, nothing real thorough, I see no difference between IE’s rendering and Mozilla’s rendering.

    Communicator fails to put things in two columns. Everything goes in one long column, with the narrow one with the calendar and links first. I don’t keep up with Netscape, looks like this version’s a couple of years old and probably not the most important one to worry about.

    Actually I do see one difference between IE and Mozilla, which brings a grin to my face. There’s a line at the very bottom of the page that IE users won’t see, for obvious reasons. If curious, I guess they’ll just have to try returning with a different browser.

  • May 18, 2002 at 11:37 pm
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    Looks good in Mac IE5.1 on OSX.

  • May 19, 2002 at 4:36 am
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    comment Plenty good enough and a nice demonstrator. Does OK with Bobby. I can break it easily with IE6 at 1600×1200 playing with fonts/sizes. The left hand site navigation column expands right to the right hand side of city hospital in the photograph and overlies the text. Just as easy to find a combination that works and go ahead browsing the site. – Unless you or another already know the fix I would ignore this issue though I am also curious why. Seems to me there are some known issues with and (differences between preliminary and final implementation?)but that is just a nagging thought likely enough wrong. Will try some other browsers and screen resolutions sometime.(curious IE users can view source to see things not intended for them)

    Love to see your thoughts about incendiary issues among web designers – we are on opposite sides there I think. Although I was happy enough when the default background changed from grey to white in Netscape I guess I am stuck in an interesting text(which you do provide) on an 80 column mono-screen terminal world.

  • May 19, 2002 at 4:39 am
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    comment known issues with d-i-v and s-p-a-n in my previous comment, the tags are not displayed in my IE6 currently have not checked that issue in anything else

  • May 19, 2002 at 8:39 am
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    opera 6.02—fine

  • May 19, 2002 at 9:20 am
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    Communicator 4.x’s support of CSS was minimal. IE4 had preliminary support of CSS that was a bit more complete, so pages like this one stand a better chance of looking right in IE4 than in Netscape 4.

    Since I have a database-driven backend now, I can create a template that will work adequately in older browsers, possibly going as far back as Netscape 1.1. That’s something I intend to do at some point. Those older browsers make up about 8% of the Web browsers out there, which is why you’re starting to see people use XHTML and CSS instead now.

    But seeing as the book I published is about squeezing more life out of older computers, it’s very safe to say that significantly more than 8% of my readership uses a Netscape 4-series browser, or OffByOne or Dillo. That’s the nice thing about basing a site on a solution like b2–it lets you be versatile like that.

  • May 19, 2002 at 9:35 am
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    RE: The navigation column spilling over…

    That’s easy. The navigation column is a fixed 220 pixels wide. If you go too crazy with font sizes, it’s easy for the calendar text to start spilling over.

    I tried a modified template that uses a relative size for that column (18 ems, which at a standard font size is close enough to 220 pixels not to break anything) and the column scaled pretty nicely with font size. So I’ll probably implement that change. I may even step back to 16 or 17em, since I used 220 partly to accomodate bigger fonts.

    I designed with 800×600 in mind, since that’s a low common denominator. A frightening number of people still run 640×480, even if they have 17-inch or 19-inch monitors. On the other side, there are more than a few people running 1600×1200 or higher now that cheap big monitors are plentiful.

  • May 19, 2002 at 10:53 am
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    Using Galeon that comes with Mandrake 8.2 and it looks great. No great difference fromt the 6.0 that xp uses.

  • May 19, 2002 at 11:29 am
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    Site looks good in I.E 6, Mozilla 1 Release Candite, and K Melon. Though I think it looks the best in K Melon. The fonts look really nice.

  • May 19, 2002 at 11:59 am
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    It looks good under Konqueror 2.2.1, Netscape 6.2.3, Opera 6 and MS IE 5.01, all running on SuSE 7.3. (IE’s running using Codeweavers’s CrossOver Office.) NS 4.78 doesn’t render the CSS, so it looks pretty bad using that.

  • May 19, 2002 at 3:12 pm
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    I am viewing the page through Konqueror 3.0.0-2 (using KDE 3.0.0) and everything looks fine to me. I actually like your new site better than the old one, even though I never had anything against the old one. I haven’t played around with fonts or tried to “break” your page in any way. If you need that done then let me know. I can also send screen shots.

    Dave T.

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