Another Gripe about Internet Explorer 7 & 8

[leftofce]

I would like to add my voice to the many before me who have complained about the inadequacies of the Internet Explorer web browser. As many of you may have noticed, left of centre migrated to a CSS based document type about a year ago. While we are generally happy with our design improvements as viewed in Firefox and Safari, we couldn't be more pissed off about the appearance in Internet Explorer. As a simple google search on IE CSS Fixes will demonstrate, IE has a host of problems associated with reading CSS, including doubling the float width, inheriting margins and expanding boxes...etc. Some of the main problems and IE specific fixes are laid out on the following sites: Position is Everything, WipeOut44, and, of course, Wikipedia.

What is interesting is that IE is clearly an inferior web browser; and yet it remains among the most popular browsers in the world. According to W3, versions of IE make up the most used browser, with Firefox gaining fast, and Safari a distant third.




In fact, even those who are responsible for it recognize its inadequacies (see the IE Weblog). Typically when products are faulty, the market responds by avoiding the products. In this case, however, the market has chosen to accept the faulty product (undoubtedly forced down the public's throat by Microsoft), thereby placing the onus on webmasters to create IE hacks to circumvent the problems caused by IE. The market is actually working against technology. It is forcing webmasters to write hacks just to account for a malfunctioning browser.

I ask that all internet users boycott Internet Explorer until it fully complies with the modest web standards set forth by Acid 2. Safari, Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, and other major web browsers have passed Acid 2 (and they are all free, by the way). The only major browser that does not yet pass the test is Internet Explorer. The burden for change should be on the developer of the browser, not on webmasters who have written good code.

For posterity, let's compare a few different views of our index page.

This is how the CSS based index page is read in IE (without any hacks for the IE browser) (fuck ugly):



This is how this same index page is read in IE (WITH some hacks for the IE browser provided by our friend at Elevated Works) (better):



And this is how our index page looks in Firefox, Safari, and all other browsers that have passed Acid 2 (finally beautiful):



So if left of centre doesn't look as good as you think it should, for Nessuno's sake, please join the 21st century and switch your browser...

[leftofce]

My web design frustration has doubled this week with the finding that Internet Explorer does not properly display PNG image files. In fact, on IE7 the PNG image files are not even visible. I tried a number of recommended fixes for this issue to no avail.

This is what our index page looks like in the Firefox, Safari and all ACID2 passable browsers (see above). Notice the icon images beneath Left of Centre is Omnipresent:



Below is what our index page looks like in the IE browser. Notice that the images from above are now missing:



Per the recommendation of LibPNG, I tried to re-register IE's internal PNG support:

Q: Internet Explorer doesn't display PNG images even though your web page claims it supports PNG. What's up with that? A: This appears to be a widespread but not universal problem (Greg was never able to reproduce it) that most often affects Windows versions but can also occur on Mac OS. It may actually have more than one cause.

For Windows, by far the simplest approach is to use regsvr32 to re-register IE's internal PNG support, as passed along by Michael Wexler (possibly based on a posting by ARodriguez on 16 June 2001): I couldn't see .png files in IE 5.5 even with SP1 installed on Windows ME. Then, thanks to Usenet (through Google), I found the magic step:

Code: Select all

Start -> Run... -> regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\pngfilt.dll (and click OK)

This re-registers the primary png viewer for IE. Why did I have to do this? Got me. Gotta love Windows. Anyway, 10 seconds later, I could view entire test suites. Wonderful and easy solution.

Unfortunately, this fix did not work for my IE browser. So I figured I would just switch to jpg images, and wahla, problem solved. Still, IE can suck it...