Internet Exploder 7 beta

[doctorknobs]

I was reading an article on another church forum late last night, and because of it I wound up installing Internet Explorer 7 beta; I then checked out my church website to see what if any differences there would be...

Well, ALL of the articles (news items) text got center justified due to it!!! My current layout has that text left justified (in IE6, FF, and NN). And there were a couple of other issues too. Thank goodness for xp's system restore! I'd have given up webmastering (webmashing in my case) if I'd been stuck using this beta version from here on out.

So, if that's how IE7 is going to read a site, I guess I'll have to get busy figuring out what changes are necessary in order for my pages to look like as they do now in IE6.

Oh, and the new interface for IE looks very similar to Mozilla's FireFox and Netscape Navigator...how original.

[JackWolfgang]

I was reading an article on another church forum late last night, and because of it I wound up installing Internet Explorer 7 beta; I then checked out my church website to see what if any differences there would be...

Well, ALL of the articles (news items) text got center justified due to it!!! My current layout has that text left justified (in IE6, FF, and NN). And there were a couple of other issues too. Thank goodness for xp's system restore! I'd have given up webmastering (webmashing in my case) if I'd been stuck using this beta version from here on out.

So, if that's how IE7 is going to read a site, I guess I'll have to get busy figuring out what changes are necessary in order for my pages to look like as they do now in IE6.

Oh, and the new interface for IE looks very similar to Mozilla's FireFox and Netscape Navigator...how original.


I saw that on the web somewhere today (Slashdot?), and I wanted to download it and try it in a Virtual Machine at work. I also wanted to download and try Windows Vista, but alas, too much work to do!

[ckvkkeek]

Yeah I have system restore turned off.... and am stuck with an ugly browser. Luckily I don't use IE at all. So I can wait for the final version.

What is your site? I'd like to look at it and see if I can see why it is centered.

[flutem3]

Hi, Vince,

Thanks for the heads-up on the new IE. If that would have happened to me, I doubt that I would have realised that was the problem when I looked at the church website. And I would have been bent all out of shape. :D Believe me!!

I am getting bent out of shape try to do a simple thing on the Gimp. I have been working on and off for a month. I know I am going to feel like kicking myself when I get it...and I will get it, even if I am 104 when I do.

Thanks again.

Carol

[doctorknobs]

ckvkkeek,

Hopefully the final version of IE7 will correct the problem I encountered. I'm simply not experienced enough to figure it out on my own (not quickly anyhow). Due to some self-inflicted problems in the past I've made it a habit to keep the restore option turned on for both of my machines. Sorry to hear you're stuck with that ugly browser!

My church site is www.gsumcindy.org (http://www.gsumcindy.org/), and while it's currently functional for the most part I'm hoping to create a custom template for our own unique look. For now I'm simply trying to get it updated with current information and a few extra features. We're using Mambo CMS, and that's primarily because the pastor's son revamped the site with it about 18 months ago, upgrading us from a purely html site. It was a bit of a struggle initially, learning how mambo operated, but after working with it for the past couple of months I wouldn't want to go back to the old way.

I wound up forming a committee of sorts, 3 others and myself, to assist with the overall design/content/structure of the site. At our 1st meeting a few weeks I had them look at several websites to demonstrate the numerous different formats and designs that were possible; your site, Harvest Pointe, was at the top of that list. I doubt our site will ever resemble it in any way, but I thought it was a very good example of what could be done.

If you wind up figuring out why the text on our site went from left to center justified with IE7, I'll be forever grateful; since most everything presently works well enough in IE, FF, and NN I'm not inclined to investigate it myself...yet.

Carol,

I don't know that IE7 would have that same effect on your site, but at least you've been warned about the potential! If you're using Windows XP, I would highly recommend turning on the system restore function; it's saved me many times.

Hopefully you'll figure out that Gimp issue long before you reach 100! I've never used it, so I can't offer any assistance. But, if I find some free time I might download it and see what I can figure out (just to satisfy my own curiosity).

[ckvkkeek]

Try changing your DOCTYPE to this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

See if that helps... I am just guessing though :-)

However I have seen DOCTYPE's cause issues like this.

I actually found out how to unistall IE 7. Which is good, but I actually unistalled it to install beta 2. Which does the same thing to your site.

I wasn't to worried about it because I am a FireFox user.

ck

[xhtml]

Doctorknobs;

One thing you should be aware of it that Internet Explorer - all versions including the forthcoming IE 7 - do not recognize XHTML at all. Your site looks just fine in Firefox and Opera. IE simlpy treats XHTML as invalid HTML and goes on its merry way.

Also you should remove the <?xml version=...> header at the top of your pages as IE will chock on this and not handle CSS and some other functions correctly (throws IE into quirks mode). Anything that appears on the page before the <!DOCTYPE..> will mess up IE if the document is supposed to be XHTML.

Best to use HTML 4.01 Strict and forget the XHTML stuff. XHMTL should be served as application/html+xml and not text/html - a server side issue.

Hope this helps
Regards
Ed

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Why does microsoft suck Oh let me count the ways. As Ed said IE7 will make no improvements to the inclusion of XHTML. So that leaves me will this question;
Does anyone put firefox download links on their church site?

I have been thinking about doing it but haven't acted yet.

[xhtml]

Kyle;

I usually put the little 80x15 "Get Firefox" logo with the link to http://www.mozilla.com/ on all the web sites I work on - in an effort to get more users to switch to that browser. It does work sometimes, as I've had at least 5 people email me in the past year and tell me they switched to Firefox because of that little logo.

There is also something else you can do - what I like to call the IE Surprise - and that is to exploit one of IE's own private features - the IE conditional comment - to hide a message somewhere on the home page, recommending that the user get Firefox or some other browser. Here's an example:

<!-->
<p>You appear to be using Internet Explorer - a web browser that does not fully comply with Web Standards - You should consider getting a more standards compliant web browser such as <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/" title="Get FireFox!">Firefox</a> to fully experience the Internet.</p>
<![endif]-->

Only IE versions 5.0 and greater will display the paragraph shown above. All other browsers treat the IE conditional comments <!--[if IE]> and <![endif]--> as regular comments. Sneaky huh?

As for putting the Firefox logo/link on a church site - my only experience with that was I wound up having to remove it because the Minister said it was "...advertising a product...". I suppose you could consider it advertising, but I think of it as a link to give visitors to the site a better experience on the Internet. Even after I explained why a user would and should switch browsers, he stuck to his guns and off it came. So I guess it would be up to whomever is in control of the web site content or approves the final design.

We all know that the only reason that IE has the current browser market share they enjoy so much, is because it comes preinstalled on just about every computer you buy. Most users - especially those new to using computers and the Internet - don't know there are better browsers available and just use what comes installed on the computer. I'm all for spreading the word that better browsers are available.

The other day, I got my nerve up and tried the IE 7 Beta 2. All I can say is thank you Lord for system restore! MS still has a long (very long) way to go before IE 7 will be ready for prime-time! The restyled tool bars leave a lot to be desired and it just doesn't compare to Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. If you want to stick with IE and want tabbed browsing and better control over pop-ups and so forth, there are IE addon's that do the job very nicely and much better than IE 7 will.

Of course the reason I tried it out was to see how CSS styled web sites look in the [I]"new and improved Internet Exploder" - man, oh, man - IE is still going to break a lot of great looking web sites, unless they fix ALL the CSS/HTML bugs!

The really sad part is that once they finialize IE 7, it will still be a year or more behind the better browsers, but most people will just automatically upgrade! I'm so tired of incorporating CSS features into web sites, only to discover that they won't work in IE, then have to limit my designs to things that will work in IE, just to try and make the site look the same in all the modern browsers.

Didn't mean to ramble so much (I tend to do that [blush]), but it is so disappointing when the most widely used browser is the worse one! I say if you can do it, spread the word!

[flutem3]

Ed wrote:

"I usually put the little 80x15 "Get Firefox" logo with the link to http://www.mozilla.com/ (http://www.mozilla.com/) on all the web sites I work on - in an effort to get more users to switch to that browser. It does work sometimes, as I've had at least 5 people email me in the past year and tell me they switched to Firefox because of that little logo."

Hi, Ed,

I must be really dense. I have Firefox downloaded and cannot see what makes it better than IE 6. I truly do not have any idea what people see as so much better. I was discussing this with another internet friend who doesn't understand either.

Could you or somebody please tell those of us who don't understand what it is that those of you who do understand think is better? I have heard the same thing over and over, but I have no idea what the difference is that makes Firefox "better"...and evidently for some people it is a lot better. I want it to be better for me as well!

Thanks!!

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Ed,

Thanks for the comment. that's sort of why I haven't done anything yet, I haven't been able to convince myself that it's not advertisement, but is advertising something that is free and beneficial to your congregation a bad thing? I'll have to think about that one. Thanks for the IE trick I had forgotten about that completely.

Carol,

Firefox is thought by most people who use it to be better than IE for a multitude of reasons, but here are the top three that where sold to we when I switched over;
1.) Safer- THe better written program has less wholes for hackers to exploit and because it has a small market share less hackers spend time trying to break it.
2.) Standard compliant- Meets W3C standards much better than IE ( something that is a must for developers)
3.) More efficient- The program itself runs smoother and the features it provides i.e. tabbed browsing allow for much faster work on your part.
4.) Easier to customize and extend- With it's open source background developers are more willing to give their hard worked tweaks awa for free as Mozilla extensions then in a browser than IE.

These are just some of the reasons. I bet some of the more senior guys around here could add some better ones.

kyle

[flutem3]

You know what? I think the reason I don't understand too well is my lack of knowledge about computers in general. I understand the term, standards-compliant, because of standards in other fields. However, I have no idea what standards are for anything that has to do with a computer. Where do I find this kind of information...and do I need it for what I do?

I feel like a newbie for certain when you guys discuss some of this stuff. However, I enjoy reading it because I know I am learning...I may not know exactly what I am learning, however. What I have found is that eventually I will run into something that has been discussed on here. If I don't understand it, at least it will be familiar to me which is helpful.

Thanks for your continued help.

Carol

[xhtml]

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[xhtml]

However, I have no idea what standards are for anything that has to do with a computer. Where do I find this kind of information
Carol - check out this page (http://www.fewpb.net/~evasser/) and you can read about what the standards for web sites are...
...and do I need it for what I do?
If you're doing web sites the answer is a definite YES :)

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Carol,

the standards for all web languages are created and maintained by the World Wide Web Consrtium (http://www.w3.org/). Their site is very large so it might take a while to find things.

[xhtml]

Carol;

I'll narrow down some of the W3C specs for you to review:

Here is the list of valid DOCTYPE (http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html)'s that are required for your web pages

Here is the Global Structure of an HTML Document (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html)

Here is the Index of HTML 4 Elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html)

Here is the CSS Full Property Table (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/propidx.html)

This link will help you understand how to read the DOCTYPE (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.3) definitions

Some of this is pretty technical stuff but you can learn what elements are in the spec and their attributes.

If you wish, I can give you a list of some really good web sites that show you the proper way to markup an (X)HTML document.

Hope this helps and doesn't confuse you...