Website issues with Internet Explorer 8

[Stuart Robinson]

One of the primary reasons for the release of IE8 was so that the Microsoft browser would be HTML compliant – this was not the case with IE7 and before. In many cases this has exposed coding errors on sites that appeared to render OK on IE7 (hence the IE8 compatibility switch back to IE7) but now appear broken in IE8.

As Gerret has mentioned – getting your web site code WC3 compliant first is the way forward.

Regarding browser stats try ~ http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Most corporates run IE, while most home users run FF.

Not only do you have to make sure that your renders correctly on each browser platform – you also have to consider different display sizes as well.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

1024 x 768 used to be the standard, but now you want to be aiming for 1280 x 1024 – this can leave a lot of “white space” ether side of your site if you are not careful.

 

[Darren Addy]

1024 x 768 used to be the standard, but now you want to be aiming for 1280 x 1024 – this can leave a lot of “white space” ether side of your site if you are not careful.

People can choose their own approaches, but I would respectfully disagree with this. The fact that I'm reading this page, over my morning coffee, on an old but serviceable laptop that has a maximum screen resolution of 1024 x 768 may have something to do with that but it also has an underlying false premise that higher resolution monitors = browser windows of the same width. The idea of higher resolution is often to have more windows/applications on screen at the same time - not to have a web page running "wall to wall". I have higher resolution 24" monitors on my desk at work, but I don't open my windows to the full width of my screen real estate and would resent it if people designed pages so that I would have to.

As a web developer, I personally favor designs that have a fixed 960 pixel wide multi-column "page" that floats centered on the screen, with background showing on either side. There are a number of flexible 960 grid systems out there (YAML, 960 Grid System, Fluid 960 Grid System, Yahoo UI Grids System or Blueprint CSS, for example) that provide a place to start. I'm very anti-reinventing-the-wheel and the grid systems give you a real head start over a blank page.

There are differences in the various ways that javascript rendering engines process code, but I'm not aware of any browser/engine-specific coding problems (hacks) that need to be done for any of the modern ones. I could be wrong. Also, Webkit is also used by Google's Chrome now (a highly optimized version is used in Chrome and Safari 4.0) called Squirrelfish Extreme, which beats the pants off other engines and in particular IE8 beta (getting back to the original subject) which is in distant last place. So much for Microsoft innovation.