Internet explorer and Firefox problems

[nick]

Most of the people who are designing a site would have atleast came across this problem once in their lifetime.

Some tags and the attributes are showing and acting as totally different in both the browsers. Just somedays ago I had one <ul> tag which was showing perfectly in the firefox as I was developing my sites in firefox on my localhost. I have been through all this many times but still I am a human and I always forget compatibility and when in end I checked the site in internet explorer it was mess.

I was also on verge of losing a client in past due to this. I made a site for him and he was shouting he wanted it center aligned. I tested it on firefox and Internet explorer and it was showing in center. So I said it is in center. He said it isn't I checked and said it is. This went on and on for 4 days. He went to some other PC in his office and checked the site just like that. And he sent me the email that yes it is centered. Same evening he came back to his PC and said why am I moving it to left? As if I was just here changing his site from center to left and then back to center aligned.

Have you came across any problems like this? What are the best ways to overcome this compatibility issues.

 

[RCRiver]

I don't really do much design / html these days, just programming.

However, the designers I work with usually create the initial xhtml to work on firefox, which is standards compliant, and validate it on w3c.
Then they test on IE6/7, and Safari.

Before we even start a project, we make sure the client knows that we only guarantee the site will look correct on Firefox 2+, IE 6+, at a resolution of 1024x768 and above.

Sorry I guess this is not specific to your issue!

I guess the first thing to do is find out what browser version / OS / resolution your client has.

What you can do is put in hacks for specific browsers - either css hacks, or you can make a different css file for each browser and use php $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] to decide which one to show.

 

[nick]

Yes I try to use that also but the <ul> and <li> tags are creating this trouble.

For example one of my site : http://www.shoppersale.com

You can see that it behaves differently in both IE and Firefox. After setting up many checks and using php I was atleast able to achieve this much as for now.

Some libraries that have been used in the project are also not working same in both the browsers.

 

[RCRiver]

cool, looks fine to me in both IE and FF, but it doesnt validate!

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.shoppersale.com/

At the bottom, it looks like you have an unclosed div tag! :gasp:

 

[nick]

Got it. Will fix it right now. webmasters always have to worry about keeping their visitors happy all the time. and the search engines would also love the good code on the pages.

 

[i4u2]

Makes me think maybe the folks who develop firefox might create a plugin for firefox to allow web preview of both a ff and ie page at the same time in different tabs - would be handy to preview like that in the same browser..
i am firing off an email to them now.....

By the way, has anyone tried firefox portable edition? its cool, keeps all your personal stuff together in one directory instead of spraying it all over the registry.. is a nice usb stick program

 

[nick]

WOW that's good news. Will atleast save some load off the registry and well this registry catching programs can stay away from our personal data. I don't check much for this stuff lately as most of the time I just have to do work. In past there used to be lovely days when I was free and was always researching something nice and cool. Thanks for the suggestion.