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Why would you ever be hired with that attitude? The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.

While I agree with you that one has to make pages work with IE; allow me to say that you are talking out of your ass.

My sites always have the proper DOCTYPE, they have to in order to validate (I validate all pages prior to posting). Sometimes _having_ a doctype makes IE show new bugs.

Frankly, unless you're building some fancy site with the absolute latest CSS and Javascript features, IE will render your page *just fine*.

Your sites are obviously _very_ basic with minimal design. The moment you pass into medium complexity you start running into problems. I don't use any Javascript.

Yet, why exactly do you need to be using 32-bit images on your page? It's quite easy (and beneficial for download speeds) to get by with 8-bit images.

We need 32 bit images in order to have variable alpha. If you don't have variable alpha, then you can't have any image without including the background it's going to be over.

Including the background in your image completely negates the advantage of declaring colors in the CSS. Normally I could change the background of my site by changing one line, now I have to change all images as well.

There's other reasons why you might want a variable alpha, say to have transparent graphics or windows (the navigation on the left). Which are not heavy as the image is just 2 x 2 pixels and weighs in at a hundred bytes or so. In fact there are tons of creative uses that people haven't even thought of.

and tell me why they play such an integral part of your development process that you cannot find a way around them.

You're missing the point entirely. The idea is to allow the designer do her thing (so I can get a beautiful unique website) and then translate that to CSS, compromising wherever needed; not just half-assedly add some design to a text document.

However, when one tries to do anything remotely interesting, Explorer completely dies on you.

The best solution I found so far is using IE conditionals and serving IE a different and sometimes strange CSS file. In the end I usually figure it out reasonably, but it takes ridiculous amounts of effort and the site is never as good as it's Safari/ Mozilla /Opera counterpart.

If you want an example you can look at my current site (I linked it above too), I've only starting the IE fixing, you can see the ugly IE file with filters: and other weird junk so that PNGs show up with alpha: here. So far it's taking a serious effort and even when finished won't look as well anyway. Look at it under both IE and then Firefox.

CSS bugs for various versions of IE (along with workarounds).

Writing valid code is not good enough.

A few folks have a contrary opinion on the use of Verdana and fixed font sizes when applied to the web:

• Why you should avoid the Verdana font
• The Wrong Size Fonts Or why not to over-ride the reader?s font size
• Another way to think about font-size control

A popular article on the differences in designing for printed media and the web at Web Pages aren't Printed on Paper. Check out the global comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets for further resources.

Two links of relevance:

First, note this list of CSS bugs. Note that a number of valid markups CRASH NS4. That's why NS4 is a thorn in the side of standards compliance... otherwise valid code can flat-out cause the browser to tank. Not good. Just as a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a little CSS compliance is a train wreck. In response to one of the above posts, I'd much rather code for Lynx than NS4. And I do code for IE, opera, Netscape 6, Mozilla...

But there are workarounds, some painful, some quite painless. Go here for an FAQ on dealing with NS4.

I totally disagree with the Coward and his attitude (that's nice, calling someone a moron because you don't agree with him). Many clients say "I want these features and I don't give a #@$% about Netscape 4.08 since it's gonna cost me more to have you develop it. I'm happy to satisfy 9?% of my possible audience."

Others say "I want it to do everything (DHTML, CSS, ActiveX, Flash, integrated Authorization and Authentication, SSL etc.) with every browser" until we tell them the price of the development, and the potential bugginess....

It's easy enough to say "make it standards compliant", but the different browsers implement standards differently Take CSS, for example, and how about printing? Why do you think there are so many pages devoted to cross browser functionality? BECAUSE IT'S HARD AND TAKES TIME. TIME MEANS IT COSTS THE CLIENT.

Not every client has the $ resources of an Amazon or an Ebay. Do you work for real live clients?

No, this is why CSS sucks in Netscape.

Web site design needs a lot of different things, Information architecture & usability, HTML & XHTML, CSS & implementation bugs, search engine ideas and keyword research, Web server techniques & content management, deeziner discussion & tech discussion, good practices & sucky practices.

I could go on. My point is that you can either be a half-hearted jack-of-all-trades, or do the Web a favour and pick something, learn to understand it and collaborate with people who have complimentary skills.

Of course a Web site is no use if no one visits it. A link from the /. home page is a good start.

Calum

Oh, like stylesheets. Or ... stylesheets. In fact, a search for "hate netscape" in Google turns up 159,000 entries. Go read some of them.

I really hope that Mozilla will be a web browser panacea someday. Until then, I'll be sticking with IE... on my Solaris box, even. ;)

> The Opera browser is 100% W3C
The opera browser isn't 100% W3C compliant!
Some examples: http://css.nu/pointers/bugs.html#Opera3 5
http://www.people.fas .ha rvard.edu/~dbaron/css/test/results


> Mozilla/NS 6.0
Mozilla IS NOT Netscape!!!
Please read this http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/in dex .php

Best regards

Uriel

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