Even if you don't use Microsoft's Internet Exploder as your main browser you still should test each new design thoroughly. Turns out that it handles <base href=...> different than any other browser I have access to. If the address declared as your base is valid, all's well. If it's not, it's not. But whereas the majority of browsers handle such a slip up gracefully, the browser used by the majority of people doesn't.
Microsoft's Internet Exploder is unable to render PNG graphics with transparent backgrounds correctly. There are work-arounds for this, requiring conditional comments, the execution of a script in the browser, plus use of non standard CSS extensions. This often works, but can lead to extended page rendering times.
Alternative you can use pngcrush to set a property of the PNG file to force MSIE to render the image background in the colour of your choice. At the same time pngcrush can be used to prevent browsers from adjusting Gamma values if an image and the HTML page use identical colour values, which normally should be displayed so that both have identical appearance. Adjusting gamma for one obviously leads to visible differences designers often struggle with.
If you want to fix the background colour in a PNG image, use the command
pngcrush -rem gAMA -rem cHRM -rem iCCP -rem sRGB -bkgd $1 $2 $3 infile outfile
where $1, $2 and $3 are the [decimal] colour codes to be used by IE instead of the default grey it normally uses. In- and outfile are the names of the input and output images. If you don't need to adjust the colour values and only want to prevent Gamma correction omit the bold part of the command line.
After having worked on some very straightforward HTML & CSS, which renders identical in all browsers except those made by Microsoft, I've come to the conclusion that not every time one of Microsoft's products deviates from accepted standards, evil intent is the cause. I'm sure not even Microsoft with all its resources is able to anticipate the order of list items and the way random sentence length influences the wrapping of code. If it's not evil, it can only be mind numbing stupidity.
A tool for those engaged in website construction which doesn't involve Javascript, Ruby, Rails, Social, Pastel Colours or Rounded Corners. Instead it deals with something fundamental.
The Iphone, according to the WSJ, is the most frequently used mobile browsing device, having more market share than all other mobile phone browsers combined.
People are wising up:
Microsoft doesn't want to produce a standards-compliant browser. It doesn't want to produce a standards-compliant anything. It is only interested in furthering its monopoly by lock-in. I'm sure the IE7 team is under strict orders never ever ever to produce anything that comes close to being able to run nontrivial CSS, Javascript or anything else "out of the box". It wants developers to abandon competing browsers and push their customers to use IE. That was the strategy behind the mutilation of Java, the pushing of possibly the most ludicrously insecure plug in system every known in the computing world (better known as ActiveX), and that's its purpose in making sure that IE, no matter the iteration, doesn't play well with CSS.
And:
Personally, I put whoever's in charge of Microsoft's IE product development team on the same moral level as spammers. Much in the same way spammers end up wasting your time and gumming a fantastic common resource, Microsoft's product wastes the time of thousands of web devs and holds the web back.
Time to remind people that even for Windows there are perfectly normal Open Source and commercial browsers; there's no need to continue to use outdated, crippled and risky technology.
It appears most web designers seem not to believe they're the only one using their browser at full screen size. Smashing magazine elaborates, why content should be flexible so it can adapt to window rather than screen size. Those posting comments agree - with something - and then state the pixel widths they design to.
Richard Rutter explains in A List Apart how to use font-size and line-height consistently even when using multiple columns and font sizes across the major browsers.
© Copyright 1998 - 2008 Klaus Schallhorn.