View Full Version : Is applenova.com supposed to look ugly on windows?
solinari6
2005-03-30, 09:57
I surf applenova on my PC at work, with the latest IE. It just doesn't look right, though. Is this done on purpose to highlight the crappiness of IE/WinXP?
http://webpages.charter.net/solinari/applenova.jpg
No, that's not done intentionally. Internet Explorer for Windows just plain sucks. I'm actually withholding some really cool features for the site right now because, despite being standards compliant code, Internet Explorer just mangles it to bits.
Specifically, what you are seeing there is Internet Explorer failing to properly apply the alpha channel in PNG images. Also, it looks like it's barfing on the CSS for the secondary navigation bar.
If you use Windows, you should really be using Firefox. More and more sites are moving towards clean, advanced CSS designs and Firefox and Opera are the only browsers on Windows that can show them in their true glory as their designers intended. What makes us different from a lot of those sites is that we aren't investing countless hours implementing backwards hacks and removing features on special versions to get IE to play nicely.
The image inconsistencies you're seeing are because IE for Windows does not support alpha channels in PNG images. Most every other browser has supported this for over five years, but the IE team just never got around to it, among other issues. So to answer your question, yes, it's supposed to look like that on Windows. Did we purposely intend for it to look like that on Windows? No. Something around 5% of our page views come from IE on Windows, so instead of forcing ourselves to comply with less than 5% of our viewers, we decided to use PNGs with alpha channels to enhance the visual experience for the 95%.
You should seriously consider upgrading to Firefox for your machine at work.
solinari6
2005-03-30, 10:42
You should seriously consider upgrading to Firefox for your machine at work.
I would, but I'm not allowed to install new software at work. :(
It's not a big deal, i was just curius about it...
Something around 5% of our page views come from IE on Windows, so instead of forcing ourselves to comply with less than 5% of our viewers, we decided to use PNGs with alpha channels to enhance the visual experience for the 95%.
haven't I heard a justification of that nature somewhere else before....? And doesn't it normally get shot down in flames here....
Just playing Devils Advocate...
PNG w/ alpha channels is an open standard, anyone can implement it if they care to.
Targeting the open standards is always preferable to writing to closed ones. When the open standard has >50% share of visitors, it's a no-brainer.
Not the same as targeting 95% with closed products that force the other 5% to spend money just to comply.
I'm not allowed to install new software at work.Do you really mean not allowed to, or do you mean not able to?
If you can, install Firefox.
I'm not allowed to install software on my work Win XP machine, but I still have the capability. So I use IE for the company intranet and Firefox for the internet. It seems to work OK, even though we have a corporate firewall that prevents us viewing any https page, or any page containing swearwords. We can only download files that end with .doc .xls .ppt and .pdf. All outgoing emails are scanned for swearwords and certain other words like 'Secret' for example. There is even a rumour that the firewall scans for large areas of pink skin in JPEGs...
You could use a JS to make the pngs render right. It's a tad slow but works better then nothing at all
SonOfSylvanus
2005-03-30, 16:43
Do you really mean not allowed to, or do you mean not able to?
If you can, install Firefox.
I'm not allowed to install software on my work Win XP machine, but I still have the capability. So I use IE for the company intranet and Firefox for the internet. It seems to work OK, even though we have a corporate firewall that prevents us viewing any https page, or any page containing swearwords. We can only download files that end with .doc .xls .ppt and .pdf. All outgoing emails are scanned for swearwords and certain other words like 'Secret' for example. There is even a rumour that the firewall scans for large areas of pink skin in JPEGs...
Holy Crap!
:eek:
You could always do the "install firefox on a USB memory stick" option… that might be just a bit too much effort. ;)
There is even a rumour that the firewall scans for large areas of pink skin in JPEGs...
Whohoo! Black and latina porn it is then...
onlyafterdark
2005-03-30, 17:36
Hey Brad, what are these new features that you are holding back due to IE?
curiousuburb
2005-03-30, 17:41
Thread, meet thread (http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=5340). You have so much in common.
Really, you two should hook up.
I thought about that, but I think they're different enough. This one concerns rendering issues while the other is talking about the FAQs.
curiousuburb
2005-03-30, 18:13
I guess this seems a sample case that answers the "Why IE-only FAQ" question in the other.
Hey Brad, what are these new features that you are holding back due to IE?
For one, scrollable posts so people who post disgustingly huge images won't hose the page's formatting.
Didn't this forum have some sort of adaptive formatting where large images would only screw up one post, not the entire thread? That was neat. Still, no biggie for me at 1600x1200. :p
Didn't this forum have some sort of adaptive formatting where large images would only screw up one post, not the entire thread?
Yeah, but LoCash hosed that functionality when he wrapped everything in a giant table.
*cough*
Yeah, and didn't you re-write it without the tables but haven't pushed those changes yet?
*cough*
I wrote it in tables so I could have the drop shadow surrounding the entire content area. It's a visual effect important enough to sacrifice the functionality of only a single post widening. Besides, when a single post widened it broke the continuity of the layout by bleeding to the sides.
The better solution is the scrolling feature brad came up with, or if he'd just push the Table to DIV changes.
*cough, cough* skipper ;)
Wrapping it in a table or a div doesn't matter. They're both containers that will stretch with the contents. So, in either case, a large post is still going to hose the layout the exact same way.
Regarding the scrolling posts, though, maybe I should go ahead and implement it and stick a big flashing banner at the top of the page for IE users warning them how badly they browser sucks and screws up out pages. :)
curiousuburb
2005-03-31, 12:21
As opposed to the subliminal confirmation (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795) they may get now from Win2K. ;)
onlyafterdark
2005-03-31, 13:36
My vote is do it. I think its weird to hold out improvements to the site because of a minority of users who use IE as their browser. Like you said, just put a post at the top of the page saying IE sucks and that it wont work on the site very well.
There is a hack for phpbb i know (i am sure it would work for vb) that allows one to crunch the width of oversized images. That kind of discourages people from having images that are too in posts
Gargoyle
2005-03-31, 14:39
Depends how its done. I have a feeling that the width of an image is only available to Javascript if it was supplied in the IMG tag. If you do it server side by feeding the image through a php script and gd library you could do anything you want with it at the expense of a chunk of CPU usage.
I vote for Brads CSS trickery. I have seen it working on the dev server and it works well (on the browsers that support it).
curiousuburb
2005-03-31, 15:46
Scaling support in the IMG tags would be nice, though. Or a thumbnailer script.
autodata
2005-03-31, 21:21
Regarding the scrolling posts, though, maybe I should go ahead and implement it and stick a big flashing banner at the top of the page for IE users warning them how badly they browser sucks and screws up out pages. :)
:lol: I've strongly considered doing the same thing on my main site, but it still gets too much ie traffic.
Regarding the scrolling posts, though, maybe I should go ahead and implement it and stick a big flashing banner at the top of the page for IE users warning them how badly they browser sucks and screws up out pages. :)
Yeah, and can you make it so only IE users can see it? BTW 100th post! :D
Yes, we can. :)
I actually (edit: used to, not any more) do something similar on my personal web site. When a user first visits, it checks the browser's user agent and cookies. If it's an IE user, the person immediately sees a warning page with a link that will redirect to the URL that he/she originally requested. Upon clicking that link, a cookie is set so he/she won't get the warning again for a week or so (I can't remember how long the cookie's expiration was).
For that matter, instead of writing it in PHP, we could block and redirect IE users from our .htaccess files, I believe.
But that would be evil, wouldn't it? :devil: ;)
No, evil would be detecting IE and hitting them with a couple dozen popups, popunders, and general insanity.
Now go do it, and you'll get that set behind me on the bus to Hell. :D
onlyafterdark
2005-03-31, 23:35
Man you guys are pure evil. :devil:
Someone finally noticed! Yay!
onlyafterdark
2005-04-01, 01:48
It takes a true loonie to see the deep-down craziness/evil in people. ;)
At home I use a Mac but for work I have to use a PC. We're not allowed to install any other browsers (on pain of death - fair enough I say. Corporate standards and all that).
So what that does mean is that I have to look at a cr@p version of Applenova: Each post is centre justified and only as wide as the text in the post, so you see a mishmash of alternating light grey/dark grey posts in the middle of the screen rather than a uniform width. Surely this is easy to correct for IE??
Second, okay - IE doesn't support alpha's on .png images. BUT (and don't be offended by this), they way you have used the banners in this forum eg the AppleNova logo could just as easily have been part of the image it's overlaid onto couldn't it? That way we'd all see the same thing.
I can certainly live with the problem but as mentioned elsewhere in this thread 5% is still 5% and if an important website catered purely for IE users even though Macs hit it we would all be complaining! Just an idea...
Please don't ban me, I'm just trying to provide a balanced view :o ;)
you guys say it like there is something wrong with evil :P
Because i am too lazy to edit i will make a new post, (give me a break i king lazy the 6th :P ) on my site we wanted to write an active X script that would explain all the problems with IE and active x, suggest they get FF, and open a new window with the firefox page.
InactionMan
2006-04-26, 08:55
BUMP!
The forum looks fantastic in the new IE7 beta 2. And it's actually a bit snappier than Firefox.
Oops, I mean M$ sucks.
Got some screenshots to share? I've been curious about specifically what bugs are fixed in IE7, but I've yet to see a good list.
Support for transparent PNGs probably makes the most difference in IE 7.
InactionMan
2006-04-26, 09:35
AppleNova main page (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/AN.png)
IE7 Thumbnail view (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/IE7tn.png)
The sadness of DaringFireball as viewed in IE7 (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/DF.png)
AppleNova main page (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/AN.png)
IE7 Thumbnail view (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/IE7tn.png)
The sadness of DaringFireball as viewed in IE7 (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/DF.png)
Close, Microsoft. Very close, but oops (daring fireball).
Yay, alpha channel support. Welcome to five years ago. :D
Oooh. Thanks for springing to action, InactionMan! :)
AppleNova main page (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/AN.png)
IE7 Thumbnail view (http://tehaldo.googlepages.com/IE7tn.png)
Damn IE. Fix some problems, but introduce others. Note the horizontal scroll bar. Grr. Sadly, I'm actually hoping that some of IE's CSS selectors are still broken so we developers can easily work around its faults. :(
It's nice to finally see alpha support on PNGs, though.
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