God damn my page looks like CRAP under Netscape...

[GoldenBear]

Boy, if you have access to both browsers you should check it out. http://www.gamingdreams.com

What the hell is wrong with Netscape?!? Anyone have ANY idea how I would go about fixing it?

 

[Duckers]

That's probably because you are using iframes and Netscape does not support them.

 

[GoldenBear]

Hmm, what are iframes? I highly doubt I use them as I don't have any frames at all...

 

[Duckers]

I found this in the source code of your web page:

<IFRAME SRC=&quot;http://ad-adex3.flycast.com/server/iframe/GamingDreams/Main/123&quot; scrolling=&quot;no&quot; marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 WIDTH=468 HEIGHT=60>
<A target=&quot;_top&quot; HREF=&quot;http://ad-adex3.flycast.com/server/click/GamingDreams/Main/123&quot;><IMG BORDER=0 WIDTH=468 HEIGHT=60 SRC=&quot;http://ad-adex3.flycast.com/server/img/GamingDreams/Main/123&quot;></A>
</IFRAME>

 

[UG]

It's not Netscape's fault, it's your's for not programming for us Netscape users.

Oh, and it's Unicorns.

Your fault, again.

 

[GoldenBear]

Hmm, that's the ad code they gave me, I can't really modify that...

 

[GoldenBear]

Actually I just took that out, same result..

 

[NFS4]

Works fine with IE 5.5

 

[atom]

404 Not Found

The URL requested was: /FlycastUniversal/Version3.6/index.js
The operating system reports &quot;The system cannot find the path specified.&quot; (3).

---------------------------------------------------------------


Thats what I get when I try to read it from Netscape.

 

[convex]

netscape is such a pain in the ass...for instance verifiedtraders.cjb.net looks good in ie, netscape just molests it

 

[Harvey]

Since I'm one of many who don't use IE for anything but updating Windows, I guess you're going to have to learn how to write for both browsers. Many page layout programs have viewers to allow you to see the results in both.

 

[Huma]

Maybe it's the 92 HTML errors reported by netmechanic. Everyone loves blaming netscape, but I prefer to blame bad code.

 

[GL]

Huma might be on to something. I used to curse Netscape too for some rendering oddities. Turned out I'd forgotten to do a closing tag for something like a font or table cell and it through everything off. Double, triple and quadruple check your HTML. Netscape is like a really picky...it won't let any mistakes slide.

-GL

 

[reitz]

But if IE can handle a few errors, and Netscape can't, doesn't that make IE a superior browser, at least in one respect?

 

[M]

<< But if IE can handle a few errors, and Netscape can't, doesn't that make IE a superior browser, at least in one respect? >>


Nope, just means it breeds bad coders (somewhat like FrontPage does).

 

[Huma]

But if IE can handle a few errors, and Netscape can't, doesn't that make IE a superior browser, at least in one respect?

what M said. It makes for sloppy work that renders differently on different browsers/platforms. Almost all professional (and I mean seriously professional) web design firms (with real big clients professional) will have extremely clean code.

Using netscape and coding for it for two years is one of the main reasons I'm being considered for a certain job right now.

 

[reitz]

True, I suppose I didn't think of it from that angle.

 

[GoldenBear]

&quot;Nope, just means it breeds bad coders (somewhat like FrontPage does).&quot;

What? That smile must indicate you're not serious right? Because picky browsers will make for WAY more frustations and broken walls than good coders (i.e. ME). Even if you want nice code (for whatever reason, it's not like anyone will judge Anandtech for his source CODING), that's defintely no reason NOT to use IE. With proper coding BOTH browsers will display the page correctly, but in IE's case, it should appeal to both populations. It may surprise some people out there but content IMO, is considerably more important than page code...

&quot;Almost all professional (and I mean seriously professional) web design firms (with real big clients professional) will have extremely clean code.&quot;

Okay...so for the other 99.97% of users that like to design a page as simple (i.e. ME) and as easily as possible, will prefer IE. A plus, another thing that pisses me off about Netscape is the lack of CSS styles, and the inability to make background rollover changes...I mean, people who blame MS or AOL about Netscape's downfall can really only blame one company, Netscape. If Netscape was the superior browser it would succeed, but instead, the world uses IE.

 

[denali]

GoldenBear, you can have the best content on the net but if someone cannot read that content because of your poor coding then the content is worthless. Currently I cannot even vieew your site with Netscape.
I would suggest taking a look at a few of these sites.

http://validator.w3.org/ Check your code against the standards.
http://www.cast.org/bobby/ Check accessibility to people with disabilities.
http://developer.webtv.net/ Check your site for WebTV use.
http://www.webstandards.org Reasons for standards compliance in browsers.

Yes making you site work well with all browsers will take some effort but I think that it's worth it. If you have access to both a MAC and a PC with IE 5.5 on both I could create a page that you look great on the MAC but terrible on the PC. And this is with the same browser version from the same company only difference is the hardware and the fact that the MAC version complies to the standards and the PC version does not!

 

[atom]

No offense GoldenBear, but putting it through various validators, you have a lot of errors on your site. And I mean a lot, about one every 10 lines. I didn't look through all of them, but I'm surprised your site works in IE.

 

[GoldenBear]

So are there some types of debugging programs out there for this type of stuff?

 

[RSI]

GB,

Yes, the best tool is to manually go through the code and fix it all. Not that hard actually.

 

[RSI]

Oh yeah and can you Netscape users check out www.unrealpc.com and tell me how it turns out? Just wondering how it looks in netscape (I use IE myself).

 

[Huma]

<< Okay...so for the other 99.97% of users that like to design a page as simple (i.e. ME) and as easily as possible, will prefer IE>>

GB, good code does not have to be complicated at all. If you check my site, and even run it through a validator, it has 0 html errors, and 0 compatibility issues (as reported by netmechanic) and it's amazingly light in code weight.

If you check my site, I have almost the same amount of text on screen as you, but my html file is 11kb compared to your 24kb. I hand code everything, because I can reduce layout overhead by as much as 50% compared to frontpage, and get it to display in any browser almost identically (except for CSS rollovers in netscape). And I do it fast.

I test all my sites in netscape, because it keeps my code clean and will let me know when I've missed tags or screwed up my code. If you want a wide audience, make your code work.

Part of the reason I work in flash now is that it avoids cross browser compat issues though, but it's not the greatest (actually, retardedly bad) choice for news sites with lots of text.

 

[M]

GoldenBear, I was being serious, however my point was that to be a good coder, you need to learn discipline. The advantage of netscape over IE here is that it teaches it. Very well. Of course, this statement assumes that you are hand-coding a site, those using WYSIWYG editors need not apply.

I'd also add, that, yes, netscape is far from faultless, I'd love it to be fully standards compliant, but it's not. This, I feel, does not take away from the fact that it does teach coding discipline.