The relationship between coders and browsers

Back in January 2009 I did a somewhat new year suprise to you all and made the new 2009 theme, “Renovatio” for James’ Blog more of a suprise than anything as I’d been developing the theme and did not make any post about it, and one day *poof* new theme to James’ Blog and I got very good responces from people saying it was a good improvement and they really liked it, but the theme took longer than expected because of display issues in different browsers. Which brings me onto a somewhat article/rant about browsers.

As a website coder, you have to develop around browsers, it’s in the job description but the most annoying thing about developing around different browsers is the mis-match display issues you will most certainly occur. Now not to make this some massive Internet Explorer bash, but when I was developing the 2009 theme for James’ Blog I encounted alot of problems with Internet Explorer 7, at that time I had installed Internet Explorer 8 BETA 2 and was emulating Internet Explorer 7 for certain sites as to be fair Internet Explorer 8 was beta so sites weren’t going to be 100% but what was funny is that Internet Explorer 8 being BETA displayed the new theme just like Mozilla Firefox, but once I emulated Internet Explorer 7 the whole theme fell apart, and it sounds dramatic but really it actually did the first what I call test of the theme Internet Explorer 7 just did not want to display anything correctly, I really wish I’d screenshotted the horror because you would of took one look at it and almost thought that I’d actually set the divs to be out of place or have random margins in places. God it was horrible. I mean had two browser windows open one was Mozilla Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 even someone who wasn’t remotely interested in Website Development would of gone “Well you f**ked up here didn’t you”

It’s just like Internet Explorer 6, lucky I didn’t start getting interested into website development properly when everyone was coding around Internet Explorer 6, im sorry but that had invalidy written all over it. So website developers we’re coding around a browser which doesn’t conform to W3 standards and even better because many people started using Mozilla Firefox coders we’re then finding that they we’re still having to develop fixes (also known as hacks) for there websites to display correctly in Internet Explorer 6! Im just so glad I spared myself the heartache as Internet Explorer 7 was released and Windows Update was quick to roll it out on Windows machines around the world. I managed to get alot of the display issues sorted in Internet Explorer 7 by the time I had released the theme and made it live, but still to this day I have to use a conditional statement and create a seperate stylesheet for certain elements to work and display correctly in Internet Explorer 7, infact here is the seperate stylesheet with the elements that need to be defined differently:

html .links { height: 1%; z-index:3000; }   /* This is for the new navigation bar */

/*Style fixes*/

h2 { margin-top:10px; }

/*Layout div fixes*/

.content { float:left; margin:0px 0px 10px 10px; } /* God I hate the random float margin that IE produces */

.entry { padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom:10px; clear:left; } /* I hate the different padding issues that IE has as well */

.sidebar { margin:-10px 0 0 0; } /* REALLY HATE THE FLOAT MARGIN */

/*Comment Fix*/

#comments .vcard {float: left; width: 90px; margin-top: 5px; margin-left:-45px; }

See from that you may think this guy must hate Internet Explorer altogether. Well kind of but not with some massive vegenance, I mean yes it creates more work having to develop little fixes for internet explorer while other browsers can work with my original stylesheet but in the end when your a coder you have to be ready to do it. But im not like some people who denounces a browser because it uses more CPU than another, or takes 0.5 seconds to load than another im sorry but anyone that does that, you seriously do need to evaluate yourself. I have Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and a browser called Maxthon. But the golden rule is never develop a website in one browser you must develop it around all and make sure it displays correctly each time. Hence why I have all of these browsers, there are much simpler ways of testing a website in different browsers such as by going to a website called BrowserShots and getting a screenshot of your website in various browsers, means you don’t have to install all these browsers and just stick with your main one or maybe two, but me I like a first account hence why I have them installed!

I’ll tell you the worst scenario a coder can face, you go through testing your new website, layout theme or change in browsers and you get to the final last browser and it just so happens that will be the problem browser, so you we’re thinking one more test and im home free! Not anymore, back to the coder drawing board for you! But you do get something out of it though, knowledge to use for the future incase you encounter a mis match display on different browsers and with many people writing about hacks and fixes for different browsers your sure to be able to solve it, because in the end. Website Development and community go hand in hand!