Why does Internet Explorer SUCK so bad?!?
7.28.2005 – 9:22 am | by paul
So, it’s been a while since I’ve tested this site in Internet Explorer on a PC. This morning, thanks to a tip from a friend, I found out that I do have some anomalies.
The header and footer images are slightly off from the body of the page. That’s not too big of a deal, I could live with that. The real problems are in the sidebar. The image on the left is how the sidebar looks in IE6 under Windows XP Pro. The image on the right is how it looks under Safari 2.0 under Apple OS X 10.4. Notice a difference?
The weather icon is a png file with an alpha channel. I totally forgot that IE doesn’t really display png w/ alphas very well. Why, I do not know. You would think Microsoft would be able to do that by now, png’s aren’t exactly a new thing.
Next, the spacing between the menu items is obviously a little off in IE. Why, I don’t know that either. It seems to display properly in every other browser, on both platforms. I think it stems from Microsoft’s inability to conform to CSS standards. I know that’s why the dividing line between the weather information and the search field is missing in IE.
Lastly,Why oh why can’t Microsoft make IE anti-alias the text on a web page (make text look smoother)? IE on the Mac was able to do this… Maybe it’s a general shortcoming of the Windows Operating System?
All this leads me to one question… Why does Internet Explorer suck so bad?
If your on a PC, and you’re using Internet Explorer… please STOP! There are much better browsers out there, like Firefox, or Mozilla. They will improve your web-viewing experience. Better yet, just switch to a mac. All your friends are doing it.
Thanks for the heads up Todd.
UPDATE (a little while later): OK, I replaced the png files with jpegs, and I fixed the spacing between menu items. There’s still some spacing issues, but at least it’s presentable now. Damn IE!
July 29th, 2005 at 8:00 am
I’m not at all defending IE, it’s rubbish, but I can say that it is capable of displaying smooth text, well it’s not, XP is, and that’s where it needs to be turned on from, anyway, I use Ubuntu and when I DID use windows it certainly wasn’t with IE.
http://dyndns.asxtrader.com:82/images/firefox_emulatedie_compare.jpg
July 29th, 2005 at 8:13 am
Thanks for the info, Nicholas. For those of you who don’t know, Ubuntu is an Linux based operating system.
July 29th, 2005 at 10:04 am
I had this great idea: using grayscale transparencies in PNGs to build an entire site, so that the color scheme of the whole site could be altered dynamically, even randomly, by assigning BGCOLOR tags on the server side. This worked great in several browsers, and I thought it would be way-cool. Even IE 5.2 on Mac worked great. Alas, IE 6 and greater REMOVED this feature, and no longer renders PNGs correctly. NO transparencies, or even accurate color. Apparently MS refuses to embrace any standards that are developed or managed by anyone else! If it isn’t general knowlege, I recently learned that Macromedia developed and evangelizes the PNG format. Now, I’m a PS guy, but Freehand->FireWorks->DreamWeaver is really pretty smooth with PNGs. Unfortunately, FireWorks is quirky as hell, and PNGs aren’t an option in the real world if the evil empire says “no.” Dammit.
July 29th, 2005 at 10:36 am
Hey Jason, Yep, IE is always the browser that throws a wrench in my development time, whether it’s my sites or sites for my clients. I haven’t played with the beta release of IE7, but from what i hear it’s even worse. It breaks things that currently work under IE6.
July 29th, 2005 at 11:56 am
How do you get the search box to be a standard Apple style input box?
July 29th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
Hi Ron,
I started seeing that on various sites too, and wondered how to do it. Luckily, Melvin at AllForces.com was nice enough to give me the answer, so I’ll share it with you too.
Usually a search field will have an input type of “text”, simply change the input type to “search”, and it will show up like an Apple text field. Unfortunately, this only works in Safari. Other browsers still display it as a standard rectangular box.
I tried to post the actual code here that I use, but wordpress doesn’t seem to like having that much code in a comment. It was getting all hinky. If anyone wants it, email me and I’ll send it to you.