FireFox woes

[fastedge]

I recently downloaded FireFox and checked out my sites with it. Whoa, they need help. However, it seems that the fixes for one create unwanted results in the other (IE). While I want FireFox users to be able to use my site, I can't abandon IE. My site is almost completely laid out using CSS. Any ideas?

[jpadot]

Fastedge,
I viewed http://www.bigfive.com/ and noticed exactly what you were talking about. I believe that you are using divs, but not positioning them absolute. Try using the float attribute to float left and right the left and right columns. You will not get the behaviors perfect, but it should be a fix. Also, the left and right floats MUST appear in the markup before the center column. IE doesn't care about the order of the markup. I'm not sure how to solve the background issue. I'll have to play with that a little bit. I hope this helps.

[speed]

Sticking with http://www.bigfive.com

Step 1 is to go to http://validator.w3.org and get the page to validate, that includes adding a DOCTYPE to it.

There are only 28 errors, but they will get in the way of fixing the page, especially the </p> without the opening



For the DOCTYPE I'd use one of the Strict ones. This will have an effect on the way IE renders the page see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/ as a start.

Once you've got that done then it's a case of looking to see what other problems are in there.

In future I suggest to design for Firefox and fix for IE, it's much easier.

[fastedge]

Thanks for the tips. I agree that it seems that designing for Firefox, then tweaking for IE seems the way to go. I have a few sites that need attention but BigFive.com is the worst of the bunch. I did notice that it seems Firefox is pretty strict and literal in translating what I write. Some of the things that have been causing problems are where I "tricked" IE into displying something a certain way. Firefox doesn't like tricks.

[freddieb]

It's different again in Opera 7

I, too have the problem with <div> and getting them to look the same across browsers. I agree about getting them to look right in Firefox first. I think it's important just for the fact that Firefox is going to be huge, with a lot of people going to be using it as their default browser.

[Yoder]

Originally Posted by fastedge

Thanks for the tips. I agree that it seems that designing for Firefox, then tweaking for IE seems the way to go. I have a few sites that need attention but BigFive.com is the worst of the bunch. I did notice that it seems Firefox is pretty strict and literal in translating what I write. Some of the things that have been causing problems are where I "tricked" IE into displying something a certain way. Firefox doesn't like tricks.

You got that one right. I prmarily browse with the fox, but use IE to tweak things. I would imagine that with the popularity gains that Firefox is experiencing that they will get things turned around rather quickly.

[valk97_goose]

I viewed your source and you have about 4 blank lines before the DOCTYPE statement.

You must not have any spaces before your DOCTYPE statement or the browser will resolve in 'Quirks' mode. If using a DOCTYPE statement it MUST be the first code read by the browser (no lines or even one space in front.