In this staff report, dashes (–) are rendered as question marks by Firefox (Macintosh version 2.0.0.3). Looking at the page source, I found that throughout the article the font is reidentified as Times New Roman over and over, including whenever “–” is used. It looks like this in the source when a dash is used: <font face=“Times New Roman”>�</font>. In one case, a word gets trapped inside there, leading to it being displayed improperly in my Safari browser (the word is “they’re” as in “they’re contracts”). I suppose that it would cause problems in Firefox, too, but I have Firefox set to use my default font, no matter what the page tries to do. Strangely, Safari displays the dashes correctly, but they do not appear in the page source when it is viewed with Safari.
I am pretty sure that I have seen the same thing in other staff reports, but I am not positive. The dashes show up properly in this article and its source, but the font tags are still present. One thing that I found was this article, which has some code randomly appear in it a bunch of times for no reason. The code is “<span lang=“en-us””, followed by a random letter, word or phrase, which is followed by “</span>”.
I don’t have a problem with those “funny” characters in Firefox 1.5.0.11 on Macintosh OS X 10.4.9, but on the pages you mention I see “box characters” (a diamond with a question mark) using Safari 2.0.4. In my experience, I see a problem with “em dashes” and “smart quotes”. I can’t tell from your description if that is what’s happening with you, kjolb.
We’re looking at our coding procedures to see if we can standardize so it looks the same way – properly! – for everyone.
I will tell you that this is a PC-based environment here and that Mac users should be accustomed to stuff not being perfect by now, that’s one of the problems with having a Mac. I also note that Mac users do seem to have more of a need to run the most recent versions of whatever software they have, including any fixes that may come out.
This is not meant to be a slam towards Macs or Mac owners and should not be taken personally or offensively. Just saying. I own some Mac equipment my own self and do prefer it for some things. …not Straight Dope content.
Nonsense. Writing good, conforming HTML and setting content types correctly make things work portably, and if anyone has a problem with good pages you can ignore them. This whole Mac/PC crap is nonsense in this context.
TubaDiva
Although I don’t own one, I agree with your “one of the problems with having a Mac” comment and therefore disagree with Derleth’s comment "Writing good, conforming HTML and setting content types correctly make things work portably"
I’ve received E-Mails (from Mac users) that my website calculators sometimes produce errors in powers of ten.
(e.g. 1 inch = 2540 centimeters)
Also, I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories about Windows Vista causing problems for users transferring songs to and from their I-Pods.
To me it seems, despite the supposed affiliation of Microsoft and Apple, Bill doesn’t go out of his way to ensure compatibility.
wolf_meister: That’s Javascript. Javascript is known to be a portability nightmare. Straight HTML with minimal markup and not even any CSS to speak of is absolutely portable if written intelligently.
Java doesn’t have anything to do with the browser as long as the browser is capable of embedding applets at all. Javascript, on the other hand, is run by the browser and can change arbitrary elements of the page.
Worse. Word Perfect. But yes, that’s what goes on; it starts in WP and goes to FrontPage and then goes to the server.
FrontPage may be the main culprit as it often throws stuff in just because; I’ve often had to edit big strings of stupidity out of columns that FrontPage generated.
I do believe Ed had some computer changes fairly recently and may be dealing with newer versions of software; not sure if Vista is an issue here as well but that is possible. I’ll ask him.
I also suspect that the Macs that are having the most problems are those that have not upgraded recently as well; my understanding is that the longer Macs go without upgrades the more differences it finds with Windows, especially more advanced editions.
I’ve had a problem with Unicode in Safari, both displaying and reading, on all parts of this site. The board doesn’t play well with Safari, and I’ve had the same problem with apostrophes, dashes, and other punctuation and diacritics that the OP mentions. Force-loading an encoding clears things up, but I shouldn’t have a problem with it in the first place since I use Unicode as the default encoding.
I’m not sure what the compatibility problem is for sure, but it’s darn odd. I’ve had no problems with double-byte character input on other message boards, but this one chokes on it sometimes.
Firefox works properly though, so it might be something a little off in how Safari deals with encoding. The odd thing about that is that most of the guts of Safari is based on the open-source Web Kit, and usually the open-source community is very good about vetting universal compatibility issues.
I’d just like to post support for supporting actual standards. Such programs as Front Page that are seeking to make their own standards are devious attempts to appropriate that which is meant to be universal. It ain’t called the World Wide Web for nothing.
Please encourage those folks that generate content for the web to do so in a manner that is respectful to the medium they are using. Using standard coding is as logical as NOT using a stone tablet to publish a newspaper.
Absolutely. Frontpage had the audacity to expect you actually change the way the hosting server works in order to upload perfectly ordinary HTML. Frontpage Extensions are (or were, I don’t hear about them much anymore) a travesty.
