It is not difficult creating a standards-compliant page design in CSS with no hidden layout tables that will render correctly in standards-compliant browsers and that crap Microsoft peddles as a browser.
One problem with tables, and an actual advantage for CSS divs, is that with tables the page won’t load until the table is fully loaded while the div will load as data comes in. So, if you have a catalog with 50 thumbs and item descriptions, the user won’t see a table until all the items download. But with a div, the first item will be seen immediately, and then the second, and so on.
I think a major part of this problem is there’s no integrated updater in IE. And a lot of people aren’t computer-savvy enough to do anything other than play with what’s been put in front of them. So you’ve got people like my mom, who still uses IE (and I’m betting it’s IE6, though I didn’t check), because it came bundled onto her box, and it wouldn’t even occur to her to go looking on the 'net for a different browser. So she’ll have IE6 until she gets a brand-new computer with an updated browser bundled in (or until I go crazy setting up her computer how I like it, dammit! 
Which will not be soon, since I’m up there on average maybe once every two years. And her computer has other issues. My cousin, who ought to know better, told her two years ago that 256 meg of RAM and a 10 gig hard drive was plenty. Um? Damn thing is slower than an arthritic nonagenarian, and no one around to plug new chips in even if she got them.)
Hell, even for me… I basically ignore the IE that came bundled with my OS, except for occasionally clicking on IE-Tab in Firefox if I need to check cross-browser rendering on a webpage I’m working on. Reading this thread, I just checked, and I still have IE6 too, and it didn’t even give me a little nag screen about upgrading. I can’t say it ever would have occurred to me to look for a more recent version, since I pretty much use Firefox exclusively, and Firefox updates itself regularly.
I’m sure you’re right. My mother’s the same; she still runs IE6 on her old computer, which she bought used. Hell, she only got a computer in the first place because i moved to the US, and she wanted to be able to keep in touch by email. If it weren’t for that, she’d be very happy without one.
She has a dial-up account that gives her 2 hours access a month, and that’s all she needs to send and receive email. She composes her email offline, goes online to send and receive, then logs off.
Oh yeah, THAT’S a great idea. I’m just going to run off to my clients and tell ‘em that IE sucks, and only lazy sons of bitches use it, and from now on, we’re not going to worry about their web site working with the browser that the vast majority of people use! That’s gonna go over GREAT. We don’t need no stinkin’ customers who aren’t smart enough to download FireFox!
C’mon, get into the real world. Getting a page to work on multiple browsers isn’t any big deal at all. Software developers have always had to tweak for different hardware/OS/etc - from the old days when you had to write your own printer/graphics drivers to writing code that worked on Unix/Windows/Mac to today’s browser differences. It’s just part of the job, and whining about it or refusing to accept it is simply unprofessional.
Write software that works. That’s your fucking job.
You also gotta remember that IE7 requires a WGA check unless you do a good bit of hacking. So all of the people out there with pirated XP can’t have IE7. And, just because someone has a pirated XP it doesn’t mean they are savvy enough to use Firefox - perhaps their family member set them up with the OS and turned off IE7 updates.
Or so I’ve heard…
Oh, and I don’t know what you guys are talking about WRT integrated updates for IE7. I got nagged to hell to get that update. I actually had to turn it off because I need to keep IE6 for my work. My partner has IE7, so we are able to check sites across “all browsers.”
And one more small point to people arguing that you don’t want to be forced to make changes to every single page to update HTML, so you use CSS. Haven’t any of you heard of includes? You shouldn’t be over-repeating HTML on your site any more than you should be repeating data in a database. Get with the program!
The next time someone says ‘stop supporting IE6’ I’m going to punch them in the fucking face (uh, not anyone in specific, or on these boards, no direct threat meant, hyperbole used). Seriously, you wanna be the one to tell the corporate clients their website won’t work for a shitload of their investors? I don’t work on rinky-dink static sites for the local flower shop.
When I Google to find solutions to IE bugs (the most recent one being the z-index stacking with pos:rel), I don’t want to hear ‘stop developing for that crap IE6 and let the users see the fugly’. I can’t do that. And it’s unprofessional to do so.
Ah hell, I wouldn’t have even used a <div> like some of you guys:
<p style=“float: right; margin: 0 0 1em 1em; width: {width of your image}px; text-align: center;”><img><br>Caption goes here.</p>
As an added bonus, the image will sit on the text’s baseline so you get a little gap between it and the caption.
And stopping supporting IE6 is just stupid, unless you get to force the browser on your users. When it drops below 5% market share, then maybe. But not till then.
And yet there remain sites which are only accessible in IE. Screw the shitload of visitors who use any other browser.
It’s a two way road.
I can understand that pros have to make it accessible to IE6, but would it really be that bad to include a message along the likes of “You’re using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6. This site will function properly, but you really shouldn’t be using a piece of shit like that. It’s highly vulnerable to phishing and viruses, including the Melissa Worm, the ILOVEYOU virus, Sobig.b, varicella zoster virus, parvo, and Creeper. I strongly advise that you switch to a safer and more robust browser such as IE7, Firefox, Opera, or Lynx.”
Thank you Dead Badger and nyctea scandiaca for your examples. There were a great help to me to finding the problem I had. What helped the most was this suggestion:
By using the Opera Deverloper Tools I easily saw what property was being carried over from the main “img” style and causing me fits.
It looks fine in all browsers now.
I will also look at ZebraShaSha “display:table” method later on, because with my current CSS, if the caption is wider than the image, it doesn’t look quite right.
But once again the SDMB came through! You guys saved me a lot of time and frustration. Come over here so that I can slap your butts in appreciation, like those NFL players do.
I think an equally large part of the problem is the people that browse from work, and the IS team for their company has instituted a policy that they are not ready to upgrade to IE 7 yet. I hear that from many people in large corporations - some of them even in software companies.
From what I’ve read, it is too early at this point to design a website that is totally broken in IE6. What I think is acceptable (for example in my case, where the non-profit’s budget is $0 and I’m not getting paid for doing the website), is to make sure that the website looks OK in IE6 and is functional, but that minor defects are acceptable (my example would be the small borders around transparent .PNG files that only show up in IE6).
A professional developer working on a website that will attract a large number of views from all over should still care about IE6 and make the site work well with IE6. Of course, I’m not a professional so take my opinion for what it’s worth.
While I mostly agree with you, Athena, ZebraShaSha was referring specifically to IE6. The vast majority of people use IE, but vast majority of people do NOT use IE6, according to all I’ve read.
Ah man, I hear ya. Getting all the browsers to cooperate (and keeping up on all the ways web design has changed) are why I don’t want to do it as a living. I didn’t want to take the web design class I’m taking either, but we’ll see how that goes. At least the browsers are getting better at all looking the same.
Good luck.
That is true. But isn’t there a second group of purists, maybe I’ll call them the über-purists, who say that the designer should not be controlling the way the page looks - the user should be controlling that? A web designer should not be trying to make the website look like a .PDF document or a printed page, she should be delivering content to the user and the user decides how to present it: fonts, colors, etc.
For that person, the caption element would be very useful.
And in my mind, it would serve the same purpose as some of these other tags I see mentioned in reference books:
acronym, address, (table) caption, dfn, code, samp, kbd, var that “give useful information to browsers, spellcheckers, screen readers, translation systems and search-engines.” (as one site I’ve seen describes it)
To quote kushiel, “I don’t work on rinky-dink static sites for the local flower shop.”
Anything I write has to work on IE6, IE7, FireFox 2 & 3, and Safari.
Safari has, by far, the lowest percentage of users, WAY WAY less than IE6. But hell if anyone’s going to agree with you when you say “it’s OK if it doesn’t work on Macs.”
Why the hell is IE6 any different?
From my point of view:
- because IE6 is an older browser, there is an upgrade path.
- Because once you design a simple website for Firefox, there’s a pretty good chance that it will work just fine in Opera, Chrome, Safari (I’m talking about CSS designs here) and even IE7, so it’s no extra work to make it work on Safari.
- Because most of the examples I’ve seen say “this works just fine on all browsers. Except that you have to do something special for IE6.” IE6 seems to be a pain in the ass.
<shrug> I’ve had to customize for IE6, IE7, FireFox 2, and FireFox 3.
I don’t assume anything works in any browser without some customization until I see it working.
I’m not a professional web designer. Obviously you have more experience than me. But in my experience, working on this small website, the only problems I ran into were with IE6.
My cite:
The HTML webtemplate I downloaded from oswd.org has multiple sections where it does something different just for IE6. (strictly speaking, not a problem for me, but it was a problem for the person who came up with this free template that was very useful to me.)
The free icons (transparent .PNGs) that I use display correctly in every browser I tried (see the list in my OP) except IE6.
The Google API I use to display RSS feeds at the site worked correctly in every browser I tried except IE6.
The thing that prompted this thread (CSS for captions under pictures) worked fine in every browser except IE6.
I asked a question a month ago in an ArsTechnica forum. The posters there (many of them professional web designers) were unanimous in their hatred of IE6, though most of them said that you should make your site work with IE6 if Google analytics shows that it is a significant portion of the visitors to your site.
By the way, some people do say that. I have seen several online sites (e.g. small credit unions or payroll sites - can’t think of any examples off the top of my head) that explicitly say “This site is offically supported with Internet Explorer.” and no mention of another browser.
I will be looking more into this, by the way. Thank you for the explanation of what WordPress does. Up until now, I thought that WordPress was something you would use to add a blog page to your existing site, but not to create a whole website. This is new information to me.