I’m in the middle of redesigning my company’s homepage, and apparently when they made it there were some issues with IE4, layers and re-sizing. They weren’t too sure what they were though, as it was made by an outside agency. All we are sure of is that we have to run a detection, and load up one page if the browser is IE4, and another if it isn’t. :-\
Anyone have any ideas on what these problems could be? And I guess, more importantly, how on earth to get round them? :q:
When I was a webmaster, way back when, we had to do this because Netscape tended to reload the entire page when resized. My site was heavily dynamic, so reloading took an amazing amount of time (broadband was not very common in residential use).:-\
As far as IE4, it handles layers quite differently than Netscape, and the positioning of those layers could really make it ugly in the wrong browser:)
As to the work-around, I don’t know:(
that is why I don’t do a lot in layers:-\ but then again, with the stats I have just seen, less than 10% of your visitors will be on something other than IE 5-6…=)
if that is any consolation:P
Rev:elderly:
Yeah, according to our stats the number of people actually using IE4 is very low, but because we are a huge business, we have to cater for these people. It’s part of the design brief that will never change.
As it is I’m having a hard time convincing people that we should be designing for 1024 screen res as an optimum…
Well, I agree with them on the res. part…
over 60% of users are still on 800x600…
Rev:elderly:
Well IE handles layers using div tags with a z-index setting.
Netscape handles layers using actual layer tags. They can be an absolute pain.
My way of detecting browsing isn’t actually very advanced, but it seems to work for me…
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--
if (document.all) { // IF IE
//SCRIPT HERE
}
else if (document.layers) { //IF NETSCAPE LESS THAN 6
//SCRIPT HERE
}
else if (document.getElementById) { //IF NETSCAPE 6+
//SCRIPT HERE
};
}
// -->
</SCRIPT>
Ok, I just typed that up here, so I am not 100% positive it will work, but I have a 95% good feeling it will.
Yeah, that’s basically what we’ve got at the moment, a couple of if statements and that to find out then run the right page.
Must be the div tags that are doing it then. Since I’ve been asked to redesign the front page, I’m planning on giving them the boot completely, which should eliminate the need for two separate pages.
Yeah, I am not sure Netscape supports div tags, and if it does, it definitely doesn’t support the z-index feature.
If you are going to be using layers, you definitely have to have 2 different versions, or a way to call certain features on the page through Javascript so that it will work in either or, but still be the same page.
Pain in the arse really.
Well you can have a look at the current site homepage at www.churchill.com. It’s all in a frameset so no-one can view the source, but it’s built using a multitude of layers, and it’s the tickertape in the right corner that causes the problems I’m led to believe.
They’ve also said they want the whole thing, script, graphics and code, reduced down to 40K.
I laughed.
Then I had a nervous breakdown under my desk.
It looks to me that you could take your site into Dreamweaver and convert layers to tables (overlapping layers can be troublesome). Then, take your ticker tape gizmo and trash it, replace it with Flash! Woooohooo!
40k? Dreaming! Do it all in Flash with vectors and external files and the main movie could be that size.
Good luck!
Ahhh. No Flash whatsoever is allowed!
It’s yet another part of the corporate design brief. Since this company aims their insurance at middle-aged people and upwards, they have to take into account that these peeps won’t neccessarily have the latest versions, plugins or anything. We have to assume they’re running the worst possible setup imaginable. Has to work on Netscape and IE, PC and Mac. No applets, no Flash, not fancy ColdFusion or anything like that. JavaScript and HTML is all we’re allowed to use, and pages must be under 40K for everything.
Aieeeeeeeeee!
That is insane!
Do these people even know what they are talking about!?!?
Well as for the tickertape, you could possibly use an iframe for that if it is the problem. Just a suggestion.
I have a client that allows for 90k downloads( www.kathleendughi.com )… but at least she allows Flash! =) it is still a pain in the a$$!
with 40k you can only have a few graphics at best… 
good luck, let us know how you do it… =)
Rev :elderly:
They want it to be all text, very little Javascript and like 2 images 
Try making that look nice :evil:
takes me back to HTML 3.x :*(
those were boring site days… :evil:
and a pain to build… :evil:
Rev:elderly:
oh yea, Oldschool designing =) where we didnt have fancy dancy editors, and We liked it! hehe jk =)
Yeah, I know what you mean. When I had to rebuild my schools website they also wanted me to rebuild my schools College Office webpage (grrr, I hated my school!), anywho, I opened the file and it was so painful to look at! They used some really old HTML code.
I had to rebuild it, and make it easy to understand and edit, because the college office demanded that they be the ones to update it (fine by me), well I rebuild it, added comment tags galore to help them edit, made it simple as pie, I looked at it after their first update…THEY REDID EVERYTHING I DID - IN THEIR PRIMITIVE CODE!!!
WHAT WAS THE POINT OF MAKING ME REDO IT!!! (bastards!)
Well, I was pissed, now I am straying from the convo…so I will stop talking about it.
*Originally posted by Raydred *
**oh yea, Oldschool designing =) where we didnt have fancy dancy editors, and We liked it! hehe jk =) **
Yeah, only becuase we didn’t know any better… and there weren’t any WYSIWYG editors out… yet… lol
to tell the truth, I still use the 3.x standard as much as I can… just seems to work all the time… in both browsers… but it is very limiting… 
Rev:elderly:
When building a site, I use whatever knowledge I have and make a page that works in both IE and NS (my current website excluded, that was just an experiment).
as long as it works… =)
Rev:elderly:
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