[SCCC] IE9 / Firefox compatibility in N6NB.com

Mon Feb 25 23:02:12 EST 2013

Wayne,

Bruce is right - CSS is a good thing for modern websites - but then you
have another new thing to learn :)

I recently changed the  Logger32.net website from a 7 year old table based
design to a modern template using CSS. It does render quite well in IE,
Firefox and Chrome - the CSS also has some code to make it scale OK in IE.

If you look at the source code, the various areas of each page are well
defined - like Header, Footer, Left Sidebar, Right Sidebar and the Main
Copy. Generally you just setup the menu on the left sidebar like you have
in your current site and then build your main Index page. You can then
replicate that page any number of times and only change the content in the
section for the Main Copy of each page.

I plan to take it to the next level by having the Left and Right sidebars
saved as separate pages and called from the main page using PHP or similar.
That way the menu needs to be edited only in one page - and you don't have
to go about editing a menu on all the pages you have on the site.

The Logger32 site has a fixed menu Main menu on each page and also a page
specific menu for each page to jump between sections of that page.

This was what the old site looked until very recently (courtesy of The
Internet Archive):
http://web.archive.org/web/20130120015446/http://www.logger32.net/

You can find a lot of ready templates to adopt on the web for free - Iike
those at at http://www.oswd.org/

73 de Prasad VU2PTT, W2PTT (ex-AF6DV)

On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Bruce Horn <bhorn at hornucopia.com> wrote:

> Hi Wayne,
>
> I looked at the source code for your web site briefly. I would say the
> fundamental change you need to make to bring it up to date with modern
> web-coding standards is to specify the styling parameters in a cascading
> style sheet (CSS), rather than as attributes of individual html elements.
> For example the <FONT> tag isn't generally used anymore - font size, style,
> etc is specified in a referenced style sheet. Also, the <!doctype>
> statement at the top of your page source doesn't match the coding you used
> on the page. Personally, I still have web sites that are coded with these
> old style tags and they are still rendered by modern browsers - you just
> can't expect them to look exactly the same in all browsers.
>
> On the other hand, I'm not sure I would spend much updating the html code
> for a simple site such as yours. Most hams won't notice the difference. All
> of the information is there and accessible.
>
> 73 de Bruce, WA7BNM   (bhorn at hornucopia.com)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wayne Overbeck" <overbeck6 at yahoo.com>
> To: sccc at contesting.com
> Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 3:36:52 PM
> Subject: [SCCC] IE9 / Firefox compatibility in N6NB.com
>
> It's interesting that these compatibility
> issues have come up now.  I spent most of the
> weekend revising my web site and trying to get
> it to look the same in IE and Firefox, not
> to mention Safari and Chrome.
>
> I'm NO programmer.  I was using only HTML
> features supported by Netscape 4.0 (an ancient
> version).  All I really wanted was for the
> columns to align the same way in all browsers.
> I never got there.  When IE looks okay, there's
> extra space at the top and bottom of the left
> column in Firefox.  If I fix that, it gets
> messed up in IE.
>
> This is the website that has a lot of 30-year-old
> photos of SCCC members, among other content.  I
> guess I'd like for the appearance not to detract
> too much from the content.
>
> It's at www.n6nb.com.  If anyone who knows HTML
> could look at the code and identify what is
> causing these spacing issues, I'd be much obliged.
>
> 73,
> Wayne, N6NB
>
>
> --- On Sun, 2/24/13, Cliff K3LL <K3LL at EEContent.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Cliff K3LL <K3LL at EEContent.com>
> > Subject: Re: [SCCC] This Really Sucks
> > To: "'Dennis Younker NE6I'" <ne6i at cox.net>, "'SCCC Reflector'" <
> sccc at contesting.com>
> > Date: Sunday, February 24, 2013, 5:48 PM
> > True, killing IE9 for WinXP was a bad
> > idea- this is why IE market share is
> > decreasing.  Please would rather switch browsers than
> > upgrade their WinXP to
> > Win7.
> >
> > For better or worse, there are some new "standards" (like
> > some HTML5 stufF)
> > that IE8 is not compatible with, so it is not possible for
> > those sites to
> > support IE8 should the developer choose to use that advanced
> > functionality.
> >
> > These sites simply won't work on IE8 and there is no work
> > around (from the
> > developer's point of view) to provider a richer user
> > experience that mimics
> > a desktop app:
> >
> > https://circuithub.com/
> >
> > https://trello.com/
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: SCCC [mailto:sccc-bounces at contesting.com]
> > On Behalf Of Dennis Younker
> > NE6I
> > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 5:28 PM
> > To: 'SCCC Reflector'
> > Subject: Re: [SCCC] This Really Sucks
> >
> > IE8 here. IE9 is not available for WinXP as far as I know.
> > Still, it's quite
> >
> > easy to program a web site to be compatible with IE8, Chrome
> > and Firefox.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Cliff K3LL" <K3LL at EEContent.com>
> > To: "'Marty Woll'" <n6vi at socal.rr.com>;
> > "'Dennis Younker NE6I'"
> > <ne6i at cox.net>;
> > "'SCCC Reflector'" <sccc at contesting.com>
> > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 5:21 PM
> > Subject: Re: [SCCC] This Really Sucks
> >
> >
> > > What version of IE?  Support for version 8 is
> > slowly dying, but most sites
> > > should run fine with IE9.
> > >
> > > 73,
> > >
> > > Cliff K3LL/6
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: SCCC [mailto:sccc-bounces at contesting.com]
> > On Behalf Of Marty Woll
> > > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 5:14 PM
> > > To: Dennis Younker NE6I; SCCC Reflector
> > > Subject: Re: [SCCC] This Really Sucks
> > >
> > > Hmmm . . . I was a beta tester for on-line DXCC entry,
> > used IE and never
> > > had
> > > a browser-related problem..  Several months later
> > I used it again, still
> > > with IE and still no problem.
> > >
> > > 73,
> > >
> > > Marty N6VI
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > >  From: Dennis Younker NE6I
> > >  To: SCCC Reflector
> > >  Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 5:06 PM
> > >  Subject: Re: [SCCC] This Really Sucks
> > >
> > >
> > >  . . . Anyone besides me notice the DXCC Blog
> > where ARRL says the Online
> > >  Application is only compatible with Firefox? Kind
> > of crazy. I did use IE
> > > or
> > >  Chrome (I forget which now) in December and it
> > didn't work very well.
> > >  Fortunately, ARRL came to my rescue and fixed the
> > application but sheesh,
> > >  any web programmer worth his salt can write a web
> > page compatible with
> > > all
> > >
> > >  three browsers.
> > >
> > >  --Dennis NE6I
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > SCCC mailing list
> > > SCCC at contesting.com
> > > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/sccc
> > >
>