IE Only Sites

Cabaal

I've been using Pheonix/Firebird/Firefox for a long time now and even before that I was using Moz and Netscape back as far as 3.0, you'd think in this stage and age with so many people on so many different platforms using different browser why are sites still IE only?
Why can't a web design company do a proper job on a company's site?

Site in question is:
http://www.springhillcourt.com
I've went to the site to try and book a weekend break and was very annoyed to find half the front page covered in a frame when I tried viewing it in FF.

In Firefox I get:


In IE I get:

mneylon

You probably have flash off or something, as I can see their site fine in FF pr1

Cabaal

blacknight wrote:

You probably have flash off or something, as I can see their site fine in FF pr1

Grr it would seem so, on two PC's default config with flash installed it does not handle http://www.carival.ie/ correctly, Moz 1.x is fine though
oh well
other site still has issues

Seth Brundle

I agree. It is all too common still for sites to be designed for MSIE only. Was looking at the South Dublin Co Co site today (www.sdcc.ie) - down at the bottom there is this This site is optimised for IE5.5 and above and for resolutions of 800x600 or above.. WTF! These sites are presumably being done by professionals. Why then are they only able to use basic design skills?
Feck it- I'll have a look at the other Dublin Councils sites!
sdcc.ie - fails W3C validation with 307 errors & has the above optimisation message
dublincity.ie - fails with 50 errors (after I overrided the character encoding). This site doesn't even have the </body> or </html> tags!
fingalcoco.ie - fails with 15 errors - This site is optimised for resolutions of 800x600 or above
dlrcoco.ie - 98 errors & "this site is best viewed using ie5+ at a screen resolution of 800 by 600"

impr0v

Heh, i noticed the springhill court one before as well. I booked a room with them about 4 weeks ago, had to open up IE to do so, because of the same problems you mention.

In terms of the errors, I think there can be a tendancy to go overboard in regard to criticism of the lack of code validation. I don't think the average visitor cares about whether it's valid xhtml or not, as long as there are no errors which prevent them from making use of the site, and in my book, visual design concerns should be prioritised over the need for valid code. Though, of course, there is no reason why both cannot be catered for. Should some of the offending tags be phased out and these sites not look or work as intended, presumably they will be upgraded at that point.

Seth Brundle

yes, but a good designer should be able to design a site that is valid code and cross browser compatible.
The fact is that because Springhill's site wasn't properly designed, you had to open a different piece of software to see it! Thats not good enough! The visitor should not be working to accommodate the designer - that is why the designer gets paid!

LoBo

Remember: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Presumably it applies to designers too.

Seth Brundle

what are the odds that they didn't pay peanuts though?

mneylon

kbannon wrote:

what are the odds that they didn't pay peanuts though?

Probably very high.

I use firefox all the time (except for the online banking which forces me to use IE) and the number of corporate websites that break in new and interesting ways is quite worrying.
The "breakage" is one thing, but some of them actually require me to spoof my user agent as they actively reject non-IE browsers!!

egan007

LoBo wrote:

Remember: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Presumably it applies to designers too.

A guy i know who runs a company got a site done - they were charging him 2500 yoyos for something that looked like a 3 year old did in frontpage. (he did not pay)

I did him a pro one for 500beans

so not entirely true....i like to provide quality cheap

ChicoMendez

I did him a pro one for 500beans

how bout throwing up the link so we can see how pro it is?

impr0v

ChicoMendez wrote:

how bout throwing up the link so we can see how pro it is?

And why not charge him 2499 'beans', since he's getting a pro one for less than the cost of the frontpage one. No point in senselessly devaluing the profession.

Cabaal

Dispite what a webdesigner is being paid they should still make a dcent site its not that hard to do, I've made a few sites in my day, I'm not saying there were 100% valid but they were perfectly usage in IE, Netscape & Opera and these were my own personal sites not something for a company.

The fact is a company is paid to design a website not to design a website that just works in IE its there responsibility to do a good job, its not like Spring Hill etc know alot about web-browsers and how sites should be rendered correctly in each browser.
To not do a good job means basically they are ripping company's off imho.
Just my 2cents.

ChicoMendez wrote:

how bout throwing up the link so we can see how pro it is?

I'd much prefer see the frontpage site and then the re-designed site it would be a much better comparison and then see which one can be viewed correctly in IE, FF, Opera etc

egan007

ChicoMendez wrote:

how bout throwing up the link so we can see how pro it is?

My pleasure

- work in progress as we speak

www.ewtechnologies.ie

Kai

egan007 wrote:

My pleasure

- work in progress as we speak

www.ewtechnologies.ie

Works fine for me in Firefox PR 1 but im not a fan of the scanline background, bit flickery. Nice site all the same.

egan007

Kai wrote:

Works fine for me in Firefox PR 1 but im not a fan of the scanline background, bit flickery. Nice site all the same.

Thanks - yeah i want to see if i can do anything about that flicker - it's only slight though.

AS for the one it replaced -i'll have to see if i can find it
I know i have link somewhere/

Cabaal

On a site note regarding this thread I did send a quick mail off to carival.ie regarding http://www.springhillcourt.com/ notifying them that the site does not render correctly in browsers using the Gecko engine (Moz, Netscape, AOLOSX etc) doubt they'll actually fix the issue but here's hoping I guess

egan007

Cabaal wrote:

Dispite what a webdesigner is being paid they should still make a dcent site its not that hard to do, I've made a few sites in my day, I'm not saying there were 100% valid but they were perfectly usage in IE, Netscape & Opera and these were my own personal sites not something for a company.

The fact is a company is paid to design a website not to design a website that just works in IE its there responsibility to do a good job, its not like Spring Hill etc know alot about web-browsers and how sites should be rendered correctly in each browser.
To not do a good job means basically they are ripping company's off imho.
Just my 2cents.



I'd much prefer see the frontpage site and then the re-designed site it would be a much better comparison and then see which one can be viewed correctly in IE, FF, Opera etc

Here is the old EWTechnologies website......

http://www.spear-site.com/EW_Technologies_458/

RicardoSmith

Has anyone ever been asked to check for compatibility with other browsers by a client? Just curious.

egan007

RicardoSmith wrote:

Has anyone ever been asked to check for compatibility with other browsers by a client? Just curious.

Nope Never been asked, I think it's up to the designer really. I'm sure in most cases that the client does not know that any browser other than IE exists.

dangerman

egan007, i know this thread isn't about critique for ewTechnologies, but just two points i noticed:

the menu/masthead takes up half the screen at 1024x768 - just seems a bit wasteful imo.

also, when i open some content pages, and it requires scrolling, i don't see any scroll bar, i can scroll the content with the mouse wheel or by drag selecting the text. the iframes have SCROLLING="no" on them. At higher res everything might fit but at 1024x768 it's not workin right.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

egan007

Well it's still under development so - there will be no scrolling when finished.
At 1024x768 you should be able to see all the content in both frames