IE support – criticism

  • I’m kind of frustrated that WP seems to have IMO major issues with IE. I read great things about how easy WP is to install, but you have to hack the CSS to make the default theme work? Plus the admin interface doesn’t look right in IE, most notably the fact that the theme editor entry box is off the page to the bottom and the box grows to the right when edited.

    I do appreciate that this is free software, but it really ought to work properly with the browser that 95% of readers will be using. Firefox is a fringe thing for techno people, for the most part. I’m not a complete fool with HTML, PHP and CSS stuff, and hacking is fine for cutomization, but I think the default stuff should work out of the box with IE.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 38 total)

  • Yes, I did notice that problem with admin panel. But how exactly do you have to hack CSS to make the default theme work? It worked fine off the bat for me.

    Hmm. I don’t have any problem at all with WP working with that piece of crap otherwise known as IE – then again, I don’t try to do anything “important” anywhere with/in IE, knowing better as I do from many many years now online.

    And in particular, I don’t do ANY editing WITHIN WP – no matter which “real” browser I happen to be using. If you want to edit WP theme files or any of the rest of ’em, you should be using a text editor – notepad works fine, but notepad2 works even better.

    I’ve got a half-dozen installs of WP – all of which work just fine in IE – though I do have to say I’ve not bothered with whether or not they “work” with the “default theme” (of course, if you insist on using the “default theme”….)

    “Fringe thing for techno people” – yep. Thanks.

    [This is a personal opinion only; YMMV.]

    (that piece of crap) IE’s always worked for me for WP’s default themes. Additionally, almost every theme I’ve seen released is IE compliant. Only when folks (like myself) mess with a theme to customize ir does it become an issue.

    Ditto – I’ve really only had 1 person end up with a non-IE compatible theme, which was easily fixed.

    I too use Firefox for everything except the odd, moronic news site that requires IE to play Quicktime files (wtf?) and watching the Live8 feeds from AOL (ActiveX control, the barstids).

    Statistically, between the 25 WP blogs I host, the highest percentage for IE is only about 65%. On the tech-oriented blogs, it’s more like 20%. On my root page, IE has about 70%.

    In other words, as a developer, I don’t feel it necessary to develop for IE anymore. I develop for Mozilla/Firefox, and then hack as necessary to get the design working in the more broken/less compliant browsers. It turns out that most people can be persuaded into giving up on IE once they actually try Firefox or Opera ??

    Go figure ??

    Thread Starter mastiff

    (@mastiff)

    The main thing with the default theme is that there are no bullets on the sidebar. Not a huge deal, but annoying nonetheless. It doesn’t look right without them. I’ve searched this forum and asked for help and nobody can say for sure what to do to make it work. Thus my comment that I will need to hack on the CSS to get it to work – plus probably have to create a GIF bullet with transparent background. That’s quite far from working “out of the box” IMO.

    The edit theme page is definitely hosed under IE. I tried it from multiple different machines and it only looks/works right in Firefox (didn’t try Opera or NS). I know I can edit files off-line and FTP them over and over, but for making small hacks and looking quickly at the result, the theme editor is handy. Even if I didn’t want to use it, it still ought to work IMO.

    I tend to disagree, I help manage a high profile website for work which drives over a million hits a month and the majority of the browsers are still IE, reaching about 76%. Mozilla only coming in with about 8%, I would still develop for IE.

    Once IE7.0 is released it will be a lot easier to develop and maintain as well.

    There’s an IE7.0 javascript hack out there if you’re interested at all.

    Addy for the hack mentioned by jdingman: https://dean.edwards.name/IE7/

    [Edit: jdingman, I still “tweak for IE” – AFTER I make sure what I’m producing works and works right in real browsers. It’s WAY simpler that way….]

    jdingman, I do still develop for IE – but it saves a LOT of time to develop standards-compliant code first and then get IE to work with it. IE’s bugs are (mostly) well docuemented at various locations, and if you actually understand CSS and XHTML (as opposed to your only experience being the …For Dummies book), it’s simple enough to work that way. It also let’s you bypass browser-sniffing, which is becoming more and more frowned upon – sites should just work, whether I’ve got a blank or modified referrer field, javascript disabled, etc.

    I can’t speak for the Edit Theme page not working in IE – I agree, though, it should “just work.”

    If you really want bullets in your Kubrick sidebar (which, IMHO, looks dumb), find the CSS rule for the UL and/or LI tags, and remove the line that says display-type:none;. No guarantees that the spacing will be perfect afterwards though, you might need to mess with the margins and width too.

    The WP 1.5.1.2 Theme Editor in IE 5.5 on Win 98. You cannot find a worse browser… and still the Edit panel is usable.

    Yes there does seem to be some preference for FF. I have had some issues with FF too, I don’t think it’s the greatest thing out there, so I don’t use it. In addition, the vast majority of my readership is still using IE, so I do have to be accomodating to them.

    Luckily, I have not found major compatibility issues with WP and IE. Usually just a tweak here or there. The biggest problem I have had is with the dashboard, which remains unresolved, so I just worked around and got a hack.

    FYI – the ‘preference’ for FF is that most CSS stuff works as it should by spec, whereas IE has some mind-blowing bugs which have in turn produced some mind-blowing workarounds and tricks — that don’t always work. Hopefully IE7 will implement CSS on-spec rather than making up new rules. ??

    And yes, you can go add whatever bulleting you want, VERY EASILY, in the CSS for the theme. And there’s NO reason whatsoever to go creating a transparent-gif bullet — there’s something like a dozen bullet options that should be respectable.

    -d

    https://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/peekaboo.html

    I noticed a lot of this issue on the WP admin pages using IE. Surely you have noticed this occurring too?

    For example, the Write Page title gets half guillotined – though that might be the guillotine bug itself. Bleh. So many bugs, but at least with a little forethought and some P.I.E. you can avoid most ??

    “I do appreciate that this is free software, but it really ought to work properly with the browser that 95% of readers will be using. Firefox is a fringe thing for techno people, for the most part.”

    First, only 65% of my visitors use IE. 20% use Firefox. I don’t see that number as a “fringe thing for techno people.”

    And yes, FF isn’t a perfect browser but it’s about the best that I’ve seen & it blows IE away by comparison.

    shouldn’t this post be directed at M$, asking them to join the rest of the world in developing and adhering to standards?

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    shouldn’t this post be directed at M$, asking them to join the rest of the world in developing and adhering to standards?

    They’re working on it.

    https://webstandards.org/press/releases/archive/2005/07/05/index.html

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 38 total)
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