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Cross Browser Testing Makes Sense

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By Michele Neylon on December 16, 2008 10:15 PM | 38 Comments
Trying to get sites to display identically across multiple browsers and multiple operating systems is awkward. This site probably doesn't display particularly well on all browsers, but I'm not a professional web designer / developer, so you'll have to excuse me. It's also not a corporate / business website trying to sell products or services to the public.

Screenclick, however, is a business website.

Earlier this evening I decided to visit it on my Mac using Firefox. Apart from the really annoying splash page, which doesn't do anything useful, the main page does not load correctly in Firefox 3 on the Mac:
screenclick-firefox-mac.png

Now if you open the same page in Safari you seem something totally different:
screenclick-safari.pngWhy?

Seemingly somebody decided to use Microsoft's Silverlight, but didn't bother to do a simple plugin check that would either prompt the user to install the plugin or gracefully degrade.

I won't be able to view their site on my Linux desktop either, as Silverlight isn't available for Linux (there is a port, but last time I checked there wasn't a native Debian / Ubuntu version available)

UPDATE: I've now moved to my Ubuntu Linux desktop and this is what I get:

The wonderfully helpful splash page (do they honestly expect me to continue browsing after seeing that?)

screenclick ubuntu linux

and the inner page (for some odd reason it's actually telling me that I need Silverlight now, whereas it wasn't on my Mac!)

screenclick-ubuntu-mainpage.png


PS: For a slightly different view on the Screenclick site check out Hugh's post

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Coolsites.ie Finally Live

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By Michele Neylon on August 31, 2008 7:04 PM
I have an annoying habit of grabbing domain names on whim and then promptly forgetting why I bought them.

Coolsites.ie was one of those domain names that I grabbed  a few months ago, as I knew instinctively that I would find a good use for it, I just wasn't 100% sure what...

Months later I came across a very tasty MT template called "Mid Century", which has been released under the GPL.

It's a simply gorgeous template and combines a lot of features that I felt were ideal for a site like CoolSites.ie, so I'd have been rather silly not to make use of it.

It's now live!

I plan on posting a site every day if I can, so if you know of any nice, cool or simply interesting sites that I should mention please let me know via email to submissions@coolsites.ie. I'd strongly recommend that you use the subject line "coolsites.ie submission", as it will get lost in my inbox otherwise.

(Please bear in mind that I do not use Windows, so if a site requires IE6 or 7 to render properly I won't be able to see it)

I'll also be asking a few other people to do guest posts, as I think spreading the subjectivity might not be a bad idea! (If that makes any sense)


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It's Award Season (Again!)

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By Michele Neylon on August 14, 2008 1:41 AM | 7 Comments
It's that time of the year again.

Web awards season is now open.

So what do we have this year?

Well if you're into commercially run awards ceremonies that require an entrance fee for nominations AND attendance, then there's the Golden Spiders. I've said enough about them in the past, so I won't bother wasting energy on them this year. Suffice to say that charging 150 euro for a nomination and another 290 per seat at an event that is sponsored is sickening.

At the opposite extreme Damien Mulley has launched The Irish Web Awards
Unlike the Golden Spiders you don't have to pay to nominate someone and the tickets for the event are a nominal 30 euro a pop. nor do you have to pay to attend. Yes - there are sponsors, but they're the ones covering the costs. Imagine that!

And then, somewhere in between, lie the IIA Net Visionary Awards. It's free to nominate people, but you have to pay to attend.

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Purge Internet Explorer 6 From The Desktop?

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By Michele Neylon on July 4, 2008 12:52 AM | 8 Comments
savethedevelopers-logo.gif
I know from talking to web designers and developers that Internet Explorer 6 gives them lots of headaches. While it may not be the only cause of heartache it's a clear and tangible one.

Of course there have been plenty of "upgrade to firefox" type campaigns in the past, but most seemed to ignore a simple fact. Many corporate users can't simply upgrade browsers without their IT department's "ok".

Be that as it may if you can get more people away from Internet Explorer 6, then your web designers and developers might thank you.

Have a look at the campaign over on Save The Developers (via)
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Downgrading From Firefox 3 to Firefox 2

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By Michele Neylon on June 18, 2008 10:35 AM | 10 Comments
TYPO3

Image via Wikipedia

Although I only upgraded my Mac's browser to Firefox 3 this morning I will be downgrading it shortly

Why?

Practicalities.

Several web applications I use on a regular basis break badly in Firefox 3, which renders them unusable (typo3) or not as usable as I would like (Movable Type).

I know the guys in Movable Type will fix the issues, though they were waiting on a stable Firefox release before they made any crazy changes.

I've no idea how long it will be before the Typo3 team fix the UI issues on their end.

Unfortunately in both cases the issues arise from Javascript rendering issues ie. the browser engine has changed how it handles it

Ah well!
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SalesOnline Semi-Offline

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By Michele Neylon on February 24, 2008 10:38 PM | 2 Comments
I've mentioned the horrific salesonline.ie site a couple of times in the past.

They've now taken the site offline and are instead displaying a holder page with their contact details.

At least they're not making us all suffer through that video anymore!

So anyone want to take bets on whether their new site will actually comply with any web standards?
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SalesOnline.ie - Worst HTML Coding Of The Week

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By Michele Neylon on December 12, 2007 2:10 PM | 7 Comments
For a number of reasons I had to look at the SalesOnline.ie site today. I would have thought they'd have got round to fixing its basic brokenness, but I was wrong.

If you try to view that site in any browser you will suffer.

Why?

Basic HTML code hasn't been used.

How hard can it be to specify which version of (X)HTML you're using?

If the "designer" had even picked up a book on HTML for beginners they'd have learnt about the basic elements of a properly formatted SGML document using HTML markup.

To save repetition the concept is simple. If you open a "tag", which is a bit of code to describe how something should be rendered on the screen by your browser, then you should close it. In XHTML that "should" becomes "must".

Any (x)html document will have a number of elements:
HEAD - the top of the document. This can tell you what the document is about and how to treat it ie. is it html 4.* or xhtml 1.*. You can also include lots of other "meta" information
BODY - the main body of the text

Salesonline's site tries to break all these standards.

Neither the "header" nor the "body" tag is closed, so the browser has no way of knowing where the page ends.
They force you to load their video on their main page each and every time you visit - not exactly sane usage of multimedia

And yet they claim to be using "best in class technology". You'd think they'd be able to setup a proper website!





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More Golden Spiders Fun

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By Michele Neylon on November 7, 2007 2:02 PM | 3 Comments
Golden Spider bashing might appear to be a national pastime, but I guess it's all down to the size of the target!

This year they've made a small effort to validate their weird choices by letting us, the public, vote on two of the categories. Of course, as Niall found out, the developers who did their site for them aren't exactly the most competent, as they didn't setup the forms to validate properly.

And what level of esteem should you hold web awards that include Template Monster templates?

There's threads on the "wonderful" awards on both CI and IWF. If you want some of the background then read over the thread from last year as well!
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When Is A Link Not A Link?

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By Michele Neylon on October 19, 2007 9:00 AM | 4 Comments
When is a link not a link?

When you can't actually click on it.

Someone started a thread over on CI the other day about NetVisionary nominee Panthius

The footer of the site contains a set of "links" which DO NOT work if you are using a normal browser:

deadlinks.jpg
It transpires that the links do work if you use Internet Explorer, which shows how "popular" a browser that is with Irish creative and web professionals!

Regardless of what browser I may or may not be using I'm amazed that someone managed to put together a business website so badly that the links don't work. That takes effort!



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Local Authority Sites Don't Need to be ugly

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By Michele Neylon on September 22, 2007 3:38 PM | 7 Comments
I just visited the Carlow website. It's horrific. It's embarassingly bad.

Why can't they do something like Clare or Donegal?

Does a county have to rely heavily on tourism to have a decent looking website?

I'd have thought not.

Earlier this week Carlow decided to have a carfree day before the rest of Europe.

Whether this was a good idea or not isn't important, but if you were a resident it would have been nice to actually have access to some information on it.
I'd have thought the local authority site would have been the place to find the information. Of course there was absolutely no mention of it at all!

Anyone who tells me that egovernment is improving obviously hasn't tried to actually use the local authority sites for Carlow!
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