This post is to help you get pages working in both FF and IE. There's lots of threads on this but I felt justified in making this one too.

Its very easy for IE not to display something that works fine in FF.

For example:



That simple error prevented a page from displaying in IE, however I rewrote it as:



It then worked. Carefully comb your code for errors such as that. I ignored the issue of IE non-compatibility for a long time until I saw almost 20% of visitors to my site used IE, I then had to work on it. You'd be shocked how many people still use IE:P

~SilverFox

Well the first line of code is not correct thats why it doesnt work.A lot of WSYWIG editors clutter code with faults like that one, to me its just lazy code, you could have for instance done it this way.
A lot of editors just end every statement with a "/>" which is fundamentaly wrong!
I check every line of html and css with the W3C.org validation tools so that I know that my code shouldwork cross platform.
I suggest to anyone making any kind of webpage to check out the W3C pages not only for validation but also to learn more about strict and correct coding.Also look into HTML Tidy which can clean up mistakes in the code and Clean CSS to make your CSS code validate better and in a lot of cases smaller in file size.
Good Luck!
Marky;) 

I have to agree with Mark420 about W3C validation. My site isn't very large right now, but I felt to give me the best chance at a succesful website, to check it through that. I tried my best at getting my site XHTML strict, but found for some reason it kept coming up not in complience. So for now, it is XHTML traditional. But I have learned some fundemental mistakes through the validation service. You can also check CSS validation too.

In my experience, all CSS files end with the following IE Conditional Comment:

Thanks mark.

But like I said that fixed it. Funny how simple error make big issues.

If you're saying 20% of your visitors is using IE, then your audience might be more targeted. Generally, there's more than 70% of internet browsers' market belongs to IE. Just image that 90% of the PC users are running windows. Any windows above 98SE comes with IE. That will lead to a staggering figure. Firefox better keep it's pace up to shrink the giant.

Yes my audience is targeted kinda. Its for my slavehack group the site is. Most SH players use FF due to an extension for that game. That's why I started using it at first. Personally I don't think IE is all that bad and I like Windows. I am shocked at how many still use IE though.

This post has been edited by SilverFox: Apr 4 2007, 12:53 AM

Relating the editors ending statement issue thats correct, a lot of them do that, but it is more relating in how we configure the editor, you can enable or disable it, it's your choice, i personally prefer to enable it because it is related with the XHTML standard and right now i'm working with it.

Relating the W3C.org pages, i agree with you again, i also learn a lot about strict and correct coding and the validator is a must page, helps a lot and the related info that shows every time you validate your code helps a lot too.

BTW, thanks for the Clean CSS page, i will try it right now to check some CSS's issues i have relating the use of the color and the background-color properties.

Best regards,

It is always good to validate your html pages for such mistakes and correct them, due to different browser "fix" those kind of errors quite differently, so this is no surprise, even quite funny. In the early days of browsers, you could have changed how the browser will show the html, at least on AWeb, you could make it show the code Strict, so all those errors would ruin the page, then normal as I remember where errors like that are being fixed and some kind other option more, maybe advanced? where the browser tries to output the html with trying to correct all the mistakes, but this kind of things isn't necessary Today though.. Most of browsers have their own integrated "best" html parser.

And making your pages work for xHTML Strict Doctype isn't necessary too, for your site and in general making the doctype Transitional is practically the best choice (by the way it is not traditional, but Transitional), you don't win anything and you're not cooler if your pages validate as strict, unless you're running a real xml full of stuff site with a lot of x and other x stuff

Today, it is really easy to validate your pages, especially with all those add-ons, extensions and widgets for most browsers, you just need to click or etc. to see the errors and don't need to always use the online validator and people who say that validating isn't necessary, due to google doesn't validate are wrong in my opinion, google made their pages to work on most cross browsers saving as much bandwidth as possible, sometimes some validation errors might exist, but personally, it is not recommended unless you know what you're doing or you want it to be that way, google is no standard for something, simple people like you work there, just maybe with more knowledge about their profession and usually I notice, that people who don't validate, with time if they get into webdesign or web technical programming they start to check their pages there and there, so in conclusion, people coding with such errors maybe called novice but personally I noticed that at such language as html, with time you make less and less mistakes, of course sometimes you don't close some tag, but you will notice it with time.

The error correcting thing in different browsers is actually quite a funny thing. As you've proven in this example, Firefox will not be able to display code with errors; I am not talking about valid code, since there are so many standards which differ. However, you should follow some general rules - the tags which surround some content should be <tag>Content</tag>, and those which stand alone, like input, br or img, should be <tag />. So, no matter whether a browser displays all the parts of you page correctly, be sure to make the code error-free.

Another thing to talk about, when it comes to errors, is the CSS file. When creating one from scratch, make it 100 per cent valid, as this is very important for proper display in good browsers. Why do I say good? Because Internet Explorer is not good. It will interpret the CSS code in a very strange way, and you will probably have to use some "hacks" to fix it. This is why you will have to create errors yourself It is well-know that Firefox doesn't tolerate invalid CSS code, and that a certain line (probably) won't work if it contains an error. On the other hand, Internet Explorer skips some errors (e.g. ignores invalid characters), which leads to a CSS file with no errors. Of course, this method is not recommended, as the code will not be valid, but it is a nice example of how errors can help you