verviana

I've gotten heavy into being standards compliant lately. I want to be able to do everything I want to do without having to resort to deprecated stuff and table layout, and I view it as something that's about putting the time in to learn a new way of doing things, not something insurmountable. It really hasn't been that difficult, as a general rule.

However... I keep having issues with IE (especially pre-7 IE). Who doesn't, I guess? But I have a web design business and a decent percentage of my clients ARE using older versions of IE (enough that I kind of want to cater to them). I'm pretty much compatible with the current versions of everything, but am feeling like that's not good enough. So please--your thoughts.

What workarounds do you use / have you used for CSS and CSS2 that certain browsers just won't see? A recurring problem for me is that centering (I typically use the method of displaying at block level and setting margins to auto) just doesn't happen in IE6 unless I resort to the good ol' "center" tag. Do you guys ever find yourselves throwing in deprecated tags for purposes of older browsers like this, or have you found workarounds?

What are your thoughts on transparency and .pngs? I use .pngs a lot in my design specifically for the transparency (and the fact that for a detailed image, they simply look a lot less crappy than a .gif). IE6 doesn't render them properly (as y'all know). So far my attitude has been "screw it--better for the site to look good for most people than crappy for EVERYone." But now I'm not sure.

What are your thoughts on websites that specifically declare things like "This site is compatible with these browsers" followed by a link to download the latest version? I feel more or less like compatibility is on the head of the webmaster (especially as a Mac user who likes Safari, and is tired of other webmasters not bothering to optimize for Mac. I optimize for Windows!) but have been considering at least dropping a link to IE7 or Firefox on some of my sites. It feels kind of unprofessional though.

Finally--what are some other compatibility problems you have come across with standards-compliant XHTML and IE--and were you able to find a workaround?

I'm sorry this is wordy... But if you have anything to say about any of it, I want to hear it and want you to be as wordy as possible in turn. Thanks!

dbc

I work with web standards and CSS layouts exclusively. I will not work with Table based layouts and I don't ever find myself wishing to use a deprecated tag.

There are numerous strategies for dealing with specific IE idiocies, some techniques involve using hacks (which I avoid using) and others rely on using the inheritance properties to your advantage or occasionally a little bit of DOM scripting to teach IE some manners.

The answer to your centering question is to use inheritance. Have the containing element use the text-align:center attribute then set your element to whatever text-alignment you wish and use margin:auto for left and right margins.

For example:

will center the container in your document while aligning text to the left. Standards complaint browsers go along with the unnecessary center attribute in the body element as it is negated by the corresponding attribute in the containing div and IE 5-6 learn to play well with others.

netridge

Honestly,
I don't design for older browsers, you just tend to run into tons of issues and using hacks is always good as it may cause issues with other browsers. I say just design for the current version and encourage your users to upgrade.

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verviana

DBC: Wow, thanks very much for this. It's exactly what I was looking for (at least for this particular issue.)

Do you have any references/resources you might reccommend for this stuff?

Netridge: You know, I've been doing just that myself for some time, but I've recently started a business doing web/graphic design and am beginning to fear that noncompliance with older browsers will hurt my relationships with clients (or simply lose me jobs I never know about when someone with IE6 looks at something and it appears all messed up).

Do you do web design professionally? How do you usually approach this issue with clients?

I've bookmarked your site, by the way... I'll definitely check around it when I get a minute; it looks useful.

netridge

aaah, I see. Yes older browsers are unpredictable especially when clients are still using the older browser, and you don't want to loose jobs especially when you reputation is on the line.

As for me, currently I do not do web design professionally. I am doing multimedia arts and commmunications as my major, so I do plan on doing it professionally one day but for now im just learning .

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dbc

Some books to read:

CSS Mastery by Andy Budd
Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm
Eric Meyer on CSS

Visit their sites and subscribe to their RSS feeds too.

Some sites to visit:
A List Apart
W3C Schools
West Civ
Position is Everything

I've 30 or so RSS feeds I follow on the topic besides teaching and working with XHTML/CSS on a daily basis. Once you get the basics down the work flow is faster, more effective and easy to implement than the old non-standards methods--and you have more flexibility and creative options open to you and your clients.