[Wylug-discuss] a webdesign query / mini rant

[Dave Fisher]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 09:33:53PM +0000, chris wrote:
> Just a few quick questions from a very tired soul:
> 
> How does one go about assigning the tiny icon that sits just to the left 
> of the URL in a Firefox window? All the cool kids are doing it.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon

Assigning it is easy. Insert the following in the head element of your
pages: 

  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico">

The tricky bit is authoring the 'special'  Microsoft .ico format in
Linux.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_%28icon_image_file_format%29

If anyone knows of a good/easy tool, tell us.

N.B. You can use PNGs, but buggy browsers will continue nagging the
webserver for favicon.ico, so there's not much point.

> Dose MSIE have any support for style positioning by % value? - or am i 
> going to have to pray none of my visitors resize their windows?

Just use CSS.  

N.B. IE/Mac is _not_ the same application as IE/Win.

They react very differently to CSS. IE/Mac was much better, but it has
its own bugs and is now very deprecated.

  See http://www.positioniseverything.net/ for the 'gen' on browser
  bugs.

All IEs implement percentage values on all the CSS dimensions that they
support (only a fraction of the total in the standards).

Your problem on Windows will be the IE box model and IE quirks mode:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_box_model_bug

  http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html

  

> 
> And now for a short rant:
> 
> I wrote my site in Firefox and Safiri, and i have only just got round to 
> testing it on MSIE. I was horrified to discover that MSIE STILL doesn't 
> support .png images, therefore, no transparency, 

Not 'therefore'. IE does support PNG _and_ transparency, but it only 
supports semi-transparency in PNGs (alpha blending) via a proprietary
extension.  

This will be fixed in IE7.

> and that was just the 
> tip of the iceberg. No % positioning, and apparentally no <span> tag. 

Nonsense. 

See above on %.

What were you expecting <span> to do?

The usual default rendering effect of <span> is to create an inline box
and not much else, doesn't it do that in your IE?

> So 
> as a result my site looks like its been programmed by a four year old, 
> and i have had to strip nearly everything out of it. I have seriously 
> put a thought to blocking all IE6 traffic with a cheery message reeding 
> 'This site can only be viewed by a W3C standards compliant browser' but 
> i have a dirty feeling id get sued for libel.

Possibly, since there appear to be gaps in your knowledge of the
standards and their support in modern browsers.

> In closing, can anyone remember a firfox campaign which gave users code 
> to implement a splash screen on there website which deterred/prevented 
> MSIE users from entering the site.?

No, and anybody with a real desire to promote Firefox an ounce of
usability sense would stay well away from any kind of splash screen.

Please forgive any intemperate language.  I'm less forgiving of OSS/Open
Standards advocates who sound off in ignorance than I would be of
Windows no-nothings.

To learn CSS from people who know what they are talking about, see:

  http://css-discuss.incutio.com/

And join the mailing list, it's just "the dogs'":
 
  http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssDiscussList

  
Dave