Really dumb question

[andy81]

Hi, you probably hear this all the time, but for some reason my page loads fine in IE but looks terrible in firefox. I'm not sure if it's because of the iframes or what. It was designed in Dreamweaver 8.

The page is at www.annebegg.info

Any help, much appreciated.

[Twey]

It was designed in Dreamweaver 8.And there lies your problem. If you don't know enough to code sites by hand, you don't know enough to fix the myriad errors a WYSIWYG editor will insert into your code, and so you shouldn't use one. If you do, you don't have any reason to use a WYSIWYG editor in the first place, and coding by hand in the first place will probably end up being one heck of a lot faster than fixing all those errors (which usually involves practically rewriting the page anyway).

[djr33]

WYSIWYG editors can be helpful (there's a debate about this), but if you use one, you need to keep an eye on the html yourself.
I like dreamweaver. It saves me time from hand coding. But when it messes up, and it always does, I need to know how to fix it.

so... learn html, when you get the time... it'll be a big help :)

[codeexploiter]

I don't think relying on DreamWeaver's Design preview fully while developing the pages would be a blunder.

Instead if you want to use DreamWeaver use it but check your page view at least in two or three popular browser like FireFox, IE, Opera, etc.

If you check the page view while developing you won't get into this kind of mess.

[tech_support]

And remember to not use titles like "Really dumb question" and instead use something like "Page does not display correctly in FireFox"

[BLiZZaRD]

Hi, you probably hear this all the time, but for some reason my page loads fine in IE but looks terrible in firefox. I'm not sure if it's because of the iframes or what. It was designed in Dreamweaver 8.

The page is at www.annebegg.info

Any help, much appreciated.


Back on topic and giving you the help.... LOL

It is in your CSS stuff and your tables. In actuality FF is showing it correctly and IE is messing it up, you need to clean up a few things.

Please note that I am NO CSS guy, so I can't really help with this.

Anyway...

The main problem is your <div> tags. They are a little messy and not all needed, and your middle table structure (the one with the JS) isn't set up correctly.

Hopefully someone with more CSS knowledge can look at your source and figure it out for sure. :)


I would start by putting one table on a page by itself, and messing with all those div tags, until each appears correctly on its own. then start combining them into one page.

[Twey]

I would start by validating (http://validator.w3.org/) both your HTML (yes, forget XHTML) and CSS.

[djr33]

Twey, I've been meaning to mention something, and this seems like a good time to do so.
Dreamweaver, by default, inserts an xml doctype into pages. That is likely why there are so many xml pages out there by those who don't know what xml is or why it's different than html, or, most importantly, why they're using it.
I hate it, because it starts inserting automatic self closing tags, that get in the way of things.
Anyway, that's why.

Maybe that's part of some of the issues from those using Dreamweaver.

(We can start a new thread if this is worth it, but it's on topic with what we're discussing, unless we get into it in detail unrelated to this particular page...)

[Twey]

Anyway, that's why.Quite possibly. That still doesn't excuse it though :)

[djr33]

Not claiming it does. Just that it's one more thing to point out to anyone who doesn't seem clearly interested in xml and is using dreamweaver ;)

[blm126]

I believe Dreamweaver has an option to switch between HTML 4 and XHTML

[djr33]

I wouldn't be surprised, but if the default is xml, and people don't know what they're doing, then that would explain why so many people are using xml incorrectly.
If they know to switch to html4, the all is well.