HTML ?:Form Input boxes in NS/IE for Win

bruceg

I finally have an input box displaying the same width in both Windows versions of MS IE, and NN 4.x. By using this: <input type="text" size="21" style="w
idth: 260px;" name="face"> I was able to display this input box properly in both IE and NN 4.x., however it does not display properly on NN 4.x on Unix. In Solaris, Linux, and SCO, it shows a narrower width than in Windows. All the Unix versions of NN where 4.x, just like the Windows version. I'm guessing this might be a font issue? Does anybody know what other possibilities this could be or maybe a website that would have information regarding forms, and cross platform browser interpretability?

Anon

The basis of a good web site is for it to display in a simillar style in all browsers? Shouldnt we all be designing web sites that are HTML 4 complient? How much time is wasted trying to sort out problems created by Netscape? If all web sites needed a HTML 4 complient browser to look there best maybe Netscape would get there ass in gear. Not to mention the problems with CSS. Web design shouldnt be held back by browsers.

Anon

I usually subscribe to the 'solutions not philosphy' way of thinking regarding forum replies, but in this instance I agree. I have spent many a fretful hour writing forks in my code or workarounds to cater for Netscape 4.x anomalies and I have had enough.

It's bad enough that Netscape 4.x should lack basic support for various CSS and HTML standards, but it's also full of bugs, crashes regularly and one minor version can behave totally different to another. Then to cap it all they ship the abortion that is Netscape 6 - completely rewritten - so you've now got a new set of bugs to discover and find workarounds for - GREAT, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

Now I'm no great fan of Microsoft, but I have to say that IE 5.5 is one of the finest pieces of basically free software to ever be released and it is definitely the best web browser I have used so far.

So my personal recommendation is to do what I do, write code that is basically HTML standard compliant, make it look right in Opera and IE, ensure it is at least usable in Netscape and leave it at that.

You will then find that life is so much easier that you will have time to reply to forum posts with long diatribes like this.

Regards,

chrber

bruceg

I agree with both posts, however this does not solve my current dillema. It's too bad Microsoft does not offer a Linux version of IE. I'll have to try the Solaris version, and see how well that works. If they can get IE to run on Solaris, then they should be able to get it to run on Linux. I think it is more of a political reason, than a technical one, that MS has not already done the port.

For now, I guess I'll recommend NS 6 for Linux users, since it seems to display fine in that version. I have not tried Opera yet. Konquerer for Unix (KDE/QT) is also coming along nice. There are some javascript issues with it, but I would suspect that it will eventually replace Netscape due to it's small size, and it's free. It seems to conform to a lot of standards, sometimes better than NS.

I wonder what percentage of users are still using NS. I know MS has an advantage here, but not everyone uses IE. I use NS 4.77 for Linux, personally, because I like the mail application. LDAP integration, and no crazy Outlook/ email viruses to worry about.

Anon

OK OK, you're right my post came nowhere near to answering your question which means I broke my own rules regarding forum post replies - I'm sorry.

Anyway at the back of my mind I remembered reading an article on the web a while ago on form presentaton for webpages written by Jukka Korpela (I couldn't remember the name at first and have spent a few hours tracking the page down today). I don't know how much help it will be, but give it a once over and see what you think.

Here's the URL:-

http://www.malibutelecom.com/yucca/forms/present.html

Hope this helps a little,

chrber.

bruceg

Thanks a lot for the link! It has some good information, and hopefully I'll be able to take care of most of my problems, now. Thanks again.

Bruce