OT: Web standards & browsers (Was: Chelume - My Conlang website up.)

Okay, so what exactly should I change to make it more cross-browser
friendly / standards compliant? Are frames alright? Is CSS alright?
Apparently (see below) the XML's hopeless.

> Mozilla (or the Netscape derivative
> for that matter) has, of course, no
> problems with frames. However, [insert
> fundamentalist counterargument here].
> CSS floats can probably be used instead
> of frames.
Really? We never even discussed floats in my class. I know what the basic
idea is, but  I'd have to stop and search for info on CSS to be able to use
them. I still don't understand what's wrong with frames, though.

> I'd rather say "darn IE" since it's IE
> which is not following standards, rather
> than other browsers.
I don't doubt it. I'm *no* Windows lover! (only a Windows user)

> Rather, you should keep with the standards.
> They are there for a reason. Not so many
> people use IE as you might think (not a
> problem for me, Opera shows up the page
> perfectly).
Which standards? In particular, where did I break the standards? My web
programming teacher never mentioned much about standards at all. He just
showed us how to do a bunch of stuff (I loved the class, but he was a
terrible teacher!). The one time he did mention various browsers I think he
said that IE had some 95% of the market, followed by Netscape with 5% and
that there was a third European browser (he couldn't remember the name, but
a student mentioned it was Opera) with less than 1%. But I've known him to
be wrong on several occasions before, so it wouldn't surprise me in this
case either.

But a question: I do use IE b/c its what I have and its what I'm most
familiar with. Its apparently also what many other people use, who don't
have these other browsers (the exact %-age doesn't matter, I'm sure its a
majority at any rate, even if a shrinking one). If I conform to these
standards, (whatever they are) will I make the pages unreadable to IE? I
would at least like to be able to read my own pages. Case in point: see
below about XML.


> It does, [show only the XML source]
> but through no fault of your own
> (unless you're the server admin)
> ...apparently your webserver isn't
> configured to know what XML is and
> serves it as "text/plain".
I'm not the server admin. But that doesn't make sense. If theres a server
problem, then why can I see the transformed document just fine, on any
computer I've used?

> A lose-lose situation. IE will only
> parse the XML/XSLT when served as
> text/xml; Mozilla and derivatives only
> when served as application/xhtml+xml
> (the standard, of course).
-sigh- So much for using XML. And I was so excited about using it, too. I
guess I'll switch back to HTML after all. Maybe in another half-decade or
two these kind of problems will be ironed out. :(

> I say darn M$
>
> James W. a die-hard Mac user.
I say so too, nevertheless, IE's all I've got at the moment.

~Caleb...

A Windows user who likes Linux better in theory, but can't get the GUI or
Modem to work right with it. But that's a whole 'nother story...

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