...

It looks terrible in IE, so I hope Snover likes getting complaints. They won't come from me, however, as I use Firefox.

Snover: One thing I don't like is that the about page is squashed into the middle third of my screen, which wouldn't be so bad except it's so squashed that there's a scroll bar on the right side. I've got all that screen space, so why does it have to squash itself to the point where I can't see it all at once? Also, my scroll wheel doesn't work for scrolling that stupid scrollbar. 😠

I really like the design (especially the rather menacing logo looming at the top). Its XHTML and CSS look nice and clean too, so I can understand that 1) you don't want to corrupt it to support a shoddy browser, and 2) you care about web standards and have a natural dislike for browsers that don't correctly support them.

While I completely understand the sentiment, Munt is a really small project, and we need to be pragmatic. Giving IE users something that doesn't look broken is essential. Perhaps Reckless could work on the changes necessary to achieve this?

But, why? Keeping others out of using IE is like a noble goal... 😁

It may be noble, but it will just drive people away. Very few people will be willing to go download, install, and set up some other browser (when they already have one) just to view some little site.

Yeah, but if lots of sites start doing it...😉
I'm actually surprised how many people get infected with spyware and are still unaware of Opera or Firefox. They just buy McAfee or SpySweeper and wonder how they get reinfected.

KingGuppy, after thinking for a while, it is possible that this layout could be munged into working within the confines of Trident, but so much would need to be changed that I might as well start something simpler from scratch.

* All elements using display : table* would need to be changed into actual HTML tables.
* All of the PNG images would need to be changed to be <div> elements with the image as the background-image, then be run through the propietary "filter:DXAlphaTransform" or whatever the hell that stupid shit is.
* All of the position : fixed layers would need to be changed to be position : absolute and then javascript hacks would need to be used to keep them in place.
* All of the elements that are positioned to the viewport horizontally on both sides would need to have their width and/or height calculated every time the windows was resized, and the ones positioned vertically would have to have their height calculated onload.

And none of this includes any potential new stuff.

I gotta say, I really, really like not going insane trying to debug problems with IE -- I especially love its oh-so-intuitive Javascript error output*.

It would be easier to just create a new, dumbed down IE design using absolutely no CSS (<font> tag anyone?). Reckless can act high-and-mighty about being able to munge code into submission for IE, and some of my less ambitious site designs have ended up working, but I just think it would be an infinite amount of effort for so little gain. I'd rather wait and see what kind of fixes IE7 has, despite Microsoft's pledge for no better standards support.

(* While I was trying to create the "no, not compatible" layer in IE, I was confused as to why it was not working. IE was generating an error, Line: 11 Char: 2 Error: Invalid argument. File: http://70.84.200.104/dev/mnt. I could not figure out what was causing it. I eventually ended up commenting out base.js and then commented out line-by-line in my noie.js file. The problem ended up being (in Microsoft's lingo), Line: 9 Char: 23 Error: Invalid property window.innerWidth. File: http://70.84.200.104/dev/mnt/scripts/noie.js. Way to give me a fucking useful error, Microsoft.)

Snover wrote:

Reckless can act high-and-mighty about being able to munge code into submission for IE

Look m8 I merely pointed out the errors on the site, nothing more. Yes I pointed out that I had got my sites to work and that was just to highlight that you've almost had it in mind to not support IE from the start. Get off your soapbox, the web is more or less made up of 70% IE users, 20% Firefox and 10% others. As a web developer it's a pain in the ass to support all of 'em but life's a shit sometimes.

Reckless wrote:

Look m8 I merely pointed out the errors on the site, nothing more.

The first step to being a recovering IE developer (read: me) is to realise that the site does not contain errors, IE does. After that, things start being easy.

Do you want this project to be accessible to 70% of the internet's users?

I use firefox, but I think it is incredibly and unexcusably immature to expect people to not use IE. Most people don't give a shit, and their not giving a shit is no reason for them to not learn about this great project. You are doing the MT-32 emulation a great disservice by constructing a non-IE compatible web site, for little reason.

I'm not a big contributor here, but I'll say this (with the least possible offense implied): Snover, grow up.

Maybe better option is to have at least a "degenerate" vrsion of the site for IE-users with big colorful statements such as "get Firefox for real eXPerience"?

Could someone remind me why the onus for IE compatibility is on the Web developers that create standards-compliant (read: interoperable) code, and not on Microsoft who created the broken implementation?

It's simple: MSIE is the most widely-used browser. Therefore, Microsoft gets to decide what the standard is, even if everyone else disagree.

It might work for high-volume sites to make their stuff standards-compliant but not IE-compatable, although it seems that even they wouldn't want to risk driving people away. Little pages/sites like the one you're making would definitely drive away a substantial percentage of users by not offering IE compatability of some kind.

Just a text page with "MT 32 emulator - download here, get a new browser" would do :>

HunterZ: Does that mean that if Toyota (the #1 car manufacturer in the world) decided that they were going to move the steering column to the right side of all of their cars, that suddenly everyone with a car would need to start driving on the left side of the road, because the #1 manufacturer decided that they were going to cut costs? Because, that's not the standard (in America), but because they are so big it would become the standard? I don't think so.

Hey I have my steering wheel on the right side of the car 😀

Snover, the tragedy of this discussion is that it's KingGuppy's site that will suffer as a direct consequence of the decisions you have made. KingGuppy would like an IE compatible site (for better or worse) and that's what he should be provided with. There's no point doing a website (however good looking it is) if the customer isn't getting what he wants/needs.

It already displays something worthwhile in IE. Perhaps I don't really have the time or energy to spend trying to deal with Trident and that's why I'm not?

It's more like this: If Toyota (or GM or whoever) made 70% of the world's cars in the 70s, and they decided not to upgrade their cars to run on unleaded fuel, then you can bet that every gas station would still sell diesel fuel until Toyota decided to change their engine designs.

Snover wrote:

It already displays something worthwhile in IE. Perhaps I don't really have the time or energy to spend trying to deal with Trident and that's why I'm not?

As long as the same information is accessible in IE as other browsers without looking atrocious, I don't have a problem with it.

That would only make sense if unleaded fuel was agreed upon by the entire industry, including Toyota, and then Toyota decided to back out later.

Okay, so say they did that. Outcome is the same: If you own a gas station and want it to attract customers, you have to sell diesel.