Re: IE box model

On Thu, 18 May 2006, Stevie D wrote:

If this is so well known, why are so many hacks still being peddled,
and so much misinformation about the broken box model being spread,
when it is so simple to fix?

Indeed. What would be the point of developing better browsers if they
couldn't do a better job than their predecessors, riddle me that?

The record shows that I've always put in effort to ensure graceful
fallback on lesser browsers, while maintaining good results on modern
browsers. But that's done by fallback techniques - not by
emasculating the page to prevent (let's say) Opera 9 from getting any
better results than could be achieved on NN4 or MSIE5 - or whatever
your paradigm of an obsolete browser may be.

Some folks apparently feel that they have to produce identical results
on older browser versions. Quite why they think that is never
revealed.

Sometimes they claim that the site's sponsor insists on it. But
whenever I've tried to follow this up, it's turned out that the site's
sponsor uses just one version of MSIE at one window size on one PC,
and simply has no idea that anyone else could be different. All they
really care about is that the page looks like their original
storyboard concept on their /own/ browser - which usually ain't too
hard to achieve while retaining an otherwise flexible design.

Maybe I'm just trying to twist the idea in the way that I favour, but
it seems to me that these authors/deezyners are /quite unnecessarily/
striving to produce that DTP-exact design in every possible browsing
situation (in some cases, they even attempt to make the page
completely unusable if the DTP-exact design can't be achieved).

Seems to me that if they can produce a flexible design that works in
any browsing situation, and happens to look the way the site sponsor
imagined it when they view it in their own limited browsing situation,
then we get the best of both worlds, and the web is working along the
principles that it was originally intended.

I hope you've seen http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/

cheers
.