Internet Explorer 8 problems when customers reading my site!

https://www.mindyourbusines.com

This is one of the over 100 letters I received since I have the zencart store online working:

"Hi, I tried to open your web page, but it shows cut sentences or blocks that make it difficult to read, it also shows super impossed text, send me your email so maybe I can copy how it opens, Best of luck and regards"

Oversized letters, scripts blocked, pictures misplaced, a mess!

I have being repeteadly reported that sometimes internet explorer does that thing, but not always.

Mostly is the Explorer 8 version.

I have aslo being told than no other browser gives such problems.

I also warned on my first page about this and advised the people to install a better browser and I gave some names with links to Firefox, Chrome, Opera and others.

It seems that Bill Gates decided to convince explorer users that all non microsoft buid sites are crap, but he gets the opposite results.

Instead of getting programmers to buy microsoft tools, he gets users to get rid of microsoft explorer.... lol

Explorer was designed to read well ASP only, sometimes reads bad even pure HTML sites if not ASP encoded.

Question to the forum:

Did anybody else had this problem?

Can they be fixed?

It's not IE's (or Bill Gates') fault, it's yours, as I mentioned in my post here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162480&page=2

My experience has been that IE8 is as standards-compliant as Firefox, but doesn't fix bad HTML as well.

Hi Steve,

I am puzzled a bit.

The link you provided me links back to me, the post about the script that shows on the page when called through the "New product" link which I didn't found a solution for yet. Maybe because it is not a HTML problem, but somehting else (still trying to figure out)

Same with the IE issue, I am looking at my site with Mozilla iceweasel and with Epiphany, some friends use Mozilla Firefox or Chrome and IE 7 or 8 in paralel, and tell me that with IE they have this isue but with the others no.

I submmited my site for a review to some 600 folks, and got IE bad reports from more than 40, some see the text size way to small and ask me to make it bigger, some see it oversized and ask me to make it smaller, but the reality is I am ONLY USING the Zencart standard editor (HTMLarea) embeded, and all settings are font size 2.

The header is setter at font size 9 by default by Zencart, the only thing I did was to chage the text content, and try to have H2 tag instead of H1.

The point is, most probably you did not understood the issue, and that's to blame on me since I most probably did not explained myself well enough.

If STANDARD Zencart UNMODIFIED scripts behave like that I cannot be accused of bad HTML coding since I did not encode ANY HTML here, just used what Zencart made available.

And any help I receive I test it as many times as I can before deciding if it works or not, without inventing anything on my own (I am not a programmer) so if there is any useful help you can provide or point to, I would be gratefull to you for your time and support.

Best regards,

Emil.

If STANDARD Zencart UNMODIFIED scripts behave like that I cannot be accused of bad HTML coding since I did not encode ANY HTML here, just used what Zencart made available.

How can I put this politely? You're being disingenuous (that's as polite as I can get).

I've looked at your site using IE 8 and it's a complete and utter mess - and it's a mess because you've altered the standard template, probably through altering the stylesheet. This isn't a Zen Cart problem - it's a problem created by yourself.

There's an acronym which applies to this and it's GIGO, which stands for "Garbage In - Garbage Out".

Vger

My post #13 in the thread I referenced:

**You've set the basefont size to '9' in the tagline and it's carrying over to the whole page. basefont is deprecated and only worked in IE anyway.

As Glenn said, don't style stuff inline - #tagline is available in the stylesheet.**

Using the Developers Tool Kit to search for 'basefont' in a stock Zencart installation returns no files, so that isn't Zencart.

Here's the offending code from your source:

<div id="tagline"><br /><h2> <basefont size="9">M_ind Y_our B_{usiness <br /> Ultralight aviation enthusiasts home shop}</font></h2></div>

My guess is that you pasted the text into the tagline define using some sort of HTML editor rather than a text editor.

If you use the Developers Tool Kit to search for 'basefont' it will tell you what file that code is in, and you can remove it, which should solve the problem.

Thank you Steve,

most generous, i'll try it out.

Browsing the related I.E. problem links in the forum I realised severall things.

1 Vger is wrong, mostly. I understand his attitude, but this is not what is right.

2 Although same of the I.E. issues are due to OURSELVES and the way we (by some miracle) manage to put to work Zencart with our limited or leterarily inexistent programmer knowledge, some others are due to I.E. bugs.

More than one Zencart user complained over the years about I.E. behaviour and the results of the replies lead to the clear conclusion thet I.E. is to be blamed, or better, aborted.

However some people like Steve found the time to understand the struggle, invent a solution for the Zencart and pass it to the crowd.

I hope one day I will be able to do such things, and I also hope I will be more like Steve...

I also found this REALLY INTERESTING link posted:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

pasted my url into the box and got a FLOOD of bugs reported on files that I never ever touched with anything in my zencart.

try for yourselves: https://www.mindyourbusines.com paste it in that box!

BEWARE: this URL leads to a HP sponsored site, open source not afiliated to Microsoft, so if they say there is someting wrong, is wrong, since they don't get paid by anybody to take part (as it seems to me some get paid to take part, and it shows in their attitude) Just being mean here ... lol

Most Gracious Steve, your solution might work or might not, dunno yet, but I love you anyway!

SOLUTION (variable)

Steve, I already knew what the page was, I just had no idea that BASEFONT is not the same thing with FONT, now I know it's messing Bill Gate's browser.

I am on linux here and I am using the basic Debian text editor to do that, but yes I used Bluefish in an attempt to turn the title red (never succedded, teach me how!!!)

the file is:

Home/includes/languages/englis/classic/header.php

Just deleted the BASE part form the font size and all changed, hopefully in beter.

To the I.E. fans, this is a PHP issue not HTML to be solved to make happy Bill Gates since we cannot improve his browser! Better get rid of it... lol

All other browsers are already happy with!

As I said in the previous reply:

Steve, Love you man, keep being yourself!

W3C CSS Validator results for http://www.mindyourbusines.com (CSS level 2.1)
Congratulations! No Error Found.

This document validates as CSS level 2.1 !

The "Warnings" are mostly if not all about text and background colors being too close, and not necessarily actual problems when the page is displayed.

Site looks good now in all browsers.

To make the tagline red, find this in stylesheet.css and change the color to FF0000

#tagline {
color:#000000;
font-size: 2em;
text-align : center;
vertical-align: middle;
}

Doing this stuff in the stylesheet is much easier (and better practice) than inline styling.

Most of the complaining you'll see about IE is really about IE6, which we all still struggle with.

Ok Steve, I know I am abusing here:

Could I tell the stylesheet.css file that I want a more "handwritten" font? You know, something calssy!

the pat to ther stylesheet.css is:

Home/includes/templates/classic/css/stylesheet.css (this is for me to remeber where to find it...LOL)

This is from my stilesheet.css:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(============ELIMINATED=================)

.cartNewItem {
color: #33CC33;
position: relative; /do not remove-fixes stupid IEbug/
}

.cartOldItem {
color: #660099;
position: relative; /do not remove-fixes stupid IEbug/
}
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
just to be clear I am not insane if I discovered I.E. has bugs (message to some I.E. fans) or at least not the only one insane around.

BTW, my header is now red, so I can put beneath any airplane, but the red Pittse next to my son in the product picture...LOL

Thanks a billion.

Just add whatever font you want to the rules shown.

font-family: 'comic sans ms' whatever sans-serif;

Be aware that if you choose a font that is not installed on every user's computer, a default font will be substituted and it will not look as you desire.

In your experience, what is the most common font that looks like a stilysh handwriting installed by default in windows? (probably linux and mac computers have their way to interpret them well or replace them)

Most probably a few are more diffused than the others.

B.T.W., is there any possibility that I provide the fonts in the script for that line, so any given computer uses them from my script instead of fishing them out of their fonts database where they might as well be not installed?

That would be a really cool solution, and solve a lot of headache!

My site looks better now, but I am trying to get it even better before putting more materials in it.

Thanks for the help.

Emil.

There's no script font I can see on a default Windows XP installation. I don't know about Windows 7.

Years ago, it was possible to 'push' a font to a users computer, but (thankfully) no longer, at least not without his cooperation.

Just my $.02 worth, but trying to control every aspect of the way your site appears on every visitor's screen is:

1. Impossible
2. Intrusive

I prefer the readablity of Arial, and, well, it's my screen.

For your logo and/or header image, you can create the image using the font of your choice and it will look the way you want.

Thanks Steve.

I gave it a thought and I think tomorow I'll try out something in Corel.

You are a treasure, I should burry you!

Ha, ha, ha!

Thanks a million.