Expert: Mark Jenkins - 8/10/2004

Question
Hi Mark,

I designed the website http://www.swingaring.com using Homesite and discovered that the pages look very different when viewed in either IE or Safari on the Mac. The home page has the images across the top going down the right side of the screen. This page -- http://www.swingaring.com/handhealth.html -- appears as centered or as several columns on the Mac when it should be left justified (except for the title and author). Is there something that I should be doing to ensure that the site appears the same on both PC and Mac platforms.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Dorlene

Answer
Hi Dorlene,
Your problem is well known by web designers such as myself. Basically, different browsers will render html pages in a different fashion. This is because each browser will tend to be based on different versions of the HTML language.

For example:
Netscape and Explorer 4.x Browsers use HTML 4.0 Transitional
Netscape and Explorer 3.x Browsers use HTML 3.2

This is further compounded by the fact that there are also differences ni how different operating systems (such as windows, linux, and mac) will render the pages as well.

Here is some basic info about this.
http://www.netmechanic.com/browser-index.htm

There is much more available on the web.

The easiest solution to this is to use all text (no tables). Just paragraphs and pictures.

If you choose to use tables be sure that all tags are closed.

A html table is like this
<table>             (tells the browser a table is coming)
<tr>                (a new table row 1)
<td>                (cell 1 in that row)
Cell contents 1     (what you type in the cell 1, row 1)
</td>               (cell 1 on row 1 ends)
<td>                (cell 2 on row 1 begins
Cell contents 2     (what you type in the cell 2, row 1)
</td>               (cell 2 on row 1 ends)
</tr>**             (end row 1)
</table>            (table ends here)

Lets say you forget the </tr> that closes the row (the one with the asterisks by it). MSIE will still build the table, whereas Netscape won't. Netscape is merciless on dropped tags. The whole page goes haywire sometimes.

This is just one example. If you use simple, clean (and most of all correct) code, you will solve many problems. Unfortunately this is no answer to your problem, it will only point you in the direction to solving your problem.

Good luck,
Mark J