07 September 2006

Problems with IE Browser

Some readers have reported (and I have the problem myself) that the Greek in the side bar of this blog does not show up on Internet Explorer; also, the spacing is poor. But in Mozilla Firefox (which I use), all is fine.

I've looked carefully at the blog's template to see what might explain this but don't know why this should be the case.

I'll continue investigating, but if you know how I might be able to sort out this problem, please let me know (e-mail would be best).

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Michael,

The issue is with IE's ability to render unicode properly; I'm afraid there's nothing you can do about it.

Cordially,
J. 

Posted by J.

The Tetrast said...

Your sidebar SPIonics are using "H7" & "H8". I just tested and found the MS Outlook Express accepts headers with levels of only 1-6. My guess is that MS Internet Explorer is likewise. From searching around the Internet just now, it seems that six levels has been the HTML standard, even if Mozilla allows more. Your sidebar SPIonics are using "H7" & "H8". But a dab of CSS would fix it easily.

Here's one way, just for instance

h7{color:#59332d;font-weight:bold;font-family:"SPIonic";letter-spacing:1px;}
h8{color:#718e9f;font-size:120%;font-weight:bold;font-family:"SPIonic";font-size:120%;}

h6.spia{color:#59332d;font-weight:bold;font-family:"SPIonic";letter-spacing:1px;}
h6.spib{color:#718e9f;font-size:120%;font-weight:bold;font-family:"SPIonic";font-size:120%;}

Then replace
<h7>lu/ein d’ ou)k e)/stin a)gnoou=ntaj to\n desmo/n</h7>
with
<h6 class=spia>lu/ein d’ ou)k e)/stin a)gnoou=ntaj to\n
desmo/n</h7>

and replace
<h8>Sunde/seij</h6>
with
<h6 class=spib>Sunde/seij</h6>

The Tetrast said...

Sorry, I left a few words out of my comment!

Your sidebar SPIonics are using "H7" & "H8". I just tested and found the MS Outlook Express accepts headers with levels of only 1-6. My guess is that MS Internet Explorer is likewise. From searching around the Internet just now, it seems that six levels has been the HTML standard, even if Mozilla allows more. Your sidebar SPIonics are using "H7" & "H8". But a dab of CSS would fix it easily.

Here's one way, just for instance

You currently have

h7{color:#59332d;font-weight:bold;font-family:"SPIonic";letter-spacing:1px;}
h8{color:#718e9f;font-size:120%;font-weight:bold;font-family:"SPIonic";font-size:120%;}

Whether or not you delete the h7 & h8 definitions from the style section, ADD the following to the style section (the straight quotes around SPIonic are optional, it's a one-word name):

h6.spia{color:#59332d;font-weight:bold;font-family:SPIonic;letter-spacing:1px;}
h6.spib{color:#718e9f;font-size:120%;font-weight:bold;font-family:SPIonic;font-size:120%;}

Then replace
<h7>lu/ein d’ ou)k e)/stin a)gnoou=ntaj to\n desmo/n</h7>
with
<h6 class=spia>lu/ein d’ ou)k e)/stin a)gnoou=ntaj to\n
desmo/n</h7>

and replace
<h8>Sunde/seij</h6>
with
<h6 class=spib>Sunde/seij</h6>

Michael Pakaluk said...

Thanks, that has largely worked.

But I find that in IE the spacing of the Greek in the top phrase is off (not so for the Greek headings lower down in the sidebar).

Do you have a clue what is going wrong there? Also, do you know why the sidebar is so much wider in IE than in Firefox? I'm thinking that that might have something to do with it.

MP 

Posted by Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk said...

Okay, I fixed the spacing problem in the letters, by stipulating a font size. I had overlooked that. But the side bar issue remains. MP

Posted by Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk said...

Okay, I see the issue is with how much of a percentage I make the division float.

But the percentages seem different for IE and MF. The same percentage value in the template yields a proportionately larger sidebar in IE than in MF.



Posted by Michael Pakaluk

The Tetrast said...

Yes, that width problem is a tough one. It rings a bell, but I'm not professional. I searched around the Internet a bit but didn't find anything.

Actually it's not the sidebar that you're floating with a width, instead it's the mainClm.

Now, you can see the problems which arise when you narrow the window in either IE or Mozilla. The sidebar becomes too narrow and its content gets pushed below the mainClm division. I'd set the mainClm width to 66% and do these two stopgaps for the time being:

1. In those lines of periods in the sidebar, delete 10 or 15 from each. Or, instead, format them so that you can put spaces between them so that they'll look about the same yet will break if the sidebar become too narrow:
<span style="font-family: 'arial black',gadget,verdana; font-size:
50%;color:#a48e67;">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .</span>
Still another way would be a compromise on the appearance, tighter-looking little dots:
<div style="border-bottom: #a48e67 2px dotted">&nbsp;</div>

2. This next stopgap, like the first, is in order to keep the sidebar content from being pushed below the mainClm content when the sidebar gets too narrow. Get the Name & Location info to align all the way to the left under "About Me." I did this by replacing every <dd & every <dl with <div and every </dd> & every </dl> with </div> . But keep a copy of the original markup just in case this mysteriously interferes with the blog publication process. Another way would be simply to delete the dl- & dd-related stuff entirely and replace it with text typed and formatted as you please. (It should be okay but, again, save a copy of the original stuff. Just a good habit.)

Michael Pakaluk said...

The dots repair worked well and probably good enough.

I'll fiddle with the profile formatting and see what I can do.

Thanks again. MP 

Posted by Michael Pakaluk

The Tetrast said...

Oops, I accidentally left a line break among the dots:

<span style="font-family: 'arial black',gadget,verdana; font-size:
50%;color:#a48e67;">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .</span>

That's better. Anyway, the reason to care about the sidebar getting narrowed in narrow windows is that some people have small monitors; some are viewing at low resolution because they don't know that they can increase the resolution; and some have their computers set to display everything large because they're half-blind etc. For people using software that reads text aloud, there's a formatting to say what language. Here it is for Ancient Greek:
<span lang="grc">α β γ δ</span> and I've read that it's "supposed" to work for Greek transliterated into Roman characters in the "standard" way. I suspect that it won't work for SPIonics because SPIonics doesn't use the UTF Greek characters, while the UTF Roman characters which it renders as Greek characters don't seem standard transliteration that might be used by software reading it.

Yet in the end there's only so much that one can reasonably do.

The Tetrast said...

I didn't notice that you had posted another comment. You're quite welcome.