ThisIsNPR.org

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Nice site by the way. Although I find it sad that you don’t support Mozilla / Firefox. The right column is a bit too wide…

That’s funny. If you would have actually coded your site to standards it would work in all browsers regardless of platform.
Sad really.

AAAAACK! I thought I was having a seizure…. turned out it was the website flashing and jumping at me as it was loading. FireFox 0.8 here…..
TG

“That’s funny. If you would have actually coded your site to standards it would work in all browsers regardless of platform.Sad really.”
where’s your gem of a site?

Looks good! But why is the search box missing? And how come I have to scroll horizontally to get to the main div scroll bar? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? Sorry, I just hate the “double scroll” …
Keep us updated! ??

“If you would have actually coded your site to standards… Sad really.”
I totally agree with you! Absolutely. I’m a pathetic newbie. I’m just starting to learn CSS, so I haven’t learned all the tricks to write standards compliant code and also achieve the look.
I certainly wasn’t saying I choose not to play nice with FireFox! I love FireFox! (I hate that flashing javascript insanity too, by the way. I’d like to keep the fade effect but that’s just awful…)
So if you have any suggestions, I’d really appreciate them.
“But why is the search box missing?”
Search box is missing because I have some XP bug that makes all text input boxes (only in FireFox and IE, weirdly) 10 times the stated size. So that’s just for my own personal benefit, until I fix the bug or just reinstall XP.
“And how come I have to scroll horizontally to get to the main div scroll bar?”
Not sure about that, is it a resolution issue?
I like the separate scroll because I wanted to keep everything static in the browser window. But maybe I could achieve a similar thing by absolutely positioning the three other divs so that they stay put while the main content div is offset from the top and flows normally?? But then I would lose the overall symmetry.
Back to the drawing board…

Ok, this is really silly but I had some DOCTYPE issues. I fixed those, which led to my fixing the padding/width math in the stylesheet, and everything seems to look good to me everywhere except IE/Mac. Safari and Mozilla look good on Mac, and IE, Opera, and FireFox look good on XP.
Hope this can be confirmed!
There are three problems in IE/Mac:
1. Shadow divs don’t show up, maybe a width issue? Is this the IE5.5 bug?
2. Document has lots of blank space at the bottom.
3. Horizontal scroll bar in the content div. Something to do with how IE/Mac renders the vertical scrollbar on top of the content?
Anyway, this isn’t a CSS forum, but just thought I’d point these out to the interested.
Anybody have any idea what the javascript flashing problem is with FireFox?

I hope Jesuit won’t mind if I seek to amplify his remarks. There is a choice (of sorts) as to how we go about this. We can start with web standards. Or we can code so it looks good in Browser X. Then we go all round the houses. As we have done here. “Gee Ed that flashing gizmo sure looks funny in my beta Safari whatever on my OS .” “Gee Brad got it all fixed up now but it won’t render the margin properly in NN something”. IMHO it is a cop out to say anyone is new at css. If they are why not start with the standards on day one?

If I may chime in? I think the site design is great. Can never go wrong with a sharp grey design. ??
Now some suggestions. I see you’re using the Orkut script for fading text. While cool, the method is seriously flawed. If I load your page without javascript, I see no text. I’m betting this is also causing the flashing problem.
You should check here on how to fix that.
And why are you using frames? I see a frameset with two frames, one your content frame taking up 100% of the screen, and a second with 0% and without a source. Any reason?
But besides that I think the site looks great with some interesting content. Keep it up!

My post was not a crtiticism really. The point I wanted to make is that we all need some kind of reference material before we get started. So why not use standards? It is not any harder. In fact it is easier. Then we get to the legacy UA and compliance issues you are standing on a solid and validated platform. Besides the fits and bugs in some browsers do not make sense without really knowing what the browser should be doing. Other wise you have no way of knowing whether it really is variance or just your coding. I validate as I go along rather than do it at the end. A last thought. If you validate first time out ypur knowledge becomes reuseable. If you hack at the start you will always hack till you get straightened out. We CSS folks are not zealots. Some of us just like an easy life. ??

Fair enough. I guess I’ve learned most of what I know hacking and crufting away between classes, to mixed results. And to tell you the truth, I really am tired of it! I think I should take your point and run with it — I would love an easy life.
I don’t know if this should continue here or somewhere else, but I have a question about how to change the menu items depending on where you are in the site. Nothing fancy, actually, I just want to highlight the active section somehow, like bolding the title of the active category or archive. I think this might involve some if…else, but not sure how to do it in the index.php. Any help?
And any other thoughts on the design? I’m not sure about the background.
Thanks for all the comments. This is a fine forum. And by the way, I haven’t mentioned that I am yet another MT convert, by way of Mambo.