Hi, I've been into web design for years, but only over the past two years have I started to learn standards compliment web design and begun to get into PHP and other web-programming languages.

 

Anyway, on my re-coded website I've used some server side coding to serve a non-standard table layout to versions of internet explorer older than version 7.

 

Now, the primary site which users on modern web browsers (IE7, FF, Opera) will all see a standards compliant website, but the older ones will see a table based layout, but screen readers, robots and any other sort of software that's in the business of reading websites will not see the ugly tables!

 

So, here's my question (well 2 really..), what sort of things do other people do to ensure backwards compatibility back to the dawn of time?

 

And what is performing stuff like this considered 'okay' by standards people?

 

Here's the website:

 

www.redfoxdesign.co.uk

 

Thanks for reading!

I wouldn't go through the efforts of serving table layout to older browsers. Instead, take advantage of the older browsers disability to read CSS. So if the obscure user with a really old browser should come across your site, the user will see the site with no styling at all. Just the default rendering of the browser. This works fine as long as your HTML is marked up properly and orderly. Some older browsers will understand CSS partially, but if you use @import to include your stylesheets then you should be fine as only the better CSS capable will understand it.

It's a matter of gracefully degrade the layout, not ensuring that it'll look pixel perfect in all browser. If you go for pixel perfection you'll end up with anger, frustration and grey hairs.

How far back with browser support do you want to go? IMHO spending a lot of time supporting ones like Netscape 3/4, IE5.5 and below is a waste of time and resources, like Thomas says just let them see an unstyled site - they will still be able to read it! These browsers will probably account for something like less than 1% of your visitors and your time would be better spent on things that earn your income!

 

Just as an example have a look at http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/January/browser.php where you can get a *rough* snapshot of current browser usage. The point is weighing up the cost benefits of fully supporting older browsers, if you feel not supporting them will be detriment to your business then do something about it, otherwise not.

i test my websites in a single PC with IE6,IE7,firefox , safari and opera.

Also, i don't use em coz i have a problem with that when viewed on a laptop the text sizes are different.

Please don't use tables, they dont behave well when used for layouts.

Well, the main problems were with IE6, which no matter who you listen to is still either the most popular or second most popular browser on the planet. I wasn't planning on supporting any further back than 6 really to be honest, but the layout just wouldn't work with IE6 without a ridiculous amount of tweaking, and, well, do you think a corporate client is going to accept that their website is just a load of plain text in older browsers? And in not so old browsers stuff isn't how it should be...

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Also, once I decided to give old versions of IE(no other browser receives the tables layout, it's only old versions of IE that are still stuck or corporate networks across the world! Not Netscape) a different layout it only took about 30 minutes to completely adapt the original design to a tables layout which pretty much matches the full CSS/xHTML layout exactly with only a few tiny minor differences!

 

To be honest, I don't *want* my website to drop back to being unstyled, I may know that it's the users fault for not updating their browser 5 years ago, but they don't, and I want them to buy my services, and their customers certainly won't be happy going to a website only for it to not look right, again, they won't blame their browser, they'll blame me and my client!

 

So, this method has given me a valid XHTML1.1 and CSS website, with no hacks at all which, while some might validate, aren't really valid are they?

 

So, really what I want to know is: What disadvantage does this technique have other than the time it took to implement?

Using good CSS and possibly one or two conditional comments for IE 5.5/6 you can support FF, Opera, Safari, and IE versions 7, 6, and 5.5 without having to write a whole new website.

 

This is the method I use, conditional comments are very useful for fixing the one or two things that will break in IE 5.5/6 without having to use hacks.

 

Anything less than this isn't worth supporting and I agree that by writing well structured documents users who don't want to update will still have a readable website.

 

I spend a lot more time worrying about different resolutions!

 

- Eris

When I suggested serving plain websites ot was to browsers like IE5, NS4 and earlier.

 

And yes, IE6 is always quite a bit of tweaking. But most of it is related to hasLayout, so I serve it a fix-CSS file via conditional comments. However, I still only tweak it to an acceptable level. I won't get all the bangs and whistles.

 

So your current solution is that IE is served table layout? The rest CSS? How do you detect IE? Browser sniffing is a very unreliable technique. So many things fakes IE's identification. Conditional comments are reliable to target CSS, but I can't see how they can be used to switch the document structure.

 

Looking at the link in the OP, redfoxdesign.co.uk, it should be possible to serve it to IE6 without having to use tables. Even IE5. Once it's fixed for IE6, it's mostly a matter of acconting to the different box model to make it work in IE5.5. IE5 is somewhat more difficult.

But the even the corporate userbase has moved on from IE5, hasn't it? It's not pretty much in IE6 migrating to IE7.

 

btw, you have a <style> element outside your <head> element.