Putting it simply, I designed my website in a very very crap way so that my site only works properly on IE7.

 

I have redesigned the site over and over and whichever way I do it it doesn't look good in other web browsers.

 

I got to the point where now I have redesigned my site to match different browsers.

 

I have also made a page asking to select your browser, please see this here:

http://www.gimme4free.net/index-1.html

 

What are the bad points of having a page like this? Does it bugger your google rank and keywords?

 

I was thinking of having tags and H1/H2/H3 headers in the page and in the tags having lots of keywords and getting rid of all stop words.

 

Are there any advantages/disadvantages of this?

 

The obvious advantage being that everyone will be able to view my site correctly.

There is no reason why your site shouldn't look the same (or very similar) in all browsers.

Only my opinion but please don't use that 'choose your browser' page; it's like going back a few years.

If you're having problems with your code, post a link to the site and I'm sure somebody will be able to help you out.

So you want to be a web designer, one of the biggest things you must over come is browser computability, if you cannot do this then a web designer you can't be. Relying on users to select browsers is such a bad idea and will show people how much of a novice web designer you are, especially if the layout is simple. If you want to do this as a profession be it freelance, in your spare time, or at a company you must know how to code and fix errors, yes creating a style for every browser is one way but will a client be happy with having to have this splash page?

 

My advice would be go back to basics, go to HTML dog, go through the tutorials and learn to code cleanly, to standards and without relying too heavily on absolute positioning, and from the looks of the code on your site drag and drop WYSIWYG editor of some sort.

If I arrive at a site that wants me to choose Flash vs HTML, Firefox vs IE or informs me that it's IE only - then I leave.

Ive obviously tried to fix the problem but Ive spent 2 months looking for answers and I just cant work it out, yes it looks similar in browsers but it still looks quite bad with some, as long as I have 100% IE compatability Ill be ok I think if its a bad idea to have a select your browser page.

 

I know that there is a bug with CSS in IE7 and I was using IE7 to preview all of my pages when making it which really pi**ed me off when I finally realised.

 

There a way to fix it but Ive tried downloading the file from the Google Code side and the file is not included in the zip and unavailable elsewhere!!!

So you want to be a web designer, one of the biggest things you must over come is browser computability, if you cannot do this then a web designer you can't be.

You're sounding very Yoda-like Dizi

My advice would be to ditch the welcome screen and go back to basics with your site. Of course this may not be practical, but in the long-run it will prove far better for ranking etc.

 

Plus, you have to remember that with search engines deep-linking its it's more likely that the visitor will bypass the homepage anyway and just be served the page google et all index.

What are you downloading from google-code? If its a CSS problem then it can be fixed in your stylesheet. Post a link to the site and you'll get the feedback here that'll solve it for you. Do not accept that a site that works in IE only is good enough - it isn't. Firefox is up to about 30% global usage now (not sure of the real figure, probably more than that now), so you're saying that if you had a shop, you'd be happy to turn away 3 out of every 10 people who enter? Also, IE8 is likely to render web pages more akin to Opera9 and FF3 than any previous IE incarnation - so your sites could break very quickly if you don't address these fundamental problems.

This version is compatible with IE7 & Firefox (Still no gd with IE8 though):

http://www.gimme4free.net/firefox/index.html

 

Here's a link to the IE7 fix:

http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/notes/

 

Im having trouble getting it to work without the right files though!!!

Ok, just saw your other thread. I can't understand why you're using a table in this site? Your code is a bit of a mess to be honest and you certainly shouldn't be needing to look for an IE7 fix for such a simple site! As has been suggested, you would be better off rebuilding this site using standards compliant html/css. You mention that you have spent months looking for a solution, so I would suggest taking a couple of weeks out to learn what it means to write good semantic HTML and then styling it with external CSS. Its well worth the effort. A good place to start might be A List Apart.

reminds me of the old days ...

"this site is best viewed in Netscape Navigator"

 

Your site is so simple, seriously take my advice in my previous post and what others are telling you, you need to rebuild the basic layout of your site. I would understand needing conditional comments if your site was complex but all we are looking at is a basic two column design with a header navigation and a footer.

 

I just think you are over complicating it, maybe due to lack of experience in web design, relying to heavily on software rather than learning how to code for yourself, or just because you need to learn a few more things. So try simplifying your code and look at how it should be built rather than relying on fixes per browser.

reminds me of the old days ...

"this site is best viewed in Netscape Navigator"

 

Those days are still here - wymetro.com - the West Yorkshire transport information service won't let you do a journey plan unless you're using Internet Explorer , a bit tricky on a mac!

Those days are still here - wymetro.com - the West Yorkshire transport information service won't let you do a journey plan unless you're using Internet Explorer , a bit tricky on a mac!

 

You can get IE for a mac, so how is that tricky? annoying yes, not very user friendly, but not tricky

Thanks for the help guys and yes, its true, I 100% rely on dreamweaver doing all of the work for me lol.

 

Ive taken your advise and Im redesigning the site, fixed 1 CSS problem which was the green header bar being offline, was set to (is it absolute positioning??? XXpx XXpx?). Changed that to auto and that sorted that out, will try to learn code and go through some tutorials.

 

Thanks a lot

You can get IE for a mac, so how is that tricky? annoying yes, not very user friendly, but not tricky

You know what I meant lol

It didn't take too long but Ive got a working template for firefox, IE, opera, safari, i know theres a site somewhere that does screenshots of ur site using different browsers, does anyone have the link to it?

 

new link to working template:

http://www.gimme4free.net/test/index.html

Hi, I've had a quick look in FF3, IE6, IE7, Safari and Opera and everything sems to be fine.

You can use sites like this to get screenshots in different browsers.

Alternatively you could install all of the individual browsers on your machine. This way you can see how the page works in each instead of just a snapshot as it were.

It didn't take too long but Ive got a working template for firefox, IE, opera, safari, i know theres a site somewhere that does screenshots of ur site using different browsers, does anyone have the link to it?

 

new link to working template:

http://www.gimme4free.net/test/index.html

 

 

Woohooo, it is looking so much better now

Woohooo, it is looking so much better now

 

Thanks Dizi, great to get some posi feedback