coding for IE and firefox

Timbo_La · 17 Jan 2006 at 23:59

Hi,

at the moment i am in the process of designing/building my site and have come up against the problem of building for different browsers. it seems that IE is the problem from what i have read and been told, but my question is why when i build my site in dreamweaver does it work in IE perfect (i have read that IE interprets it so it works or something along the lines as that) but why does dreamweaver use code that works in both?

just a thought, becuase i know at some point i am gonna have to redesign which means learning how to get my website looking great in both browsers.

Timbo

thesubstitute · 18 Jan 2006 at 14:25

That's mostly because Dreamweaver is the spawn of satan himself. If you're serious about designing websites with cross browser compatibility (which mostly means conforming to standards), you really needa learn to write the html / css yourself.

In my experience debugging other people's dreamweaver generated pages, dreamweaver genuinely generates horrific code.

A friend recommends Nvu as a free alternative, but ultimately I'd recommend using text editors to write your own code (notepad++ seems a popular choice but I'm an Eclipse person).

SpicyDuck · 19 Jan 2006 at 08:39

As thesubstitude said, you'll simply need to learn to hand code the html/css yourself.

So simply, Dreamweaver generates code that will make the site work in IE, because that's what most people use. The code generated is terrible and extremely messy to edit or even understand sometimes.

But hey, that's life.

Phil.

blade007 · 19 Jan 2006 at 09:11

I use Dreamweaver, for coding. Saves me loads of time tbh. The page design from the wysiwsyg Dreamweaver is better for a homesite.

nin9abadga · 19 Jan 2006 at 10:42

dreamweaver isn't all bad, it displays the code in logical colours and formatting which i find useful, however the code is incredibly bloated (if you use the built in DW options) and it does seem to put random javascript in there too for some reason!

but for accessibility purposes and ease of use, css and html are the way forward, learn them yourself to be a true champion.

ie is the problem, it interprets the html in the "incorrect" way. margins, padding, hover states, (to name but a few) seem to be the main culprits. oh and widths.

nin9abadga