New problem with Firefox

C

CWWJ

John:
I am writing this from the crisis center where I work as a volunteer on a
brand new Dell at 96dpi with a widescreen monitor and both FireFox and IE7.
Our website works perfectly on IE7. Remember that the site was created with
a setting of 120dpi, so if there was going to be a problem I would see it
here. The forms are jumbled on FireFox as they have been all along when
accessing our site on a 96dpi setting, but they are perfect on IE7, and so is
everything else (except the left registration is even more pronounced with a
widescreen). So I am still baffled as to why you are having an IE7 problem
at either resolution. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that
toilets flush in reverse in Australia?
 
R

Rob Giordano \(Crash\)

offended? what made you think I was...im not..wasn't...aren't

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression
 
R

Rob Giordano \(Crash\)

Ok let's review:

IE7
@ 96 dpi - layout wanked
@ 120 dpi - layout wanked
FF2
@ 96 dpi - layout wanked
@ 120 dpi - layout wanked

think about this...view any website other than yours (try Google, MS,
CNN...whatever) with your monitor setting at 96 dpi, then change it to 120
dpi...does it wank out the layout?

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression
 
C

CWWJ

I'm not sure what you mean by "layout wanked." That can be understood as a
good thing or a not-so-good thing, depending upon your point of view. If
this is a negative comment, then let me simply repeat what my experience has
been viewing my web site on several different computers, some with IE6 and
FF2, some with IE7 and FF2.

The only failure I experienced was with FireFox 2 when accessed with my
display set at 96dpi. The forms pages are jumbled (although usable) and
other pages have cosmetic problems like text too small in a big text box.
However, FF2 worked perfectly when I was set at 120dpi

Both versions of IE -- IE6 and IE7 -- displayed entirely correctly in both
120dpi and 96dpi. The forms worked properly, all buttons and boxes were in
the proper place, and all pages looked and functioned properly. Just last
night (as I reported) I used both IE7 and IE6 at 96dpi on two computers at
another location, and both worked perfectly.

As for what other web sites look like, I visit probably fifty or sixty a day
and I sometimes can detect a site that may have been created in Publisher.
If the content of the page is over to the left with lots of white space on
the right, it could be a Publisher site because Pub can't do centering. I am
much more likely to see weird jumbled things when I am using FireFox than
with IE, so I suspect there are other web authoring tools that have the same
limitations as Publisher in terms of cross-browser compatibility. I haven't
spent a lot of time switching back and forth between 96 and 120, but then I
don't visit lots of sites with forms pages either.

Finally, just to sum up: I have had only one problem: viewing my web site
at 96dpi on FireFox2. When I view it on FireFox2 at 120dpi, I have no
problem. I have had no problem with either IE6 or IE7 at either 96dpi or
120dpi.
 
J

John G

Now I am confused. And it has nothing to do with toilets and all those
myths.

When you were insistent I went to my wife's machine which is on the same
little network and has the same screen resolution as my desk machine (1024 x
768 and 960dpi) I find that IE & works OK but FF2 the form is jumbled.
So here is IE 7 on 2 machines with similar settings that seem to work
differently.

I have deleted History and temp files and refreshed and don't know how to
explain it
I am sorry if I wasted any of your time. I will keep a lookout for what
might have happened but will have to give up at the moment I think.
 
D

DavidF

Wanked, winked, weird, whatever...we are getting confused with semantics
here I believe. The layout of the page and the form may be messed up and
jumbled, but the form is still functional/usable...if you can figure out
which buttons, boxes and form controls go together. This 96/120 dpi issue
affects the *layout* of the page, not the *functionality* of the form.

Would you do me a favor? Make a copy of your Publisher file and delete all
the pages except for Evaluation form page at:
http://www.burdin-adr.com/index_files/Page637.htm . Then use
www.yousendit.com to upload the file, and email the link to that file to
yourself, and then post that link here so I can download your Pub file. I
want to do some testing and see if possibly I can escalate this with MSFT.
This page is a great example of why they need to address this 96/120 dpi
issue. When you use yousendit.com you DO NOT have to sign up to use the
services, and I use it all the time to send links to large files for
downloading, rather than attach them to an email.

DavidF
 
R

Rob Giordano \(Crash\)

wanked is never a good thing.

the form may work (send results) but it's certainly NOT usable here, because
I cannot figure out which radio buttons to push as the buttons don't line up
with the questions.

I'm talking about the Evaluation Form page.



--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression
 
R

Rob Giordano \(Crash\)

D

DavidF

Yeah, I agree...functional, but not very usable. I was just trying to clear
up some of the semantic confusion.

DavidF
 
C

CWWJ

Rob,
please tell me what browser and what setting you are using where you see the
alignment problem on the evaluation form. As I said last night, the only
problem I have had is in viewing FireFox2 at 96dpi -- FireFox at 120dpi and
IE 6 & 7 at both resolutions work perfectly -- no jumbled forms, no
misaligned buttons, nothing wrong at all. I just checked with my coordinator
at the office, and she accessed the site with IE7 just a few minutes ago and
everything was perfect.
 
C

CWWJ

That really is puzzling, isn't it? I've created a monster with this thread.
So you have two machines, both set to 96dpi (normal) that see two different
things on IE7. If you do have the time to change your setting to 120dpi I
think you would find that FireFox works Ok too. Thanks for spending so much
time with this issue -- you guys have the patience of Job.
 
C

CWWJ

Yeah, David, I will be happy to do that. I have used yousendit several times
to send large files. I will not get around to it til later today or tonight
however. Thanks so much for your concern about this issue. The sad thing
for me is that Publisher is so easy to use and creates a good-looking if
somewhat limited web site. But these underlying problems: the huge padding
at higher resolutions -- on widescreen monitors it looks ridiculous -- and
the inability to easily center plus the forms problem, are really serious
issues. Do you know anything about the new FireFox 3.0? What little I've
read indicates they have made changes to solve some cross-browser problems.
I think it is being released next week.

Incidentally, I was kidding about the class action lawsuit -- I am certain
that all the warranty disclaimers are included in those terms of agreement
that no one ever reads -- but failure to warn in a more visible way than in
the birdseed bold print of a warranty might be viewed as negligence by some
sharp lawyer.
 
C

CWWJ

How do you explain that you see "jumbled" on both settings on both FireFox2
and IE7 and I see "jumbled' only on Firefox2 at 96dpi? How do you explain
that John G. sees "jumbled" on his IE7 but does not on his wife's IE7? I
have tested this site now on six different machines running IE7 at 96dpi and
all six work perfectly. On these same six machines FireFox2 worked perfectly
at 120dpi but not at 96dpi. Three of these machines are brand new Dells with
widescreen monitors, one was a one year old HP laptop, one was a three year
old Gateway and one was a five year old custom-built. Switched back and
forth between 120 and 96 repeatedly and got the same result. Also ran
multiple times at both resolutions on IE6 with the same perfect results.
Finally, I am running IE7 right now and just left my web site a minute ago
and everything was perfect (in fact, it looks better on IE7 than it has ever
looked).

Only FireFox2 at 96dpi failed. I don't get it. Does anyone have an
explanation? Showing me a picture of what you saw confirms you saw it, but
it doesn't tell me why your IE7 doesn't work and mine does. Is the ghost in
your machine or mine?
 
R

Rob Giordano \(Crash\)

I have 4 machines running here, and the layout looks ok on 2 but not the
others, depending on monitor, dpi setting etc.

I believe the problem comes from Pub's use of layers and absolute
positioning etc., but since Pub's html is kinda crazy it's hard to tell
exactly.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression
 
D

DavidF

CWWJ,

One of the reasons I wanted the Evaluation page was that I think at least
part of the problem has to do with your design, and I wanted to test that
before suggesting a fix. But, if you go to
http://www.burdin-adr.com/index_files/Page637.htm and look at the form where
you have "Neutrality, Empathy, Managing the...etc" that correspond with four
*option button* choices of Excellent to Poor. On the web page try to left
click, drag select the text "neutrality...etc" and you will see that
regardless of which browser you cannot select the text because the whole
text box has been converted to an image:
http://www.burdin-adr.com/index_files/image15541.jpg
As a general rule with Publisher webs, if whatever you are doing in your
design results in the text being converted to an image, then you need to
change your design. In this case it is at the minimum exaggerating the
96/120 dpi problem. Remember how I told you that when you Publish your pages
at 120 dpi, then one of the results is the graphics and images on the page
are "enlarged" in FireFox. The fact that your list of "Neutrality, Empathy,
etc..." has been converted to an image, and is enlarged and as a result
doesn't stay in line with your button choices.

So, try this. Instead of using a separate text box with different shading
for your "Neutrality, Empathy, Managing the...etc" text lists, build the
form as per the more normal way. Drag that text box that you are currently
using off into your scratch area. Go to Insert > Form Control > Text box.
Put "Neutrality" in that text box and align it horizontally with the four
*option button* choices of "Excellent, good, fair, poor". Then again go to
Insert > Form Control > Text box for "Empathy". Create a new text box for
each. Then republish the page and test it in FF and see how it looks. I
betcha it will line up better.

I want to keep the focus on this particular page for now, with the suggested
redesign, rather than stray off onto discussing other pages, and different
browsers and such. But here is a different, and probably a better
description and discussion of 96/120 issue than I have provided before:
Adjusting Scale for Higher DPI Screens:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537625(VS.85).aspx
And remember that Publisher produces different code for non-IE browsers
which means that FireFox deals with this scaling issue in a different way
than IE does. So as I said above, fix the text that has been converted to an
image on your Evaluation page, and republish, and test the page in FF to see
how much that helps, before we start discussing other pages....

DavidF
 
C

CWWJ

David:
I appreciate your hanging in there with me. You are right about the
evaluation page and the text that became an image. I agree that the
evaluation page has an extra added disadvantage, but unfortunately that
appears to be a small part of a bigger problem. The article you referenced
on scaling shows how IE handles different resolutions by scaling. So IE can
easily display both 96 and 120 with proper scaling (and I'm sure other custom
settings in between). Firefox apparently can't (or won't) do this.

I have discovered that there is a serious problem on all the pages when I
publish the site with a 96dpi setting and view it in Firefox at a 120dpi
setting -- in fact it is chaos. Take a look right now at 120dpi and you
will see what I mean. (Viewed at 96dpi it is absolutely perfect). Vice
versa: when I publish at 120dpi, Firefox sees it great at 120 but has
jumbled forms and text too small for the graphics when viewed at 96dpi. But
on IE7, everything works no matter how the site is published, either 96dpi or
120dpi -- makes no difference. And I've got to tell you, IE7 looks great.

I am puzzled as to why 96dpi is considered "normal" when it is a lower
resolution that makes small text even smaller and more difficult to read.
120 is much more comfortable for reading and viewing in general, so why is it
not the default? I don't recall ever re-setting my dpi since purchasing this
computer about four years ago, so it must have been 120dpi out of the box.
I'm sure there's a good reason (no I'm not sure at all -- often there seems
to be no good reason for lots of things inside these boxes).

I am interested in -- as a temporary only fix -- the idea of publishing two
versions, one at 96dpi and one at 120dpi, and then put a warning at the top
of my home page that says "if you are having difficulty viewing this page,
click here." But the long term solution is to abandon Publisher for web
design and try the Serif WebPlus to see how it works. If 96dpi is the
default setting I'm sure complaints will start to come in from Firefox users
if I stay with 120dpi. On the other hand, those people used to viewing our
site on Firefox at 120dpi are in for a shock now that I have re-published at
96dpi. I'm going to leave it up that way for a while to see how many
complaints we get.

The new Firefox 3.0 is to be released tomorrow. Maybe they will have
decided not to play such hardball on poor MSFT. I know they're the ones who
are in compliance with the standards, but I can hope they'll try to live and
let live. I think they'd gain even more market share if they helped solve
the compatibility problem.

One final question: Is there any way to use Firefox as the browser for Web
Preview in Publisher? That way I could design pages for Firefox knowing that
IE can display them as well. Thanks again, and any suggestions are welcome.
 
D

DavidF

CWWJ,

I don't know the definitive answer to why 96 dpi was the standard, or how
many new systems are coming in at a default of 120 dpi. My best
understanding is that 96 dpi was fine until technology evolved and screens
became capable of much higher resolution, even on physically small screens
such as 14 inch laptops. With that came the option of 120 dpi so the text
would be more readable. Don't forget that you might help make things easier
to read by going to the Appearance tab in the Display setting and choosing
one of the large or extra large font settings instead of adjusting the dpi.
And yet I can't say that even that might not have an impact on the code you
produce...just try it.

It also appears that MSFT figured out how to deal with this issue of scaling
in IE and given that Publisher html code is "optimized" for IE, the 96/120
dpi issue is not as much a problem than it is for FF which gets different
code. Whether FF3 renders this code better than FF2 is yet to be seen. Let
me know if you install FF3.

Part of the point I was trying to make in suggesting that you change the
"Neutrality, Empathy, Managing the...etc" text box and use the form control
text boxes has to do with a general issue with viewing Pub webs in FF and
other non-IE browsers. There are things you can do in your web page layout
that will work in IE, but won't work in FF...once again because of the
different code. IE is much more forgiving than FF, and part of that is that
is because FF is more "standards compliant" than is IE. The general approach
to fixing or improving the cross browser compatibility of Pub html code is
to tweak the design. If one approach chokes FF, then you change the design
to something that works in both FF and IE. This is why I was suggesting that
you change the "Neutrality, Empathy, Managing the...etc" text so that it is
not converted to an image, and with that change hopefully the page would
view more correctly in FF.

We can blame the Publisher html coding engine, we can blame the differences
in IE and FF, and we can move to different programs to produce the web pages
and get more "standards compliant" code. But I think you will find that no
matter what program you choose to use, there are going to be times that you
will need to tweak your design to fix a compatibility issue between IE and
FF. FrontPage code was not completely "standards compliant", and Web
Expression is an attempt to provide a program that does produce more
"standards compliant" code, that will have better cross browser
compatibility. Serif Web Plus purports to produce "standards compliant"
code. Publisher does not produce "standards compliant" code, and the only
way to work with it is to change the design around until you end up with the
most cross browser compatible code. It is what it is...work with it, tweak
your pages and your design, or move to a different program and probably
still do some of that. Producing a web page that is 100% compatible with
every browser made is only a goal...and a goal that keeps changing with new
and different versions of the different browsers. That is the whole reason
for "standards compliant" code...and the standards evolve.

If you want FF to be your default browser, go to Tools > Options and at the
bottom of the Main tab there is an option to always check to see if FF is
the default browser...click the Check Now button.

DavidF
 
C

CWWJ

John,

Someone suggested I try to design my pages for Firefox, so I made Firefox my
default browser for web previewing. Lo and behold, the web site worked great
in both resolutions in web preview, but on the web itself it was the same old
story. When viewed at 96dpi by a 120dpi display, or vice-versa, it is a
mess. Only when the display and the web site are at the same resolution will
Firefox work. I really don't understand that.
 
C

CWWJ

David, I did revise the evaluation page using text boxes. I'm going to
re-publish the site late tonight when nobody's watching just to see what
happens. In my post to John G. I reported that I made Firefox my default
browser for web preview -- the results were: Firefox web preview looked good
in both resolutions, much to my surprise. But when the site is published to
the web, it is another story -- it's a mess when viewed with mismatched
resolutions, i.e., 96dpi looking at 120dpi or vice versa. How can this be?
How can a web preview on the Firefox browser look normal, but the web site --
on the same browser -- is chaos?

As you will see if you visit the site (and I don't blame you if you're tired
of doing this), you will note that it is now published at 96dpi. When I view
it at that resolution it works great. But if I view it at 120dpi, several
things happen. Text in some, but not all, text boxes, becomes too large and
overflows the text box. In other text boxes it looks exactly as it did at
the lower resolution. The boxes and buttons on the forms pages lose
alignment and end up well below the bottom of the page, totally out of sync
with the rest of the page.

In the other version of this scenario -- published at 120dpi and viewed at
96dpi, the opposite occurs: text is way too small for the text boxes -- in
most pages -- and the forms go out of sync in the other direction, too short
instead of too long.
 

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