GM in IE 7.0 vs. Firefox 2.0

[gordongordo]

I've a blog using GM as the basic software, which however was then worked on and altered by my original web-builders and managers four years ago. The blog is www.thebuggyprofessor.org

My managers, alas, have disappeared or at least won't answer my queries for a few months now, so possibly I can get help here.

The problem concerns the differences in the way the blog shows up --- both the entry and main-pages --- in IE and in Firefox. In IE --- my managers said, originally, the site was built for IE --- everything shows up splendidly: text-lines length, different fonts, different colors etc. Not so in Firefox. There the different fonts and colors work ONLY for the first paragraph that a change in fonts or colors has been made in the IE greymatter cgi-bin. I can live with that. The problem is that the text-line length --- especially in the main entry page --- is much too long for the eye to take in easily.

I did go to the Firefox forums, and didn't get useful help. forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=525849&sid=f0ea719e87b6e0f174d2b8e35ff7b7cc So if someone would take a look at the blog --- especially once the continued button has been clicked --- and view it in IE and Firefox and have a suggestion to make, I'd be grateful: very much so. As far as I can tell, viewing the blog in each browser 's "source" shows no differences, yet the text-line is much longer in Firefox.

Alternatively, maybe someone can suggest where in GM's templates I can enter some html tags like the following:

body {

margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 20px; margin-right: 20px;

padding: 0px 20px; /* Need to set both margin and padding to get consistency between browsers. */

Thanks for any help,
Michael

[Carlos Phelps]

Michael,

It appears that your CSS style sheet has 4 errors and 123 warnings plus the home page HTML currently has 0 errors and 611 warnings.

All your problems can be corrected.

I would be glad to help you correct it.

[gordongordo]

Carlos:

Many thanks for your quick reply and offer. I just sent you an email at your web site, indicating I'd like to accept and possibly hire you as my new web manager.

When you get a chance, kindly reply.

Michael

[e-mail]

[coldstone]

gordongordo: you may want to edit out your email address, to prevent the spammers from picking it up. You can always private message Carlos with that info.

Also, unless Carlos has already fixed your site, it looked fine on my iBook w/ Firefox (line wrapping was liquid and didn't cause horizontal scrolling).

In your file buggycss5.css is where you will want to put that Body css styling.

[toaster]

designing a site with IE in mind is just asking for trouble. Microsoft's browser plays about with your code and adds stuff to it, they seem to think they know better perhaps.

Better to design it using a standards compliant browser, such as firefox, to check on positioning etc then tweek the code to look right in IE also.

~toaster

[Carlos Phelps]

toaster,

I build everything with standards in mind.

My goal is to have valid HTML, XHTML, CSS, no tables for layout, and 508 code with no errors and no warnings.

Well formed code is poetry, it is easier to read, loads faster, works in most devices, looks good in most, and does well with the search engines.

That said, when it comes to existing live sites we must be careful what, how and when we make changes. The inter-action of programs and processes is fluid and also timed so sometimes if we break a link it will not be seen until the next update.

The lesson: backup everything and be ready to hurry up and wait for the update until you sign-off on a project.