ASP.net site looks completely different on IE, Firefox, and Chrome; why? - asp.net

I'm doing css for a website. I send the html and css to a guy, he puts it into ASP.net. The problem is that the transfer didn't end well for my code and it needs some fixing. The problem is that when I look at it in Chrome, or Firefox, or IE8, I get three completely different renderings. I spent a good amount of time trying to fix a drop-down menu that is supposed to appear while hovering over a link. The one he had in place from ASP.net worked in IE, kinda worked in Firefox, and was completely broken in Chrome (I haven't tested Safari or Opera.) Just getting it to look basically the same in firefox and chrome was a struggle. The html source is showing me two completely different pages as well.
Does anyone have experience with this? I know nothing of ASP.net, and it seems like the guy is modifying my layout with a wsyiwyg (I found tables used in random places, which I did not put there.) Faced with this, what is my best option? Is this fixable, or am I in over my head?

Many times WYSIWYG programs don't generate code that results in reliable, consistent renderings. However, there are a few things you can do to check your site's consistency.
You can use a program like Adobe BrowserLab (there's a free trial right now) to automatically render your page in multiple browsers side by side
You can use the w3 Validator to make sure that your code is standards compliant. If your code isn't standards compliant, then you will likely have issues across browsers.
Note that you can force asp.net to generate XHTML Transitional- or Strict-compliant code (if that's the standard you choose to implement) via the web.config file. Use the directive
<xhtmlConformance mode="Transitional"/>
if you want to enable this behavior.

Was your code rendering fine in those browsers before you sent it off to the .NET guy? If so, the programmer is doing something to muck up your work. ASP .NET won't change the way your code renders... it's simply the Windows equivalent of PHP (simply put).
I would suggest (if you haven't already) testing your code before hand-off to verify proper rendering. Take some screenshots, and if after sending your code to this developer things break, you can point out that it was working until he started messing with your markup. If that ends up being the case, at least you know it wasn't you. If it was, then we have more work to do. :)
Can you provide any samples?

The html source is showing me two completely different pages as well.
That sounds like your asp.net guy is doing something wrong there. You can use asp.net to do browser-dependant rendering, but it sounds more like his job is to just make the site render what you gave him, and it's usually better to get your html and css right to begin with.

Related

Website Broken in IE8

I am working on a Wordpress site (a modified 2012 theme) for a client that is rendering incorrectly in IE8. Everything looks great in IE9+, as well as current versions of Chrome, FF, Safari, etc. I have looked around at some of the suggestions posted to fix the problem but I'm not quite sure where mine begins. The whole page is considerably broken. If anyone can provide me with some clues it would be a huge help. Thanks!
My Site
Edit: I'm noticing some of my styles are not being applied, specifically to top-nav and my footer. Others appear to have most if not all styles mostly intact. I've read that media-queries are not supported in IE8, but I don't see how that could be related. I am also reading that only 31 stylesheets can be applied, but I don't believe I am using nearly that many.
I had a project a while back where I have built an intranet and was nearly finished with the strap when I realized that most of the users rely on IE8; it was a shocking experience, can tell you that. That just as a preamble, so I know what your into.
I have wasted a lot of time so to safe yours (maybe), here what I would look for and probably do:
Install IE8 if you haven't already. There's a lot of tools which can help you with that like IE Tester as well as an integration installation from Microsoft directly to switch between versions
Eradicate the current errors first before you start working on the specific IE8 issues (as #markratledge already mentioned)
If you want to have HTML5 elements working as well then I recommend the HTML5.js Enabling Script
You have definitely too many HTTP Referrers (even for modern browsers), in IE8 (especially on a slower machine) it's sometimes deadly (Your page may load fast, however the rendering time is extremely long (+/- 6-20 seconds))
Combine and minify CSS and JScripts
There are a lot of services around the net where you put in your raw data and it compiles you a minified version, or server-side like Minify for PHP5
Move most scripts to the bottom to counterfeit rendering issues in IE8
Make a unique .css only for IE8 or use hacks, if really needed in your main, however you prefer (quick'n'dirty solution though)
IE8 and the X-UA-Compatible situation
How IE8 Determines Document Mode
I'm not too sure, but I think Mootools and jQuery together may create a conflict in older IE's (assumption)
Fix your code errors, in particular the JS call above the doctype. Anything above the doctype throws IE into quirks mode
Especially IE8 will get really hard on you for little mistakes inside the code, I have even seen script-includes not working because of being positioned lower than another in the code (while any other browser doesn't really care). It will take you at least a good bunch of hours to fix/erase all those errors and to make it compatible for IE8< users.
Beware that most clients (at least from my experience) don't (want to) understand browser compatibility issues like this one (It has to work!) or if really needed then make them understand that some features may be jeopardized/incomplete in the specific browser, herein.
There's plenty more you can do, but that depends on the deadline/timespan you have.
Fix your code errors, in particular the JS call above the doctype. Anything above the doctype throws IE into quirks mode
See [Invalid] Markup Validation of delindesign.com excellence - W3C Markup Validator. Scroll down in the validation report to see line numbers and source code. Start fixing the code errors and revalidate.

getting started with css in Dreamweaver cs6. Noob issue

I've just recently downloaded dreamweaver cs6. I've been following tutorials online, and I've run into a bit of a snag. I'm almost embarrassed asking this question, because I know I must be missing something obvious, but here it goes:
I'm following a tutorial right now on making a drop-down menu out of pure CSS. After implementing the first few lines of CSS code I was losing all of my sub menus in the drop-down. After pulling my hair out trying to figure out why for the better part of 2 hours, I finally preview in Firefox. (can't believe I didn't try earlier.)
It all seems to work fine in my browser, but I was wondering: Is there a way I can look at it in Dreamweaver? Its really inconvenient popping in and out of my browser everytime I want to check something. Like I said, I'm basically (not really basically, I just am) a complete noob at all things web-design. Thank you for your time.
Dreamweaver is just an IDE and it is not a browser. It doesn't execute :hover events and JavaScripts. You need to preview what you have done using F12 and check it out. :)
Short answer: no. At least, there's no reasonable expectation that you should. The problem with web-design is that the only real way to do things properly is to code by hand and preview it in a browser in another window - this does come as a culture-shock to "designers" who are used to WYSIWYG programs like Photoshop and InDesign, but the web is a completely different media where the underlying markup matters the most and is open to re-interpretation by browsers.
Dreamweaver has historically had good WYSIWYG rendering (thanks to their partnership with Opera years ago) but ultimately it's still not the best way.
I note that Microsoft's "Expression Blend for HTML/JS Applications" (there's a mouthful) does actually have first-class design-time WYSIWYG support because it works directly with an instance of IE, so you can test things like :hover and client scripts at design time - unfortunately it isn't suited to actual "web" sites - just "desktop" HTML, which is a shame.

Find design Problems (html,css)

i have some ASP.NET pages.
pages does not appear in FireFox4 same IE9.
i want to find my HTML or CSS Design problems.
i hared that this is a tool for finding problems.
but i can't use it because my ASP.NET Page contains some usercontrols.
I am looking for a way to find my design problems(tool , tip , etc).
another note is i am using jQuery UI plugins in my site.
One approach would be to use Chrome Developer Tools / Firebug / IE 8 Developer Tools to take a peek at the HTML being generated to look for any glaring errors. It can also help catch some jQuery issue that might be causing you grief.
Outside of that, HTML Tidy is a nice program that could help diagnose some stuff for you as well.
One thing to realize is that every browser renders a page slightly different, despite the attempts to render them in a "universal" manner. If you're really looking for the small differences, you can check out the SuperPreview tool that comes with Microsoft Expression Web

Asp.Net website looking fine in IE6 but not in IE7/IE8

I have a small website developed using VS2005 and mySQl, it's just 2 webforms and login page.
During the development and testing phase, me and my customer were using IE6, and it was looking fine, we didn't test with other browsers because it's a small application, and just a add-in for large desktop application.
The customer informed me that site doesn't like the same when he installed IE7, for example I have a webfrom that show a page with Gridview that has multiply pages(AllowPaging=On), it doesn't look fine in IE7 and I can't navigate to other pages in Gridview, but it was working fine with IE6, and there's no complicated things, just plan GridView with small formatting.
I installed IE8 and doesn't look fine with it too, even in compatibility mood.
Have anyone faced the same problem?, and what should be the quickest or best solution for that?.
I know, I SHOULD NEVER USE WEBFORMS AGAIN.
The only reason for a difference in look between the browser versions is your styling and doctype.
Start with setting a doctype to run in quirks mode. You can get information about it here.
After that, see if things improve. If not, I would start ripping out any css/styles/themes you may be using. Then build it back up using normal CSS.
Incidentally, web forms isn't the problem in this case; it's a styling issue.
as Chris mentioned, add to that that browsers have really some annoying differences that makes you pull your hair sometimes, and 90 % of the time it is related to CSS.
so what i suggest is the following
use a tool called IE Tester, it is amazing tool that let you test your sites in all IE versions.
Use conditional command for targeting IE specific version if some CSS rule is wrong.
we use this tool http://rafael.adm.br/css_browser_selector/ it is really amazing it let you define css rules for each browser without hacking or conditional statement, but the down side it is Javascript dependent, but we had no complains.
also this script http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/ which is brilliant, it will let IE 6 behave like IE 7 which will save you tons of problems, again it is Java Script dependent.
Avoid Hacks as much as possible, the above methods will help you a lot.
hope this helps.

How to embed HTML created by Dreamweaver into an ASP.NET applicaton

I've been asked by a friend, who created a very visually appealing website mostly in Dreamweaver, to add some database backed functionality that I really only know how to do in ASP.NET. The problem is when I load his generated HTML into an ASPX page it renders it quite horribly. I've tried adding a basic .html page to an ASP.NET project but it still looks funky. He's on a Mac and i'm (obviously) using a Windows box. Is there a clean way to take a quite complete (but quite static) website and add ASP.NET functionality to it? Any comments are very much welcome. Thanks!
Just a quick thought.
You state in your comment:
Everything works is just doesn't look near as good as it did in the Safari browser
Where doesn't it look as good as it did in the Safari browser? When served as a page from a webserver (either the built-in cassini server, or IIS) in IE/Firefox, or when you switch to design view in Visual Studio?
Visual Studio has a lot of trouble rendering things correctly - it's really not standards compliant by anyone's definition - VS2010 is apparently much better - for example, try looking at this page: display/box/float/clear test in a browser and in the VS designer - very different.
If you mean in the browser, which browser? Have you tried looking at it Firefox instead? It's possible that if it's been built to look nice in Safari that it will work in Firefox, but there may be issues with the rendering/layouts in IE - this is a fairly well known issue.
If all the stylesheets are being correctly called (check with Firebug for Firefox for example) then there are probably some issues with the CSS that need to be addressed for IE.
ASP.NET does not alter the rendering of standard HTML. So there must be some other issue like a missing stylesheet (either all together or a broken link) or images. Once you have the HTML properly copied over and solve the display issue, you can add in the ASP.NET controls and code you need to make it functional.

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