Ah, it’s all coming back. I remember doing this before, when I first designed my site with Movable Type. Most of the layout is CSS, and since I don’t know CSS, I have to use a template of some sort–some WordPress Theme which has all the fundamentals, all I have to do is insert my own images, change the colors, set widths and heights and fonts and so forth. A work in progress, even still after several days of redesigning.

One unexpected factor: the person who built the theme I am using as a template decided to make an ass out of all the people who used his theme. He inserted text which would only appear of you viewed the blog in Internet Explorer; it takes a prime spot right below your blog banner and right above the first post, and essentially says how IE blows and what are you thinking about using that.

Now, to be honest, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment–but at the same time, this guy’s methods are for crap. Inserting a condescending message into the middle of your blog which you won’t see unless you’re using IE on Windows? I had no idea that I was insulting a large block of my own readers, and would not have known at all until (a) I happened to stumble across the code by accident, (b) used IE myself, or (c) someone got offended and told me about it. (a) was not too likely, as the page content section did not really need modification; (b) would eventually have happened, once I got around to testing the theme out on different browsers; but (c) happened first.

Ergo, as soon as I can root out the last of any original design elements this guy put it, I am deleting the link back to him. All I needed the theme for was as a foundation to create my own design, anyway. Or, that is, to transfer the design I had to the new blog.

But since I did wind up unknowingly offending at least one person in that manner, I wound up doing platform/browser tests early, and was reminded of yet another headache of web site design: getting all the browsers to play nice. Like I said, I greatly dislike the theme author’s methods, though I agree with the sentiment: Microsoft makes life harder for web page designers. Sure, they could follow standards, but do they? Of course not. And since Microsoft owns the Desktop and gives IE as the default browser, virtually everybody uses it–which means that you either dance to Microsoft’s tune and blow off people using other software, or you make your blog look bad for everyone else.

This really stands out when you look at the pages in the different browsers. There really is a good deal of difference in how they render, especially in Windows. Witness three browser views of a part of one of my pages. First, Safari:

Next, Mozilla/Firefox:

And lastly, Internet Explorer:

Notice a few things: the text looks smoothest in Safari, probably because Apple does font anti-aliasing. The text looks bolder. Mozilla/Firefox looks horrible–the text is all jaggy and distorted. Maybe I don’t have the text settings done right–but they are as I downloaded them.

IE is in between the two as far as text quality, but notice something else: the half-page-width horizontal rule is left-aligned in IE, and is correctly centered in Safari and Mozilla.

Here’s the interesting thing: on a Mac, Safari and Mozilla/Firefox are virtually indistinguishable–so much so that posting an image of the different screens would be pointless.

Here is an animated GIF file, for those of you who have that turned on in your browsers, switching between the three browsers renders:

But that’s not the only place IE differs. You’ll find other small bits and pieces here and there that don’t match up–and IE is always the odd browser out… meaning they’re the ones who don’t play by the rules. Look at the bottom of the comments area on an individual page:

Left is Mozilla, center is Safari, right is IE. Notice how the background color for the last comment extends down to the bottom of the page. Again, not the way it should be.

Such problems are not insurmountable, but they are a major pain. If Microsoft stopped finagling with the code so they could force people to make IE look better to the detriment of other browsers, then web design would be a lot easier. Instead, you have to inspect every nook and cranny on different browsers and different platforms, and fiddle with the commands until you find an array of settings that looks acceptable on all browsers.

This is why so many people keep the simple, basic themes provided, and I can’t blame them for it. It’s a huge amount of effort and self-training. The benefit, however, is learning new code, if you don’t know CSS already.