Posted by mobile phone:
Interestingly in my quest to cross check most of my client sites in multiple browsers, I seemed to have overlooked my own. It seems that for a number of days or even weeks I have managed to appear as a total jackass to those of you using IE, my apologies (not for the fact that you use IE) for the formatting problems. The issue seems to have been resolved as far as I can tell but please let me know if you experience any weird behavoir! Ok, on with my day.
IE Issues? For how long?
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I notice from your Flickr page that you like to test sites on browsershots dot org. That is ok, but not always accurate. Be sure to try different settings with their site, particularly screen width and resolution. A lot of wordpress templates seem to have centering problems on pc browsers with both IE and Fx, as well as Opera.
e.g., Your current papertree site, on 1024 x 768 with xp standard settings seems to center content paragraphs and cut off left so that the dates and indent does not fully display. The browsershots site might not reveal this to you. ( I’m not sure where that single word/column display is/was coming from – maybe a CSS issue? )
Of couse all professional web designers have their usual esoteric browser and equipment preferences, but they have to remember that most of the people who will be visiting their client’s sites are not web professionals and are usually using the most common equipment and browsers – like IE7 on xp ( or even NT still!) at 1024×768 on a 17 or 18 inch screen with standard text settings.
I really think it is always best to set up your own equipment for pc browser tests – a standard pc with current IE, Fx, Opera, and Safari for Windows with 17 or 18 inch monitors and multi-boot OS’s if you can.(Windows/Linux). Of course Mac is not usually a problem, but pc is still king in the home and business world and probably will be for a long, long time yet.
Alternatively…..you can always teach a few friends (non-experts) how to take full screen screenshots on their equipment and pay them a few bucks to test your mock-up client sites and send you the jpegs for review.
Best wishes, and keep up the great work!
Lucas,
Thanks a lot for your thoughts here I think that your comment can become an extremely useful addition to this short post. You bring up a lot of good points about testing and I agree 100% with your views of browsershots. I currently run quite a few different scenarios pairing different browsers and different OS’s. I think my problem is rooted in the fact that I pay very close attention to client sites but often times over look my own. (i.e. the problem you pointed out to me in your comment). Clearly I was updating my own site in a haphazard way and that is something that will not continue with the coming redesign.
Thanks again for stopping by and dropping your comment.