Being Amber Rhea

Breakdown of my blog visitors by browser, according to StatCounter:

So I don’t feel too terrible about feeding IE a stripped-down version, due to One True Layout problems.

Apparently this is what my site looks like in Netscape 4 (click each image for a larger version).

I’m going to add some code to direct users of NN 4 (and other shitty browsers) to a version of the site with no stylesheet. But IE users (IE 5/Mac and IE 6/Win) will get a special treat - a (mostly) plaintext version with a nasty message at the top telling them to switch to a better browser.

Graceful degradation doesn’t have to be sugar-coated.

I finally got around to fixing - er, hacking - my stylesheet, so my layout displays correctly in IE. It actually didn’t take that long to do, which was a pleasant surprise. Just had to add some Tan Hack stuff to body and #sidebar, and a clearing div after the comments and category links in .blogEntry.

If you’re using IE (why, why??) and it still looks funky to you, try emptying your cache.

As I currently don’t have access to a working Mac (yes, I’m blogging from work - gasp!) I don’t know what it looks like in Safari, but I’m sure it’s fine. IE/Mac… well, that’s another story altogether.

I don’t think it’s a Tan Hack situation that’s causing my blog to be fux0red in IE. I think it has something to do with floating… I’ll try redoing it later with floating the content right and then the sidebar right. Which means I’ll assign a fixed width to the content area, but you crazies with tiny resolutions can deal with some whitespace.

Although I am tempted to just leave it fucked up in IE.

Well, Pat just informed me that my blog looks like shit in Firefox and IE. Silly me, when I removed the table last night I only checked it in Safari. There’s some issues with clearing the floats. I’ll get to it when I can. In the meantime… scroll, scroll, scroll!

This is a new one. It crept up and bit me in the ass today:

Internet Explorer 6 has a puzzling bug involving multiple floated elements; text characters from the last of the floated elements are sometimes duplicated below the last float. This bug is a real headbanger because there seems to be nothing triggering it. However, by now everyone should know that IE needs no excuse to misbehave.

The direct cause is nothing more than ordinary HTML comments, such as, <!– end left column –>, sandwiched between floats that come in sequence. Apparently, the comments are hard for IE to digest when they occupy those positions, resulting in a kind of “screen diarrhea”.

IE never ceases to find new and creative ways to fux0r nice, clean, standards-compliant code!

Do I have a moral obligation to tell people if they have spyware on their computers? I’m not talking about friends or family members; I’m talking about faceless users that send comments or complaints via the Customer Support form at work.

As you know, I am now the official “eGain Lady” at work. Lately I have been noticing this (or some variant thereof) showing up in the user agent string: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; FunWebProducts) Not a lot, but enough for me to notice it, wonder about it, and Google it.

According to several blogs and tech news sites I’ve read — this one, for example — FunWebProducts is spyware (or, perhaps more accurately, adware). Of course, the makers of FunWebProducts deny this allegation. Either way, one thing is clear: the presence of FunWebProducts on a computer tends to screw with the way the browser behaves, especially with things like logins, registration, posting messages on message boards, and so on. So, this could be the common culprit behind some of these users’ problems with WebMD.

So, moral obligation or not? The little angel on my shoulder says, “Yes, tell them! Help them!” The little devil on my other shoulder says, “No, it’s their problem! Serves them right for using Windows and IE anyway!” The voice of the WebMD legal department says, “Just leave well enough alone.”