What is the most popular browser?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-22 08:24pm

CelesKnight wrote:I work at a company that does a lot of sites for businesses. We do our own tracking, and most of our customers use IE 5 or 6 (like 80% or 90% of the total). Surprisinly, the next most popular are Netscape 4 and 6. Quite a few none technical people in big companies seem to like those old browsers. Mozilla and Opera is mostly used by bit heads (like me), you're not going to see your average suit or secretary using it. Your results will, of course, vary.

I know that DeutcheBank at least a year or two ago standardized on NS4 internally. It's a fairly mature product with some roaming-profile support that NS7/Moz still lacks.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-08-23 12:05am

verilon wrote:
Pu-239 wrote:Why don't you use transparent GIFs? (BTW the patent on LZW compression in GIFs expired sometime this year for the US, so it is legal to create gifs using GIMP and the like).
Been there, tried that. My comp won't let me keep transparent gifs.

The color on an image and rendered on an element (table,cell, whatever) should look the same if their RGB values are identical though. Can you post a screenshot of what you want to do?

As an option of last resort, use serverside or client side scripting. You'll have to ask DW for anything involving serverside scripting, since I don't know perl.
If you are a web page developer, you should have multiple browsers installed anyway.

(and too busy to do it, since I'm spending time figuring out how to work blender, povray, and other 3d stuff, then help dalton on web page standards compliance.)
I have multiple browsers, but each one it look sslightly different. the web address for the page I am designing is at http://www.bigads4less.com/kwikdyme.html for the time being.

The problems I am having are with the tan images on the left for the rollovers. I can't seem to keep them the right color. As well, my computer has a porblem optimizing images. Every time I try to optimize a jpg before I save it, it makes an invisible file (and I have all hidden files viewed, and still can't see it), and then can't do anything with this particular file.

~ver

Strange... your computer seems seriously broken. Anyway, I don't seem to see the problem. Rollover images look fine in mozilla and konqueror though- the background and the image both put out A48931. The image above "get started fast" with the curve has a lighter shade, but it looks intentional.

Strange thing is that on my computer, the coding says #A58833, yet the color picker program says #A48931 when I click on the table on the side.

However, the result from the color picker program is the same when run on both browsers (konqueror and mozilla firebird, haven't tried rebooting to see IE yet though).

You could do the same rollover effect without using images, using a horizontal rule and some javascript to change the color, I believe. or you could use the an image for the horizontal rule only. That would save downloading time slightly.

Did you obfuscate your javascript or something. Quite hard to understand.

Oh, and your validation errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% ... l#line-585
Use css to replace those nonexistant tags, or get rid of the doctype on top if it's not standards compliant, unless you really need it since your page is designed for IE6 "standards compliant" mode. Script tags should have type="text/javascript" in them.

Alt text should be on everything- if it doesn't need an alt tag fill it with *. Replace & with & in your urls. And the last image is outside the body tag and html tags, which in the standards, do not require closing tags(though recommended). Fixing these is of dubious practicality though, and removing the "nonexistant" properties may break older browsers (up to and possibly including IE4, and NN4(NN4 is a shithole anyway, and any attempts to code for it will break everything else).

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-08-23 12:13am

That code looks machine-generated to me. It works, though, so I suppose that's what counts.

However, just remember that the W3C validator is your friend. I've used it to great extent to troubleshoot annoying problems in my CSS and HTML.

Oh, yeah, and it's generally a good idea to keep your CSS templates as a separate file so that you only have to update one file to change formatting across all pages.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-08-23 02:36am

I wanted to reply before but my computer was kinda trying to render a 32000 x 24000 pixels PNG of the Executor

Anyway, here is my analysis of your website:

-SCAM!!! SCAM!!! (just kidding

)
-You're using Dreamweaver, which is a good thing.
-You're not matching colors correctly, and it shouldn't have anything to do with browsers (it should look WRONG in every browser), except for the little thing that IE routinely fucks colors in webpages. If you really want to make it look correct in IE, then stick to web-safe colors (I'm including a quote from the DW helpfile later), which shouldn't have a corresponding negative effect on other browsers.
-Your page is huge - 350 kb! Mostly because of wrong use of picture formats. Try to keep the total size to 100kb or so. If you can do 60k, everyone will love you.
-You're using the PNG format. Personally I stick to JPG and GIF, and I don't know exactly how big is the compatibility for PNG.
-You're using the wrong formats in the wrong places. You should use a compression 5 or less for the title (so it takes 20kb instead of 150kb). You should use GIF (or PNG if you know think you know everything

) for the links and other stuff that has mostly plain colors. In fact, if you use GIF try to use 32/64 colors unless the picture has a lot of color. The problem isn't size, is rendering speed, memory load and the fact that JPG is lossy and plain-colored stuff actually looks worse than photos with it.
-There's absolutely no reason NOT to use transparent GIFs, unless your graphic application is totally fucked up.

Here's my advise for the color thing: capture the IE window with Print Screen. Paste it into your graphics editor, and use the eyedropper to get the color you got from the plain image (not the links because they're JPEG and literally, no two pixels will be the same color). Try to use that color for everything so you don't have any more matching problems. Either that or stick to websafe colors (ones with 000, 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF on them) at least for colors you intend to match between pictures and tables.

From the helpfile:

About web-safe colors
In HTML, colors are expressed either as hexadecimal values (for example, #FF0000) or as color names (red). A web-safe color is one that appears the same in Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer on both Windows and Macintosh systems when running in 256-color mode. The conventional wisdom is that there are 216 common colors, and that any hexadecimal value that combines the pairs 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF (RGB values 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, and 255, respectively) represents a web-safe color.

Testing, however, reveals that there are only 212 web-safe colors rather than a full 216, because Internet Explorer on Windows does not correctly render the colors #0033FF (0,51,255), #3300FF (51,0,255), #00FF33 (0,255,51), and #33FF00 (51,255,0).

The Color Cubes (default) and the Continuous Tone palettes in Dreamweaver use the 216-color web-safe palette; selecting a color from these palettes displays the color’s hexadecimal value.

To choose a color outside the web-safe range, open the system color picker by clicking the Color Wheel button in the upper right corner of the Dreamweaver color picker. The system color picker is not limited to web-safe colors.

UNIX versions of Netscape Navigator use a different color palette than the Windows and Macintosh versions. If you are developing exclusively for UNIX browsers (or your target audience is Windows or Macintosh users with 24-bit monitors and UNIX users with 8-bit monitors), consider using hexadecimal values that combine the pairs 00, 40, 80, BF, or FF, which produce web-safe colors for SunOS.

If you're using the Dreamweaver Color Picker, remember to turn off the "snap to web safe" option if you want to know what color is REALLY there.

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-08-23 07:38am

Pu-239 wrote:Strange... your computer seems seriously broken. Anyway, I don't seem to see the problem. Rollover images look fine in mozilla and konqueror though- the background and the image both put out A48931. The image above "get started fast" with the curve has a lighter shade, but it looks intentional.

Actually, it's NOT intentional. The rollovers and the image above are supposed to be the same color.

Strange thing is that on my computer, the coding says #A58833, yet the color picker program says #A48931 when I click on the table on the side.

However, the result from the color picker program is the same when run on both browsers (konqueror and mozilla firebird, haven't tried rebooting to see IE yet though).

You could do the same rollover effect without using images, using a horizontal rule and some javascript to change the color, I believe. or you could use the an image for the horizontal rule only. That would save downloading time slightly.

This is true.. unfortunately, I (A) don't know how, and (B) don't have the time to learn.

Did you obfuscate your javascript or something. Quite hard to understand.

I'm using DreamWeaver..?

Oh, and your validation errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% ... l#line-585
Use css to replace those nonexistant tags, or get rid of the doctype on top if it's not standards compliant, unless you really need it since your page is designed for IE6 "standards compliant" mode. Script tags should have type="text/javascript" in them.

Alt text should be on everything- if it doesn't need an alt tag fill it with *. Replace & with & in your urls. And the last image is outside the body tag and html tags, which in the standards, do not require closing tags(though recommended). Fixing these is of dubious practicality though, and removing the "nonexistant" properties may break older browsers (up to and possibly including IE4, and NN4(NN4 is a shithole anyway, and any attempts to code for it will break everything else).

-confused- Ok, here, you lost me. I *think* I know what you're saying, but not really.

~ver

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-08-23 07:56am

Slartibartfast wrote:I wanted to reply before but my computer was kinda trying to render a 32000 x 24000 pixels PNG of the Executor

Anyway, here is my analysis of your website:

-You're not matching colors correctly, and it shouldn't have anything to do with browsers (it should look WRONG in every browser), except for the little thing that IE routinely fucks colors in webpages. If you really want to make it look correct in IE, then stick to web-safe colors (I'm including a quote from the DW helpfile later), which shouldn't have a corresponding negative effect on other browsers.

See the thing is that the colors will match each other in the images, but NOT on the table. So this is not a browser problem, rather than a coding problem for some reason? As well, I made the table background colors and the image colors the same while making them. They should stay the same when uploaded to web space, but for some reason they don't.

Your page is huge - 350 kb! Mostly because of wrong use of picture formats. Try to keep the total size to 100kb or so. If you can do 60k, everyone will love you.

How do I manage this?

-You're using the PNG format. Personally I stick to JPG and GIF, and I don't know exactly how big is the compatibility for PNG.

That is to be fixed at some point. I'm working on it and ten million other subsets to the page, as well.

-You're using the wrong formats in the wrong places. You should use a compression 5 or less for the title (so it takes 20kb instead of 150kb). You should use GIF (or PNG if you know think you know everything ) for the links and other stuff that has mostly plain colors. In fact, if you use GIF try to use 32/64 colors unless the picture has a lot of color. The problem isn't size, is rendering speed, memory load and the fact that JPG is lossy and plain-colored stuff actually looks worse than photos with it.

The problem with using the GIFs and PNGs is that every time I tried to use them in the page, they would save properly, or seemingly so, and then turn a lighter color as soon as I uploaded them. Then checking them again on the comp, they were indeed a lighter color.

-There's absolutely no reason NOT to use transparent GIFs, unless your graphic application is totally fucked up.

My comp keeps saving all transparent GIFs as GIFs with a white background. Same with JPGs. It will save PNGs with transparent backgrounds, but that's pointless because it sets a background color when put into IE.

Here's my advise for the color thing: capture the IE window with Print Screen. Paste it into your graphics editor, and use the eyedropper to get the color you got from the plain image (not the links because they're JPEG and literally, no two pixels will be the same color). Try to use that color for everything so you don't have any more matching problems. Either that or stick to websafe colors (ones with 000, 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF on them) at least for colors you intend to match between pictures and tables.

I tried that for what seems like ten million times.

From the helpfile:
<snip>

If you're using the Dreamweaver Color Picker, remember to turn off the "snap to web safe" option if you want to know what color is REALLY there.

I don't use that unless it's a very base color. I input the colors myself. Now, if I turn off the "snap to web safe" option, this shows the true in the design mode?

~ver

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-08-23 01:52pm

verilon wrote:See the thing is that the colors will match each other in the images, but NOT on the table.

The images don't match colors in MY graphics editor, Photoshop.

So this is not a browser problem, rather than a coding problem for some reason?

Well, apparently IE is ALTERING the colors in your PNG when it renders them. In other browsers, I see exactly the color that's contained in the images themselves.

As well, I made the table background colors and the image colors the same while making them. They should stay the same when uploaded to web space, but for some reason they don't.

There might be a problem in the configuration of your graphics app. Maybe it's using some kind of color profiling like Photoshop used to have by default - it's that thingy that makes the pictures look right in a specific monitor by fucking up the actual color

Your page is huge - 350 kb! Mostly because of wrong use of picture formats. Try to keep the total size to 100kb or so. If you can do 60k, everyone will love you.
How do I manage this?

Using correct format for graphics, and high enough compression. Just the title thing is worth 150kb when it should be 20kb as a JPEG.

-You're using the wrong formats in the wrong places. You should use a compression 5 or less for the title (so it takes 20kb instead of 150kb). You should use GIF (or PNG if you know think you know everything ) for the links and other stuff that has mostly plain colors. In fact, if you use GIF try to use 32/64 colors unless the picture has a lot of color. The problem isn't size, is rendering speed, memory load and the fact that JPG is lossy and plain-colored stuff actually looks worse than photos with it.
The problem with using the GIFs and PNGs is that every time I tried to use them in the page, they would save properly, or seemingly so, and then turn a lighter color as soon as I uploaded them. Then checking them again on the comp, they were indeed a lighter color.

Then there's definitely something wrong with your graphic editor.

-There's absolutely no reason NOT to use transparent GIFs, unless your graphic application is totally fucked up.
My comp keeps saving all transparent GIFs as GIFs with a white background. Same with JPGs. It will save PNGs with transparent backgrounds, but that's pointless because it sets a background color when put into IE.

Read above.

Here's my advise for the color thing: capture the IE window with Print Screen. Paste it into your graphics editor, and use the eyedropper to get the color you got from the plain image (not the links because they're JPEG and literally, no two pixels will be the same color). Try to use that color for everything so you don't have any more matching problems. Either that or stick to websafe colors (ones with 000, 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF on them) at least for colors you intend to match between pictures and tables.
I tried that for what seems like ten million times.

Well, it helps if your editor actually respects your color choice

If you're using the Dreamweaver Color Picker, remember to turn off the "snap to web safe" option if you want to know what color is REALLY there.
I don't use that unless it's a very base color. I input the colors myself. Now, if I turn off the "snap to web safe" option, this shows the true in the design mode?

It only affects the picker itself. Dreamweaver doesn't really snap the color, it uses the one you tell it. It's only an option so the picker rounds to the nearest safe color when you use it. Besides, color-picking a JPEG isn't very useful.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-08-23 02:02pm

verilon wrote:
Pu-239 wrote:Strange... your computer seems seriously broken. Anyway, I don't seem to see the problem. Rollover images look fine in mozilla and konqueror though- the background and the image both put out A48931. The image above "get started fast" with the curve has a lighter shade, but it looks intentional.
Actually, it's NOT intentional. The rollovers and the image above are supposed to be the same color.

Well you appeared to be able to get the rollover image and the table colors matching. It shouldn't be too difficult. The only problem I see is with the curvy image above the "get started fast" rollover (brown3.png, and the pngs associated with it). Just make the curvy white/tan image thing match the color on the rollover images. brown3.png has a color value of #AD923E, which does not match the #A58833 in the coding or the rollovers jpgs. Fixing that appears to correct it. You image editing program seems misconfigured.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-08-23 02:49pm

You know, I also use Paint Shop Pro 7.04 for web graphics work, and I've never had problems with it saving the wrong color unless I want it to.

By any chance, do you change the image color mode to 256 colors when you save things as PNG images? That could be causing the strange color changes.

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-08-24 02:19am

Crayz9000 wrote:You know, I also use Paint Shop Pro 7.04 for web graphics work, and I've never had problems with it saving the wrong color unless I want it to.

By any chance, do you change the image color mode to 256 colors when you save things as PNG images? That could be causing the strange color changes.

No, but it does that automatically with GIFs..

~ver

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-08-24 02:23am

verilon wrote:No, but it does that automatically with GIFs..

Then it's likely using the default options, which aren't very good. Before you save the image, decrease the colors to 256 via the Image>Mode menu. Use the last option, I can't remember the name of it but it's not the web-safe or the default. That gives you better color preservation.

I've used PSP7 for years now, so I'm pretty familiar with its quirks.

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-08-24 02:25am

Crayz9000 wrote:
verilon wrote:No, but it does that automatically with GIFs..
Then it's likely using the default options, which aren't very good. Before you save the image, decrease the colors to 256 via the Image>Mode menu. Use the last option, I can't remember the name of it but it's not the web-safe or the default. That gives you better color preservation.

I've used PSP7 for years now, so I'm pretty familiar with its quirks.

Ok cool, thanks!

~ver

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-01-07 11:22pm

Ok, um, no bitching about thread necromancy, since this is relevant for future use, but I think I know why there's the color problem- IE interprets the gamma values embedded in the PNG, and this is interpreted differently by each browser. Try saving w/o the gamma values, or find a program to strip them in the future. Gimp can do this.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-01-08 12:51am

Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser. It is a buggy, badly written software bundled with every copy of another badly written software called Windows.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-08 01:03am

Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser, Bose is the most popular aftermarket loudspeaker brand, and the McDonald's Big Mac is the most popular burger.

People have bad taste.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2004-01-08 01:39am

evilcat4000 wrote:Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser. It is a buggy, badly written software bundled with every copy of another badly written software called Windows.

Which is why we have this:

(Click it)

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-01-08 06:35am

The Eagle Riders?

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-01-08 10:19am

Slartibartfast wrote:The Eagle Riders?

Mozilla Firebird. Close, though.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-01-09 03:37am

Good, because I never liked that Galactor guy...