Cross Browser Compatible for Wordpress

[Amfire]

Warriors,

How to create/modify a Wordpress site to function properly in all major browsers?

Any such script/suggestion, a non technical person can follow?

Thanks,

[TheRichJerksNet]

This depends upon many different factors such as the theme you are running, the way the stylesheet is setup, and etc ...

There is no website 100% perfect in all major browsers but you can do some tweaks and etc to make it look good in all browsers. The worst browser is IE because it has major problems with just simple html and simple css. IE will always view sites differently because it is not mozilla based.

James

[Amfire]

My site not looking good at IE, what to change? where to change?

[Stefan Vee]

A wordpress site's "looks" and "feels" depends on the theme.
Unfortunately, many themes are amateuristic copies of copies of copies of copies ... which explains why so many are buggy.
Much harm can be done with a plugin-overload as well.
Pick a professional theme (excellent freebies BTW at woo themes for example) and install it. Deactivate plugins you don't really need.
You should be fine.

[Amfire]

still looking for solution.

[charlesburke]

Amfire, I think the point was made that you might want to try some differnt themes. Just do some surfing of the theme directories, download a few that fit your needs, upload them to your website, enable each one in turn, and check each one in IE to see if the problem goes away.

If you're permanently married to your current theme, you won't find the help you need in the forum. You'll need a programer to dig deeper than we can here.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

[Amfire]

Sounds good. will change it and see how it goes.

Originally Posted by charlesburke

Amfire, I think the point was made that you might want to try some differnt themes. Just do some surfing of the theme directories, download a few that fit your needs, upload them to your website, enable each one in turn, and check each one in IE to see if the problem goes away.

If you're permanently married to your current theme, you won't find the help you need in the forum. You'll need a programer to dig deeper than we can here.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Amfire

How to create/modify a Wordpress site to function properly in all major browsers?

What do you consider 'all major browsers'?

It isn't too difficult to get a site design to work right if your idea of a major browser is FireFox 3.0 and IE 7/8. Throw IE6 and some other older browsers into the mix and things get more complicated. I've found that about 80% of the browser specific display problems are caused by incorrectly closed tags which is an easy fix once you find it.

Other than that, it's up to the theme you use. WordPress is a PHP engine and the public face of it is almost entirely up to the theme you select.

Originally Posted by Amfire

Any such script/suggestion, a non technical person can follow?

Other than using a theme that's been done right from the start, no, it will require some knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP to make the necessary modifications.

[houdy]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I've found that about 80% of the browser specific display problems are caused by incorrectly closed tags which is an easy fix once you find it.

These tags may not only be in the theme but in a post, a common mistake is caused by copying from another website or a program like MS Word and pasting it into the visual editor when making a WordPress post. The formatting from this can cause big time display issues especially on IE.

Another issue I often see is a missing closing </ div> tag somewhere on one of the themes files.

[deskmonkey]

The best advice I can give you for making your website cross-browser compatible would be to make sure you are using completely valid HTML/XHTML and CSS. Different browsers interpret codes differently, so using standard code makes it easier for your site to be cross-browser compatible. I would suggest running your website through W3C's Markup Validation Service to make sure that your HTML/XHTML uses only standard code. Also, you can have your CSS validated at their companion CSS validator.

Now, I'm not saying that if your code is 100% valid, then it will automatically look the same on all browsers. Even standard code is sometimes interpreted differently, but the differences are not that great and at least you are guaranteed that your site will look similar in differing browsers.

[Amfire]

Hi,

So i am to copy the content on notepad and repost it right?

missing closing </ div> tag somewhere on one of the themes files

what is solution for it.

Originally Posted by houdy

These tags may not only be in the theme but in a post, a common mistake is caused by copying from another website or a program like MS Word and pasting it into the visual editor when making a WordPress post. The formatting from this can cause big time display issues especially on IE.

Another issue I often see is a missing closing </ div> tag somewhere on one of the themes files.

[Amfire]

W3C's Markup Validation Service says 18 errors.

"some of them are
end tag for element "p" which is not open
Error Line 99, Column 12: end tag for "p" omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified
end tag for element "p" which is not open"

which file are we talking about here?


CSS Validator says 4 errors

one of them is Value Error : font-family Generic family names are keywords, and therefore must not be quoted. : "Times New Roman","serif"

is it a good idea to change theme?
what are good practices for WP-table plugin?

Originally Posted by deskmonkey

The best advice I can give you for making your website cross-browser compatible would be to make sure you are using completely valid HTML/XHTML and CSS. Different browsers interpret codes differently, so using standard code makes it easier for your site to be cross-browser compatible. I would suggest running your website through W3C's Markup Validation Service to make sure that your HTML/XHTML uses only standard code. Also, you can have your CSS validated at their companion CSS validator.

Now, I'm not saying that if your code is 100% valid, then it will automatically look the same on all browsers. Even standard code is sometimes interpreted differently, but the differences are not that great and at least you are guaranteed that your site will look similar in differing browsers.

[Amfire]

FireFox and IE all versions, safari,

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

What do you consider 'all major browsers'?

[deskmonkey]

Actually, you can just type in the URL to your site and the validator will check your site for you. It removes any possible errors like you accidentally missing something when you copy/paste your source code into their forum, thus fudging the result.

Anyway, regarding the missing </div> issue, since I don't know what your website is, I can't take a look at the source code myself to see where the problem is. If the only problem is a missing </div>, though, then you just have to go through the code to see where it's missing. When you go through the code, keep in mind that every opening tag has a corresponding closing tag, so find which opening <div> doesn't have a closing </div> tag. HTML tags can be nested, so make sure that when you're adding a closing </div> you're adding it in the right place. The same principle applies with every HTML tag — ie. a <p> tag must have a proper closing </p> tag, etc.

[Quentin]

You can usually tell if a theme is compatible and work in most browsers as it will have a separate css file for IE and general.

If they do then you can be pretty sure it will be pretty well compatible with most browsers.

Q

[Amfire]

thanks. uploaded another theme, now sidebar is covering the home page.


How to decrease length of sidebar?

Originally Posted by Quentin

You can usually tell if a theme is compatible and work in most browsers as it will have a separate css file for IE and general.

If they do then you can be pretty sure it will be pretty well compatible with most browsers.

Q

[TheRichJerksNet]

Amfire,
The best theme to use is Download Flexibility Theme for WordPress - has many options and can be customized easier than editing the css.. Also the owner is a member here and you can get support easy for the theme from the owner..

James

[tomcam]

Interestingly, cross browser compatibility is the responsible of the theme author, not WordPress. Your mileage will vary depending on the theme used. I create sites on both Mac & Windows, using FireFox, IE, and Chrome. I have had good luck with the following themes. They're all free, all available at WordPress.org:

Gear
TypographyWP
Fall Season
Atahualpa

Atahualpa is also most easily changed from the WordPress dashboard, as opposed to having to muck around in PHP files.

[Amfire]

James,

Thanks, will check it out.

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

Amfire,
The best theme to use is Download Flexibility Theme for WordPress - has many options and can be customized easier than editing the css.. Also the owner is a member here and you can get support easy for the theme from the owner..

James

[Amfire]

What rights normally we have on these free themes? Are we allowed to remove/modify footer?

Originally Posted by tomcam

I have had good luck with the following themes. They're all free, all available at WordPress.org:

Gear
TypographyWP
Fall Season
Atahualpa

Atahualpa is also most easily changed from the WordPress dashboard, as opposed to having to muck around in PHP files.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Amfire

What rights normally we have on these free themes? Are we allowed to remove/modify footer?

It would depend on how the author licensed it but many people do remove them or make the links nofollow. Many of these themes are under the GPL license just like WordPress so modifying them is OK, however, it is a nice thing to do to leave the footer link in to give the author credit for their work.

[Amfire]

Ok. thanks.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

It would depend on how the author licensed it but many people do remove them or make the links nofollow. Many of these themes are under the GPL license just like WordPress so modifying them is OK, however, it is a nice thing to do to leave the footer link in to give the author credit for their work.