Hey guys, anyone using Mozilla?  I had a customer tell me that they tried to view my site today from a different computer that used Mozilla instead of IE and my website didn't work. Can someone check this out for me?  I was updating a few pages over the past two days, but I don't think that would bring the entire site down and being an IE user I can't look into it myself.

Thanks
-Michele

Can someone check this out for me?  I was updating a few pages over the past two days, but I don't think that would bring the entire site down and being an IE user I can't look into it myself.

This is just a general observation and NOT directed specifically at you Michele. Anyone who has a web site and especially anyone who makes web sites ought to have a few different browsers available on their computer to make sure everything works for all visitors to the site, no matter what browser they use. Internet Explorer is notorious for being non-standards compliant, so if your web designer is only building IE-friendly sites they are doing you and your potential customers a disservice. It's really no big deal to download and install a few different browsers on your computer.

I'm currently using SeaMonkey as my main browser, which like Firefox is in the Mozilla family. The only problem that I can see with your site is that it has been designed so that I can't view the whole page without scrolling both sideways as well as up and down - or changing the resolution of my monitor. That has been the case since you changed your site awhile back. This is because of the graphics used for your links at the top, as well as the footer at the bottom which is one gigantic, long graphic. This is true whether I use IE, Firefox, SeaMonkey, or Opera. I could also probably get around the problem by going out and spending hundreds of dollars on one of those new widescreen monitors, but my current one works fine for 99.9% of web sites, which are built to be user friendly.

Sometimes web designers don't take that stuff into account, though I notice that Chris Chomick's own site was specifically designed to not have the side-scrolling situation that yours does. Maybe the person having the problem with Mozilla has an older version browser that has issues with cascading style sheets or javascript, I don't know.

Other than that, the new design is really nice and it works for me in a Mozilla browser, specifically SeaMonkey - and as always I'm a huge fan of your wonderful puppets themselves, Michele.



Ron G.

PS
If I center your web pages in the middle of my browser window I can see pretty much everything that I need to use it. Girlfriend... I really love your puppets - funny, cute, well-crafted, and full of personality!

Thank you so much Ron, for the compliments and the suggestions. 

I was never aware that I could have multiple browsers loaded at once. I just assumed that they would conflict with eachother and always avoided using anything otherthan IE since it always came with computers I have purchased in the past.  I also thought IE was the norm for other users.

I'm curious, what would be the purpose of using something other than IE?  And which ones would be the top browsers to download.... I really don't want to have all of them as I'm sure there are many.

Finally.... I'm not sure how to solve the scrolling problem. I have access to my webpages but I'm afraid to alter the main structure for fear of messing things up. I guess I'll have to check to see if it's something as simple as just decreasing the length of the graphic and hopefully it wont throw everything else out of wack. 

-Michele

I remember having the same issues looking at your site when you first changed it; but since then I've bought a new wider screened laptop and the sidescrolling issues have gone. Sounds like your designer has factored for his/her screen size and not everyone else's. To fix it, you'll just have to get your designer to use % widths (this way the site automatically resizes itself according to the user's screen resolution).

For some useful info: about 60% of my site visitors use IE6, with some of that being smaller percentages going to other IE versions. Then there's about 20-25% of whom use Firefox, and about 5-10% using Opera.

The purpose to using other browsers... well, download FF and see! My browser resolution is so much better, fonts and colours clearer. Plus, you can do a lot of stuff, like add ons. At the bottom of my browser I have gadgets which tell me my current IP address, Google page rank for the site I'm looking at, a Google translator for highlighting and instantly translating foreign languages, an editor for editing web code on the fly, a Bloglines notifier for new stuff from my favourite sites, and a link to a website validator. This is all stuff I use every day and IE can't compare. Other things FF can do that IE can't: when my computer crashes or the internet stops working, FF instantly remembers all the sites you were viewing and loads them next time you open your browser. You can have better security (you can store your passwords with a main password in case your computer gets hacked), etc etc. There are a lot of reasons why people move away from IE; but most of them are probably involved in some sort of internet work anyway, since 60% of my users are still using it.

FireFox is what I use.  As Na point out the majority of folks do still use IE but more and more are moveing to FireFox or other Mozilla based browsers. As a rule they are faster and more secure then I.E. 

I don't see an issue with your site. When they say "didn't work", do you know what they meant by that?  That could be a lot of things.

Has anyone used Google Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome
What are the different browsers and why is one better than the other?

Billy D.

Billy,
There are a multitude of browsers out there perhaps even in the 100s if you count older ones.  Some of the most popular ones would be I.E., FireFox, Opera, SeaMonkey, Safarie, Google Chrome.  I've tried all of the ones I listed.  It really does not hurt a thing for you to download and try a browser out. If you don't like it just uninstall it.

I don't really know that one is really better then the other.  It all depends on what you want from your browser. I like FireFox because of the tools it offers that make it easier for me to build and design websites.  It can also be simply what a person gets used to working with.