internet browser difference. help with web-site. please!?

Question

OK
Let's have the solution to this one! What do I need to do to get my web page thumbnail pictures when enlarged to look as I want when shown on IE, FireFox, Opera,Netscape etc. All the Internet browsers differ. I have used javascript for the pictures, CSS for the design and html for content and layout.
But why o why wont the site display at least similarly on all browsers? HELP !

Ok Chris that was short and sweet but what are you suggesting that I have made a typing error? Anything more?

I guess what I need to know is whether there is a some form of uniformity programming I can use so that irrespective of browser, my site looks the same or at least similar. The background is plum and on firefox . On IE the background shows as white and looks bloody awful.
Thankfull for any suggestions. Ps Chris I admire your cheek that I should give you the site but it aint published yet. Thanks

Answer 1

Internet Explorer is notorious for irregular support of HTML and especially CSS standards. I've attached a couple of links below that may be helpful.

However, when IE does something completely bogus with my page, more often than not it turns out to be due to some syntax error or typo on my part. IE is just less forgiving than the others on a lot of errors like missing closing tags. Validating your code will help flush out errors.

Answer 2

As others have said, there is not a great deal you can do. Even if you change a colour to something like blue, all browsers will display it differently. For instance I use IE 6, Opera 9.0, Mozila 1.7.13, and Firefox 1.5.0.4. All these browsers displayed blue, and red, in a different colour to blue, or red. Some were closer to purple for the blue, and pink for the red.

As for getting the pictures to display the same when enlarged, you may have to provide some more information about what you are trying to do. Ie, Are all the images the same size when enlarged (200 x 100), or do they have different sizes.
Is it just that the images either are too large for the screen, and some browser reduces the size to fit (but makes it sooo much smaller)?

Also, as CSS is not universally accepted by browsers, some web sites still use tables for layout. You may need to do this unfortunately.

Answer 3

The different browsers render the HTML in different ways so it's not surprising you are seeing such major differences. Unfortunately there is not a lot you can do about it. You can clean up your design to use only more "standard" colors; even then it won't be 100% consistent but at least the blue places will be blue in all the browsers. Or you can build 4 copies of the page, each optomized for one specific browser and build a browser check into the web server back end. The instructions for this will vary depending on what you're running for the server but basically you can redirect the incoming session to a particular page based on the browser being used.