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Web page design update

 

December 9 2011

As I have mentioned before, I am not completely satisfied with how this web site looks on mobile browsers. While I was able to make some minor changes to get the site to look half-decent on a mobile device, further testing on an iPod touch shows there was still work to be done.

I have done this work. Instead of using an actual table, the CSS now uses display: table to arrange the page in a table layout. For Internet Explorer 7 and 6 -- the only browsers today with significant market share that do not support display: table -- I have used IE-specific HTML to show the tables only to these older programs.

Because of this, I can now move the ads on the right hand side of the table to the bottom of the page on mobile browsers; in addition, since I now use viewport in the head of the document, the ads are fully readable in mobile browsers without needing a pinch zoom.

I have also tested the web page in Internet Explorer 6 and the page's content degenerates fairly reasonably on this ancient browser. The top of the page is light grey instead of having my picture, because IE6 doesn't support PNG transparency and that's how the PNG's background looks in IE6. I have removed the link hover colors in IE6 via the Owen Hack; on pages with the Google ads, move hovers cause the page to annoyingly "blink".

I have removed the text razzing users who still use IE6; I have decided it's not my place to tell people what browser they should or should not be using, and there may be someone out there who somehow has an internet connection, but is not in a financial position to upgrade their older computer. IE6 is the oldest browser that mainstream web sites still cater their design to accommodate.

The site also looks reasonable on Dillo as well as being perfectly readable on a browser that does not support CSS.

My goal in my web site designs has always been to have my site render reasonably well on as many browsers as possible. While I'm no longer worried about how it looks on museum pieces like Netscape 4, I have made sure the web site looks good on Opera 11, Chrome 15, Safari 5, both Firefox 8 and Firefox 3.6, Internet Explorer 8, on mobile browsers (namely, the iPhone), and reasonably degenerates in Internet Explorer 6-8.

In Dillo and Links, the site does not look perfect, but it is reasonably attractive and perfectly readable. On browsers without CSS, the site is perfectly readable, albeit not pretty.

I have not had a chance yet to test the revision of the web site's design on iPads or other tablet devices, nor on any non-iPhone smart phones, but suspect the site will look good (it should look the same as it does on a desktop browser; the mobile page is only for small-screen devices).

I would like to perform more testing on mobile devices before going live with the site; in the meantime, its design can be tested here:

http://samiam.org/try/
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