My blog looks horrible on all bar Firefox / questions about redesigning
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Greetings. I have a couple of conceptual questions. I use a Mac.
My blog, which uses the standard WP White as Milk theme, looks horrible on most browsers, but fine on Firefox. There are features in this theme that I need, and I’m reluctant to switch. Plus I hate most ready-made designs! The original template designer is hard to get hold of.
So
a) Can I get an independent 3rd party designer to improve aspects of the overall look of the blog while retaining the features I want? I mean, I have a conceptual problem figuring out how he gets “into” the template in order to tweak it!! But I’m told a person with the right skills can do this quite easily. Is that correct?
b) If I do nothing to the basic design, is it at least possible to make it behave in a more predictable way as between one browser and another? On Firefox and Safari, I’ve chosen the exact same standard and fixed-width font preferences. (And in Safari, “Zoom text only” is NOT selected.) Yet in Safari, with those same settings, the blog is far smaller! If I zoom to make it bigger, then other sites look way TOO big. Whereas in Firefox the blog is more or less well-aligned appearance-wise with other sites. Is this an issue a redesigner can tackle or is there any other advice anyone can offer?
Many thanks!
David
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Although I see a very slight difference between Safari 3.2.3 and FF 3.0.10, it is minimal.
Each browser renders things differently and if you were to look at it in Internet Explorer it would look different still – and probably much worse. Or take a look at it in Opera 9 or 10; different still.
You will NEVER get all browsers to show a page exactly the same. There are always going to be differences.
What you would have to do, and this CANNOT be done here at wordpress.COM, is to create and test individual CSS style sheets for each browser – and browser version – and then query the browser when someone tried to load a page to find out what it was – so that you could load a specific stylesheet just for that browser/browser version.
IE5.x renders differently than IE6 which is different from IE7, which is different from IE8. Safari 1 is different from Safari 2 which is different from Safari 3. Firefox 2 is different from FF 3. Opera 9 is different from Opera 10, Flock and it’s various version are slightly different. Take a look at your blog in Google Chrome and it will be different still.
Are you going to create 15 or 20 stylesheets, and then every time a new browser version comes out test and possibly create another stylesheet for that version? Where does it end?
You would be trying to hit a constantly moving target with an off-balance baseball.
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Fine — and thanks for that. (On my Mac, incidentally, the differences of scale and size are major, not minimal.) But moving to my point a), can I do fundamental design changes, working with a designer, to a template downloaded from WordPress? I need to upgrade my site visually, but the basic elements of the existing design are fine.
This a) point is nothing to do with browsers.
David
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No, we cannot upload or use outside themes here. http://support.wordpress.com/themes/adding-new-themes/
If FF is displaying completely differently from Safari, then there is a zoom setting issue with one of them.
FF: go to view > zoom > reset
Safari: go to view > make text normal size
Do be aware that just like with rendering of web pages, each browser zooms differently.
And again, if you end up paying someone to try and fix this on a self-hosted blog, I hope you have deep pockets.
If you want that level of control, you will have to self-host a blog. Including costs of a domain registration expect to pay anywhere from $7 to as much as $100 per month depending on bandwidth and storage requirements. Also be prepared to do all upgrading, all troubleshooting, all maintenance, and all backups.
And do not go for a really cheap web hosting company. Many promise the moon and give you a rotten egg. You really do get what you pay for.
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As far as point a)
With a self-hosted blog you can, but here no. You can do anything if you have enough money, except for outrunning the grim reaper.
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Thanks. This is helping – but I’m not there yet, though I don’t want to keep you on this too long! Forgetting browser issues — and staying with pure design. You say I cannot use an outside theme, but I have actually spoken to people who say they CAN tweak an existing WP theme, if they have my password. One person who actually started was Azeem Aziz, the original designer of the template — but he has disappeared. Others say they can do it too. Are they wrong? Azeem was certainly able to start — we just didn’t finish.
As to self-hosting, no, I don’t want to get into that.
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They’re not messing with the underlying template, only the styling of it (the style sheet). Means you get to pay for the yearly CSS upgrade.
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Aha – good. Next, where is the line drawn on that? I guess I will have to work that out. What is underlying template and what is styling? But the point you are making is — yes, they can do it. Is the CSS upgrade something I have to pay WordPress for, and is there anything else I need to make the designer aware of?
Anyhow, I am taking the magic words “CSS upgrade” away from this.
Thanks.
David
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They can tweak the CSS, but when they tweak, it is going to tweak it for all browsers, not just one. Typically when it comes to browser-specific “hacks” in CSS, they are all for versions of Internet Explorer (with a couple here or there for minor FF fixes) since it is so non-compliant with web standards.
You also have to make sure that the people know that when they start “hacking” that they will ONLY have access to the CSS, NOT to the underlying theme files. ModificationS here are limited to CSS, and any change that would require editing an underlying theme file cannot be done.
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Thanks. I’m not yet clear how much freedom the designer will have at the CSS level, without reaching the underlying theme file, but I guess the experience will show this.
I’ll discuss browser compliance with the guy when I pick him or her. Btw, why are fixes typically for Internet Explorer if it is so NON-compliant??
Don’t bother to answer that if it is too technical — the point that a fix has to operate equally across all browsers is noted.
I assume this is all I need to know.
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They have to put in the hacks for Internet Explorer so that it will display things correctly. Internet Explorer may be losing market share with each passing day, but as of April 2009, it still had a 42% share (IE6, 7 and 8 combined) according to the World Wide Web Continuum. Interestingly, Firefox is at 47%.
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Well, I’ll tell them to forget about Explorer and (if they can) do the job with Firefox and Safari in mind — though, to go back to the beginning of this discussion, I find those two very different.
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FF 3.0.10 like you and Saf 4.0 beta. Went to 4.0 to see if it fixed me-specific issues with 3.2.3 — it did not!
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By the way, I had done all that zoom resetting you recommended. It did not fix what I see as a major difference in the way FF and S display my blog. Minor browsers like Opera tend to be on the side of Safari. It’s FF that stands out, for me.
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