Display differences of XWD7 site - IE versions

[DocRock]

I used Adobe Browserlab to test this site. It displays as I expect in IE9 and FF3 but differently (corrupted font styles, some small layout differences) in IE6, 7 and 8, Chrome 14 and in FF3. I don't have other means to test but the client says his viewers reports that the site looks "strange" which I assume has to do with their browser incompatibility with styles. How can I ensure that the site will display correctly in all common browers -- IE6-9, FF2-3 and Chrome13-14?

[mwenz]

FF2, FF3 are terribly behind the times, as is IE6.

There are layout differences between every current browser, what should one expect for these other "ancient" browsers? It wasn't until IE9 that MS has even approached a standards-compliant browser. IE6 is really behind the times in this regards.

However, even using Adobe's BL, I didn't see anything that is "broken" about the referenced site, at least on the home page. There will be some font differences, especially on the Mac and on IE7 and older. You are using Garamond for some text. IE6 doesn't understand that well, but the Mac is expecting a different name for the same font. In either case, unless the site visitor has the font installed, it will always be substituted. Unfortunately, I don't know if Xara has the ability to code various font families as one can do in sites controlled with a CSS file which provides a better path of font substitution.

You mention "font corruption" and I suspect you might be referring to the substitution. Would that be true?

Take care, Mike

[DocRock]

Thanks for looking at this issue. I should have been more specific about "corruption". Running Adobe BL on my Win PC the font changes from garamond to something else for a portion of text in the middle of the paragraph in the older browsers. As you say, IE9 and FF3 render the page with no font changes. Scary that you don't see the same things in your BL. Odd to say the least as I would expect that all text would be displayed in the default serif font if garamond was not available. I'll dig into the site pages and see if there may be something I did during development that causes the problem.