Re: Netscape vs Explorer problem

On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 02:28:20PM -0800, Pedro Alvarez, Jr. wrote:
> Hello all,
> I've been baffled by this problem and am not sure how to solve it.
> For the past few years, students have been able to request some of
> our services(slc.berkeley.edu) via the web. Lately, I've been
> hearing of students having problems with the links that go to those
> request pages. I checked the links from home and here at work. I
> use Explorer exclusively and all seemed to be fine. Someone
> mentioned using Netscape and when I tried the links via Netscape,
> indeed the links went to a stat21 page. This seemed to be true with
> a lot of the links on our site.
> Here's an example. Using Netscape, if one goes to slc.berkeley.edu
> then clicks on the Social Science link in the frame on the left, all
> the links on the ensuing social science page go to a stat21 page.
> However, as far as I know, when using the same example in Explorer
> all the links work fine.
> Has anyone experienced a similar problem and how might it be solved.
> My own personal opinion is to not use Netscape at all.

The web is an open medium; you do not have control over what browsers
your customers are using, so you need to code to web standards which
are supportable by any browser. Microsoft does a poor job of
supporting standards, and encourages people to violate them,
specifically to try to drive other browsers out of business; the
proper response to this is to make your HTML valid, not to tell people
to use the broken browser (IE). In particular, a site whose primary
users are students must be able to be viewed in a wide range of
browsers; students these days are increasingly using non-PC-based
browsers on their PDAs and cell phones.

The HTML on your pages appears to have many errors. In particular, an
error which is probably causing you problems is an unclosed <a> tag:

            <P><A HREF="http://slc.berkeley.edu/stat/stat21.html"><TABLE BORDER=0>
               <TR>
                  <TD WIDTH=356 HEIGHT=63 BGCOLOR="#336666">
                     <P><FONT SIZE="+2"><B>Social Science
                     Services</B></FONT></P>

                     
                     <P><FONT SIZE="+3" COLOR="#FFFFFF"><B>AT-A-GLANCE<BR>
                     </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="+2" COLOR="#FFFFFF"><B>NOTE:
                     The links on this page don't seem to work in
                     Netscape, if possible please use Internet
                     Explorer)</B></FONT></P>

Note that that <A HREF="http://slc.berkeley.edu/stat/stat21.html">
doesn't have a corresponding </A>. Fixing that may make this page
work in standards-compliant browsers, although there are many other
problems on your pages which could cause problems.

If you are still using Claris Home Page 3.0 to modify your pages, I
would suggest that you instead get the most recent version of
DreamWeaver, and run all your pages through an HTML validator before
posting them.

I also would highly recommend redesigning your site so it does not use
frames, which break a number of web paradigms.

-- 
Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
College of Letters & Science
249 Campbell Hall
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the list server:
For information about MAGNet, its meetings and events, and its
mailing list, including information on subscribing and unsubscribing,
see the MAGNet Web site at <http://magnet.berkeley.edu/>.