Author: Forrest Corbett

Browser Testing: Internet Explorer 8 vs Internet Explorer 9 in IE8 Browser Mode – Don’t rely on it

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow, WordPress

Why not use Internet Explorer 9’s Developer Tools for testing IE8 & IE7? Here’s why.

Twice last week this issue has come up so I’m providing some examples and reasoning as to why you should not even bother using Internet Explorer 9 for testing websites for how they would look in Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 7.

Background
IE has traditionally not been developer friendly out of the box. In IE9, that changed and Microsoft provided Compatibility Modes within Developer Tools (F12).

Months back, working with a couple devs, I was told this is how they test with IE8. I thought “wow, great that Microsoft is trying to help developers.” I never looked into this feature before, as I had always just used VMs for testing, long before IE9. So when IE9 came out, I continued that patter. (Microsoft provides free virtual machine images for testing.) However, my distrust for them overpowered me and I decided to run some tests.

The first test I ran was Acid3 http://acid3.acidtests.org/ Viewing the screenshots below, you will see the immediate differences I saw: A different score and slightly different rendering (eg “FAIL” in the corner.) Continue reading →

CSS Rounded Corners Not Displaying In Firefox? The answer.

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

A few versions back, Firefox (Mozilla as a whole) dropped support for its original method of supporting CSS3 rounded corners (border radius). Previously it needed the -moz prefix – -moz-border-radius

Starting in Firefox version 13, Firefox no longer honors the -moz prefix in respect to border-radius.

One solution is simply to remove the -moz prefix. You can do this via find and replace – find: -moz-border-radius and replace it with: border-radius

This will cause older Mozilla browsers to not display border-radius anymore. So you could also add just border-radius as an additional rule.

Support for the prefix was removed in Gecko 13.0 (Firefox 13.0 / Thunderbird 13.0 / SeaMonkey 2.10).

Display scrollbars in Webkit browsers (Chrome, Safari…) on Mac OS X

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

Starting with Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” (and continuing with 10.8 “Mountain Lion”), browsers based on Webkit often do not display scrollbars on elements such as divs that are overflowing. This is a “feature”, and there is a way to disable it.

The quick answer:
Use the psudo element -webkit-scrollbar  and set -webkit-appearance: none;

Sample:

<div class="example">
 Content<br />
 Goes<br />
 Here
 </div>
.example::-webkit-scrollbar {
 -webkit-appearance: none;
 }

Background:
I’ll try to walk the fine line between theorizing what Apple is thinking and what they have done. On Macs that don’t have a normal mouse (eg one with a scroll wheel), you won’t see scrollbars by default. Plug a mouse in, and instantly you’ll see your windows adapt and show scrollbars. Unplug it, and they go away.

Scroll bars will display when you scroll using, for example, the trackpad on a laptop. Essentially devices that “scroll” get scroll bars. And devices that provide more of a “swipe” don’t get scroll bars.

Fixing TeamViewer “Access to the TeamViewer server has been denied” on Mac OS X

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

I’ve used TeamViewer in the past, and wanted to use it again. I launched it and was prompted to update, so I did. After installing version 7.0.11515 I used TeamViewer successfully and then the next day it wouldn’t work anymore.

“Access to the TeamViewer server has been denied!”

A dialog with that message would pop up over and over again. No amount of clicking “okay” would help. I kept thinking my password was being rejected, but it wasn’t.

What’s the problem? TeamViewer looks at your system’s serial number and tries to determine if it’s valid or not. If the app thinks it’s an invalid serial number, it will prompt that dialog, forever.

This can occur several different ways. For example, if you have been tweaking your Mac, you might have accidentally changed your serial number or erased it. It also happens if you’re running your own custom install of OS X, perhaps on PC hardware (aka a “hackintosh”.) Apps such as MultiBeast help one configure a hackintosh, but don’t provide a valid serial number. And to be clear, the number doesn’t have to come from Apple, it just has to follow a specific pattern.

What’s the solution? Get a valid serial number. How? You can use an app such as Lizard to generate a valid serial number. However, if you run this and apply it, it just might overwrite some other changes that it shouldn’t. So be prepared to fix your install if you go this route. For example, you might:

  1. Make a backup of  the /Extra/smbios.plist file
  2. Run Lizard
  3. Copy the generated serial number into your backup of the smbios.plist file
  4. Then replace the newly created smbios.plist file with your backup

There’s also another option. Others have also run into this issue and there’s a thread on InsanelyMac where a user has posted a copy of a smbios.plist file. You could grab the serial number out of it and use it, rather than using Lizard.

Check your stats – time to stop supporting Internet Explorer 7

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

Recently I was working on a fairly large web project and we were dealing with some data grids that were very difficult to deal with. I browsed through the site’s analytics to see that IE7 usage had dropped below 5%, and after some discussions with some stakeholders, that was low enough to drop support for it.

Woot!

This allowed us to use CSS tables, which really helped us handle the data which needed to be displayed.

I’m really pleasantly surprised at how quickly IE7 usage has dropped off on some sites. Sadly, I still have to deal with IE8 shortcomings but they’re not as bad. I’m still disappointed in IE9 and sadly Microsoft is still failing to compete with other browsers with at least the IE10 preview. Hopefully they step up their game for the release version.

For your own sites, make sure you check our own data. Sometimes there are strong needs to still support IE7, and even IE6. But at least for some sites, the old versions of IE are going away faster than they used to.