So as some of you know, about a year ago I started a little project at cafepress.com which involved me opening a small online shop and uploading designs for t-shirts and other products for sale. It wasn't really a money-making idea as much as a creative outlet for my underused abilities in the aesthetic and commercial realms.
The shop is called Shirtbug.net, and you'll see that the logo cleverly reflects the name in a way that makes the address stick firmly in the brain of the potential repeat customer. My idea for the name and logo came in a moment of creative genius which I can only attribute to divine inspiration (proof, I would argue, that God indeed wills that my shop should see success and acclimation).
However, despite this heavenly affirmation of future commercial prosperity, I continue to be demonized by the Hellish spectre known as "browser incompatibility".
You see, like most tech-savvy individuals in the modern age, I switched my web-browsing software over to Firefox several years ago, using Internet Explorer only during those rare occasions when I am away from my computer and using the hardware of a less technically inclined friend or acquaintance. However, as most of the web-browsing world still thinks of that blue "e" on their desktop as "the internet", web page designers are constantly forced to create web sites that look good in both Firefox and IE.
Enter my problem: My cafepress page, which is currently running a slightly modified version of a template which was professionally designed and purchased by me several months ago, does not want to behave itself in both browsers. Naturally Firefox still offers the best possible browsing experience, yet in this case even "the fox" is slightly letting me down. I'll give you some links so you can see for yourself. (PS – you'll need to have both IE and Firefox installed on your computer to participate in this part of the post. If you don't have Firefox installed, you should do it now and welcome yourself to the 21st century)
Here is the main page for my Cafepress shop: http://www.cafepress.com/shirtbug
Let's check it out using Firefox first. If you'll scroll down to the bottom, you should see two little yellow and red bugs flying around near the bottom of the left-side menu. The one and only issue I have with Firefox is that the menu items overlap slightly with the colour gradient at the bottom of the menu, and the bug graphics slightly cross over into the menu text:
If you look at this same area with Internet Explorer, there is no problem:
However, that's the only good thing that IE is doing for my design. You may have noticed in Firefox that at the very bottom of my page, there is a graphic of some mushrooms growing out of the grass, like so:
IE decides that it doesn't like the graphic, and thus tries to cover it up:
But my biggest issue with IE is this – when you try to view any of the product pages, it decides to ram my product picture into the menu graphics on the left, and ends up screwing up the menu display completely. Take this page which shows my Game Over shirt, for example (click on picture to enlarge):
While Firefox has no problem putting each element in its place:
In conclusion, this is driving me crazy. Honestly. We have the technology to talk in real-time video to the other side of the planet, but we can't create internet software that can universally interpret html code in a consistent way?! Can't Microsoft at least raise their browser standards to the same place as the rest of the internet world?
I appeal to my faithful readers, both near and far, who may have any amount of expertise in web development, and humbly ask that you help me to get my design looking nice in both browsers. If anyone is to take my shop seriously, it has to at least behave itself in an orderly manner.
As for the rest of the web-browsing world, may I request that you give Firefox a try, and at least use it when you feel like browsing through shirtbug.net? Visiting my site with Firefox is like having you visit my home and hoping that you don't notice that I didn't dust on top of the china cabinet. Visiting my site with Internet Explorer is like having you visit my home and hoping that you don't notice the flooding on the first floor, and the gaping hole in the living room wall where Microsoft crash-landed their company jet. It's not that the mess is my fault, but it's still embarassing.
