With all the advancements in modern day technology, one would expect a site to look more or less the same in Internet Explorer (IE), FireFox, Chrome, Safari, or any of the other popular internet browsers.
Sadly that is not the case however. What looks perfect in one browser – will not necessarily look remotely familiar in another.
Maybe I am exaggerating a bit here, but I honestly am a little disappointed that this blog looked presentable in most browsers, and then – when I accidently pull it up in internet explorer – it shows code that I purposefully hid. And to think that it was like that for at least 3 – 5 months is embarrassing.
My programmer always reminded me to “cross check the appearance of things in all major browsers” but I never took his advice too serious – simply because I assumed things should look the same. “It’s a simple theme” I always said, but boy was I wrong!
Alright, I made a big deal about this – but what the heck am I yapping about?
This code. Also known as the “comment code”. I used it to hide an old banner in the code of this site, and apparently Internet Explorer did not recognize the “hide this” command.
Meaning the pathetic old banner was showing in the sidebar along with parts of the comment code.
Lesson learned? Always double check all code updates you make – with all the major browsers. I would even (maybe “especially”) recommend checking it out on various mobile platforms as well.
I learned yet another lesson today about double checking everything when I noticed (also in the sidebar of this site) that my ecover image (by the opt-in box) was not showing on some pages.
Thinking this was strange, I opened up the code and found that – because I did not put in the full URL (images/eCover.png instead of http://url.ca/images/eCover.png) – the image would only show if one was on a page that was rooted in the same folder as the image sub-folder was in.
A long story short and the moral of these stories: ALWAYS double check all code changes – however insignificant they might be. The last one was not a browser issue, but you just never know what will throw the code out of order.
Technology has advanced so far over the years, but it too has limitations. So, always, always, always, double check your stuff 😀
