scriptygoddess

22 Apr, 2004

CSS: Mac IE issues

Posted by: Jennifer In: Lessons learned

I'm not sure that "Lessons Learned" is the most appropriate category for this, as all I've really learned from this little exercise is that IE on the Mac SUCKS.

1) When testing changes to a stylesheet on the Mac – I can't just hit refresh and have it load in the new/revised stylesheet. I have to actually QUIT IE completely (not just close all browsers – actually QUIT the program) then open it again – and THEN it will load the new stylesheet

2) That little trick they talk about with doing CSS forms – making an outer "row" div – and then two inline "label" and "formw" spans inside. This will only work in Mac IE (and sit all on one line) if I add an extra unlabeled, unstyled div… so instead of this:

<div class="row">
<span class="label">First Name</span>
<span class="formw"><input type="text" name="First_Name"></span>
</div>

I have to do this:

<div class="row"><div>
<span class="label">First Name</span>
<span class="formw"><input type="text" name="First_Name"></span>
</div></div>

UPDATE: HERE IS A BETTER WAY!!! – I'll leave all the above up here too, if for no other reason than just because it's interesting that this works also – but ideally, less code is better. I previously left a comment in this post that I would try it – and I did – and this new link has a solution that's better than mine. 😀 (found via the CSS Help Pile.)

3) In addition to the above, if that last </span> and the two </div></div> are on the same line – it gets messed up again. So if that last line looks like this:

…etc. etc….</span></div></div>

it'll get messed up. So it has to look like this:

…etc. etc….</span>
</div></div>

4) I also ran into a really weird problem with links completely disappering (on Mac IE only) when you hovered over them. I'm not talking like you hover, it turns to white, then you hover off, and it comes back. I'm talking about you hover over it, and then it's gone… and the only way to make it reappear on the page was to refresh. I DID fix this – but I'm not sure how. I have a suspicion that it had to do with too many nested divs styled with IDs instead of CLASSes. But I'm not sure. All I know is that I changed many of the styles to use CLASSes and it went away.

Again – like I said – I think the only thing I'm sure of here is that Mac IE REALLY sucks. I've only been doing my layouts in CSS for a few weeks now – and already I see a trend. Every browser is happy – pages validate – but Mac IE kicks the bucket.

16 Responses to "CSS: Mac IE issues"

1 | brian w

April 22nd, 2004 at 9:52 am

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Instead of quitting the program, I'm pretty sure you can enter the URL of the stylesheet itself & hit refresh, then refresh your HTML page. Which might at least save you a few seconds with each iteration.

Also, are you sure you have the most up to date version of IE? Several times I've made pages I was sure were valid, but they failed in the version of IE 5 that shipped with slightly older Macs until the user upgraded to 5.2.1 or whatever the last version was. It might save you a little bit of frustration.

2 | jr

April 22nd, 2004 at 10:31 am

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IE on the MAC is pretty much a dead animal. Microsoft is not planning any further developments as Apple now bundles Safari (which has it's own quirks).

I would guess that the powers that be were not expecting the style sheet to change. I'm wondering if they even cashe it. Anything to make it a harder on the develper.

3 | liz

April 22nd, 2004 at 12:15 pm

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Hmm, I don't have that problem and I am using a mac now and have been for years. Maybe its the version of IE you are using, or perhaps your preferences? I hit refresh and it works fine.

4 | Jennifer

April 22nd, 2004 at 1:03 pm

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I checked the version and it's 5.2.3 and the OS is the latest (Jaguar) – It's not just me, either. I checked on a number of other machines – as well as with a few developers I work with. All experience the same problem.

(I should note – I'm not referencing style sheet changes to THIS site)

If you don't have this problem – that's wonderful. But I wanted to make the post so that the person who DOES run into this problem and can't figure out why the stylesheet they just edited isn't being loaded in Mac IE – they're not the only ones.

There may be other variables involved – for example – if you're running the page locally vs. on a server… I'm not sure… nor do I have the time to bug-test their browser to find out the exact scenario it happens in.

5 | drew

April 22nd, 2004 at 2:54 pm

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i agree with brian w. i've been doing that trick for as long as i can remember. another that usually works is holding shift and refreshing.

6 | Greg French

April 22nd, 2004 at 5:21 pm

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IE for Windows uses F5 for refresh, and CTRL+F5 to refresh whether the page is in cache or not. Perhaps there is an equivalent combination for IE on the Mac.

7 | Duncan Campbell

April 22nd, 2004 at 6:26 pm

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I *think* you can force the stylesheet to reload by killing your temp files/history.

Try this:

1. Open your page.
2. Change your stylesheet
3. Open IE Prefs (Explorer | Prefs), choose Advanced, and click "empty now" and "Clear history".

Also, you might want to make sure that "Always" is selected in the Cache area of the advanced settings – this usually works for me.

Like someone else in these comments said: Do you really care? NOBODY (well nobody with any sense) uses IE-Mac anymore, and Microsoft have stopped IE development (on windoze – i assume on mac also).

I for one made sure my site worked in Safari, IE Windoze and all the various Mozilla flavours – it renders like crap in IE-Mac.

8 | KMB

April 22nd, 2004 at 6:50 pm

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Hi there!!

Why don't you use labels instead of <span> and remove the second span, by inserting the class directly to the input-field??
Something like:
<label for="First_Name">First Name</label>
<input type="text" style="formw" name="First_Name" />

Not sure this works though…

For further details:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.9

Cya KMB

9 | KMB

April 22nd, 2004 at 6:51 pm

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Make that a class in the input, not a style – sorry about that…

10 | Dasme

April 23rd, 2004 at 8:57 am

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Had similar problems with mac IE for a new design I was working on. You have to go to the prefs and make sure your page refresh is set to everytime. Once that change is made restart ie and all will be good.

Mac ie definitly has some issues. It's a definite challenge to design for it :)

11 | Jared

April 23rd, 2004 at 10:17 am

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On the Mac you can just push option+command+r

This will reload the page instead of just refreshing it. This should save you the trouble of closeing the browser and re-opening it.

12 | theresa

April 23rd, 2004 at 2:45 pm

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This is unrelated to CSS, but if you ever have images with spaces around them in Mac IE, you have to revery to using the old vspace and hspace attributes. I can't wait until Mac IE goes away!

13 | Jennifer

April 27th, 2004 at 10:29 am

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Just a note to myself (and to anyone else who cares LOL!) Through that CSS Help Pile, I found a link to this – which may help that form issue problem I ran into (so that I don't have to use the extra DIV)… worth a try at least.

14 | RMCox

April 27th, 2004 at 11:39 am

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There's also the Mac/IE5.2 commented backslash hack which can facilitate some much needed inline hackination. And it's ok to use this hack since Mac/IE5.2 is dead. You can see an example of the hack from a previous version of my homepage.

ps. glad the help pile, eh, um, helped and thanks for the link.

15 | esprit libre

April 23rd, 2004 at 3:03 am

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geek maintenance
I finally went back and fixed all the broken mp3 links in past entries. the mp3 category archive is here if you want to go back and download any of them. . can I just say that I love my…

16 | esprit libre

April 23rd, 2004 at 3:17 am

Avatar

geek maintenance
I finally went back and fixed all the broken mp3 links in past entries. the mp3 category archive is here if you want to go back and download any of them. . can I just say that I love my…

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