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15 months ago till today...; And I hope it never happens again.
Topic Started: Jan 22 2011, 04:22 AM (159 Views)
C.T
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Ruler
Yes, I've made the biggest mistake in web development in my life. >_<

You see, 15 months ago I was placing up the latest news entry for the Soul Calibur IV CaS site. In the midst of editing, I somehow truncated an extremely important part of code in the HTML (keep in mind I was working only in Design view, which is the real culprit of it all), not only once but twice a row in two consecutive updates. I simply did not bother to check the coding, let it slip and uploaded it as promptly as possible. Of course everything looked correct via Firefox (which is the only browser I dare to use btw), but this wasn't the coffin I'm about to talk about. No....

Once a visitor views the site in Internet Explorer, they are about to see... well... pretty much nothing. Or a half ass site with no navigation available and one single news entry to top it off. With that being said, the viewer has absolutely no way of navigating the site further in (such as viewing the actual CaS content) as the navigational bar was gone. They'll basically be sprinting out of this site as soon as a third second passes by.

OH THE HORROR!!
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IT WAS LIKE THIS FOR 15+ MONTHS!!

So what happened that made the site look correct on Firefox yet become unusable in IE?

The answer is simply the <if IE> tags. These tags allow you to specific how things look exactly within IE only, and these tags are also used to hide things in IE and not other browsers. As you know I use these tags quite heftily since IE does a crap job of rendering things correctly compared to Firefox and other smarter browsers.

When I copied an existing news entry to create a new one, the software somehow didn't copy all of the <if IE> tags. So it copied only the declaration and not the closing tag. What resulted was basically 80% of the page hidden in IE. :no: Losing the navigational bar most importantly.

So the lesson is: Always double check your coding to make sure it's correct! And test the site and all of its pages on both IE and Firefox before you upload anything!

15 months... And about 40% still use IE. That means almost 1/2 of the visitors never got a chance to see anything beyond this in their cruddy browser. But would that also explain the lack of visitors submitting creations, or even visiting the forums in the past 15 months? Perhaps...

And you may ask why I only discovered this now?

Well, it's not mind boggling at all that I happened to visit the site on IE today. And that's when I saw the horror.

Also, this error only happened from late October 2009 till now. So anytime before October 2009 the site displayed both perfectly on Firefox and IE.

The thing I really wanted to know was - WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS SOONER?! I know there are plenty of people here who use IE right? :o

And the damn Awardspace is STILL down, so I can't even fix it yet!
Edited by C.T, Jan 22 2011, 04:30 AM.
My Links: [YouTube] ~ [Photobucket] ~ [Forums Blog] ~ [CaS Sites]
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The Mayans predicted it...

2012: The End of the World........Wide Web.

Achievement obtained 6/5/2011:
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Slinn Thiefy
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Well, I use IE, but I haven't visited the SCIV CaS site for a long time...perhaps since before October 2009. I wouldn't have noticed such a thing.

Perhaps that's the reason no one has told ya. From the date this error or even before it, there were people that did'nt bother to even go here in the forums. And even those who maintained an active presence might not bother the SCIV site as well. Either that, or those 40% moved on to FireFox, Google Chrome or another browser before October 2009, so wouldn't know that.
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Perseonn Balthasaar
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Another Stage of History
Awardspace is up. And the page isn't broken viewed on IE (online version-wise) :blink:

However, if you need fixing on the Index, I'll delay the update. I'm currently checking any corrupt file post the recovery (the banner is the 1st thing I saw corrupt).

PS: the Cbox's expired.
Edited by Perseonn Balthasaar, Jan 22 2011, 09:51 AM.

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New website for CaS submission!
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C.T
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Ruler
I just fixed it when the server went back up, that's why you're not seeing the error. But trust me, it was there for a loooooooooong time.

There are only two pages effected by this: index.html and newsarchive.html. The fixed pages are now online on the server as we speak. So please download these two pages right now off the server and use them instead.

In the future, keep in mind that <!--[if IE]> needs to end somewhere with <![endif]--> and same with <![if !IE]> (ends with <![endif]>). So be careful copying the news entry. I recommend you do it in Code view so you know exactly what you are copying.

Also, I will need the entire site folder back when the upload is finished. This is necessary to double check everything's correct, and I have to adjust a few things as well.
Edited by C.T, Jan 22 2011, 10:56 AM.
My Links: [YouTube] ~ [Photobucket] ~ [Forums Blog] ~ [CaS Sites]
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The Mayans predicted it...

2012: The End of the World........Wide Web.

Achievement obtained 6/5/2011:
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tanleeseng
Maestro
To tell the truth I think the coding bother me less than hosting the site at Awardspace because they are blocking my country's IP (and maybe other country as well but I wouldn't know). I have to resort to using IP masking program just to access the site which to me felt annoying at times. I know it might be a lot to ask but please find a better hosting site as the current one isn't working well for me (and maybe others as well).
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Perseonn Balthasaar
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Another Stage of History
I'll PM you the site backup as soon as it finishes upload :)

Adding a site suggestion, how about using wikidot?


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