ASP.net site looks completely different on IE, Firefox, and Chrome; why?

Question

I'm doing css for a website. I send the html and css to a guy, he puts it into ASP.net. The problem is that the transfer didn't end well for my code and it needs some fixing. The problem is that when I look at it in Chrome, or Firefox, or IE8, I get three completely different renderings. I spent a good amount of time trying to fix a drop-down menu that is supposed to appear while hovering over a link. The one he had in place from ASP.net worked in IE, kinda worked in Firefox, and was completely broken in Chrome (I haven't tested Safari or Opera.) Just getting it to look basically the same in firefox and chrome was a struggle. The html source is showing me two completely different pages as well.

Does anyone have experience with this? I know nothing of ASP.net, and it seems like the guy is modifying my layout with a wsyiwyg (I found tables used in random places, which I did not put there.) Faced with this, what is my best option? Is this fixable, or am I in over my head?

Answer 1

Many times WYSIWYG programs don't generate code that results in reliable, consistent renderings. However, there are a few things you can do to check your site's consistency.

• You can use a program like Adobe BrowserLab (there's a free trial right now) to automatically render your page in multiple browsers side by side
• You can use the w3 Validator to make sure that your code is standards compliant. If your code isn't standards compliant, then you will likely have issues across browsers.

Note that you can force asp.net to generate XHTML Transitional- or Strict-compliant code (if that's the standard you choose to implement) via the web.config file. Use the directive

<xhtmlConformance mode="Transitional"/>

if you want to enable this behavior.

Answer 2

Was your code rendering fine in those browsers before you sent it off to the .NET guy? If so, the programmer is doing something to muck up your work. ASP .NET won't change the way your code renders... it's simply the Windows equivalent of PHP (simply put).

I would suggest (if you haven't already) testing your code before hand-off to verify proper rendering. Take some screenshots, and if after sending your code to this developer things break, you can point out that it was working until he started messing with your markup. If that ends up being the case, at least you know it wasn't you. If it was, then we have more work to do. :)

Can you provide any samples?

Answer 3

The html source is showing me two completely different pages as well.

That sounds like your asp.net guy is doing something wrong there. You can use asp.net to do browser-dependant rendering, but it sounds more like his job is to just make the site render what you gave him, and it's usually better to get your html and css right to begin with.