Developing a theme for IE7

Hi, I'm a webdesigner and new to elgg.

I have a big client who has installed elgg 1.8 by his own and now asked me to develop a custom branded theme which... ta-da... should be compatible with IE7 (argh!)

Now, I'm in webdesign since '96 and of course I know very well the problems that this request arises but, since I'm not going to drop this challenge (and their budget), I need to choose the best course of action to handle this project.

My plan is to develop a theme based on tables, and not on layers, to avoid all the nasty behaviours that IE7 shows when it has to deal with DIVs and floating stuff.

The first idea is to get an existing template and modify the modules, substituting most of the DIVs with tables and TDs. (Of course my client will forget any responsiveness, they already know, unless in the end I choose to go for a double theme, one for IE7 and one for newer browsers with a javascript automatic switch.)

My doubt now is: considering that I still don't know elgg and its features, is it better to modify an existing theme or to develop a new table-based theme from scratch? 
Or something completely different? Maybe someone of you has already faced this kind of requests with elgg and knows how to satisfy them in the best possible way.
In the end, 
I'll be glad to know any opinion you have on the right way to approach this problem since I have to start working immediately. 

Thank you!

Enrico Frascati

 

  • Well, there are a lot things you need to take care of. For starters, if you want to use round corners, you must use IE compatible css code. There is a lot of documentation about it. I think you could use an existing theme as a base for your new theme, and then add what you need. 

    The main problem, is CSS3. Some will render ok, some won't. 

    If needed, you could force IE compatibility mode as well:

    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • If your target browser is IE7 I would throw out all css3 and keep it as simple as you possibly can.  If you're replacing divs with tables (I certainly don't envy you...) I'm not sure adapting an existing theme would be much help (other than possibly educating you in the elgg views system) as there would be so much to change you might as well start fresh.

  • @rjcalifornia I'm a little scared to implement too many hacks since I feel the theme would be a little unstable and difficult to modify later. Since most of my clients love to tweak with my work after the delivery (quite common in webdesign, I know) I prefer to keep it very simple to edit again and again until this client is fully satisfied.
    For this reason I think I'll stay with the suggestion from @Matt for a fresh start and a very easy structure. To work I think I'll go back to Adobe Dreamweaver which some years ago was for me the main tool to develop tables and avoid madness, considering the huge amount of TLs, TDs, COLSPAN and all their happy family.

    Anyway, you could confirm that elgg could be integrated in tables as well in DIVs and I'll not discover some huge problem later? For my experience with CMSs, it should be absolutely possible but the right time (and the only one) to have this kind of doubt is before beginning :)

    Do you know of any good tutorial I could use? I have sleeping accounts with Lynda.com and Tuts+ that I use sometime to catch up with some technologies but I didn't find anything on eelg.

    thanks for your help!

    Enrico

  • It definitely can be done.  I've never used dreamweaver, I think it's more of a graphical drag & drop kind of tool - not sure how useful it would be with the views system (which if you're not familiar with Elgg you should read up on before you dive in)

    http://docs.elgg.org/wiki/Engine/Views