MS Publisher website won't display in IE 8

[mibec3]

I'm trying to help a friend with a site she created using MS Publisher. It displays fine in other browers (safari, chrome, firefox) but not in IE. I looked at the html and it seems fine. The site is www.lushandleafy.ca

Any suggestions?

[Tripredacus]

This page is written in VML (Vector Markup Language) which is a deprecated language supported in older versions of Internet Explorer. Seeing the code, it would appear that IE is actually displaying the page properly, while Firefox is ignoring some of the code. For example, a lot of the content not displayed in IE is wrapped with things like this:

<!--[if gte vml 1]>

This is asking if the browser has VML installed. IE is returning a false condition to this, and as such is not displaying the code inside. It is displaying all the objects marked with:

<![if !vml]>

It would also appear that VML has had some security issues in the past, and its language has been updated to newer versions. I would hazard a guess that your friend is using an older version program to make these pages that doesn't use the newer language.

It typically isn't a good idea to create a website that requires plugins (especially ones like VML and later versions of SVG) unless you can garauntee that the target audience is going to have them. For example, if this technology was to be used on a corporate intranet, or launched from a CD, that would be ok.

[mibec3]

Thank you Tripredacus for your reply. Now it makes sense. I will pass the info along to her and hope that she decides to use a more up to date program/platform for web development (really not sure why she used Publisher in the first place)!

[Tripredacus]

Sometimes people just use what they know. People out there are still using Publisher and FrontPage to make websites because its what they have on their computer. You could also technically make websites with Word if you wanted. If you look at the code on that page, you'll notice there is a lot of extra stuff in there, which is a major complaint against webpage builders from Microsoft. There are other programs out there, some might be free, some not. In my past I had used the webpage builder included with Netscape's browser, and also used Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver isn't a free program, but there are free ones out there too.