Friday, 17th June, 2005

On PNGs, GIFs, CSS and MSIE

Transparency

Have I mentioned that I hate Internet Explorer?

I fail to see why, when almost every other browser on the planet can handle transparency in PNG images, IE seems to just throw its hands up in the air and plaster a great big grey box where things should be all alpha-channely-gorgeous.

Take my little calendar thing on the left there for example. I was dead chuffed when I wrote that. It's not complicated — just a series of three PNGs layered on top of each other like this:

Clever no? All I had to do is create a folder with each of the months, and numbers from one to thirty-one in it, then use date() to work out the file names.

But if you were using Internet Explorer, then it didn't bloody work did it? Nope. Instead of a purple plagiarism of Apple's iCal.app icon, you got this:

Which is shit.

"Why didn't you use GIFs Siobhan?" comes the obvious question. "GIFs have transparency and MSIE can handle them OK"

Because (comes the response), if you look closely at the bottom of the number, it doesn't have a consistent background colour — and blending in the edges of the anti-aliasing with, say, white, wouldn't be perfect.

But, in my strive for perfection, I have to admit that sometimes a kludge is better than hideousness, and so, I've implemented a little hack to make things slightly less ghastly for MSIE users.

if (!(stristr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "MSIE"))) {
    $extension = "png" ; 
    } else { 
    $extension = "gif" ; 
    }

And then, wherever I use sexy transparent PNGs, I just drop this snippet in:

<?php echo $extension ; ?>

That way, Firefox and Safari (and Opera and whatever) users get the full yumminess of alpha-channel transparency, while MSIE users (forshame) get second-best nasty GIFness.

You really shouldn't be using MSIE you know. It's clumsy, buggy and prone to security exploits. Here, go get yourselves Firefox — it's free, customizable, and a lot more secure that the Beast of Redmond

(Quick addition to this — I just found a rather interesting article on A List Apart that explains a little of what I'm going on about here, and offers a solution. It's not perfect for me, but I think I can maybe hack it around a bit)

Comments

Listen, I wonder could someone do me a favour? For quite some time now, I've been aware that the comments appear dreadful in MSIE. Last night, with the help of the lovely Joanna Nicholls I managed to play around with the CSS a bit and got them looking closer to what they're supposed to look like — but the little Gravatar was still messing up the top of the box.

I've had another stab at it this morning, and it still looks OK on Safari, but I've no way of checking on MSIE.

So, I was wondering if someone could take a screen shot of this for me, and email it to siobhan@eyefood.co.uk so I can see if I'm getting any closer.

Ta

(Update: OK, with the help of some lovely people, I've got a little bit closer to making things cross-browser-lovely. As I said, I can't check still, so if it looks screwy, please will yous let me know?)

T and Sympathy

Just going back to the debate from the last few days...

I think there's an underlying issue here — one I've mentioned before. I said, waaaay back at the start of my little rantage about Grayson Perry's documentary, that I didn't care why men wear frocks, I care what happens when men wear frocks.

I know a couple of people disagreed with me, saying that the why was interesting in itself, and I suppose I have to agree to some point — I, like probably every other trannie in the world spend a large amount of time pondering just what it is about my head that makes me want to do what I do, and I guess it's a useful pursuit for us all to follow at some point or another — but I still feel it's not the most important thing in the world.

What is important, in relation to the interaction of the Tranniesphere with the rest of the world, is the outcomes of what we do.

Transvestism is, at the end of the day, a pretty harmless activity. There's no actual physical (and perhaps, mental) damage done simply by putting on a skirt, or a pair of stockings or whatever. If all we did was lock ourselves in our bedrooms and parade around in high heels, then well, nobody gets hurt do they?

But that's not all we do. We take that self-presentation and we foist it on the people around us. Sometimes it's our partners and families, sometimes it's happy accomodating communities like the Gay Community, sometimes it's the much more hostile world of the Straight Ones.

And every time we do that, we project a perception that we have about women onto the ones around us.

In some cases, all that results in is a bit of ridicule — comments fly from onlookers, bemused by the "bloke in a dress". But underneath the immediate (and often unpleasant) feedback that we get, there's an undercurrent of social-stereotype-reinforcement.

Using language like "feminine deportment and poise", whilst on the surface seems to be a positive statement (trying to get away from the idea that to be 'successful', transvestites have to be pretty), only serves to contribute to (a) a continuing social myth that being a woman is all about daintiness and tea-cosies and the like, and (b) the equally mythical idea that all transvestites share this view

This is why we need to be so careful when we demand "acceptance". It's no use us folding our arms in defiance to the rest of the world and demand that they respect us, if we're not prepared to return that respect.

This sounds like I'm suggesting that we adopt a meek and complying attitude to everyone's objections to us. I'm not. I'm not suggesting that we bend over backwards to change what we do to 'fit in' with society — I'm suggesting that we really consider what effects we have on people.

There are, obviously, reactions from people that are unnaceptable. From (as Kat rightly points out) the victimisation and abuse of people in the transgender community result in violence, to the continuing ridicule that we seem to bear on behalf of the media. It's wrong, and we shouldn't stand for it.

But the debates and arguments that seem to go on endlessly within out community about how "the world just doesn't understand us" are stale. They lump all objections to what we do into one great big category of "ignorance", when in actual fact, some of the objections to the way that we behave, and the language we use, are quite justified.

I would love, at this point, to draw comparisons between our struggle for "respect" (not "acceptance" — I still have problems with that word) and the countless advances that the Gay COmmunity have made over the years. But I think the situations are different. True, there is a similarity in the "this is who I am, get used to it" style of reasoning — and, as a fully-registered Militant-Little-Bitch™, I whole-heartedly agree — but that's where the similarities end.

I mean, fair enough, when faced with small-minded, bigoted assholes who declare things like "Why don't you you just stick to the right type of clothing. You are an insult to the normal male community." (to quote a recent commenter on Becky's guestbook, yeah, shove it in their face. Intolerant attitudes should be challenged, attacked, counter-acted.

But the difference between us and the Gay Community is that they're not involving another community in what they do. They don't try to pass themselves off as anything other than themselves. They don't take on the language of a completely different setion of society.

And we do.

And to be honest, as I've said time and time again, if we use outdated, sexist, and offensive language to describe ourselves, then we should expect all the criticism we deserve.

How's that Lauren? Is that a bit better? I've still got to do the one for when your details are remembered though...

why should I apologise for who I am and what I choose to wear?

Becky, I don't think you should have to apologise at all. And I don't think there's anything wrong with being militant. It's just that I think sometimes our militancy is misplaced. True, when we come under attack from ignorant, bigoted, assholes, we should be 'out and proud' — but when serious questions are being put to us, I think we should be prepared to have some of our sacred cows questioned.

I think, what I'm trying to say, is that sometimes we view the rest of the world as one great big lump of intolerance. And as a result we don't listen to some of the things people say to us. What we should be doing is working out who our allies are, rather than taking on the whole world

Well spotted Lauren — I had forgotten to convert the character I use as a delimiter to its HTML Coded equivalent.

I noticed that Opera declares itself as MSIE — which I found odd, but like you say, there must be a good reason for it. Having said that, the only bits that change for MSIE are the PNGs — the CSS is consistent. I haven't implemented any hacks ... yet. I'd rather it worked without hacks — a strange preference considering how hacked the rest of everything is