The Problem

Saint John the Evangelist's site is written using W3C compliant code, which means that it best supports the standards that browsers are supposed to run by. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and indeed many other browsers (though the numbers are declining every day) do not correctly render webpages the way they were intended to be displayed by the author. In this particular instance, Internet Explorer renders certain spacing elements of the site twice as large as they should be, which has the result of floating elements of the page way below where they are supposed to be.

The Solution

In order to compensate for this rendering error, the author of the site has implemented a script that detects the browser with which you are viewing the site and edits the style of the site so that it looks the way it was intended. This causes another problem which the user must remedy. Internet Explorer 6 treats many pieces of code, like the one that changes they way the site looks, as ”suspicious“. When this happens, a bar like the one below appears:

You must click this bar to allow the Javascript code to run in order for the site to be displayed properly. The Saint John site is not, nor will it ever collect personal data from you. The script that Internet Explorer is blocking is simply to identify the browser so that we can provide the best browsing experience to you. A copy of this Javascript code can be emailed upon request.

Final Note

The author of the site recommends that, if possible, the user upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, or alternatively, switch to a browser that better supports web standards, such as Opera, Firefox, or Safari. This is not an endorsement of those browsers per se, but rather a suggestion to the user to achieve the best browsing experience possible.