Any Web Browser > Internet Explorer
I design and code websites for the many projects I have. Websites obviously run on web browsers. Web browsers vary from company to company. If your on a Windows machine, about 80% of you use Internet Explorer 6 or 7 by Microsoft. If your a bit more savvy you probably use Firefox. And if your even more geeky, you probably use Opera or the likes. If your on a Mac you probably use Safari. If your more of a savvy mac user you will also probably use Firefox or Opera more.
Here’s the thing. The Internet Explorer team (up until version 6) over at Microsoft took it upon themselves to throw some standards used to create websites out the window and replacing with their own definition of them or just didn’t implement them at all (transparent PNG’s anyone???). Every other popular web browser complies with these standards 100% except Internet Explorer.
So what does this mean and why should you care? If your not a web developer, you probably won’t give a damn about this unless you go on a page that is misaligned and has layers of objects on top of each other. For the rest of us that create websites this is the most frustrating experience ever, especially if you just finished the entire website. We just have to find a way to work around, hack, and trick Internet Explorer into doing what we want.
Imagine being an architect who just designed an amazing skyscraper in Florida and then telling him to build the same exact skyscraper in California. At first it might seem easy since everything is already done and proven. But then you have to account for the earthquakes, mudslides, and other natural instabilities of the earth in that region.
In that analogy, Standard Web Browsers are Florida and Internet Explorer is California. It’s just a pain in the ass. There was no reason for Internet Explorer not to be standards compliant except for the fact that Microsoft tried to make everything proprietary. Well thank God Firefox and others have come in to the picture, otherwise Internet Explorer 7 would have been another step backwards in web standards.
Filed by tony at August 8th, 2007 under Programming, Rant, Web
