Pendragon

Just to note: The layout is buggered in IE6.

Also to note: I do not use IE6 out of choice.

As a web programmer I find the differences between the browsers particularly frustrating when trying to achieve W3C AAA accessibility compliance. Comments? Sympathies?


[IE7 aswell? Argh!)

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laserlight

Which part of the layout is "buggered"? If you are talking about the occasional misaligned left column, that is something that apparently is currently "buggered" across all browsers. On the other hand, it usually does not matter much anyway.

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Pendragon

Mis-aligned left column and half-width right leaving white space.

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maxorator

It has been driving me mad also... Mostly I get things to work in all browsers (without any conditional comments), but if I can't do that I stop trying to make it work in IE6 and just make sure it will show up normally on browsers of this era.

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The duck is irrelevant to my point.

Pendragon

It's rarely possible when dealing with business systems as many large company networks (my own included) have yet to upgrade to IE7. If you don't make something look tidy in IE6 you're effectively ignoring a large section of your customer base.

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maxorator

The stuff I make always works in all browsers, only that in IE6 some little decorations don't work.

I've done 2 company network systems but with those I didn't have any problems. Though with some game sites I've made some little hover stuff and stuff like that doesn't work in IE6.

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Pendragon

I've had some quite interesting times trying to make companies' flashy layouts work across all browsers. It can be easy but this is dependant on what kind of site is desired/practical (what's practical from the developer's perspective I assure you is not what counts as practical from an upper management perspective) but with pre-existing sites or high expectations and management stubbornness... well... as I said I've had some interesting times.

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maxorator

Lol, I am usually just told: "Do something good." and "Add something good to the site so it would attract more customers."

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The duck is irrelevant to my point.

Pendragon

You haven't had any encounters with management and (God forbid) sales and marketing types then? Count yourself lucky. It doesn't last.

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Elysia

I always say screw IE. Microsoft isn't following standards, but the rest of the browsers are. So it's a little misaligned, should we be to blame for that or Microsoft? I think they can live with it or get a real browser that DOES follow standards.

Pendragon

But 'the rest of the browsers' make up a small percentage of the total market share. Microsoft still dominates (almost totally in the corporate world) and it would be foolish and costly to ignore it.

If you are a professional web developer you will be expected to adhere to this. It all depends on who your target audience is and the impression you want to give of yourself/the company you work for.

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Elysia

For a small alignment error?
Better to inform users that IE is insecure and writing web pages for it is a pain because Microsoft does not follow standard. It's better to try another browser - like Firefox or Opera.
If the page is non-critical, then this is the wisest move IMO. If you don't educate people, they will never learn.

It's true I haven't built a webpage for a company, but I do have experience in webdesign. I have written own webpages. And whatever you might say, it still looks just plain messy and ugly to me with special cases or just plain faulty CSS/HTML just for IE 'cause it doesn't follow standards.

Pendragon

'Users' only have a certain amount of say in the matter. A corporation is not going to change over to firefox 'because Microsoft doesn't adhere to standards'. It would cost time and therefore money to do so and what's in it for them in that case? It reflects badly on the company if their website isn't presentable to the customer and they could stand to lose a lot of business that way. People are very judgemental and dismissive.

IE comes pre-installed, it's easy to use, and for people who aren't 'computer-savvy' there is no alternative (how would they know about it?). How do you 'educate' those users? People won't change unless there's something in it for them. Is your average Joe really going to change browsers to make life easier for the developers? No. Is your average Joe ever likely to consider who wrote this web page? No... unless it looks badly made.

As a general rule, you don't use special cases. It's not always necessary. It takes practise and, to some degree, trial and error to obtain the goal. *

[Edit]To not sound quite so hard, I do agree in that I know first-hand how frustrating it is to achieve but it's not going to change any time soon. Ideology and practicality don't make good bedfellows.[/Edit]

*I have admitted defeat on one occasion after two months of re-jigging what had previously been a pretty portal-like flash site to be AAA+ DDA Compliant and still look as it was supposed to on three platforms. In this case the design was scrapped.

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Elysia

Not taking about companies here.
And heck, since companies have so much crap and commercial n' stuff, why not put a Firefox flash in there too?
"Safer, faster, better functionality, support the website industry, etc. It's free, why not give it a try?"

No, really? No special cases? Every page you look at turns out at least 10 CSS errors (while the fact that when I make pages that works fine in Opera & FF, no CSS errors are found and they validate 100% as standard code)) - I can't believe there's no special cases. And if there aren't any, you do have to make it so darned complicated and use whatever you shouldn't and forego good CSS just to makei t compatible with crappy IE. And the fact that IE doesn't even support some basic CSS - like display: block says that you have to find another, usually non-standard way of making it work.
That browser makes me puke.

Pendragon

>"Safer, faster, better functionality, support the website industry, etc. It's free, why not give it a try?"

Because it costs money and, more often than not, the 'better' functionality will either be redundant or lost on them depending on how good your sales person is.

It *is* possible to build pages with no special cases. It gets harder particularly when it comes to IE5 but it is possible.

IE7 supports a lot more than it's predecessors and the remaining issues were going to overflow to the next version or through fixes although I don't have details beyond the release speech for IE7.

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