whytemyke said:
seriously, what's so wrong with IE? And I understand that designers might program for other browsers, but I hear far more complaints about pages not working right on firefox or opera than I do with pages that don't load correctly for IE.
Here is the problem: there is an organization created to help come up with and put into place standards for how web pages are built. The idea - and I can't believe anybody would be against this idea - is that anybody who views a website, no matter what kind of computer they have, what operating system they run, or what browser they use, should have the same experience. If I buy a book or a magazine, I know I'm getting the exact same presentation that everybody else is getting. With websites, that's not an easy thing to do, so standards are created to help with that problem.
So far, we all in agreement?
The problem with IE is that Microsoft has chosen to (a) create some of their OWN standards that only work with IE, and (b) be slow at adopting or totally ignore some of the standards that the W3C has ratified.
Microsoft has a long history of "
embrace, extend, extinguish." With the internet and web browsers, Microsoft didn't see the explosing of the web at first, and then when they did, they raced to make themselves a huge chunk of it. So, Internet Explorer came out, Microsoft had the power to make sure people were using it over other browsers, and then they stated the "extend" part. The idea sounds great - Microsoft makes new types of code that help make the internet even better. The problem is, the internet only becomes better if you are using Internet Explorer.
If you have a website that works in IE and doesn't work in other browsers, that IS NOT the fault of those browsers - it is the fault of the website. They have chosen to code their site using specific IE coding, and that goes against the ENTIRE idea behind the internet - that it is for everybody, not a specific grouping of people.
Think about this - what if this forum could be read by anybody, but you could only post if you used Internet Explorer? Or, say, only Windows users could post. Would that be fair? Would anybody in their right mind make a message forum like that?
And let me give you an example of my frustration. I used CSS2 and PNG graphics to do some neat stuff with my message forum - I made a skin where there is a drop-down menu at the top for all of the forum commands, so that every command is always available on screen without needing to scroll up or down. I used 100% valid CSS code, and it works perfectly in every browser - every browser except IE. If five out of six browsers render things properly, and one browser doesn't, and the code is all valid, tell me which side the problem is on. Because of that, I either have to have an "IE version" and an "all other browsers version" of the theme (which is what I do), or spend a lot more time and effort to hack the perfectly legit code in order to make it work at least somewhat the same in IE. That is one reason why web designers hate IE so much.
