Internet Explorer Boycott

giginger

Nice tip guys. Thank you :)

nick1presta

Also, to add to "boycotting IE", you realize that some IE users have no choice. Either there is no alternative (Business users are often forced to use something like WinME/2000 with IE) and some users just don't want to switch. This doesn't mean that you should make life hard for them or force them to change. No one comes into your home and forces you to live life a certain way so why should people be forced to have their internet experience changed because you can't make a site accessible? My motto: The site should work exceptionally well in all CSS~2 browsers (Opera, FF, Safari, Konqueror) as well as being functional and similar (in looks) on IE. I mean, if you have a CSS only menu without the aiding javascript for IE, why bother adding it? Losing 80% of the visitors on your site because they can't effectively use your menu because the other 20% will think your design is cool is just pointless and stupid. The web was meant to make things more accessible to people all around the world.

alexander

I don't ever think we can freeze Internet explorer out, too many people are using it. "My motto: The site should work exceptionally well in all CSS~2 browsers (Opera, FF, Safari, Konqueror) as well as being functional and similar (in looks) on IE." Nice motto :)

skyfex

nick1presta: Don't let me catch you reading only the title again That's basically what I said, except I'm suggesting using a different CSS for IE, so you can make modifications to make it look okey without having to stop coding semantically correct CSS for other browser.

If you're an IT administrator and you let people use IE on your PCs, you're stupid. Though admittedly most IT administrators out there don't know much about IT.

"The web was meant to make things more accessible to people all around the world."
And what causes most accessibility problems in the world? Internet Explorer. "Ohhh. Everyone uses IE, so lets use IE "standard" HTML and forget about that silly little 5-10% for our online banking system."

alexander: "I don't ever think we can freeze Internet explorer out, too many people are using it."
It's exactly that attitude that is the reason so many people use it. If everyone used notepad, would you write all your documents in plain text?

I'm not actually suggesting everyone boycott IE completely NOW.. of course. But I'm just trying to spread some feelings. Hopefully webdesigners will begin to ignore IE more and more, until it dies or MS hires some real programmers on the IE team.

nick1presta

skyfex
"The web was meant to make things more accessible to people all around the world."
And what causes most accessibility problems in the world? Internet Explorer. "Ohhh. Everyone uses IE, so lets use IE "standard" HTML and forget about that silly little 5-10% for our online banking system."

You still don't get it. Yes, IE doesn't have the best standards support but that doesn't mean you blame the problem on IE alone. Web Designers/Programmers who don't program with IE and other standless browsers in mind are to blame for making the web what it is.

skyfex
That's basically what I said, except I'm suggesting using a different CSS for IE, so you can make modifications to make it look okey without having to stop coding semantically correct CSS for other browser.

Again, you should be using conditional statements, not another stylesheet entirely. Your CSS should be well formed that you should only have to make minor adjustments for IE. If you require a whole new stylesheet, you're not using CSS properly.

Bergamot

And what causes most accessibility problems in the world? Internet Explorer. "Ohhh. Everyone uses IE, so lets use IE "standard" HTML and forget about that silly little 5-10% for our online banking system."

Bullshit.

What causes most accessibility problems is that, for the first ten years of it's life, HTML was a semantic nightmare. The dotcom craze caused a bunch of incompetent programmers to learn inaccessible web development and never update their skills.

skyfex

nick1prestaYou still don't get it. Yes, IE doesn't have the best standards support but that doesn't mean you blame the problem on IE alone. Web Designers/Programmers who don't program with IE and other standless browsers in mind are to blame for making the web what it is.

You shouldn't have to program with a particular browser in mind. Yeah, there are even differences between Firefox and Safari. But IE is just horrible to the point of being lazy. And MS doesn't seem to care. Do you think they will care more if we send them angry letters? We need to feed them to the sharks?

nick1prestaAgain, you should be using conditional statements, not another stylesheet entirely. Your CSS should be well formed that you should only have to make minor adjustments for IE. If you require a whole new stylesheet, you're not using CSS properly.

If IE makes it so I can't write HTML/CSS the way it's supposed to be written, I have to make exceptions. I'm just trying to minimize them, in favor of the people who use real browsers.

BergamotWhat causes most accessibility problems is that, for the first ten years of it's life, HTML was a semantic nightmare. The dotcom craze caused a bunch of incompetent programmers to learn inaccessible web development and never update their skills.

People still design services with only IE in mind. People still make services with table designs. For christs sake, NRK, the government owned norwegian broadcasting company, that broadcasts some content in freakin' Sami (a minority language) just because their policy is to give everyone access, still has a webservice that only works properly with Internet Explorer, and that is about as inaccessible to for example blind people as possible (even though they broadcast news for deaf people).

I'm not saying Internet Explorer is the single root of all our troubles with the web, but it's the greatest of the lot. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that MS is being lazy with IE. Good webservices is a threat to their monopoly after all. And I think it's every good webdesigners duty to push adoption of alternative browsers, even if you just include a small note saying the site will display better in Firefox or Opera.

On a related note, if you visit http://www.macgrab.com using IE, they send you to http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/. Completely unrelated: AppZapper is awesome.

skyfex

Forgot to comment on lechs link. Explorer Destroyer is just what I was thinking about. Though I didn't know about the Google thing. Personally I would use the level 1 setting, though with a smaller notice perhaps.

Bergamot

I'm not saying Internet Explorer is the single root of all our troubles with the web, but it's the greatest of the lot.

The greatest cause of web inaccessibility is lazy, incompetent developers who think accessibility is something optional you tack on after your site is otherwise complete. They're the ones using layout tables, browser sniffing, writing entire webapps as activex controls because the only language they know is VB, dropping alt attributes, and eschewing semantic markup in favor of WYSIWYG layout apps.

These people exist, they would exist if Firefox were the one with the 85% marketshare, and they will continue to exist long after IE fixes all major rendering bugs.

Minisweeper

50!

skyfex

Bergamot:
True.. Though they didn't have much of a choice back in the days. The web standard didn't allow for much design freedom. And I know Netscape wasn't much faster than IE at adopting new standards. But right now, it doesn't really help that table-designs is almost still the easiest way to get things to line up properly in Internet Explorer. I still find myself using a table with a single cell sometimes just to make sure that floats don't overflow the design, because it's simply the easiest and most discreet solution. I mean.. christ.. Give me the IE source. I'll program min-height support for them! It can't be that hard. (Edit: The same goes for display: table)

nick1presta

Give me the IE source. I'll program min-height support for them! It can't be that hard. (Edit: The same goes for display: table)

Yes, because you know how to create your own rendering engine.

Bergamot

Well the IE developers seemed to fix min-height pretty quickly once they got around to it.

bugsmi0

I'm a strong supporter of not supporting IE in any way, shape or form, upgrade to Safari or Firefox or charge your client more for IE design, IE needs to be put out of its misery and by god or the devil one day it will happen ;-)

WallPhone

Bugs: Why? Is it because IE doesn't follow standards very well?

/me stirs the kettle of irony

bugsmi0

well there's that but even without CSS it's a piece of crap
note how I avoid shoving my foot in my mouth ;-)

bjrn

Meh. Anyone who says that you should not write your pages with IE in mind at all annoys me. It's just like saying that you'll only work in IE. Remember how annoyed you were last time you came to a website that said your browser wasn't good enough for it? Did you ever return to that website? Pressuring Microsoft to work more on IE won't happen through being hostile against IE users.

Some small note to say that people can switch to a more awesome browser is okay, in my eyes. But ignoring a browser just because you don't like it is lazy and stupid.

The one thing people need to understand is that the acid test isn't a real test, it's more of a quirks mode challenge to see how well the browser can display things given the circumstances it's being pressed under. I don't believe even the w3c will even use it as a measuring tool.

lech

On the other hand the W3C seems to be lacking an interest in writing test cases for a lot of things, so I guess you might as well take what you can get
In fact, I can understand it when Microsoft is hesitant to implement things that are still in a working draft state. Sure, they may be relatively stable, but I'm sure MS would rather have people working on something they know will make it to the final product, than something that they'll have to change, and then change again when new drafts come out. Also, with the W3Cs test suites which aren't quite up to scratch (this is what I am told by famous internet people who've worked with browser implementation and/or the w3c) I can imagine them thinking that the W3C should get its stuff together before they spend time on trying to implement things.

Having said all that, I dislike IE. They don't even fully support HTML 4.01. Seriously, that sucks. The HTML 4.01 spec has been unchanged for nearly 7 years, yep 7 years for them to get it done. And the incomplete CSS1 support also sucks. I'd love it if they could get that done...