After working on a recent (and frustrating) project, I am once again reminded of how much I loathe Internet Explorer. Mind you, the only frustrating thing with the project was that Internet Explorer was involved. The invention of DIV tags and CSS was supposed to make designing websites much easier, not to mention provide much more functionality and make the pages appear “prettier”; the PNG image file format is fantastic for web based graphics, especially with its alpha transparency layer, and allows designers to use one graphic everywhere on the website without needing the same graphic sliced multiple times just because of the change of background colors. Even though we have all of these wonderful inventions that have been around for years, we are now just finally able to start using them without much hassle between browsers – except Internet Explorer.
It amazes me how much time and effort developers have put towards creating hacks and work-arounds to get pages to appear correctly in Internet Explorer – I myself (not a developer) had to create two separate style sheets to get the website to display correctly in all browsers (one for Internet Explorer, and one for the rest of the world). Why can’t all browsers (mainly IE) just read style sheets and PNG files the same way? I mean it’s like having multiple gas pump fittings to cater towards different car models and makes – it doesn’t make sense.
Alright, after all that being said, I do realize that the latest update for IE7 finally resolves a lot of differences between other browsers like Firefox and Safari. I am also well-aware that Microsoft is getting ready to release IE8 soon, and that should even further resolve differences between browsers – but my main beef are the people who just don’t want to upgrade. I don’t know why, but some people just got comfortable with IE6 and don’t want to let go; this means that it takes at least double effort to program a website just to cater towards those that still chose to use IE6.
All that I’m asking is to please (at least) upgrade your browser to the latest version of IE (if that’s what you use) or give Firefox and Safari a try – they are both superior and faster browsers than IE. Firefox is great for skinning and plugins, not to mention one of the first browsers to feature “tabbed” browsing, while Safari displays the best looking websites on a Windows based computer (it has a great text anti-aliasing feature built in the browser). Just click on the icons above and please give these browsers a shot – your websites will look far better and load much faster than they ever have before.