Apr 8, 2005

Websites should be functional, if not beautiful, in all browsers.

I am completely fine with browser partisanship. I am okay with people designing for certain browsers. I do it myself. I don’t care too much if your website doesn’t display correctly in my browser of choice. But I can’t stand it when someone creates a personal site that is only functional in a certain browser. I think that’s just irresponsible.

The site I’m thinking of has since changed its itself to something less offensive, but a few months ago I visited it to find that the navigation could only be accessed by IE users because of a fancy and completely unnecessary javascript trick. The owner had a note about it on the main page and everything.

And, come on, IE? None of the cool kids use IE anymore. Psh.*

*Author acknowledges that there may be a cool kid somewhere using IE right this very minute. But there shouldn’t be. She also acknowedges that her unconditional hatred for Internet Explorer may be more than a little immature. But she doesn’t care too much.

Posted at 8:59 PM in The Site

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3 Comments

Stephen Roller at 9:26 PM on 4/9/05

True designers make sites that look beautiful in all browsers. This includes (but is not limited to) IE, mozilla[1], opera, safari, konqueror, cell phones, PDAs, lynx, netscape 4, dillo, and telnet[2].

I can usually hit IE, mozilla, cell phones, PDAs, lynx, netscape 4, dillo, and telnet without any problems. Safari and Konqueror usually have a few minor bugs, but nothing big. Opera almost always handles things nicely, but occassionally has a quirk or two. In ALL instances (well, save telnet), my site is equally functional.

[1] And all derived browsers
[2] Yes, your code needs to be that beautifully structured. Yours is pretty good. The wordpress generated stuff is the only ugly part.

Jeff Hume at 8:56 PM on 4/14/05

Wrong.

True designers do not need to make sites that are beautiful in all browsers. True designers code to web standards with some attention to browsers who only have minimal quirks.

What we should be saying is the following:

True web browsers support web standards which allow true designers to do what they do best - design.

K D at 7:07 AM on 4/16/05

I agree with this Jeff Hume guy.

And I converted Lethanon to Firefox >D !!

I feel a little guilty because Equiangular.net is one of those sites that is completely non-functional in IE but I don’t really care because I am literally the only person who goes there. :D All my other sites are functional in IE but they look better in Firefox.