Fed up with different browser standards!

I feel your pain, David!

Also, in Brazil lots of people still use IE6! It's a nightmare...

What I do is I make it perfect for Firefox and than check it on IE6 and fix the errors. Most times that's enough to make it work for the later Explorer versions as well.

If you valid your code, it helps a lot. I also have a cheatsheet I created over the years with IE "hacks", e.g. fix for transparent png in IE6 and other common stuff.

I feel your pain too....I can't wait until the death of IE6!

David,

Not sure who told you that designing for FF will ensure proper layout in IE, but whoever they were they damned sure had no idea what they were talking about.

I feel your pain and have been feeling it for a number of years.

There is good news though. It is getting better!

It used to be that you had to either check which browser the user was using and then supply a separate stylesheet for their browser, or include IE hacks all over your CSS code. Hacks that may or may not work depending on what version of IE the user was using.

Note: Offering up a stylesheet based on the user's browser is problematic at best. IE8, for example, is pretty hard to detect because its UserAgent strings mimic older version(s) of IE, so the IE8 users may be misidentified as an IE7 or even an IE6 user.

IE8 is the most compliant browser that Microsoft has ever put out. Now your CSS will pretty much work in IE. There are still a number of things you've got to hack to get to work, but compared to all the other IEs it is sweet!!!

The down side is that when you code for FF then look at it in IE8 it looks okay. But not everyone has upgraded to 8. So you've still got to code for IE7. I refuse to code for 6 anymore though. If the user can't upgrade to at least 7 then they can kiss my *** and take what I give them or go away. Plus, by now if their still using 6 then they're probably use to seeing funky looking websites.

The same goes for the smallest screen resolutions too. If you're still rocking a 800X600 or a 900X700 resolution then you should be prepared to scroll. Of course, setting the site up for the new phone browsers is a different story. But at least the phone browsers started out pretty compliant and are getting better quicker than PC browsers.

My biggest current complaint is the lack of CSS3 support. CSS3 supplies the designer with a number of tools that we've been wishing for for years.Transitions, Animations, Shadows, Opacity declarations via HSLA, pseudo-classes and more.

IE does not support most (any) CSS3, although there is project that does allow IEs 5-8 to identify CSS3 pseudo-classes via JavaScript. Not a MicroSoft project BTW.

FF nightly builds have recently had CSS3 support, but those aren't available to the general public and the current public versions of FF don't have much CSS3 support.

Chrome, Opera, and Arora currently support most CSS3, but between them they only have approximately 4-25% saturation depending on whose numbers you choose to believe.

The numbers are so skewed because browser detection is pretty much faulty, and also skewed by the fact that browser usage is highly dependent on demographics of the site recording usage. So sites that have higher Opera users are, for the most part, also sites that are targeted at people that have a higher awareness of the choices available to them in regard to browsers.

Anyway, as you have probably gathered, this subject is one that has been a source of heartburn for designers for years and a personal pet peeve of every designer I know. Want a lengthy conversation with a designer? Just mention cross compatibility issues. You're sure to get an earful. A fact evidenced by this post.

While it has gotten better as the consumer demands more compliant browsers it will probably never get to the point that designing your site with 100% compliant code will ensure perfect cross browser compatibility. If for no other reason than the fact that the least compliant browser has always been the most popular. IE has been forced to become more compliant over the years as they lose market share to more compliant browsers, but they are still MicroSoft.

The bottom line is that if you intend to get more involved with site design and development, something many marketers choose to stay away from, then you will not only have to educate yourself in regard to the every changing code standards, but also what works with what browser. Oh yeah, keep a bottle of antacids by your desk too.

At least the browser wars keep it fun!

Take Care,
Gene

Hi David,

I got so sick of dealing with what you're running into I decided to hire someone in-house and make it their COMPLETE responsibility. Now I don't have that headache anymore!