Sounds like your programmer is not that great of a programmer to me, if you want to pay for someone to do a great job who is HIGHLY skilled and very knowledgable, I HIGHLY recommend "MyWebWork" on the Warrior Forum, his name is Bill, you wont go wrong hiring him for programming.

Also, I would never pay a programmer upfront until the work was done, thats me personally, unless you really know and trust him and his skills.

no 3 installments i paid the first one already...

So now when hes done what am i supposed to do with a website only useable on IE, what a nightmare. How much will this cost to make operate in mozilla?

Agree w/seo_bos - php has nothing to do with client side compatibility, there's something else they're doing - and if it's active x, that can be a problem as some users are going to have it blocked.

I don't know how much 'a lot of money' is but you might want think about halting the project to check with some other developers before going much further. So far you're only out your deposit.

so what do i do? as of now he said we are going to make it work in ie but not mozilla. He said once completed it is another charge to work in mozilla, i am not sure how much i will find out monday.

This is a pretty complex site, member log in member chat video picture upload and so on and so on.

But again.. this make be something super simple to real developers im not sure. I am honestly thinking of doing a threat type of thing like listen if you dont make it work in both browsers once developed im just never going to use you again.

I left enough of a deposit where i do not want to leave it and walk away. Im way up there in high numbers, im sure most developers would dream of a project like this, so he got lucky on this one. But now that i realized how much i am paying wtf you cant make it work in both browsers?

am i wrong or is this guy trying to make me another tool in his toolbox? i have had a few crappy sites made outsourced for 150 bucks each and they work on every browsers yet im paying in the xx,xxx range with only one browser....really?

I'm a programmer too and this is the most lame excuse I've ever heard. Guys like your programmer bring shame to the rest of us.
You should hit him with some browser usage stats and tell him that you're no building the website for the "IE community" nor it is a "Microsoft internal website" so it should work only in IE, you're building it for everybody so it MUST work in all major browsers, building a website that works only in IE it's like building a car that takes only right turns, sure, it does run but it's never gonna take you where you want.
If I was in your position and couldn't get him to make in work in Mozilla too, I'd cut my loses, you can always find another programmer / team, of course, I'm only saying this after reading your posts, reality could be much more complicated and usually it is .

I would have to agree to statements already made here.
You need to get a new " web guy ".
What kind of site are you trying to set up ?

I'm a web designer and programmer,
and I might be able to set you up with a
free template or script.

Let me know.
thanks
Jeff

I figured that, just common sense alone what kind of S*** is that? I would never expect that in anything, just sounds stupid. So im going to market my site to IE users only? lol, yeah next time we speak im going to hit him hard with the news. If he does not comply i am going to come back here, thank you so much everyone.

This is why we have written specs that state browser compatibility, such as...

------------------------------

1. Web site will render according to specs in the current versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

2. The website will render according to specs in Internet Explorer 7

3. The website will degrade gracefully to render within the known limitations of Internet Explorer 6.

-----------------------------

Sometimes this gets changed when a client insists upon full IE6 compatibility.

It depends on how it's been coded. I doubt a PHP developer would use anything entirely IE only like ActiveX controls and such but they could. It's probably a matter of cleaning up the CSS. This is probably isn't a big job unless the site is huge with a lot of customized pages and if the current coding isn't a terrible mess.

they didnt even code anyything just going over design and getting that right. This guy is really ticking me off, im pretty good with computers and this just does not seem to be a difficult task. When i ask a question he tries to slow the convo down and educate me like im a 5 year old, hes just trying to rip me off. Considering what i paid so far all i can do is threaten to leave once hes done.

I would imagine your developer is saying that he is only TESTING in IE. You may find the design to work in other browsers. I have found many subtle nuances between versions and in agreement with other posters most of those are making your site look good with IE. Most of the major problems are with zindex around layers and getting those working right. It's especially painful if you are using many javascript libraries and trying to get them playing nice with each other.

Best practice is to indicate required browsers for development, and establish something called "User Acceptance Testing" where you test the deliverable as a user would use it prior to accepting the code. Make sure when you do this you are using each browser you intend to support in your code.

In my opinion that's IE7, IE8, Firefox 3, and Chrome. You also need to start considering things like Safari/HTML5 compliance for devices like iPad and iPhone especially if your site intends to have any videos.

The only reason I can think of that a site would only work in IE is if it's using activex controls. But really, why would you be using activex controls anyway?

as a developer I assume that it the website should work in all the main browsers. Most professional developers around me assume this also. What client wants to find out that their site doesn't work in a particular browser?

It's a ridiculous statement and one that screams either laziness or scammer. Any professional developer will do this for you automatically and not charge extra

I create landing pages for a living. One of the KEY things I strive for is valid code that works across all browsers. Even the blessed Internet Explorer 6.0!
In the cases where certain browsers lack functionality, the html code is meant to 'degrade gracefully' ( in other words not explode and still look ok in crappy browsers).

Its an essential part of a developers job, and if hes telling you that its an 'extra' or its 'hard', he is in effect telling you that he SUCKS.

Find someone who knows what they're doing, period.

I believe that some programmers haven't mastered html/css. Some clients would hire a different coder who specialize in front-end coding to do all the screens. Then that would be handed to the backend coder (your php coder) to be developed. It may actually speed up the process assuming both coders to their jobs.

But not having the site compatible with IE (especially IE7 up) or firefox is indeed a lame excuse.