By Anonymous (not verified) on

Working on a new design.

Now I haven't made up my mind yet if I will still support IE6 on my own site (I should I know/ should I?) when along comes the bottom: feature in IE7. Guess what I am not smart enough to declare the bottom property in IE7. Greaattt. I already had to add a seperate stylesheet just to make it work.

As of now it works in Safari, Firefox, Opera. Do I reaaally need IE.

Yes, of course you should not shut out any people, I hear you say.

But I am really tempted to just show a message when somebody visits with an IE browser:

You are using IE. IE is too difficult for me to design in.
My design was done in Safari, Firefox and Opera about two days ago.
So maybe come back in the future sometime when I have learned to design in IE.

Have a nice day

But seriously should we as designers even be bothered with the difficulty of designing in IE. Should we just be lazy and only design for browsers in which layouting is quick and easy?

Are their courses anywhere where I can learn how to design for IE?

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Comments

ff1’s picture

ff1 commented

I think the question is really: Do you want to drop support for over 50% of internet users?

Developers and Designers may not like IE, but while most people continue to use it, we cannot afford to ignore it.

Here are some browser statistic sites:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/April/browser.php
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

ian
Fantasy Formula 1

marcvangend’s picture

marcvangend
he/him
Primary language Dutch
Location Amsterdam
commented

People don't just read, they interpret what you write. I always try to imagine what my grandmother would think when reading something. I guess she would think:

I am using IE. I don't know what IE is, did I press the wrong button? Anyway, IE is too difficult for somebody to design in. Whatever that means.
His design was done in Safari, Firefox and Opera about two days ago. When I was young, I just worked at the office...
I can come back in the future sometime when someone has learned to design in IE. Allright.

Thank you for the nice day.

Personally, if I would use IE, I would read this as

This is the personal playground of an unprofessional webdesigner who doesn't care about his visitors.
He just wanted to get things done quickly, took the easy way and forgot to design for all browsers. Now it's too late and the lazy bum doesn't want to back to the drawing board and do it really well this time.
For now, I can get lost.

Excuse me for being sarcastic, but I really can't imagine that a serious webdeveloper would do this. If you can't be bothered by the boundries set by users, you should be an artist.

Now for some constructive feedback: I don't know if there are special courses for IE development in general, I've never heard of them. However I have experienced that if you are trying to solve a more specific problem (for instance aligning something with the bottom of your screen) there are a lot of internet resources that will tell you how to do it cross-browser. Just use Google and stay up-to-date with sites like A List Apart.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

I agree that places such as banks, government institutions and hospitals should be accessible to all.

I guess it can be compared to designing a volkswagen or a porsche. I wonder what Ferdinand Porsche would do. I'd like to think he would build his own browser.

For me I am pretty much done with IE. if x=10 then it should be x=10, not 

<if ie5.5>
x=11
<end if>
<if ie6>
x=12
<end if>
<if ie7>
x=15
<end if>
<if ie8>
x=?
<end if>

I will design a basic design for IE, and maybe I just won't. Unless a customer really wants something for IE. But I don't have to. Not anymore. Because there is choice again. I don't care who is right or wrong. When I type x=10 in a Gecko browser x=10. I am not dependent on IE visitors. 40% of the world market is still roughly 563,089,968 people. There are plenty of websites that if I visit with a non-ie browser that won't display right. My personal view is that all browsers should adhere to an international code, defined by law. WIll MS pay me for the extra design time, no. I still have to iron out the details, but for me, I am done with IE, and it has given me a fresh take on design. Designing is fun again. :-)

To tell you the truth I would rather spend my time making designs 100% accessible for visually impaired people. Something more important.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

I cant think of another professional web designer who would even consider abandoning IE6 at this time, you're not serious are you?

If you are, can you please replace your "bugger off" message with a redirect to a friend of mine site? He needs some extra graphic design work and will be happy to take your potential clients off your hands, at no charge even...

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