Comments on: The Browser Wars Are Not Over – Web Standards Are More Important Than Ever

By: Joanna M. Pineda

Joanna M. Pineda — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:10:06 +0000

Thanks for the great comments!

Lisa, our experience matches yours. IE7 users are upgrading to IE8 but there is still a group of IE6 users out there. My team wishes IE6 would just go away. Evidently, automatic updates are not enough to make everyone upgrade!

Robert, good question about why IE is not standards compliant. Some would say that Microsoft usually wants to set the standards and has snubbed standards efforts, but at least one blogger says it has to do with Microsoft’s (and other software companies’) interest in making their software backwards compatible. http://www.raizlabs.com/blog/?p=218

By: Lisa Hoppes

Lisa Hoppes — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:03:22 +0000

as one who fought the standards fight, i still believe in it as much as i did then. yes, IE did add nearly double the development and testing time, and we’re unfortunately in a phase where supporting THREE versions of IE is smart. Of course as a developer, my thought is “if only IE6 would die, my life would be easier.” I recently read this article on the QuirksBlog which presents an interesting possibile future for IE6. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/06/state_of_the_br_1.html I can totally see that happening.

By: Chelsea

Chelsea — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:26:26 +0000

Great entry! According to Wikipedia’s statistics for “browser usage,” the majority of people are using IE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_browser_usage_share.svg

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:09:06 +0000

I personally find it puzzling as to why IE is not standards compliant, when all the other browsers are and seemingly have been. Having recently plunged into development & design myself, I find it annoying that I have to do a hack just for IE 7 and earlier. Does anybody know WHY IE has not been standards compliant? Is it because MS thinks their standards are better than THE standards? I use Firefox and all of my suite software is open source now, but I have to say that I find Safari a very stylish browser, just not really sure how it measures up in terms of functionality.

Great post, as always, thanks Joanna!

By: Joe Grossberg

Joe Grossberg — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:41:52 +0000

I remember you making us ensure that sites worked on Netscape 4.7 … At the time, I loathed that policy. In hindsight, it made me a better web developer.

By: Matt Taylor

Matt Taylor — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:01:47 +0000

Definitely a good call making your webpages compatible with other browsers. I get very annoyed when I go to a page that won’t work with Firefox, and think “What amateurs.”

When I encounter a page that won’t display Firefox properly, I just copy the URL into IE. I have to wonder how many people just skip the web page altogether. That could amount to a lot of lost business.