§ How far should you go?
Just how far should we go towards not caring about IE in our web design? I think even though we hate the browser we have little choice in dealing with it as a browser.
That said, proper coding has its merits no matter what the platform.
Now, I’m gonna pick on someone. Tom has built a nice looking site. However he’s not compatible with Windows at all. Really. While Opera and FireFox will view his site just fine neither can post comments.
IE cannot even see enough of the site to read the contents.
I even tried Links on Linux and got a “cyclical redirect” error (something I’ve never seen before) when trying to post a comment.
So this begs the question: how far should we go in our advocacy of our favorite platform and doing things just in spite of “The Evil Empire”?
Despite our hatred of Microsoft and the complete and utter pain that MSIE can be at times is it really to our benefit that we completely brush off an entire platform? I think not.
While I’m getting into the mindset that standards compliant coding and semantics aware struture is a great thing I also see that we cannot and should not cut out readership due to a principal that is not only a HUGE uphill battle on a muddly slope but really does no good at all.
Wouldn’t it serve better to protest in stories and examples that are accesible to those who continue to use the bad browser? After all, how good is your protest if it can’t be heard? When a site breaks and content is inaccessible to a browser or functionality is reduced on a platform it doesn’t say protest, it says lazy.
I like to frequent some of the blogs of some of the larger players in the web design circuit, some of them being the innovators that are elevated to status of god by some, yet I never have a problem accessing their content. Funny about that isn’t it. The people at the forefront of the fight for standards compliancy are making sure their content is accessible to everyone? Makes for a more convincing argument when you say that I don’t like hacking for MS instead of I won’t hack for MS. I see won’t as can’t.
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