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Digg this if you're tired of IE costing you money! (no ads involved)

productofdivorce.com — i'm tired of losing time and money hacking my 100% standard code to work in a half-assed browser. digg this if you want to help get a massive shift away from IE compliance and if you won't tolerate their lack of standards anymore, IE 5, 6 AND 7 are to blame.

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  • ell0bo, on 10/26/2007, -21/+377Sure I'll digg that, and not just because I spent an hour today figuring out how to work around a bug in IE...
    • wiifm69, on 10/10/2007, -20/+10ie6 is devil spawn. http://tinyurl.com/346wwy
      • scoot2006, on 10/10/2007, -6/+26So is IE 7
        • pauleric, on 10/10/2007, -3/+21So will be IE 8
          • TheSmiddy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+19however IE9 will only be considered a mild disappointment
          • specialK16, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10IE X ftw!
          • moskaudancer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5@ specialK:
            Yes, but by then, Firefox will interface directly with your frontal lobe.
          • DavidBGie, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3Down with the old and trusted (IE)! Up with the new and jealous(the others)!
            Sorry! I'm just playing that 10,000 year old game that humans play. Everyone here is just like me.

            I can't wait till everyone turns on Linux and goes to BSD! Down with corporate Linux!!!!!!!! BSD rulez!!!!!!
      • Microdot, on 10/10/2007, -16/+8the problem is not necessarily IE (regardless of it being a worthless pile of excrement)... its the countless millions of ignorant computer users that sit behind their little ikea desk in their trendy little home with 1.3 kids and suv's, and never have a clue that they are using the bastard hell spawn of a browser, or currently being violated by 40.1 million viruses while unknowningly spamming the entire continent with penis enlargement ads.

        until you make them aware of what is happening... IE will continue to be a force on the net that microsoft can use to f**k each and every one of us right up the ass.

        i have long been a supporter of a forced competency test before allowing someone to purchase an internet connection.
        • natenovs, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7wow. just wow.
        • RobotCitizen, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Your anger seems a tad disproportionate.
        • DavidBGie, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2@Microdot (aka Old-ass hippie trying to keep up with Digg)

          You talk as if you were not a statistic! Stand down pawn! With your predictable "Alternative" lifestyle. Oh, you got your $9000 Apple Quad core or your Quad AMD running Ubuntu but guess what?! Your just like a million other "special" diggers! Off your horse jackass!
      • GawtMilk, on 10/26/2007, -7/+6This is a stupid article. "I wish 60% of people would switch browsers"? I don't know about you, but my target audience uses IE. I code for standards, but with IE hacks in mind. Sure, IE could be better, but still...people aren't going to switch from IE unless they give a fig about computers. 60 - 90% of the people out there don't mind running the ten year old basement computer to check emails in the morning.
    • quomen, on 10/10/2007, -12/+143Digg this if you're tired of IE costing you money:
      http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-2.0.0.6&os=win&lang=en-US
      http://www.opera.com/download/
      • helimeef, on 10/10/2007, -20/+5Nononono! Not Opera! People ONLY FIREFOX!!!!
        • Reziarfg, on 10/10/2007, -8/+8Standards compliant > Open source.
        • SteveMax, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5I'd rather run Opera, or any other Gecko/WebKit/KHTML-based browser than IE. We're trying to say that people should have a variety of equally good and standard compliant browsers to choose from. We're definitely not trying to replace one monopoly with another. Lack of competition drives market stagnation, which makes the products suck.
    • kingkilr, on 10/10/2007, -40/+9I'm working on an open source digg(sort of, its social news anyway), it won't have a single non standard line of code.
      • thebenchase, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1... shut the ***** up.
        • moskaudancer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Don't talk like that to him dude...If he pulls it off, he will officially be the new messiah.
          Doubtful, though.
      • jiminizer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9why's this guy getting dugg down? he hasnt given a link so hes not spamming,and by saying hes going to use valid code shows that he's supporting the article and not making invalid websites just for IE
        • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Because, if you ever code a webpage only in valid code IE users won't even notice unless they view the same page in Opera. This is a whinny post. Because when you're paid by the hour don't you want things to take longer?
    • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -26/+17this is as much for the article, as well as those agreeing with it.
      quit your whining. if you want to work in any arena you have to adapt to what the market demands, and what the market is willing to pay for. web development is no different. if you can't be bothered to deal with the market, go and do something else. make way for those that are no doubt more willing and able than you are. you'll soon learn any IT based profession is as much about dealing with legacy, as much as well all hate it.
      • quade, on 10/10/2007, -13/+15Amen to that.

        I'm the lead developer for a company that owns about 30 newspaper sites, plus a buttload of magazine and other sites, and I've done the HTML for a lot of them. I hate IE, and I don't use it except for testing. But I've been writing HTML for over 10 years now (you think IE is bad -- do you remember Netscape 4? OMFG!), and coding for IE isn't that frakkin' hard.

        It's simple: You code in Firefox, double-check in IE, and as long as you don't do stupid crap (float and position are great tools, but should be treated with respect), and you know the warning signs of the most common IE bugs (double-margin float, etc.) you'll be fine.

        And yes, quit whining that you have to support 60-70% of your users.
        • OutThisLife, on 10/10/2007, -9/+7The HTML part isn't the problem.
        • quade, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Yes, it is. HTML and CSS are fundamentally the same thing. Almost all of the IE bugs are HTML and CSS related.

          That's what the page was complaining about -- the standards of HTML aren't correctly followed by IE, which is his pain.
      • jebudas, on 10/10/2007, -9/+12jrbrewin@microsoft.com ?
        • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+6i love your "I can't argue against your comments, so i'll just think up the lamest insult instead" mentality. I hope you enjoy going thru puberty.
        • jebudas, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6And I love your abrasive nature, junior. FTR, complaining about IE is not whining, Microsoft neglected W3C standards for many a year, and they deserve the heat. If you want to bend over for everything that comes your way, feel free, but its not my style.
        • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1you're accusing me of being abrasive, when i defend myself against childish comments like yours? you're the definition of hypocracy my friend. And to think all i did was to point out that perhaps, if said webdeveloper wanted to continue working in the industry that he so obviously loves (sarcasm), perhaps he should think twice before pulling ie support from every page he makes.

          for that i become labelled a microsoftie.. seems you may not bend over for bill, but you've certainly been barebacking someone, or thing.
      • FTLJohnson, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14Hey JR, if it's about Market demands, then why is IE as a browser losing market share faster than every other browser, which are all gaining market share... EVEN though Microsoft is employing forceful tactics including IE in other software packages, and forcing it as the default browser in vista for many applications even if you have firefox or something else installed? Despite all that... You are trying to tell me that there is a demand for IE? You don't understand markets very well at all man. There's a demand for products compatible with Microsoft office, and the OS that runs that. So, people buy windows... That does NOT mean that there is a demand for IE any more than there is a demand for Windows Movie Maker, or MS Paint. People are simply using it by default. That's not market demand.
        • natenovs, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4because they had over 80% of it? theres not much room to go up from there....
        • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -7/+1i'd hope that someone with FTL in their name would truely be faster than light.. not slower than *****.
          granted, ie is losing ground. it holds close to 70%, down from almost 95% a few years ago. However, you seem to believe that because it's share is dropping, that there is no demand for pages to be written to work for ie. Despite that fact that ie 6 and 7 both hold the top two spots of browsers most commonly used.
          Let me enlighten you. http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
          Don't confuse me stating facts as me supporting internet explorer, and claiming that i think it is a superior browser. For the majority of dimwitted idiots that have no clue about internet security, and use 2000/xp/vista straight outa the box it quite obviously isn't secure enough. However, the fact remains that whilst it is the dominent force, in that a ***** more people are using it over the next most popular browser (firefox), people should still think about supporting it if they don't want to alienate potential customers.
          anyone who understands basic business principles realises that minimising potential customerbase = bad. so bad, that it EASILY outweighs the cost of spending another man day or two or three making your site support the inferior browser.

          now, to play devils advocate. I believe claiming that microsoft use underhanded tactics to get people to use ie is a bit rich coming from the firefox community, when a lot of (lets be fair,) lazy web developers would prefer to just head their site with a bit of jscript to block ie* altogether and re-direct them to ffox downloads, when upon inspection their sites look just fine and dandy in ie7. It's not microsoft's right to tell me what software to use. But equally, it isn't mozilla's either.
          • FTLJohnson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6That's NOT what I said *****. I didn't say that people don't want pages to work in IE, how the hell could you even infer that from what I said. I said people use IE by default. Most of them don't even know what the ***** HTML stands for. Grow a clue. (especially before YOU call anyone else SLOW)
          • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1"I didn't say that people don't want pages to work in IE"
            yes you did. you said that. "if it's about Market demands, then why is IE as a browser losing market share faster than every other browser, which are all gaining market share" implying that market percentages != what people want. And quite how a browser shipping with an os, or updating via an online update system is microsoft being forceful when ever other operating system and/or browser out there not only do it too, but all but copied microsoft's lead in doing it. the meer fact that a majority of people use the default browser was the point i was trying to make, before you butted in, talked *****, and then tried to back yourself up with.

            pot, meet kettle. now fck off.
      • mikesherov, on 10/10/2007, -4/+11100% right FTL. Just because 70% of the market uses IE doesn't mean 70% wants to use IE or even knows about other browsers. People use IE because it comes preinstalled on their computers, not because people like it. Next thing JR will be saying is that people prefer to pay $6 for a popcorn in the movie theaters because 70% of the popcorn eaten in theatres is $6 popcorn from the theater.
        • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -14/+1What are you talking about. Do you even know how much media exposure FireFox gets? To say that 70% of people don't know about FF is pretty stupid.
          • FTLJohnson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Spoken like someone who doesn't talk to his mom about computers. Tell you what, next time you are at your parents house, try telling them about firefox... see what happens... and if your family is in the know (and for some reason still uses IE - try the same trick at a friends families house (or girlfriend). Just as an experiment... ya know.. to see how much they know about firefox. Say, "did you know that firefox has a spellchecker built into the browser but IE doesn't?" or "did you know that there is a plugin for firefox that blocks all website ads?" See if they really knew anything about firefox.

            Some people are really cluelessly self centered in their own little worlds.
        • haiduz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I use IE because I honestly think its better than firefox. I have both browsers installed on my machine and I like how IE handles tabs and the ctrl+N command.


          (and for those open minded enough not to dig me down for my browser preference)
          And another thing.... If 70% of poeple use a browser, then thats the standard. I think the browser preferences of millions of poeple carries far more weight than the standards written up by micro$ort haters which purposelyy contradict the way IE renders pages.
          • mojibake, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Standards are necessary for technology to expand. Interoperability and very basic devices rely on standards so companies can develop products which will respond in the same way to the same set of instructions.
          • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I use IE7 as my main browser. I love the protected mode option as it makes IE7 on Vista the safest browser. Every time I've been ready to dump IE for Opera they've added just enough to keep me using it. First pop-up blocker in IE6- SP2 and now tabs, RSS, & transparent .png support in IE7. If you want more features to keep up with Firefox's ever growing list check out IE7 Pro add-on. It has a Firefox style spell checker, crash recovery, ad block, and a grease monkey like function. That being said I also use Opera and Sea Monkey. I also have Safari installed as well, just for kicks.
      • mattyxo, on 10/10/2007, -5/+8I'm going to have to agree with you. Though I've been web designing for considerably less time, it does NOT take that long to have it work in IE.x. Maybe it's not the browser; maybe it's programmers who don't know how to write code that adapts. And why is it that when someone defends IE, they're microsoft (bringing this up because of jebudas' comment)? Why the "either you're in, or you're out" mentality? I support IE because it's not AWFUL. It doesn't render how you want... boohoo. Nothing is perfect - not even FIREFOX.
        • jebudas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2mattyxo, i've been designing for a long time and every single designer i know despises ie. why? because you have to do extra work. why do you have to do more work? because microsoft has a monopoly and therefore didnt need to put extra effort into making their browser comply to w3c standards. so, you can either be one of the people that lies down and says oh well, i'll just spend more time on this, rather than have fun with my friends and family... or you can raise some awareness and hope for a change. I mean, the fact is that IE7 is more w3c compliant, and I like to think that the web industry professionals being vocal about the problems had something to do with that.
          • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4People harp a lot about W3C standards (they're actually suggestions). but ask yourself this; why would a company write "standards" that go against the browser with the largest majority when most of the ways it did things were not bad?
          • mattyxo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I don't understand what kind of sites you're designing that require so much extra work. EVERY browser renders differently so you need to make your code flexible and it needs to adapt to variable circumstances. If you have been designing for a long time, then you should already very quickly know how to create flexible designs regardless of the browser.

            I'm not lying down and taking it like a bitch. I'm designing websites that more or less look the same in every browser, but function the exact same in every browser. Do you complain about people on mobile phones when they can't see your content properly?

            And just because all your designer friends hate IE doesn't make your point more valid.
    • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -6/+41I don't really see how digging this will change anything. Most of digg users already using non-IE browsers. This is basically like most of those online petitions. Useless.
    • fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -23/+8Learn html and css better. There is absolutely no point in bitching and whining about IE6 incompatibilities. They are all very well known, very well documented and each have numerous workarounds that are widely available.

      After this many years if you call yourself a professional and you still have to dick around to achieve compatibility then you are in the wrong industry.
      • jorisb, on 10/10/2007, -6/+6you don't make any sense
        • Syntaxis, on 10/10/2007, -5/+5He makes perfect sense: IE's lack of support for standards is NOT A PROBLEM if you're a professional. EVERY THING is well documented and there are numerous very valid (semantically correct and W3C validated) means of working around them.

          It's newbies that keep digging this ***** up that will cause one of the biggest problems of the modern internet world: a suddenly compatible IE will ruin all the sites where novice webdevelopers have used filthy CSS hacks to get their website to look decent.
          • Audacitor, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3That's great and all, but how many of the world's developers can be called professionals? The Internet should not be a place where only professionals get to make good looking stuff with ease.

            The only extra code I'm gonna right for IE is a script that'll redirect the user to the Firefox download page.
          • rpgmaker, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3"a suddenly compatible IE will ruin all the sites where novice webdevelopers have used filthy CSS hacks to get their website to look decent."

            I hope so, webdevelopers should develop following standards not the will of a whimsical browser
      • Me1000, on 10/10/2007, -3/+12What part of standards compliant do you not understand?
        • fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -11/+3It is entirely possible to make standards complaint, cross-browser compatible html and css. Without hacks or workarounds.

          Your choices, and everyone else's, are to learn the technologies better or find another job. IE6 will be relevant for probably another 5 or 6 years. IE6 has been out 6 years already. You cannot blame the browser because of a shortcoming in your knowledge or experience when every problem with it has long been known, documented and solved.
          • Audacitor, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7But you can definitely blame the browser if it's not standards compliant. The standards have been set down as guidelines that all browsers and websites should follow for the pure and precise reason of making sure everything works on every browser WITHOUT having to right extra code.
      • theodenking, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10No other browsers need workarounds that screw up your standards compliance.
        • fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -7/+3Opera and Firefox do not render everything identically. They both render things to *their interpretation* of the W3 standards.
      • sleepwalkers, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I believe the point is that there are standards out there that try to make it so you can avoid having to use any sort of workarounds.
        And Microsoft chose to completely ignore them. People are (rightfully) upset over it.
    • XisZ, on 10/10/2007, -12/+7*ahem*

      < !--[if IE] >your.css/.js/.etc< ![endif] >
      • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -11/+1mis-post, bury this
      • Me1000, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4That is more code than I should have to write!
      • latova, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13We're not supposed to fix Microsoft's mistakes.
      • foomojive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+23< !--[if IE] > a bunch of hack styles that took me a really long and frustrating time to figure out and make my otherwise enjoyable job a pain in the ass < ![endif] >
    • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -13/+12"we can be like that guy who blocked firefox, but not backwards."
      can anyone explain how exactly this isn't backwards. zealots are bad, whatever side they are on.

      • khellendros1984, on 10/10/2007, -3/+17How is he a zealot? He's just tired of putting up with non-standard *****. That's what the standards are for; to be followed. If they're ignored, then they're worthless.
        • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -4/+5zealot Show phonetics
          noun [C]
          a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too.

          Run every site out there through the w3c validator and there are errors. For example google has 50 errors. Digg itself has 75 errors. I don't see them being ragged on for not following standards.
          • Audacitor, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6That's because they both have to break the standards to look correct in frakking IE.
        • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1Even microsoft has only 12 errors.
      • kaelyiesta, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Unless he is on the correct side, which he is. IE is web devs worst nightmare. It is like a screw that has 3 radially symmetric notches from the center. No carpenter should use it because it does not conform to either flathead or philips screw drivers.
        • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1That's not really a good analogy. If IE was the 3 screw then it would been really popular, and like most sites are IE compatible, there would be a screwdriver for the IE 3 notched screw and it would be really popular to boot as well.
      • sleepwalkers, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5I'd rather have zealotry for something that benefits the good of the web developing community and ends up being a good thing for consumers in the end than zealots who feel the need to defend Microsoft's decision to completely ignore established standards.
    • tHePeOPle, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11That's an hour you could have spent on digg.
      • Audacitor, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3You're right. Now I'm really ticked off!
    • svivian, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Didn't see anyone else post this: http://www.nomoreiehacks.org/

      Personally I have totally given up on fixing PNG transparency in IE6, it doesn't 'break' any pages, you just get grey backgrounds where it should be transparent. IE6 users will have to put up with that.

      As for the rest, well most layouts and javascript functionality can be built with simple code anyway. I avoid hacks apart from the odd extra CSS rule (to fix IE without being detrimental to real browsers) - I don't normally have many headaches.
    • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3OK, let's start a new game.
      Go to the w3c validator
      http://validator.w3.org/
      and try to find a major site with least number of errors.
      To my surprise Adobe has only 4!
      • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Wow www.msn.com has only 1!
      • schoate09, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6***** Digg has 82 errors.
      • lavchan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6IBM, Mozilla, and Opera are all valid XHTML Strict. Wikipedia, Mininova, and WordPress are valid XHTML Transitional.
      • Modizzle, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3www.pornotube.com ftw!
        btw, NSFW. Just thought I should mention that.
      • onewingedangel9, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Adobe was one of the first websites ever registered according to some article I saw on digg a week or so ago. It was one of the early adopters.
      • defaultdigger, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1http://productofdivorce.com/noie/

        This guy hasn't even bothered with a Doctype declaration !!!!!!
    • idreamincode, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Maybe Digg could make their code work with IE... but I doubt it: http://digg.com/design/digg_it_button_problems_with_IE_autologing_out
      • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I also run into that problem on other browsers. It seams to be a problem when opening multiple stores in tabs.
  • dpcamp, on 10/10/2007, -23/+259here here.. sick and tired or catering the IE's crap browser.
    • goeatsmsht, on 10/10/2007, -26/+1Why cater? There are plenty of site out there that ONLY work with IE, why not have a few that ONLY work w/o IE?
    • robzbd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26Check your web stats... if < 1% of your traffic is from MS/IE then screw the hacks... If all your traffic is coming from IE then, well, ouch.
      • fuzzmeister, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14Unless you run a Linux website, or something like that, I'm not sure it is possible to have so little of your traffic from IE.
        • bagelpirate, on 10/10/2007, -4/+6Mines 70% IE 5.5-7

          I spent hours making IE hacks for my CSS drop down menu, *****.
          • anonym41414, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3You shouldn't have a drop-down menu on a Web site anyway. There are myriad usability problems with them. In this case, you went to a lot of trouble to make IE work with something you shouldn't have had in the first place.
    • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -14/+9I use FF, but I will say that IE7 is pretty good.
      • Dohko_Xar, on 10/10/2007, -9/+7have you gone mad?
      • MeneerR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3This is not about which browser is better for the user.
        This is about which browser is costing the world wide economy millions of dollars, because they intentionally break the standards.
        Yes, its intentional. They are not bugs.

        How big would the chance be that working around some bug meant it wouldn't work in other browsers? Way too small to explain the current situation. Microsoft Embrace, Extend, Exterminate. First they embrace the internet, then they extent it with their own stuff (that doesn't work in other browsers or on other operating systems), then when they have the biggest slice of the market, they break compatibility with the standard. Now, webmasters must spent lots of extra time, or just give up on standards and develop solely for IE. End-result: about 10% of the web only supports internet explorer. End-result: you can't browse the internet on any device without microsoft tax.

        It's like communism god-damnit. We only get once choice. One size must fit all and the leaders eat like kings.
    • ddrace, on 10/10/2007, -1/+21"Hear, hear"
    • snyper2s, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1its not difficult, switch to FF or something else its not rocket science
      • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Or be like most people on the planet and just not care as long as your websites work.
        • MeneerR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's not about which browser is better! Its about the render-engine of microsoft intentionally breaking standards and costing the economy millions of dollars, just to impose a complete vendor lockin on the internet. There are still sites that only work with IE. We wouldn't have that if all browser would follow the same standard. And all browsers do, except Microsoft IE's. It's not about user preference, its about forcing developpers to support Internet Explorere specific stuff.
    • econofast, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Unless your getting paid by the hour...
      No, I still hate it then.
  • tbb9216, on 10/10/2007, -14/+189seriously - im in an 8 week project that should be a year long, my team and i can develop it fast enough, but its tweaking it for IE that pushes us up to the deadline.
    • Lingur, on 10/10/2007, -8/+3I decided that this one time, for my own personal site, I just wouldn't do it. If you go to http://www.btype.org using IE you are not permitted to see the site. I started to tweak the site for IE and just gave up thinking "why the hell am I doing this, if IE doesn't play along, neither will I".

      Sadly, you don't always have the privileges of doing that. Well, at least I can do whatever I want with my *own* site.
      • Casedot, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8wow, you couldn't get that simple thing working in IE???
      • DeathGod321, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Buried for saying that you have a girlfriend in the about section, unless you were talking about firefox. (which by the look of the message that I got when I tried to open it on IE7, is very likely.)
      • schoate09, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4It's ok, your website is ***** anyway.
      • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Hmm, even IE7 with tweaked user agents is blocked. And here I was going to compare it with Opera. All that extra work of blocking a site instead of just doing like me and writing standard code minus IE6 hacks and leaving it at that. My general philosophy is write the code as it should be and let the browsers/users deal with it.
      • Lingur, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Way to stay on topic guys! Real great!
    • Syntaxis, on 10/10/2007, -12/+6Surely I'll get Dugg down for this, but your company obviously lacks experience in frontend developing (html, css) if it pushes a deadline just to get a site working in IE. Ah, unless... unless you're developing for IE3, then, perhaps, I can sympathize. I've worked huge projects and small projects, making over 150 websites in the past 7 years. I went from making cross browser websites "the old way" (tables, spacer .gif images) to the "modern way" (css, semantically correct html, unintrusive use of javascript, et cetera)

      Digg me down.. I don't mind much, I guess I'll only offend those who aren't professionals. And I guess that's their (your?) good right. Currently, though, it seperates the pro's from the novices, with all due respect. And yes, I realize how arrogant that sounds.
      • JacNet, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2Dugg down at your request.
        • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Dugg you down for being an ass that validated his position.
  • joshuaer, on 10/10/2007, -15/+126great idea i am really sick of IE trying to fix stuff just for windows ie, nothing ever seems to work the first time you program it. i know My Ajax menu i just built works just fine in Safari ( mac and windows ) Firefox ( mac, windows linux ) Opera ( mac and windows ) yet my drop downs all are aligned wrong in IE.

    It also drives me up the wall that some sites are now not allowing FireFox and Safari to view them. We all picked the standards we all of our programming follows the guidelines and all the web browsers follow them every one other then Microsoft.

    The web2.0 site i am working on right now will not offer any support for IE you can view the site in it but it will look all messed up. I do not see why i should create a whole new site just to work on IE when it works fine on all the other ones.

    my new computer is now 100% microsoft free!!!
    • rasterbator, on 10/10/2007, -4/+31I believe the reason Apple released Safari into the Windows world is that they believe it is taking too long for Firefox to takeover market share from IE. By entering the PC market, I think their intention was to get users away from IE, and not to take users away from Firefox. As well they also wanted to show PC users another compliant browser, and get Software Update on PCs.

      I hope they succeed. Download Safari. And if your parents or friends are not the types to switch browsers, download and install it for them and REMOVE IE. Tell them that the result will be less spyware on their machine (which is true), and they will say GO FOR IT!
      • diggitydoc, on 10/10/2007, -12/+5safari SUX on windows. like macintosh has some huge share of the market.... idiot.
        • rasterbator, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8you sir, are a moron.
        • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Market share of a browser seems inversely proportional with browser quality, at least among the top 5.

          P.S.... Safari sucks on Winblows? Ever seen IE on OSX?
      • ucg1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+22Releasing Safari for Windows may have something to do with iPhone/iTouch. Maybe its for web developers to make sure their pages work with Safari and to a lesser extent to push towards standards compliant web pages so that Safari on iPhone/iTouch/Mac OS do work correctly.
      • willemmulder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14releasing Safari was an IPhone move in the first place... If windows developers can test their apps on Safari and make it work on Safari, it will also work on the Iphone. So it's good for testing and stuff, however, it has some bugs, and I prefer using Firefox or Opera...
      • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -6/+11Personally, I believe the reason Apple released Safari into the Windows world is because they hate PC users.

        I mean, have you actually USED it? It's horrible. The security issues found in the first few days alone.... And that disgusting user interface....I mean, come on. At least try to pretend you followed the OS's UI guidelines. It's good practice for any software anywhere. You wouldn't want someone hard coding Vista-like Aero elements in an OSX app any more than we want Apple embedding their gray metal junk on Vista apps.

        "Hi. I'm a Mac."
        "And I'm a PC."
        "And I'm an Apple Developer." *pulls out gun and shoots PC*
        • sleepwalkers, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2That's how the application looks on OS X, and if they're able to port it, UI and all, to Windows... Why not? WinXP lets developers do things like that, and if that's how Apple designed the browser, they obviously feel the UI is competent enough (whether that's true or not is a different story).
          And also, nobody is going to hard code Vista-like Aero elements in an OS X app because it isn't possible.
      • vornan19, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3Back when my friend and me and another roomie started together I said 'Before we hook up to the internet you're going to try Firefox'. And you know what? Not one complaint. Nada, zip, zilch. The roomie was clueless but my friend is a convert.
        • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2Way to force your views on other people. If you were going to do that you should have shown them Opera as well. Then at least you would have been showing them some real diversity among browsers.
      • Stefanoz72, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0"Remove IE" ?!
        There's no way of removing it!
    • norman619, on 10/10/2007, -5/+5Well, until most people stop using IE you have to live with it.
    • phogasmic, on 10/10/2007, -4/+13I agree ,I cannot believe that there are still mainstream sites like ( Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail and Plaxo ) that do not support Safari. Even Google Office is guilty of it. Safari is 100% Standards Compliant, you don't have to jump through hoops, it irritates the hell out of me and is shameful that these companies that should be leading the way are developing to appease IE6/7. It is stupid, because aside from Yahoo Mail and AOL mail which are mainstream, sites like Google Office and Plaxo could easily get away with saying they don't support IE6/7 fully because most of the people who use these sites are tech savvy early adopters, who would be willing to download another browser.
      • ucg1, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Google Office is completely mainstream. I know many non-techies who use it now, whereas before they were using Microsoft Office. It's just easier and more accessible, you don't have to be a techie or earlier adopter to see that. Google Office is well beyond the early adoption phase anyway.

        They have no excuse not to support Safari, however.
    • skyscape, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1yeah its like apple will take over market share. Apple has been trying to take market share away from OS since stone age, and are still in a hole
    • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9You have to accept 90% of your visitors will see your site "all messed up". I understand your motives, but don't play the martyr - it will just ***** off your website visitors.
      • cmburns69, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7It's not much of a martyrdom when only a couple of people care that you've martyred yourself.

        Seriously, if you're running a hobby site, support whatever browser you want. If you're running a business, you can still limit browser support to whatever you want, but understand that if you don't meet the needs of the market your business will fail.
      • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -4/+0...and maybe then they'll consider getting a decent browser!
        • ConceptJunkie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4No, they'll think it's a crappy site.
        • Pyrogen, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4No, they'll believe the site is made by an idiot and simply go somewhere else. It isn't their browser, its "the internet," and "the internet is down." We build sites for the lowest common denominator in business. And that lowest common denominator is: 1024x768x32 on Windows XP or 2000 with Internet Explorer 6-7.
  • bfaulk04, on 10/10/2007, -14/+205i'll digg this with a passion, but sadly it won't do a whole lot
  • Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -14/+137Just another reason why no one should trust Microsoft with standards.

    Office XML, I'm looking at you...........

    10%-15% of the examples in their Office XML specification didn't even validate as valid XML!
    • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -32/+6you'd rather trust mozilla. do you remember the non-complient ***** they thrust upon us all 15 years ago? i doubt it.
      • Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1715 years ago I was 8.
      • ucg1, on 10/10/2007, -5/+22Mozilla didn't exist 15 years ago, *****. Netscape != Mozilla
      • TenebrousX, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13there were barely standards 15 years ago; the Web was a year old
      • sleepwalkers, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Yes.
    • gcnaddict, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3"10%-15% of the examples in their Office XML specification didn't even validate as valid XML!"

      Arbitrary numbers. Hell yeah!
  • Chewie67, on 10/10/2007, -7/+70Great idea, but I'm not sure it will work.
    After all, is Digg's CSS and XHTML full of hacks to make IE work? If not, no one at Microsoft will see this...
    • Gzero, on 10/10/2007, -8/+19@import "/css/36/ie6.css";
      @import "/css/36/ie7.css";
      • beforeIforget, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Is this the best route to go with trying to make IE look good? I'm just asking because I've always tried to keep one CSS scheme (with hacks for IE, etc.) ... but is separate CSS file really the way to go? One set for all compliant browers... and one for IE?
        • helimeef, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2See this is exactly what the problem is with IE. The last thing you said specifically "One set for all compliant browsers... AND ONE FOR IE"!!! See we are forced to create a separate style sheet just for IE. It's SAD. Jeez if I see any more bugs in IE 8 (which better come out soon), I'm going to grab Gates and make him give up his OS back to Apple! (He stole it from them anyway, along with stealing IE from Stephen Wozniak.)
          • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Check your history pal. The modern GUIs both Windows & Apple were stolen from Zerox.
          • cosmo7, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1U don't think we went to the moon? Why not tell Louis Armstrong to his face?
          • helimeef, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Apple bought it from Xerox, Windows stole it from Apple. (specifically the Lisa). Bill Gates acted like he wanted a job there and he copied the design of the Macintosh, shipped it to NEC, and then was born Windows. Anyways I'm happy because my cursor just disappeared and now it's back...
    • ddrace, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1 "
      "
  • NoOneButMe, on 10/10/2007, -51/+6Dont most of Digg's users already use FF/Safari? Pointless post.
    • Jeffler, on 10/10/2007, -5/+16Don't a few digg users do web development and have to develop for IE?
      • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2Except it's not up to them to decide if the site should support IE, it's up to their bosses. And I doubt they are stupid enough to lose the majority of their market just because of some philosophy.
        • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2What bosses?
          • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2The people/company that hire web designers to build & maintain web sites. If you don't do what they want then you don't get their money. I'm going to assume that since you don't understand this simple fact you're 13.
    • alcatraz678, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6obviously your not a developer
    • joel182, on 10/10/2007, -2/+412% of Digg users use IE.
      See: http://fvvw.com/digg/report.html
      • natenovs, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2but digg sucks on firefox. so 88% of digg users are having a ***** poor experience on digg?
  • picsectionpleez, on 10/10/2007, -30/+17I hate IE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • scuvball, on 10/10/2007, -47/+11I've tried both. IE7 is fine for me.
    • vdog, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17The reason it's 'fine' as a browser is because web devs spend a lot of their time and money making their sites work with it. Time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.

      It's a classic catch 22: The browser is 'fine' because of all the effort we spend in making our sites work with it- we can't ignore its large market share. Because we've made our sites work with it, a large number of people will continue to use this 'fine' browser.

      We need our clients, we need users like you to break the cycle.
  • mentalsticks, on 10/10/2007, -31/+46Let's make this the most dugg story ever.
    • appetite, on 10/10/2007, -4/+6I kind of feel bad for you with your unrewarded enthusiasm.
      • mentalsticks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Thanks for the sympathy, I needed that. I thought it was a sure hit... ;-)
  • arcooke, on 10/10/2007, -21/+6waist.. heh.
  • ghall, on 10/10/2007, -23/+67I make websites occasionally, and I absolutly REFUSE to go out of my way to make them compatible with IE.

    Dugg!
    • chris9902, on 10/10/2007, -28/+20I would never hire you. You're simply unprofessional and lazy imo.
      • Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -7/+15How is refusing to hack around blatantly ignored standards "lazy"?
        • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -6/+11Well, you're effectively alienating 85% of the world's internet users. I consider that being a lazy developer.
          • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -6/+2He's alienating them? More like he's trying to make them realize that they're using a ***** piece of software and should switch to one of several better, free alternatives. That's like saying the iPod "alienates" the majority of people who use Media Player.
          • mishsquish, on 10/10/2007, -2/+385%? You know IE6 use is down to just over 30% worldwide, right? Firefox and IE7 roughly have the other 2/3rds.
          • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers Depends on where you get your stats from. Either way, IE is most likely around 80%.
      • Iwantawii, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Of course someones FRONTPAGE web site might look okay in IE
    • diggitydoc, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13add can't spell to that list.
    • skyscape, on 10/10/2007, -10/+3My first interview question to you would be, do you like M$ or not? If the answer is somewhat dry, you will get fired by me before getting hired.
      • ucg1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Fired before getting hired? How do you intend to fire me from my current job when you're not my employer? Or did you mean with an actual fire by flame-thrower or similar device?
      • maz2331, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0And if I say I absolutely love them or absolutely hate them, what do I get?
    • Carburetor, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4And what's the difference between you,and someone who tweaks his site to ie only?
      seriously, me, you, and probably most of the digg community know that firefox rocks, and much better than the lousy ie,
      but, think about a grandma who think "the internet" is the blue *thing* on her *wallpaper*.
      the main goal as i see it, is to make your site accessible to maximum surfers, that some of them still using the crappy blue one.
      • 35263526, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4The difference is he's not tweaking his site to Firefox-only; it'll work fine in any of the comparatively large number of at least semi-compliant browsers, just not Microsoft's bastard child.
        • MeneerR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Konqueror, Safari, Ephiphany, Firefox, Flock, Opera.

          Just to name a few.Why do we need to create two websites (or at least two style sheets)? One for compliant browsers and one for microsoft.

          They are incompatible with the standards by CHOICE. They want to force developpers to choose. They actually try to vendor-lockin the whole freaking internet this way.

          You can not feel you neck being tied to the microsoft tree?
          You really think all those 'bugs' exist because Microsoft can't afford decent programmers?
          You really think the programmers that actually work at microsoft are simply incapable of implementing a standard complient render-engine?
          Off course they can. They hire the best people in the world, to make them break stuff in such a way that its creates the most profit.

          They have spent tons of money creating an encrypted binary format for Word (.doc) that would take years to reverse-engineer (and it did). They spent your money making sure you can't even buy a product from somebody else and still open your documents. They spent your money making sure you can't visit 5% of all the websites out there when you switch to another browser or operating system.

          They are excellent at research and development. They just use all the talent for bad causes. Mix that with bad priorities and your'e done. All they care about is: can we force people to buy this? Can we create a commodized standard that is not open to outsiders? Can we lock people in?
    • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -5/+6Actually, competent developers don't have to jump through hoops of fire to make their website compliant with IE - you design robustly, you're OK. You get cute and elaborate, you get burned.
      • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8translation: IE is fine for those of you who make sites in plain text (not "cute and elaborate"), and everyone else is a bad coder.

        If your view of "designing robustly" is making a site unnecessarily simple, inefficient, and boring, you don't need to be doing web design. Stick to writing legal documents.
      • Eddm, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2You get dugg for realism. Any competant developer will have absolutely no trouble with IE. I used to get supremely enraged with IE's incompatibility but over the past few months, my designers have been busting out some very intricate pages but IE has had no trouble with it -- even IE 6. IE 7 was a HUGE leap forward in terms of compliance. Sure, MS could be better but it hasn't caused me (or other developers I know) any problems for quite a while.
      • helimeef, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I define "robust" as a readable website with correct XHTML, CSS, and unobtrusive JS (with Ajax thrown in for some spice), along with looking smooth and letting your user have a focal point, and to not have to describe the UI. You, however, are defining "robust" as the best coding possible, and not cute (or styled; if you want it to work in IE). Anybody can be a web DEVELOPER, only few can be a web DESIGNER.
    • HigherLogic, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8Couldn't agree more with thailand. If you're a competent developer, you should have no problem getting your site compliant (robust or not) with IE6+. Every time I hear someone say they only have issues with IE6, I ask to look at their code and it's pretty obvious why they are having so many issues. Not digging this because IE doesn't cost me money, its users make me money (they actually click on ads and buy *****).
  • xOKxWhy, on 10/10/2007, -46/+2I use Firefox and all, but how exactly does IE cost money? Pretty sure it's free
    • soopafly, on 10/10/2007, -3/+38Time = Money
      • natenovs, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3but that argument is apparently flawed when comparing windows and linux?

        plus, the time it takes to work out a quirky feature on IE is offset by the fact that your page can be viewed by 75% of the Internet population.
    • IIIKrazyKiDDIII, on 10/10/2007, -5/+10lol... you're joking right?
      • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7if you're up front in claiming you will not support ie out of choice for a project you're tendering, you wont get the contract. so not supporting it costs you money.
    • gn0stik, on 10/10/2007, -4/+16Time is money, development takes time. Developing for IE takes an extra long time because you have to work around the bugs.

      Hence IE costs you money. Got it sport?
      • shark615, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2No... Fortunatly it doesnt't work lke that in business.
        See I charge for the time it takes me to develope a site there for that extra hour makes me more money...
        • jakswa, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0It doesn't work like that in *your* business, or *small* business. Big business is all about time.

          Even if you are a l337 website developer, faster competition makes the business time-oriented. Now, if you aren't competing, you're not worth mentioning here.
    • bluenullity, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7So Supporting IE Costs you Time which equals Money. So the inverse is Not Supporting IE Costs you your Job.
    • outsid3rNo17, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5I don't understand why the poster is getting dugg down.
      He asked a question people! Just answer the damn question. If you keep up you l33t behavior and ignore people who are new to web programming, no wonder Microsoft will have an easy way shoving down his standards. Because Microsoft listens to these people and supports them, the majority of the new generation will still go with Microsoft.

      gn0stik's answer was alright.
      • IIIKrazyKiDDIII, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I didnt digg him down, but his post is worded in such a way that it refers to "buying IE" not "paying for the development on it" Hence dumb question.... hence l33t attacks
      • shark615, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Wrong.

        Time == Money. You charge the client not the other way around
    • kinetick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1He just asked a question. I don't think there is anything wrong with it. Every one here does not have to be a web developer to read posts.
      xOKxWhy, I am not sure if I am the right person to explain this; English is not my native language.
      There is an organization called World Wide Web Consortium (w3c). For the benefit of every one it was decided by the w3c to maintain certain rules(standards) when coding(e.g. (X)HTML,CSS) for websites. Almost every browser follow those rules. The only exception is Internet Explorer. This is very frustrating for web developers because it takes time and use of ugly filters and hacks to make those codes work in IE. It would be really nice if developers would not bother to code for IE but that's sometimes is not possible because majority of the users around the world use IE.
      If I was not able to make it clear, you can get more info for this: site http://www.webstandards.org/
  • makingme, on 10/10/2007, -8/+23I'm IN!
  • Steelback, on 10/10/2007, -30/+5Posting from ie
    • LastHand, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4Posting from Firefox FTW!
    • crushfan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Posting from an oscilloscope.. of course on Firefox. Ha!
  • secretmode, on 10/10/2007, -13/+55sure why not. But fixing stuff in IE costs about 10% extra time if you know your *****...not 70% anyways.
    • IIIKrazyKiDDIII, on 10/10/2007, -6/+22It costs money to know the *****...
      • Surreal, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4Depends on what technologies you are using secretmode.

        I know simple asp.net controls (file upload for instance) that work great in firefox and oddly, do wierd stuff in IE. Should be the other way around right? This requires extra time to program work arounds or find a different way to do the same thing.
      • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4knowledge is power. gain it, use it.
        • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1the most pertinent comment I've heard today.

          /sarcasm
      • bizchris, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1And time.
    • duerra, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4Yeah, I'm with you there. Yes, it stinks having to work around IE, but once you know the few things that engineers most commonly complain about, the workarounds are quick enough in most circumstances.
      • ajames01, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Same here (i agree)... after awhile it becomes pretty easy to get around IE mess-ups. You just have to keep some things in mind when you are coding the thing.

        But you probably wont be able to label your site as standards compliant if its anything more than simple.
    • hysterix, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8You know, its exactly that kind of attitude that keeps us in this screwed up position.
      "It's okay that Microsoft are all a bunch of douche-bags, ALL THE PROGRAMMERS IN THE WORLD WILL MAKE UP FOR IT BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY WE HAVE SO MUCH EXTRA TIME ON OUR HANDS".

      PHP Web Developer here, and on behalf of me and everyone else, screw you! Yes thats right, screw you and and everyone else for being down to waste my time.

      I already am stressed out enough with projects and ***** as it is, now I have to waste, "10%" (according to you) of my time fixing things that shouldn't be broken?

      Do I need to do a price-breakdown of how much money EVERYONE in the tech industry is loosing because of Microsoft?
      If everyone had your attitude, there probably wouldn't even be a firefox. Same to you Duerra.

      Oh also, Duerra and aJames01 are horribly wrong, it isn't just 'a couple things' you need to keep in mind, oh right, the web pages you are developing are web 1.0 status, well then ya the fix is pretty damn easy then.

      Guess what? When you actually are developing a bunch of crazy ass systems that integrate together, say for example, menu's without frames or javascript.....That ***** literally becomes an extra week of work to integrate it correctly.

      Don't believe me? Develop a site in mozilla and safari that uses only css to do menu's on multiple pages all interacting with each other, dynamically changing each others content; then make it work perfectly for Internet Explorer...Oh crap, not as easy to fix as you made it out to be.
      • nalfeo, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Exaggerate much? Because I would love to see the "price-breakdown of how much money EVERYONE in the tech industry is loosing because of Microsoft."
        • Squally425, on 05/12/2008, -0/+0Put it this way: If a project which normally took 2 months (61 days) required approximately 25 dollars per hour per person of 4, (developers and QA), which roughly means labour costs of 100 dollars an hour for 61 days ($45,750 for 61 days with 7.5 hours of work a day)... 10% overload would mean an extra waste of $4,575 dollars of labour + an extra wasted 6 days which could have been used for other projects. Cut into other project times = a whole different calculation involved. Now multiply that by the number of companies in this world and you'll see why IE should really start following W3C standards.

          But of course, I counted weekends as well. Too lazy to take out the weekends. You get the point though I hope.
    • qwuinc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Uh-oh, if you know the IE bugs that well you could be as well writing books about the hacks needed to work around them...
  • JasonCox, on 10/10/2007, -25/+15How about a 'Digg this if you're tired of writing code that passes W3C validation tests, works in IE7, Opera and Safari but requires hacks in Firefox'.
    • gn0stik, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7You're right. Every browser has it's issues, firefox and IE have the most. However the same thing can be said about the others. I'm personally not a big fan of safari either.
    • Surreal, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2Eh? That happens?
      • gn0stik, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Yes it does, It's happened a number of times to me.
    • Gzero, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5It doesn't even take any effort to pass the validation tests, as long as you haven't learned coding while using IE.
    • over90000, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5That's digg for ya. Getting dugg down for a perfectly valid statement. Mob mentality FTL.
  • jakecigar, on 10/10/2007, -14/+70IE can't even get the String.split correct! JavaScript is a joke. CSS is MeSsy! XSL is horrible. And their version of HTML is beyond comprehension!

    Death to Microsoft!
    • skyscape, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2yes, and that means you are one screwed man. I feel sorry for you man, I didnt know M$ can screw peoples' lives so much
    • dannix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6xsl works fine in ie since version 6.
    • vircity, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2Oooh Clever. I like how you incorporated MS is messy. Gave that some thought I see.
    • vircity, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1Oooh Clever. I like how you incorporated MS is messy. Gave that some thought I see.
    • Shaem1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Death to Shelbyville!
    • qwuinc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0If that got you warmed up, then you might as well continue with how they handle headers, and every single "incident" where header/content length needs to be within certain limits or something evil will happen...
  • Leo21k, on 10/10/2007, -36/+7I've been using IE for years now and have never had a problem with it. IE does what I expect a browser to do.
    • tnoy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+22The problem isn't using it, the problem is developing for it.
      • BackRub, on 10/10/2007, -6/+4although lets not give much credit to its usability either.
      • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+6leo21k's point being that plenty of other worldclass sites support ie just fine and dandy.
        i'm just guessing, but i think it may be because they don't use lazy ass, whiny web developers.
        • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0No, I'm sure that 90% of their developers would rather not code for 50% longer for IE compatibility if they thought they could keep their jobs. If google suddenly decided to stop paying their developers overtime to code IE, I'm pretty sure they would just code to standards. Given the choice between standard-compliant code and IE compatible code, I think most independant devs would choose standards; most employed devs at big companies have no choice because their non-IT bosses don't know ***** from silver when it comes to webdev.
          • jrbrewin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1no. i'm sure most web developers would prefer to work in web development, than not.
            granted, no one in tech related work likes supporting legacy, but the fact is, you have to, else you find a job elsewhere. by definition, if you get on and do the job you're being paid for, you're not whiny and lazy.

            you seem to think that, by having to support a browser that you don't like, web development shops have to work 'overtime' to get it done. To me, that smacks of bad project management, and lack of knowledge. know your field, or get out.
    • delhokie, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5The reason it works is because those of us that develop websites have to spend countless hours hacking and making workarounds so it does work!
      • natenovs, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3countless? maybe you need to find a different job. one youre more suited for...
    • skyscape, on 10/10/2007, -9/+3I code for IE, use Dev tools from M$, never had problem coding since. It's the idiot coders who either code for the wrong browser, or just are ignorant of the tools available to them from M$, but hey, I think it is against their religion to go to M$ site.
      • afx1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6didn't realize I had to use MS tools to make websites
      • vdog, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Of course MS tools work fine for developing IE site; they're built specifically with that in mind. The problem is that they're not standards compliant.

        The W3C ( http://www.w3.org/ ) sets the standards that everybody should use. A site built to their specifications should work in any browser on any platform. The problem is that MS have gone off and done their own thing.

        We now have to cater to both IE and the standards compliant browsers, and that gets tricky; things that work with one often look broken in the other. Finding a workaround to match both (and remain standards compliant at the same time) is hard at best and impossible at the worst.
        • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Valid code is not necessarily good code. Visual Studio can generate perfectly valid XHTML 1.1. The problem is that it's weird in quite a few places.
  • valadil, on 10/10/2007, -7/+39I've already stopped supporting IE in my personal sites. Gotta support it at work though :'(
  • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -33/+27Digg me down for this, but if you were a better coder, your IE6 tweaks (hopefully they're targeted with conditional comments) would only be a handful of extra lines.
    • Surreal, on 10/10/2007, -5/+18Yeah, but that results in looking like an ugly coder. Why should we find it acceptable to add into our websites unnecessary markup? I think you're missing the point here.
      • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -6/+9What? What I am saying is that if you were good enough at coding, your code would not require many IE-based hacks. It is not hard to make a complex design look great in all of the browsers with very little IE-only code.

        The person who started this digg entry complains that it takes him too long because of all the tweaks he has to write. What I am saying is that it would only take an extra few minutes if he just learned more.
        • MonGuSE1, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4I'm thinking that if you have done any serious web development you it probably only started recently and ignores anything below the most current IE6. IE only CSS, IE only DOM issues, IE only box model crap, IE only EM issues, IE only centering hack, the list is endless.
          • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6To be fair, the IE box model does make more sense than the standard CSS one. Honestly, padding should be counted in the total width for an item.

            I mean, they're even putting IE's way of doing it into CSS3, so someone must think it has some value.

            And let's not forget that it's IE who gave us XMLHttpRequest.....
          • noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Padding shouldn't be part of the width.
            I have a 400px wide box, I want that box to be 20 px away from everything around it, that is margin. I want the contents o that box to be 15 px away from the insides of the box, that is padding.

            Think of a physical carboard box. You take an object and put it in the box. You put padding material around the object to get it a distance from the sides. Does the box get wider?

            The CSS box model works like a real box.
          • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I disagree with your conclusion based on a physical box.

            If I have a physical box of 400px, and I want to add 15px of padding, the width of the box doesn't change. However, in css-land, it does visually. It SAYS the box is 400px, but it doesn't look that way. Padding gets tacked on to the outisde of the box, and makes it look bigger. In the real world, this would be akin to putting your padding on the outside of the box.

            Real css example:
            I have a div with this style: width: 400px; padding:100px; background:red;

            In IE, the red area is 400px wide. This is my physical real life box. In Opera, the box is 600px wide. You've just made your box bigger. That's stupid.
          • noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1In my experience that is commonly not how it works. When I have to modify IE layouts it is because the padding that exists inside my box pushes out the sides in IE.

            A 100 px box in firefox with 15px of padding is still 100 px and the contents of that box are 70 px wide.
            In IE that same box balloons to 130px wide and the contents are 100px.

            In a semantic layout the 'box' is the container. You make it sound as if you expect the contents to be the box.
          • MioTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3That's not how it works. Create a file with nothing but:

            [div style="width: 400px; height:200px; padding:100px; background:red;"] [/div]

            Compare your results in FF and IE. The IE one will be 400x200. The FF one will be 600x400.

            IE follows the real world physical box model. The CSS1/2 standards do not. 3, fortunately, gives you a choice.

            Here for more info:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_box_model_bug
          • helimeef, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Okay, let me settle this. IEs box model is non-standard, however it makes sense. In IE6, if it's in Quirks Mode, will not count padding as the total width of a block level element. In a non IE6 browser, it ADDS padding to the box's total width, which is not what a "real" box would do. I prefer IEs, but I would also rather have IE become standard, then to have every other browser switch (which would take longer). CSS3 solves this problem by letting you choose which box model to use, but think how long it will take browsers to supprt CSS3! Safari sort of does already, but everyone else doesn't.
        • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -6/+8@ MonGuSE1: I've been developing websites for 6+ years, many of them for high-profile corporations and a handful reaching into the $100,000+ arena. I know what I'm talking about, which is why I continue to say, "IF YOU ARE SKILLED ENOUGH, IT DOESN'T TAKE VERY MUCH TO GET IE6/7 LOOKING CORRECTLY". Stop assuming you know what I do and how long I've been doing it.
          • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1Are you the Queen of England too?
          • DemonTPx, on 10/10/2007, -4/+0roflolz!! :D
          • noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2His point is that you shouldn't have to hack at all. A standard is a standard, it means it works the same no matter where I go.

            If I have standard bolts on my car I shouldn't need to modify my standard wrench to take care of all the bolts.
        • tony23, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Let me add to this:
          I have been developing websites for over 10 years, and I am working in a similar arena, salary-wise, as herkalees. I rarely have any serious trouble getting IE to work the way I want it to work.

          @herkalees: I wouldn't be too worried about it. There is a reason you & I make what we do, and guys like this only end up providing more work for guys like us.
        • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5@tony23: I wish I was making that money I mentioned... my small 12-person firm is, but sadly, I'm salary. Anyway, my goal was to let the previous clown know that I'm trusted to work on very important, very expensive websites, so when I say IE6 can be massaged with just a handful of extra lines of code, you better believe it. Who ever disagrees should study harder.
        • Respec7, on 10/10/2007, -7/+6herkalees your a plug, hacking for IE makes your code look *****. End of Story.
        • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4@Respec7: First, using conditional comments is the lowest form of 'hacking code for IE6'. I use none of the asterisk/slash *****. Second, when the client has an audience consisting mostly of IE users, and they're paying you money, and you've got bills to pay, you simply cannot ignore IE. Believe me, I would if I could.
          If I was developing for small niche companies, I could probably convince them to disregard IE6, but out here in the real world, we have to consider it.
          ...and what the hell is a plug?
        • Respec7, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1Sorry herkalees, here is the def:
          butt plug
          An insult used to chastise someone who's behavior is annoying you and/or others. The insult infers that the person inflicting the annoyance on you and/or others is becoming as irritating as an unpleasant and unwanted experience of anal penetration.

          IE still sucks...I hate it horribly.
        • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3@ everyone: I'm not arguing that tweaking for IE6 is cool. No ***** way. What I'm arguing here is that when you have to do it, for whatever reason, you can keep it very minimal and easy if you know how to code very well. Conditional comments only, and a few extra lines in an ie-only style sheet, is all you need if you're really good. If it takes you more than 15 minutes, in general, then you need to better your coding skills.
          If you are working on a project that can disregard IE entirely, then I consider you a lucky person.
        • duerra, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5@Respec7 - herkalees is right - the number of workarounds that has to be done for IE6 is pretty short when you boil it down, and any competent engineer knows these workarounds and can make code that doesn't resort to "hacks" and is CSS compliant, while still addressing the few issues that are initially frustrating to developers that aren't familiar with the problems and workarounds. If you can't, that's not herkalees' fault, it's your own. Don't hate on herkalees because you haven't taken the time to familiarize yourself with the problems and solutions. And I'm not just talking about googleing for a workaround - I'm talking about actually understanding what is going on, how the standards are supposed to work, why they don't in IE vs. other browsers, and how to handle those differences in standard-compliant ways.
        • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4...thank-*****-christ... someone else with a bit of skill, over-and-above the average idiot arguing with me.
          • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0thank-*****-christ... someone who has verified credentials arguing beside you! At least now your side has some credibility...thank him for making up for YOU
          • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2@ CIDaemon: Where are duerra's credentials, and why is it that I make a valid argument learned from years of experience that nobody believes, until one or two other people say exactly what I'm saying? And how/where am I lacking that I need someone to 'make up' for me (make up what?).
            Am I not well-received because I don't visit digg very much, or is it something else? If I'm making a good clean argument for something I ***** KNOW IS TRUE, something that took me years to learn, why does the general Digg public brush it off? Is it because I'm not a popular 'digger'?
            Show me these credentials you speak of, or at least explain how you know that I lack them.
          • bilangew, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Dude, chill down. This is Digg, after all. Do not expect any intelligent conversations, unless you think intelligent conversations are "DUPE!!", "1990 has called, they want their joke back", etc.

            Anyways, I found it funny that duerra said "engineers" are needed for this kind of job. From a HTML newbie point of view (which I am), it really looks like only a engineer can do it right.
    • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3Agree. IE6 is not a good browser, but you shouldn't be extravagant. You should always consider your visitors. If 90% use IE, then so be it - code accordingly.
      • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1IE's use isn't large because it's a good browser, it's because it has been the default browser on computers for a very long time; we all know this. Therefor, it's simply lazy to forget about what's right and instead cater to the audience, just because a majority of them have IE.
    • HigherLogic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2You shouldn't need to use hacks/conditionals either...
      • herkalees, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I agree, but unfortunately I live in a world where designers are told I can develop anything they can create in Photoshop mixed with clients that want it to look the same, on a pixel-level, in 75 different browsers.
        • tony23, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I think we work for the same people :)
    • smhill, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Actually, I generally agree with him. If you develop clean, well thought out code, you shouldn't have to 'hack' much at all. The occasional position relative tag here and there but not much else really. I haven't used conditionals in a long time. Very rarely I will use an additional style sheet to support transparent pngs in IE6.

      It does suck to be sure, but the reality of it is that if are a professional, you can't simply "not" support it. You are working for your client and expected to provide a solution that meets their needs. And often that solution means getting the widest audience possible. It may annoy me, but my time is all billable, if I have to spend extra time making the site work in the most prolific browser (regardless of my personal opinion of it), then so be it. that is the cost of web development.
    • oojamaflip2006, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'm digging you down because all the 'conditional comment' IE hacks I put in to one website broke when IE7 came out. You should never be in a position of writing code specifically for a particular browser.
  • hellbent88, on 10/10/2007, -9/+65Digg uprise kill IE let's make it happen
    • gn0stik, on 10/10/2007, -10/+5We dont' need to kill IE, we just need them to fix it. It could be a great browser with a few small modifications.
  • boxxa, on 10/10/2007, -6/+23That is one reason I don't like to develop websites, esp CSS based ones to standard. It can work beautiful and setup perfect in Firefox, but as soon as you throw it in IE, it looks like *****.

    I agree that you should force people to view Web 2.0 compliant browsers that follow standards.
    • Ordinathorreur, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I really like that term: "Web 2.0 Compliant browser"

      I can see the error message now:
      Sorry, you're not using a Web 2.0 compliant web browser. This may lead to web pages not being displayed correctly. Please visit this link for a free upgrade.
    • airstrike, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1i was thinking the same thing. since when did web 2.0 become a standard? IE is still lousy at dealing with (x)html/css standards, but that has got nothing to do with web 2.0.
  • rYno, on 10/10/2007, -2/+22well I'll send my shout out against IE but getting the general public to understand and then reason with any said movement... good luck... but I'm with ya.
  • sega01, on 10/10/2007, -5/+19I completely agree. It's the browser's fault if it cannot display a standards-compliant web page, not my problem. Iceweasel FTW! :-)
  • mfaras, on 10/10/2007, -11/+6That webpage is not very standard... it doens't have any doctype, or html or head or body tags. Just text and ... thats tag soup to me!
    • DjArcadian, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2He probably did that so it would actually display correctly in IE.
  • chris9902, on 10/10/2007, -18/+10If you knew what you were doing you wouldn't need any hacks. stop supporting IE5 since nobody should be using it anyway and read up on the more complex problems you're having. You can bet somebody already found a simple answer.

    Also if you think dropping support for IE is cool or something then you're a total ***** moron.
    • Gzero, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Knowing what I would doing means knowing what doesn't work with IE. I could be doing so many great things if I didn't have to hold back for IE, because of their crap CSS support. Not to mention they don't know how to render a ***** dotted line.
  • cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -17/+12All browsers have their particular problems. As a web developer for over a dozen years, I had the most problems with Nutscrape. IE is certainly forgivable for bad HTML on some pages, but I prefer using Mozilla. I don't bother making sites compliant with Safari or Opera. If people are stupid enough to buy a Mac, I'm not going to bother screwing around with scripting and formatting so they can visit a page.
    • Gzero, on 10/10/2007, -5/+9Um, 99% of the time anything working on Mozilla will work on Safari and Opera. It's more like developing for everything else, and then fixing for IE.
    • alexweej, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Safari, Opera and Gecko have no problems with all but the most trivial of things in a properly designed page. Most of those minor breakages are incorrect assumptions about in-built browser stylesheets, something which is NOT standardised and shouldn't be. If you're insistent on pixel perfection, your CSS has to be extremely explicit.

      (And what's with the random Mac bashing? Makes me wonder why I bother spending the time replying to comments like this, you obviously have your own belief bubble.)
      • cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Wasted too much time on solving Mac users' consistent problems as a DRM developer, I suppose.
    • dacomputerfreak, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4cygnus- Do you really know what you're talking about? Standards are standards! While I won't deny that Netscape sucked, the comment from Gzero pretty much sums up my experiences.
      I could call Windows users stupid as well, but I'd rather not come here to insult strangers at random. I could really care less what OS an individual is using, just as long as my design renders correctly on his or her browser. :)
  • mratomika, on 10/10/2007, -6/+20Been talking to other developers about this as well . . . how about just getting IE6 blocked for the time being. Imagine if a few of the big name site, were to put a script to detect what browser it is, and point people to an upgrade, or even better a switch! I think Microsoft should practice a bit more responsibility in killing the monster they created . .
  • KyjL, on 10/10/2007, -12/+6Hey guys, let's make a digg post and hope that the entire planet will read this! If we pray to (whoops, ASK) Ron Paul hard enough and get all of our Troofers together we'll get IE banned from everywhere!
    • nariposa, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Haha, I'm sorry you're getting dugg down man, because that's the biggest laugh I've had from this entire thread! *dabs a tear*
  • twoboxen, on 10/10/2007, -5/+48Registered just to digg this post. I hate IE. I display a message on my personal sites to please use a standards compliant browser.
    • diggitydoc, on 10/10/2007, -7/+5aren't you just the coolest. People use what they have on their systems... most people don't care to install firefox or safari. Most corporate environments use IE, so deal with it... i like to think of it as another evil facet of corporatism, IE use.
    • HigherLogic, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3I hate when websites display messages telling me what to get, or to switch to Firefox. Never come back to those sites anyways, usually if a site is telling me that, it's not worth being on anyways.
  • stutimandal, on 10/10/2007, -3/+25Yes I am sick of Fixing Bugs for IE too.

    Please let's start a revolution and make Ballmer sleepless.
  • zyklon, on 10/10/2007, -3/+45Now THIS is a movement I can get behind!
    • Respec7, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3thats what she said
    • CiDaemon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8In Soviet Russia, movement gets behind YOU!!

      Sorry, couldn't resist. Bury me.
  • llvllatrix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7I'm sure there has to be some means of petitioning for improvement, either to Microsoft or some standards board. The bottom line seems to be that the cost savings had in developing IE without regards to standardization is costing the rest of the industry money; and by the look of things, a lot of money.
  • phogasmic, on 10/10/2007, -5/+37I am in the middle of fixing two sites to work with IE6 and IE7 ( SHAME ON YOU MSFT! ) They promised us that IE7 would be easier to develop for, they lied. It is just a shinier bag of *****.. with tabbed browsing. Its frustrating... Therefore, I pledge that on my personal website redesign......... I WILL USE WEB STANDARDS and if they don't work in IE7 or IE6 then those users will have a degraded experience. That is fair because they are using degraded browsers.

    Just like on TV, those with HD TVs can watch widescreen, high definition television shows, those who don't can't its just that simple.
    • mistergoomba, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1i agree. too bad we can't get all websites on this thinking. if casual IE users have troubles with myspace or netflix or gmail or any site they depend on because of IE, maybe we can get more people to switch.
    • andywebb95, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Well said and good analogy :)
    • dandelionmood, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Yes but non-saavy people don't even know they can surf with something else.
      You shouldn't alienate your visitors like that, mostly because it won't change a damn thing.
      What you can do is telling everyone around you to use Firefox or whatever *because* it will solve one of their problems, for example. Same problem with linux anyway.
  • robzbd, on 10/10/2007, -14/+1Dugg because I hate selfish people (read: Microsoft), but as far as coding goes, I hardly see a super-huge-massive-omglosingmoney-wtf time loss...

    This story is crap anyway, whining developers won't change a thing, if you REALLY want IE to go away, browse over to the Firefox/(insert linux distro here) page and donate.
  • erikerikerik, on 10/10/2007, -16/+9Herm, I wont digg this story, because at the moment their is no one browser that I feel is better then the rest.
    safari, IE7, FF2, Opera, not one of then covers everything on the web perfectly.
    Sure they should all pass the ACID2 test, but that's not the end all test to judge the browsers.
    -
    As a side note for every one working with IE7 (because you have to) have you thought about the IE7 Dev tool ? http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en
    • nubious, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2So what you're saying is that in order to cater to IE's crappy coding, we should download ANOTHER Microsoft product MADE to develop FOR IE7? That's like putting a band-aid over another band-aid...
    • jetsetter883, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2the firefox ***** wouldn't dare go on microsoft's website.
  • guy4graphics, on 10/10/2007, -4/+12I am a freelance designer/developer and inevitably have to hack up my standards compliant code just to work in IE. A world without IE would be a better place indeed. But its never going to happen as most users barely know what a browser is let alone that there are alternatives to IE and the reasons why IE is inferior. : (
    • duerra, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Please show me an instance where you've had to resort to non-standards compliant code to make a page work in IE. I've never had to resort to non-standards-based coding because of IE. Yes, sometimes you have to write a little more code, but it doesn't have to be sub-standard. If you feel that your code can't be standards compliant to work with IE, then I would recommend that you take a little more time to understand explicitly what things IE doesn't do correctly, and understand the standards and workarounds a little better so you know proper ways to circumvent IE's troubles.
      • tymoteusz3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Well no offense, but maybe you have never really done a "Real" standards compliant site. Remember standards do not advocate use of tables for deisign structure, but just try to get CSS div working with IE6 without resorting to hacks. The whole box model is ***** up for one. You realize that standards do not only refer to XHTML /HTML. It refers to CSS, Javascript, XSL, etc. In which IE falls very short.

      • tymoteusz3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Well no offense, but maybe you have never really done a "Real" standards compliant site. Remember standards do not advocate use of tables for deisign structure, but just try to get CSS div working with IE6 without resorting to hacks. The whole box model is ***** up for one. You realize that standards do not only refer to XHTML /HTML. It refers to CSS, Javascript, XSL, etc. In which IE falls very short.

    • helimeef, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Totally agree. I mean seriously, walk up to a person and ask them "Hey have you seen that new website?", "Yeah, but it looks messed up to me", "What browser do you have?", "The Internet.". Somebody has seriously said that to me before. I just walked away.
  • misteral, on 10/10/2007, -16/+8Oh wahhh... As if no one has ever fixed a bug that was Firefox or Opera-only.
    • outsid3rNo17, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I haven't.
      On the other hand, there are very, very few things in IE that work like they should. From the margins...
    • vdog, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2It's not the bugs that are the issue. It's MS's blatant disregard for standards- you've got to make your site work with Every Other Browser On The Planet and then IE as well.
      Coding for EOBOTP is easy - one standard does the lot. Coding for IE is