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Too Cool For IE or too Stupid? Get Over It.


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#1 Faken

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 01:36 PM

I was approving tutorials this afternoon and I came across one of those "Too Cool for IE" sites that are cropping up all over the internet, and it just pushed me over the edge and I had to write this article... granted this is more of a rant.

Have people completely lost their minds? Or perhaps some webmasters are getting way too pompous? Personally, I suspect stupidity or perhaps plain ignorance and laziness. Now, before you "Too Cool" people start throwing up your shields, let's see if you fall under my wrath of blind judgment.

Let's start from the top! For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about, there is a relatively new movement among the Internet Explorer bashers (The reasons WHY they hate IE are not part of this debate, so spare me) where they are branding their websites "Too Cool for IE". Here are the folks that started it all: http://www.w3junkies.com/toocool

Now don't get me wrong here folks... there's nothing wrong with promoting your favorite browsers on your website or letting the world know how you feel about Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer etc. You have every right to do it. But the practice of FORCING people to download a particular browser to view your website is nothing short of asinine. Let me make this perfectly clear: If you are a webmaster, you are selling services or information (whether you charge or not is irrelevant). The people that view your website are your clients. Who are you to tell your clients how and when to view your site!? It is YOUR job as a webmaster to ensure that your clients can view your website in whatever browser they use in today's current and common offerings. Especially considering IE still has over 70% browser market share.

Imagine a world where car dealerships dictate to you how to get to the dealer to pick up your car, or McDonalds tells you how to eat their food. Just what I need... a clown over my shoulder telling me how to eat my Big Mac. Have you ever been to a shop that only accepts cash and has no way to process debit or credit cards? I don't know about you, but I will walk out of that shop and never come back. The excuse of debit "fees" is called the price of doing business. If you design websites, cross-browser compatibility is YOUR "price of doing business".

Now, I know that W3Junkies.com's intent of this program is to help promote alternatives to Internet Explorer, which I am totally cool with. Unfortunately there is a wave of webmasters bastardizing the campaign and popping this "Too Cool" logo into their sites because they're either too lazy or have no idea how to code for cross-browser compatibility. If this is the case, you should NOT be designing and releasing websites. PERIOD. This morning I found a site so poorly coded, that the infamous "Too Cool for IE" banner wasn't even displaying properly! Are you not embarrassed?! Promoting your favorite browser or bashing a competitor's browser is no excuse for ignorance and I like, many others, will simply move on to another site and never come back. Cry about the lack of support for CSS in IE all you like, there's still a way to code your stylesheet so that your site renders properly. Don't know how? LEARN! Unless of course you don't want traffic and have no clue how to value customers.

For those of you running the "Too Cool for IE" banner to promote alternatives, but still have a properly coded website with cross-browser compatibility, GREAT JOB! It's a shame that your example doesn't reach further. For those of you running the banner because you're too ignorant or lazy to code a website properly and are forcing clients to change browsers, you should be ashamed. Same for those that are the rampant bashers of IE that simply do it on purpose. Good luck running a business by treating customers that way. You provide a service and visitors are your customers. If you make a service unattainable, your service is useless and you've wasted your client's time and yours. As a webmaster, it is your responsibility to know the basic principals of web design and the business/customer relationship. Good luck succeeding if you do anything less.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to eat my Big Mac. If you see the dude with red hair, tell him to bugger off.. I always eat my fries last.

Dan Richard (Faken)

PS. You can read this article in my blog and post comments at http://www.blogs.pix...id-get-over-it/

#2 -Michael-

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 01:49 PM

I agree, the idea of throwing away the majority of you're audience just because you can't code for cross browser compatability is just plain stupid. It's not really all that difficult anyway....

#3 sdesign

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 02:10 PM

I totally agree, if your going to call yourself a Web Designer then you should at least know how to code for all the major browsers. The thing is its not hurting the viewer it's hurting you. A visitor will just leave in most cases, like Faken said 70% market share for IE. Now thats a lot. So basically if your getting 100,000 hits a day if 70% of that was IE users that couldn't view it cause it was FF only then you just lost yourself. 70,000 visitors. I'd think that alone would tell you designing for one browser is foolish.

But that can also be said about IE only sites. Your definitely seeing less. But some very large sites still require IE to view them. Example, Msn Zone, Windows Update, etc.

I believe the idea of having more then one browser wasn't to have specific sites for such browsers but to give the user an option. By making sites specific to one browser is what we are trying to get away from.

#4 SKETCHi

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 02:17 PM

I'm a Firefox user myself and I would never think about putting a "too cool for IE" banner on my website. I'm sure if they took the time to check their logs, they would notice that the majority of their traffic uses IE.

If you don't code your site to accommodate the majority, you are asking for failure. I know if I see a website which doesn't load properly, I never visit it again.

By the way, nice analogy with the credit/debit cards.

#5 c-c-C-C-UNIT

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 02:58 PM

If a site isn't compatible with Firefox for Mac OS X it isn't worth my time.

And, as of today, Mac OS X truly is too cool for IE. And the last release of IE for Mac is pure garbage, doesn't do ANYTHING right GRRR.

#6 funkysoul

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 03:07 PM

Thanks for the nice article Dan, and the McDonalds one is just too cool :P

People should finally open their minds and don't keep it the way they want it.. as Dan already said, those are your customers!!!
People that only do things for FF, are just losing more then 70% they are losing their revenue..

I just had to check my sitestats and I have over 92% of IE, 7% FF, 1% others..

This numbers are just telling me that my clients / friends whoever is visiting me with IE!!

Keep that in mind, IE is still the most used browser, and I don't know any BIG company that uses FireFox on their systems!

#7 Fourjays

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 04:25 PM

I completely agree too. I always try my best to make my website work cross-browser. FF will always render a page perfectly (IMO), and IE will normally require a few tweaks. Doesn't take me long. Sometimes though (particularly on complicated designs) it is a case of having to come to a compromise - give up a bit of the design (or find a completely different way) to make it work in more than one browser. Anyone who ignores IE are idiots.

#8 Bryn

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 04:32 PM

I think they're just geeks and trying to make a large movement with people on the internet, which will never get them anywhere.
They're just stupid too see they could get 3* as many hits when allowing all browsers.
Anyways there just internet browsers, what the big deal?

#9 Faken

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 04:51 PM

I completely agree too. I always try my best to make my website work cross-browser. FF will always render a page perfectly (IMO), and IE will normally require a few tweaks. Doesn't take me long. Sometimes though (particularly on complicated designs) it is a case of having to come to a compromise - give up a bit of the design (or find a completely different way) to make it work in more than one browser. Anyone who ignores IE are idiots.


Funny I have the complete opposite issues. I find myself fixing things to work in FF rather than IE because FF has zero tolerance for code errors, whereas IE will try to logically correct issues and render the page. Now we start seeing more issues with IE because of the pure CSS layouts that are becoming all the rage <_<

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#10 syndrome

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 05:42 PM

Thanks for the nice article Dan, and the McDonalds one is just too cool <_<

People should finally open their minds and don't keep it the way they want it.. as Dan already said, those are your customers!!!
People that only do things for FF, are just losing more then 70% they are losing their revenue..

I just had to check my sitestats and I have over 92% of IE, 7% FF, 1% others..

This numbers are just telling me that my clients / friends whoever is visiting me with IE!!

Keep that in mind, IE is still the most used browser, and I don't know any BIG company that uses FireFox on their systems!


I may be wrong but I believe IBM use Firefox.

===

Pure CSS layouts all the way baby :D

Recently did a layout and worked fine in Opera and Firefox, IE one small error so not all that bad :huh: I don't see why people hate Internet Explorer so much, I think it's to do with it being Window and the view that Windows is crap which i don't think it is.

Edited by syndrome, 19 December 2005 - 05:43 PM.


#11 Chaos King

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 06:19 PM

Cry about the lack of support for CSS in IE all you like, there's still a way to code your stylesheet so that your site renders properly. Don't know how? LEARN!



Or pay to get it coded. :D :D

I completely agree too. I always try my best to make my website work cross-browser. FF will always render a page perfectly (IMO), and IE will normally require a few tweaks. Doesn't take me long. Sometimes though (particularly on complicated designs) it is a case of having to come to a compromise - give up a bit of the design (or find a completely different way) to make it work in more than one browser. Anyone who ignores IE are idiots.


Funny I have the complete opposite issues. I find myself fixing things to work in FF rather than IE because FF has zero tolerance for code errors, whereas IE will try to logically correct issues and render the page. Now we start seeing more issues with IE because of the pure CSS layouts that are becoming all the rage ;)

Faken


Lawl, I feel ya man, that was about to drive you insane with that error you had. :P :P :P :P :P

And what fixed the error? Nothing more than font-size:0; How pathetic is that, that missing caused it to render incorrectly on IE. <_< :huh:

I personally hate IE with a passion, but as a coder, I don't got a choice but to make IE happy. :D

Edited by Chaos King, 19 December 2005 - 06:20 PM.


#12 HaloprO

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 06:43 PM

I always code for cross browser compatibility! <_<
Good read.

#13 Forgotten

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 07:13 PM

HERE HERE!

I agree completely! I saw that badge on a website and followed the link. I instantly added in, glad to find a nice CSS badge to put on my site. But alas, at an internet cafe (one of the few that dont have FF now) I check my site and find the CSS not IE-compatible. I quickly attempted to look for fixes.

Way to rant about not forcing people, why lower ourselves to some sites that say that with IE. FF users are no better if they do the save for FF.

But the thing is, I need some help. What is a cross-browser supported version of the CSS?

Thanks,

Justin B

#14 Jamie Huskisson

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 07:41 PM

Keep that in mind, IE is still the most used browser, and I don't know any BIG company that uses FireFox on their systems!


I may be wrong but I believe IBM use Firefox.


Your not wrong.. IBM uses FireFox.. and if I had time i'd pull up a load of others that do too, but I see this turning into yet another firefox against IE rant that doesn't need to take place

#15 Chaos King

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 10:15 PM

Put it this way, if HTML was compatible with all browsers, that would ruin the fun out of coding, so all browsers are special to give coders hell and make it more interesting. :D

#16 Programmerguy150

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 10:40 PM

I dont like fun. I want stuff to work when I want it to work darn it:P

#17 blainex

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 11:30 PM

well said programmer guy things should work when you tell them to work

#18 azn_romeo_4u

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 11:41 PM

Dude...I feel the exact same thing. seeing all these damn too cool for IE websites and damn Mozilla lovers is annoying. Just shut the hell up about IE. Why everyone always hating?

"Take back the web"

WTF is that about? Did mozilla own the freakin web back then? Hell nah...IE did...and it will probably own it until something better than the Web comes along.

IE is still a freakin good browser...I still use it. Do I get viruses? No...that's because I'm not looking for cracks, wares and porno all day.

#19 Faken

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Posted 19 December 2005 - 11:45 PM

Let me just be clear folks... I am not defending IE here. I am defending the client relationship and speaking against EXTREMELY poor webmaster attitude and complete lack of responsibility.

Faken

Edited by Faken, 19 December 2005 - 11:45 PM.


#20 blainex

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Posted 20 December 2005 - 06:42 AM

i did my research and... these guys aernt even serious webmasters so what's the fuss about there just some kids trying to promote other browsers who gives a damn,i'm sure youll never go on a professional website and find that image displayed




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