This link does a good job of illustrating the differences between browsers:
http://operawatch.com/news/2007/09/opera-vs-firefox-vs-internet-explorer-picture.html
If you are still using Internet Explorer please join us on 2008:
Note: It’s funny, but Apple makes a better browser for Windows than Microsoft.
Some people have asked us: “What’s the point of this blog?” or “What are you trying to accomplish with it?” We don’t have a reals reason and apart from ridding the world from Internet Explorer, we don’t plan to accomplish anything with it. Truth be told, one day, after finalizing a website, and forgetting to test it on IE (we know, how dumb) we get a call from our client telling us: “What’s wrong with you guys? This website looks like shit” We quickly fired up firefox and saw our website looking perfect and working even better when it hit us, we forgot to test it on IE. At this point we opened IE7, Safari & Opera and found that website was working perfectly on them as well but we were not so lucky with IE7
Then, after hours beating our heads constantly trying to get all elements of a website to work correctly on IE7 and sacrificing some design and functionality, we call the client to let her know that everything should be fine now.
To our surprise we get a call back from her 30 minutes later asking us to please stop wasting her time and fix her website. We looked at each other wondering what was going on when suddenly, IE6. sure enough, the website look like hell on IE6.
Four hours later, including the time spent swearing at Bill Gates we had our own little “frankensteinian” website that worked well enough and looked ok enough in all browsers.
We called our client a third time and after hanging up we were all ready for some beers when suddenly, another call. This one wasn’t so bad but our client instructed us that there where still elements that look out of place. We open IE6 while still on the phone with her and saw that the website was looking correctly on our end. So after 15 minutes of going back and forth with settings and searching the internet, we had our client send us a screen print. To our surprise, for some strange and undocumented reason, the website was dropping some of the floated block elements making it look incorrect.
To be more precise, the same version of IE6, on two different computers, with the same operating system, monitor resolution, etc, were displaying a website on two different ways.
I hope this little story has helped you understand us a little bit better and now you can join us in our quest to make all web developers live easier.
And sue Microsoft for damages because of all the time, money & sanity it has made us waste trying to get our websites to work on it’s stupid browser which, as it comes standard on any PC, is the most used browser in the world.
* Update:
Here’s microsoft response to Opera’s antitrust:
” Microsoft has officially responded to the antitrust complaint filed by Opera yesterday with the European Commission. The software giant’s key point: there are plenty of readily-available choices for Windows users looking for a browser other than Internet Explorer, and there’s nothing forcing anyone to surf with a browser he or she doesn’t like.”
While the above statement is true and users can actually use another browser, like I do, the common user doesn’t have any idea on how to do this. Let’s face it, most users think IE is the Internet and when you try to explain the concept of browsers to them they stare at you with a “what the hell are you talking about” face. And elaborating on this, it is a nice thing that Microsoft includes a browser so people can browse the web without having to get a CD (since you wouldn’t be able to download a browser). Mac does the same thing but the key difference is that Safari is a complaint browser while IE is not.
And well, since Microsoft said it: “here’s nothing forcing anyone to surf with a browser he or she doesn’t like.” we at this blog will make sure to have more instructions and reasons for people to change so that they don’t have to expereince the web in a crappy browser and we, the developers, don’t have to resort to crazy hacks to make our websites work on badly developed products.
