Jan 27
The IE Factor, a day in the life of a webdesigner
2004 at 01.22 pm posted by Veerle
It seems that Internet Explorer is a hot topic in the CSS designers community right now. If you make websites for a living then you probably know what I am talking about, but for those who have no clue maybe this will shed some light. The typical process of developing a website starts in Photoshop and so far no clouds are to been seen. When the client approves the look it’s off to DreamWeaver and BBEdit.
As I told yesterday I always start by making the site compatible with Safari, Mozilla,… When I have a working model in those browsers I turn to the PC to check Internet Explorer and sometimes that’s when the fun starts especially if you’re against a tight deadline.
This image from the Microsoft IE website about IE says it all! You got to have some humor otherwise your head ends up in the screen :-)
Luckily I’m not the only one with these flaws, better yet even the CSS gurus are sometimes stuck in the never-ending street of IE. It’s always a good read that you’re not the only one isn’t it ;-)
As Doug said it so nicely:
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge I encounter each time is in wrangling Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. This devil does not play fair. It often follows no rules, and its behavior defies all common logic. It will double margins for no apparent reason. Borders disappear, 62 pixels magically turn into 143 pixels. It dodges left when other browsers go right. I’ve decided to call this phenomenon “the IE Factor”.
You can read the whole story on Doug’s website (a very good daily source btw)
This post is meant to be an eye-opener and not a round of IE bashing.
2served
1
When I’m designing a site (using only CSS) for a client, i first work with Photoshop, then do the basics with notepad to get the positions of elements, then iwork around to make sure it works in IE first.
The reason being, because my clients no that the majority of users (common folk) on the .net, use IE (weither in mAC or PC) so once i’ve got it right In IE, I move on to Opera and mozilla and other modern browsers.
I think its a pain that IE renders a lot of CSS rulings wrong, but i think it gets to much bashing from guru’s because it’s not their cup of tea browser, and because they have to put in extra work for the ‘IE factor’.
I know IE does things that can make one go crazy, but as a designer i treat it as just one more challenge to get the web site working; and no offense too any of the guru’s but to focus on the negatives of “how IE diplays things wrong” is just a waste of time.
2
I got to be honest that when I design a website and I start on the HTML that I check almost simultaneously in both Safari and IE because then I can check immediately what goes wrong, and if it does then I know it is because of my last change in the code.
And yes it’s a challenge for me too, but on the other hand if there aren’t enough complaints about this issue it will never get fixed. Imagine if it would… it would be “web designers heaven “ no?