Chris Berry On The Net

I’ve always defended Bill Gates whenever anyone criticized Microsoft for it’s virtual monopoly in PC operating systems and desktop applications. I remember the days before MS-DOS and Microsoft Office, and the total lack of standards made it virtually impossible to share documents with anyone who wasn’t on the same system. One of the major reasons we have enjoyed year over year gains in productivity for the past two decades is the universality of Microsoft products. Say what you will about Bill, but this is an undeniable truth.

I still believe the company is more good than evil, but I’ve finally come to understand why so many people hate Microsoft. I’ve dabbled in a few very simple website projects for the past several years, but the only sites I’ve built from scratch have been incredibly primitive creations that violated every standard of design and accessibility. I’ve done a lot of reading lately in an attempt to improve my skills, and today I jumped into a new project with both feet. I’m building a new site for an annual fundraising event, and as a purely intellectual exercise, I’ve decided to code it entirely by hand without the aid of a WYSIWYG editor. My goal is to create HTML and CSS code from scratch that will validate to the strictest standards. Did I mention I’ve never done this before?

I got off to a great start today, and I’ve pretty much completed my master page template. I say pretty much, because the design is complete, but I’m still trying to work around several Microsoft specific problems. I know this is something web professionals have complained about for years, but until I experienced it firsthand I didn’t realize how serious the problem really was. My page renders perfectly in Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Netscape 8, and Safari 3.1. When I open it up in Internet Explorer 6 or 7, all hell breaks loose. The problems I encounter in IE 6 are not even the same as in IE 7. I’ve managed to work around most of the problems, but it’s still not right. Most of the differences are minor between IE and the other browsers, but in some places I’ve got page elements so far out of position that I can’t begin to understand the cause.

Unfortunately, IE 6 & 7 together still represent 54% of current browser usage, so I can’t exactly ignore the problem. On the plus side, Firefox is spreading rapidly and accounts for nearly 40% of browser usage. According to Mozilla, 8 million users downloaded the new Version 3 in the first 24 hours it was available last month. If you haven’t switched yet, please do me a favor and dump your Internet Explorer today. Every web designer in the world will thank you.