The Omnifarium - Computing Devices

Browser Wars

Category: Computing Devices
Mon, 09 Jun 2008, 18:57

The last time I visited my family, I used my sister's computer to check my favorite on-line forums. But first, I installed Firefox. For some reason, my brother-in-law took a fit, and insisted I remove it. That really took me by surprise since Firefox is, of course, the superior browser.

They use Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, and since I'd never seen it before, I thought I'd have a look to see what it was like. Wow! Was I underwhelmed! I looked at it and wondered what the heck they were thinking of when they came up with this new version.

Have a look at the above screen-shot of a MS IE window. The menu bar is in an unexpected place, replaced by a couple of navigation buttons. There's a button labelled "Bookmarks", but using it requires one to be logged into Google. The "Favorites" menu can now be reached by clicking on some other button, but that's not immediately obvious. In the previous version, you could rearrange the buttons to get a more compact appearance, but version 7 limits your personalization choices.

On the other hand, here's what my Firefox window looks like. To maximize the area devoted to the web page, I have the navigation buttons and fields on the same line as the menu items. Perhaps it's mainly a matter of personal taste, but I find this a less cluttered and easier to use arrangement of the important controls.

And now to the main point of today's rant. For a long time, I've always advocated designing web pages using the agreed-upon standards to ensure that the pages can be viewed using any browser, and I still believe in that. However, how much longer do we have to put up with the bugs and non-standard behaviors of Microsoft's browser? Other browsers, like Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Konqueror, can implement the standards properly? Why should web developers have to go through hoops and handstands to support a non-compliant browser?

That said, I've started to implement CSS properties that work best in Firefox and Safari. As a result, pages on my site, www.boldts.net, now look the best rendered by those browsers. Under Konqueror and Opera they look fine, but IE has trouble rendering certain features properly. Do I care? No. There's no reason the average web user can't upgrade to a better browser. The market share of Firefox continues to rise as people make the comparison.

To be fair, Microsoft is working on a new version of their browser, and when released, may well be a more standards-compliant browser. But why wait when proper choices exist today?

Omnifariously yours, Hans

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