Nur vs. Internet Explorer

// July 22nd, 2009 // articles

Contrary to popular opinion, being late to the party is not cool. It doesn’t make you cool and just causes others to change plans due to your lack of punctuality.

This is a lesson Microsoft needs to learn. Like now.

CSS3 is here. It’s cool. I love it. Other people love it. Want to know how I know it’s officially official? Here to stay? The new standard? It has a cheatsheet.

Now like any other enhancement to a front-end development language, I assumed most (if not all) of it’s new features wouldn’t be supported by most browsers. Definitely not desired, but expected. I wasn’t surprised when Firefox hopped on the wagon with it’s support so early. Same with Google and it’s Chrome browser. Safari supports it. As does Opera.

Then there’s Internet Explorer. The browser that has always been the Joker to my Batman. The Wolverine to my Cyclops. The Star Trek to my Battlestar Galactica. It’s adoption of CSS3 has been… less than stellar. If you’re viewing this page with IE, you probably see sharp-edged corners instead of rounded ones. Are there ways to fix this particular problem? Of course there are – but that isn’t the point. If four other browsers can keep a steady pace with their CSS3 adoption, why can’t a company with the resources of Microsoft follow suit? Maybe that’s what disappoints me the most – I expect better from them. Or maybe I shouldn’t.

Writing separate files full of hacks just so a design will appear correctly in IE has grown tiresome. It’s not even jokingly funny. Sadly W3Schools has posted that in June 2009 40.7% of browsers used were some version of Internet Explorer – with IE6 losing adoption at a very slow pace. There’s one golden egg that I can use for hope. A reminder towards the bottom of the page that could easily be glanced over:

You cannot – as a web developer – rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.

Global averages may not always be relevant to your web site. Different sites attract different audiences. Some web sites attract professional developers using professional hardware, while other sites attract hobbyists using old low spec computers.

Also be aware that many statistics may have an incomplete or faulty browser detection. It is quite common by many web-stats report programs, not to detect the newest browsers.

(The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools’ log-files, but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures).

The bolded text gives me hope – a dream even. One day I’ll be tasked with creating a site whose visitors will know better than to use IE for casual browsing.

Only if we were all Norwegian.

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