After kicking Internet Explorer 6.0 – the most popular and one of the most bug-ridden and standards-defying browsers in existence – in the proverbial crotch a few posts back, I wasn’t ready to give up; the stats proclaim 32% of visitors here do so within the confines of IE6, and I wanted to provide a good UI to all users, misguided as they are. I needed to clean up a few things anyway, so I went about rewriting large parts of the site (1) using the same design and graphics, tweaked slightly to make IE6 happy.
Yea, it looks pretty much the same, because I did like the theme. Ironically though, if you view this site in its new IE6-compatible glory, you will actually get a message suggesting better alternative browsers to try.
I came across SaveTheDevelopers.org today, and while their mission of exterminating IE6 from the interwebs is noble, it comes with a typical web 2.0 belligerence. After seeing just how much time and effort is spent on a large scale commercial site to cater to IE6 dirtiness, however, I’m beginning to empathize with professional designers who put up with this for years, and this is an easy way to show support and make my life easier too.
Although this probably means I’m slowly turning into one of them.
Sigh.
- incidentally, for those looking to learn web development, either creating sites from scratch or just fun side projects like custom WordPress themes, I’ve found the best environment in the Eclipse PDT, along with the Webdav plugin for remote development or xampp for local stuff. I’ve tried a lot of IDE’s and setups and this is by far the most painless way to write webcode. (↩)