The need for IE-only sites? (was RE: [thelist] Identify a Web Crawler's request)

Steve Lewis nepolon at worlddomination.net
Wed Jul 7 13:26:13 CDT 2004


Simon Perry wrote:

> Lets try some other analogies then...
> 
> Imagine a shop that
> 
> Actively discriminates against 1 in 10 visitors and does not let them in.
Wow.  Nice troll-bait, Simon.  I'll stay clear of this one. :)

A project is building an IE-only website.  OK.  I will never visit it, 
but if that is ok with them, whatever.  IE may be feature rich for the 
site developer, but it leaves much to be desired for the user, IMO.

My preference for a non-IE browser is based on browsing features: 
tabbed browsing, skins, open source (thus I can code-review what I 
install) plug-ins, rendering speed, pop-up blocking, image/cookie 
blocking by domain, security model.  I care more these features than 
most folks.

The only time I ever fire up IE is when I am running Windows Update 
(...or testing a fix for an IE-based rendering bug.  My web dev work 
is mostly server-side stuff, and the template has had a lot of time to 
stabilize, so we only infrequently have rendering problems that are 
browser specific.)

That said, the main drawback to developing a site for any one browser 
would be forward compatibility.  This argument won't carry much weight 
in this case, however.

IE6 is a 'stable' platform because it will not have an upgrade 
available for several more quarters. (Way to turn a negative into a 
positive, huh?)  It's current feature set, and quirks, can be well 
understood and coded to.  It will also likely still be around five 
years from now, at least as a margin of visitors.

Steve


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