[thelist] Site Check - IE Explorer v5 anomaly

Ian Anderson ian at zstudio.co.uk
Wed Oct 26 11:06:21 CDT 2005


Joshua Olson wrote:

> While I don't feel that we should completely blow off Mac/IE users (instead,
> sites should be accessible by all browsers), I believe that extra energy
> shouldn't be wasted making designs look pixel-perfect for them.  IMO, making
> a site look "perfect" in IE/PC, Firefox/Moz, Opera, and Safari will
> generally suffice.

Well, yes, quite. How many sites do even *that* much?
[shuffles feet, looking sheepish...]

I too was talking about visual support, rather than access.

I think I probably took your original point wrongly, since I agree 
completely with your point above.

I've always visualised a series of concentric circles as a way of 
conceptualising browser support.

In the centre, I'd put IE for Windows and Firefox for the reasons that 
one is the browser that best supports standards and the other is the 
view that the overwhelming majority of users see for most sites.

As you move out from the centre, the pixel-perfectness (such as it ever 
was) decreases. I'd put IE Mac in these middle rings somewhere, and I 
certainly wouldn't worry too much as long as the Mac IE view looks 
professional and doesn't have any functional issues.

(I'm not beside my Mac, so hadn't checked Fred's site specifically - durr)

In other words, as long as the users don't realise that what they're 
seeing isn't "right" (ie. it isn't clearly broken at first glance), 
personally I'm not *too* concerned about how closely IE Mac matches the 
primary cases.

Older browsers (out on the edge of the concentric circles) should get an 
unstyled view; just the HTML, in other words. My point was that I 
wouldn't put IE Mac into this category just yet.

It would be an interesting exercise if there was an Evolt Browser 
Dartboard, where everyone could mark on the circles of visual support 
where they thought each browser should be - then view the aggregate result.

Anyway - apologies to Fred for not contributing anything useful to his 
question - tip on its way

Cheers

Ian


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