Here is an easy example on why you should use more than one type of web browser for testing your site. A special thank you goes to Premium Concert Tickets for allowing me to use one of their pages as an example: Michael Buble Tickets.
The IE Version
Still building websites in IE? There is nothing wrong with that. Still building website in IE, and not testing it with another type like Firefox? Crazy! I test intranet sites that I make for only IE6 users with other types of browsers. I have to, if I want high quality. Besides, there is something wrong with IE.
What’s wrong with IE? Nothing, it’s great. It’s so great that it automatically fixes HTML errors found in a web page. Check out the screenshot I took from the Michael Buble Tickets page using IE8. Notice the menu? Nothing noticeably wrong with it. A developer using only IE would see “a great job”, and sign off for the day.
Time for the Pain
Now it’s time for the pain. Here is a screenshot I took from the page using the latest version of FF.
I took both screenshots on my 1440 pixel wide monitor. On both pages there was large margins on both the right and left. No excuse for cramping menus here. Unfortunately for this site though, the menu gets wrapped content when viewed with Firefox, Opera, or Google Chrome. That’s a lot of potential visitors.
Take the time to check your site with another browser, you may not be as done with your site design as you think!
A special thank you goes to Premium Concert Tickets, for sponsoring Best Web Image with this paid editorial review.
ariel (1)
Chris (1)
Curtis (1)
“What’s wrong with IE? Nothing, it’s great.” Oh, come on Robert!
For one, Microsoft owns it! FF generally seems to treat css and html the way it’s suppose to be. IE6 is a pain to optimize usability for.
I’ll add that browsershots.org is a dream tool for testing. You’ll love it!
Just a little sarcasm. I deal with the problems of IE on a daily basis. I’m even considering writing about a post how IE6 (a notorious bad guy) is in some ways better than IE7 and IE8!
What’s the main differences between other browsers and IE?
Other browsers get better with each update, IE just changes its rules on how it handles things.
Do many people actually still use IE6? I know some corporations do because they are notoriously behind the times when it comes to updating IT technology. I work for Honeywell and we actually are forced to use IE6 at work. Which is absolutely ludicrous because some of our apps are web based and require many instances of a browser to be open.
I heard some place recently that Google is going to drop support for IE6 very soon.
A lot of people still use it, but like you said, mostly for corporate stuff. Why do people still use IE at all, and why it will continue to live? Active X.
I ran into this exact problem with my recent template hunting and testing. I reached a point where I was happy with everything in IE8, checked in FF and Chrome and both of them had hard-wrapped a menu and thrown the whole template off!
This is quite true. Some sites work totally different on different browsers. It’s sad that ActiveX will still keep IE on people’s computers for a long time to come. Then again, malicious content programmers would target whatever is the most mainstream browser anyway, whatever it would be.
Till then,
Jean
its better to use IE than other browser..it is really fast and reliable..
I’m having a problem with this matter some of my design are good in Mozilla while not in IE and vise versa. And in this case there are hard to avoid this circumstances. So I’m trying to rely on widely use browser. That’s a good solution
I don’t know why IE doesn’t wanna go with the flow. There’s still some issues for CSS and Jquery.
I can stand IE. I don’t even have it on my pc anymore.
Do many people actually still use IE6? :/
Many reasonable folks out there spend a lot of time and frustration in the search for the ‘perfect’ call-to-action.
hey Robert i am come after a weak in your site bcoz i was outside.