IE7 and Firefox

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:47:16 GMT

At least once a month, someone sends me a link to their new consumer Web 2.0 compliant website. I click the link to their website and it launches IE 7.0 and the site looks like someone threw-up on my browser window. I then load the same webpage in Firefox and it's beautiful.

I have access to stats from various websites and the percentage of users that use Firefox is usually between 20 and 30%. The percentage using IE 7.0 is between 15 and 20%. The percentage using IE 6.0 is between 40 and 50%. All other Web browsers are below 4% with IE 5.0 and Safari having as much as 3.x% share at best.

I assume that 55 to 70% of this Web 2.0 company's visitors are lost. Now, I'm not saying that every single webpage needs to work on every browser and I'm certain some of my webpages don't work in some browsers, but when your homepage doesn't work for the majority of your visitors, then you really have major problems. I know most developers use Firefox exclusively, but you really have to test your stuff in IE7 or failure is inevitable.

Tip #1113

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:15:57 GMT

Tip #1113 in developing good software. Don't use components whose version number begins with a zero. I'm sure the component owners of 0. software will disagree and I'm also sure they will tell you it was beta and shouldn't be used in production software when it stops working.

Cool Programming

IE7 and Firefox

Tip #1113