False alarm

It turns out VE Interior Design’s site is not finished because Microsoft has chosen to flex their proprietary corporate muscle and collectively give the finger to web standards as well as the Mac OSX.

As a mac user, I’ve long ignored Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  It’s not that I have any real distain for the product (or didn’t until this week), or Microsoft in general, really.  I love the Xbox.  But since this past weekend I have a serious problem with Internet Explorer.  They started this fight.  

Way back when, Apple released a little web browser called Safari, after which Microsoft cut off all Macintosh support for IE.  There hasn’t been a new version for years, while the megaton horde of PCs sold each year come shipped with shiny new crazy versions of Explorer.  I still don’t really have a problem with this.  I prefer Mozilla and Google Chrome for all of my web browsing.  Subsequently, as a designer who uses a Mac to do my work, I am only able to test my sites on Safari, Mozilla, and IE5…I’ve never messed with Opera.

So I finish the VE site, post it for client review and hear back…it’s doing weird things in IE.  Well…as clunky as it is, IE is the most widely used browser out there so this is a problem.  I don’t want my work to look terrible.  I don’t want my clients to look terrible either.  SO a-Googling we go.

Ok so the internet has standards.  There’s a group of folks who set these standards collectively and try to help out designers by keeping everything in line with them.  You may see little buttons on sites claiming them to be “WC3 compliant.”  Well, that little badge shouts out, “I believe in the standard!”  Microsoft apparently does not.  They very intentionally created their browser to parse CSS (the programming for layout control on web pages) in very strange ways.  It’s a flagrant departure from the standards and a system wide headache for developers.

Fortunately, since it’s such a pain, there are some great resources out there to combat the whole issue.  I’ve found Sitepoint (specifically their CSS guide) and Position is Everything to be VERY helpful in this area.

Fight the good fight, bretherine.

P.S. Yesterday I gave a pack of cigarettes to a guy named John who had a dog named Cheeseburger.  He’s been living in a tent in the woods since Katrina. He might be one of the nicest people I’ve talked to in awhile.  It’s a cold time of year to be homeless.  

  P.P.S. I know she’s been around forever, but I’ve been hooked on Mirah for the last week.  While sad, I find her music to be quite hopeful in a way.  I guess I can relate.  Also, I missed the show, but I heard Grails on the radio and liked it a lot.  Peace.