I’ve been working on a site redesign for some time now. Most of that time has included not doing any work. However, over the Forth of July weekend, I showed Michelle a mockup I wasn’t to happy with. She also said that she wasn’t the biggest fan. So I started over. The next mockup I created we both liked, so I spent most of the weekend in the hammock messing with it. Its the first time I’ve done the coding primarily from hand, and combining that with drinking a beer in a hammock, I felt pretty special.
Some of my enthusiasm was dashed when I looked at the page in IE for windows – you know – that browser that 90% of the world uses. It had some significant quirks, one which my friend Ben quickly pointed out an alternative for. After making the change, I collected 4 screenshots. One from Mozilla 1.7 for windows, one from IE 6.x from Windows, one from Firefox 0.9.1 for OS X, and one from Safari 1.2 for OS X. The results, in that order, are below. The image links to a larger version of itself. Notice anything?
Small differences that drive me crazy. The site is still not done yet – you’ll notice when it is. I’m still grappling with how to piece it all together so its easier to update in the future. I hate to suggest you change your browser just for a better viewing experience – so I’ll suggest that you do it to avoid security holes, spyware, viruses, and all sorts of crap that targets IE – stuff that make me laugh with glee until I have to help uninstall it.
If that is the extent of the difference between all of those browsers, then I think you are doing great. Those are such minor difference, they hardly affect the overall look. As long as you still have the same functionality then I don’t see a problem.
I don’t think you understand the genius of Microsoft. They make your life easier by thinking for you. They understand better then you do that you really didn’t want the Rooftop logo directly above your site map bar, but rather it needed some room, its own little space if you will. You have just not yet realized Microsoft’s superior layout.
Is there a code that can detect when someone visits your site with IE that opens a real browser and shuts down IE? That would be cool.
There’s code that can make IE do lots of stuff. It can make IE shut down, Windows shut down, the internet shut down, the bank shut down… The trick is getting it to launch another browser. :)
Actually, you can use javascript to serve a different CSS file to IE users, and I’m not decided as whether or not to use it.