My Decision on Browser Support

Recently, I've felt embittered about web browsers. Well, mainly one in particular. Yeah, sure there's a new version coming out, but since it's not available on anything prior to Windows Vista, how many people will be stuck without it?

Dare I say, "Lots of people"?

The good people at Microsoft are making progress. They're making great strides with Internet Explorer 9. Deep down, somewhere inside my heart, I'm thrilled that IE9 is here. However, I'm a bit steamed that people who are on anything prior to Vista can't use it. I'm sure there's a good reason for it. Maybe it's marketing, or maybe it's something else that's crucial to the core of the browser. But, anyway you look at it, I'm still disappointed that all the people on XP are out of luck. So all-in-all, I'm not attacking Microsoft. They make some good products.

Down to the Nitty-Gritty

When it comes down to it, I want to be forward thinking. I'm not going to cater to old-school browser techniques. Sure, I'll be sure that my site works across the board, I test for that. But, the heart of the matter is moving forward. Not catering to the past. For instance, I don't want to use an image just to round a corner off. There's CSS for that. If you're on a particular browser and you don't see the rounded corner, it's probably not the end of the world. You'll live.

The point still stands. I want to be focused on where there future is going. Browsers like Chrome, Safari (Yes, you can use it if you're not on a Mac), Firefox, and Opera are doing well. Sure, none of them are perfect. But they all have the future in mind.

If you're on IE8 or below and you're interested in seeing what the web can really be like, go ahead and switch to a different browser. Any of the ones I mentioned in the previous paragraph would be great choices.

Don't Hate

You might be writhing with anger right about now. Wondering:

How dare you blaspheme the almighty Internet Explorer?

My response:

Calm down. If you're on Internet Explorer, you'll still be able to use my site.

Conclusion

So in summary, I'm doing my best to look forward with my new site. I feel that going out of my way to support latency is only allowing bad practices to continue to exists. So I'm not dropping support for Internet Explorer. I'm not just catering to it. I'll still test in it to make sure things work. I want things done the right way. I don't want to be hacking browsers and loosing hours over workarounds.

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