[vox] More IE exploits

[Richard Crawford]

Michael J Wenk said:

> I never thought Id see the day where I defend IE, but I
> don't see your statement as being fair.  The biggest problem
> with IE is not its buggyness, but its market weight.  I did
> some quick googling for stats on this, and found that 95% of
> the web uses IE.  So given that if you're attempting to do any
> broadmarket web development, you're kinda stuck developing for
> IE(unless of course you want to ignore the majority of your
> market)  Even narrowing down your markets, you really cannot
> afford to ignore IE, cuz if you do, some customer(or potential
> customer) will suddenly report a problem with it, and then what
> will you do? Say: Sorry sir/ma'am, we do not support IE, the
> browser that comes standard on the most prevalent OS out there?
>
> I would argue that you would have to be certifiably insane to
> ignore IE if you do web development.

There is no reason in the world -- none at all -- why you can't build
websites that are compatible with all browsers.  If you do otherwise,
you're building on design flaws built into IE, in my opinion, and you'd
better revamp your business practices.

In my office, we do not develop exclusively for any web browser (sometimes
I have to enforce this rule pretty harshly when the other developers tell
me something like, "Well it works on IE, so what else do we need to do?").
 Instead, we try to make sure that our pages work with IE and Mozilla on
both Mac and Windows.  Building websites that are compatible with only one
kind of browser is kind of like making a type of gasoline that only works
with one brand of automobile.

And I would argue that if Microsoft knows it has 95% of the market share,
then it is acting irresponsible if its browser is so buggy that it breaks
its users' operating systems and requires a continual stream of add ons in
order to fix its security.  I also think it's irresponsible to build
websites that work *only* with that fundamentally broken browser, and
furthermore irresponsible to not at least recommend alternative, better
products to your users.


-- 
Sláinte,
Richard S. Crawford (AIM: Buffalo2K)
http://www.mossroot.com   http://www.stonegoose.com/catseyeview
"You cannot trust your judgement if your imagination is out of focus." 
--Mark Twain