Personally, I think I’m a pretty open-minded person and I am interested in new trends - if they are related to something constructive. However, some few months ago a new “trend” seemed to invade the world of css coders. The “too cool for IE” thing. It appeared first on a blog and many designers embraced it by the love of Firefox. I won’t go into a Firefox/IE debate (although maybe it would be needed), but I want to discover the reason why all those designers went along with the idea right away.
Let’s see what this “too cool for IE” does. You basically put a badge on your site, stating that it’s too cool for a certain browser.
Quoting from the original article:
“You can go ahead and make the claim that I’m lazy for not supporting Internet Explorer on this site. But as most web designers know, fixing their sites to work the same in every browser is a giant hassle. It seems like almost every time that I go out of my way to do something new and creative using CSS, the whole thing ends up getting thrown out because it would take too much time to make cross-browser compatible and/or often would end up not working at all. ”
Yes, I claim that it makes you plain lazy. You might claim that IE is wrong all that you want. But guess what? Sites are made to function in browsers and not the other way around. You don’t build the site and then adjust the browser to your liking or laziness. Like it or not, good or bad, IE is still one of the most used browsers in the world. Some need it, some got used to it. If you tell your visitor that his browser is wrong, who are they gonna believe? Since you’re not Microsoft or any other big IT corp, I guess the answer is obvious. The visitor’s logics is simple: “I want information and I want it fast, that’s why I’m on the web”. Be sure that no visitor will “take his time” to study Firefox, Mozilla, Opera etc. unless they got too much time on their hands. Remember that a normal visitor will not have the time and will to experiment on browsers as web designers do. So when seeing the coolness badge, the first thought will be “maybe you’re too cool for me too, let’s move on to another site”.
As much as I’d like to see the web as an ever evolving business, I only see involution in this particular trend. It brings back memories of “best viewed with IE” that annoyed me some years ago.
And talking about business, this is bad business by all means. You’ll lose visitors, potential clients, and that means losing money. Are you that rich to be too cool for IE?
Finally, this trend started for the wrong reasons. I would have probably given it some benefits if it was started because of IE security flaws and out of the main concern for the web surfer’s security. Firefox, Mozilla, opera and such are less targeted by attacks, being less popular, therefore they are somehow more secure for the time being. But this thing started because of the problems that IE causes mainly in positioning. Is it the visitor’s fault that IE causes trouble? No, sir. Does he care about it? Again, no. He just wants to get the information. Does he know you? No. Does he know his browser? Well, better than he knows you. You are the coder, you are supposed to make it work in order to give him a good web experience. Just remember that on the web you’re never designing for yourself, but always for the visitors.
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8 Responses to “ Too cool for your visitors?”
Great post. Hacking IE is certainly a pain, but it’s part of the job.
Your rant/rationale misses the mark in so many ways. Of course you’d be an idiot to stick that badge on your professional site. Any designer worth their salt knows that. Kudos for pointing out the obvious.
And it’s not about a secure browser, or who’s is better. It’s about calling a known, faulty piece of software on the carpet - software that makes our jobs harder. So before you waste another hour of your life (and shame on me for wasting me time reading it), do us a favor and remember that designers who sit on your side of the fence (the side that say IE is OK because people are still using it) - you make our jobs harder by perpetuating IE’s stupidity by catering to it.
Have a nice one!
hifiDesign sorry, but you are missing the point here; it’s not a debate about IE, but about the webdesigners’ attitude. I never said that IE is good or bad. What I’m trying to state here is that the user comes first.I’m not on any side of the fence. Why do we have to be on one side of the fence or the other? Why can’t we take a peak from both sides from time to time, just to check if we’re not missing something?
And “do us a favour” - who is “us”?
If you put it that way, I make my own job harder. But it so happens that I love my job and I love the coding.
Nice Article,
it’s another german site but see it self and take a look to this site, Zu blöd für CSS.
Cheers.
Sorry for the wrong Link, thats the right one Zu faul für CSS
Cheers.
[…] There seems to have been a lot of buzz surrounding the “Too Cool For IE” images that are popping up all over the place. Generally, the acceptance has not been positive, but rather, quite negative. And yet we are seeing them everywhere, more and more. One particular post that I stumbled upon that just made me laugh was at Pink Thinker. Let me give you the highlights: […]
I’ve seen this “too cool for ie” logo on a site or two and to be honest I just assumed that only the fixed logo itself was “too cool”. I didn’t realise that the whole site was coded without consideration for IE. I would have to ask though, what concern of anyone’s is it if some people feel to exclude IE? I think the main issue is that people have problems with the word cool and so are reacting to that more than anything else. It started on a blog, someone’s personal site. In what way are they morally obligated to cater for IE on THEIR OWN PERSONAL SITE?
Why I understand the Too Cool for IE thing, yes a professional site should cater to IE 5 - 6 Win. IE 5 Mac I say fork it. MS even dropped support on that one. About time too. But I think in some ways it is a good thing to do. Show IE users that they can;t even use a simple #foo:hover or :focus without a hack. Maybe it will show some the light.