IE 6.0, IE 7.0 and Firefox 2.0 from a web designers perspective

I remember the issues we used to encounter with Netscape and Internet Explorer when we started making websites back in 1999 . A web designer would spend days building a site only to find out a lot of what they made looked one way in Netscape and another way in Internet Explorer (IE). Gradually as fewer people started using Netscape and IE got better and the web evolved, the cross-browser issues stopped being an issue.

Well ... now in 2006 - it has become an issue again. This time it is three browsers instead of two.

Welcome Firefox 2.0, IE 6 and IE 7.

So here is the problem. Way back in the old days a thing was created called W3C. The goal was to create web standards that all web designers would adhere to. IE decided because they "owned" the market. They could decide what their software adhered to.

Of the three browsers people mostly use, Firefox follows more closely the W3C standards for websites than IE does. IE 6 is really "loose" and would let you write crappy code and get away with it. In addition IE 6 is installed on over 80% of computers.

So Microsoft had to make an executive decision and fix what they could fix, but still allow certain non-compliant code to display in IE 7. Why? Because a large percentage of websites are written with non-compliant code including many Fortune 500 sites and quite possibly Microsoft's.

So just as a back-up they issued a warning to businesses to check their site out and make sure it works in the new "more compliant" IE 7.0.

You would think in 2006, software makers would be more responsible than this ...