Sipid believe that the world of
web development revolves around making
websites look good and easy to use. The only thing getting in our way is the millstone that is Internet Explorer version 6.
Our security is paramount, but at what cost?
Let me tell you a story. It all began on August 27, 2001 when Microsoft released the 6th generation of Internet Explorer to the world. The new version, it was made clear, was to focus on “privacy and security features, as they had become customer priorities”. This itself is very impressive. Microsoft’s realisation that the world of
e-Commerce was making more and more headway was to ultimately lead them to where they are today with IE8.
However, this increased research into security and privacy came at a cost.
IE6 is like a tin of beans
The consumer has always been one for the brand. It’s inevitable that we, as human beings, will stick to what’s familiar. We go into a supermarket, we see two tins of beans made by different manufacturers, we pick up the best known brand and buy it. Many will say that this is down to cost, in some case it is, but if you take cost out of the equation (as in, they are the same price) then which would you choose?
It is all to do with familiarity – the comfort in knowing that what you are purchasing is exactly what you expect.
But what if the second tin of beans is juicier, has more beans per can and is more healthy? Would the consumer even know, or would they continue to buy the brand that they recognise?
Internet Explorer is the big brand of browser beans. A massive 65% of internet users are running Internet Explorer, with a truly staggering 24% of all users (not 24% of IE users I stress) using IE6.
IE “Need to fix”
When
web developers are creating
websites, they have to conform to restrictions of particular browsers. These are changes and slight differences between the way that each browser shows the information to the user. Developers have to run tests in each browser for every change that they make, to ensure that the code they are using displays consistently between all browsers – depending on the size of the site this can be a pretty hefty job!
But, the point of this blog, which I’m coming to, is that there is only one browser which stands alone when testing. You can guarantee that you will check in 7 browsers (Firefox and IE, multiple versions, Google Chrome, Safari etc) and there will be only one browser which has problems that you “need to fix”.
IE6.
I can’t fathom what Microsoft were thinking when they made this release. Were they so hung up on security issues that they forgot to make it compatible with the most basic of code? I can only speculate, but it is safe to say that this incompatibility only leads to developers spending more time on coding which can only cost more around the build process, whether this is incurred by the development company (as
Sipid do) or offloaded onto the client.
What is the point of multiple browsers??
So what is the point of multiple browsers? Well, I myself use Mozilla Firefox for developing and Google Chrome for browsing. The reasons are simple – Firefox is brilliant for developing on, mainly due to Firebug, and Google is fast with a nice interface which is perfect for browsing.
To summarise
Why don’t I use Internet Explorer? Well, it is slow, uses too much memory and has problems showing the most basic of websites, even the latest version (8). IE6 was the worst of a bad bunch.
It escapes me why there is still such a massive portion of the world using Internet Explorer – I can only put it down to one thing.
Beans.
