I think its hard to design websites when you don't know exactly what your viewers are using to browse the web. With so many browsers like Opera, Netscape, IE, and Firefox, different internet speeds, and the people that don't update their browser, how do you design for them all?

I want my website to be accessible but I don't want to sacrifice my design, is there a way to have both, or do you think one is more important?

Build it for Firefox and not use transparent .pngs? If you're focusing on design, which normally is focused into graphics sites normally, people will be using Firefox. Other wise people use Internet Explorer, so just remember whom your designing it for.

It shouldn't be too hard to make a design that is compatible with the latest versions of Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. If you can get that down, your covering about 90% of your traffic which is pretty good. Not to mention, if you code to standards and use CSS and xHTML you are a lot more likely to have luck in different browsers.


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- Josh

Cool, thanks you guys! Hopefully Firefox will bump Internet Explorer out, I like Firefox a lot better than IE. Maybe everyone will convert to Firefox one day. It would make it so much easier to know exactly what browser your users have if there was only one, and I think it should be Firefox.

melissajean85 wrote:

Cool, thanks you guys! Hopefully Firefox will bump Internet Explorer out, I like Firefox a lot better than IE. Maybe everyone will convert to Firefox one day. It would make it so much easier to know exactly what browser your users have if there was only one, and I think it should be Firefox.

Haha, we can only hope, unfortunately windows is never going to stop coming with IE and since windows is so popular, I don't see than happening any time soon.


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- Josh

I know that is truth and besides IE is the default of many computers when you go and buy them.

Good points everyone. I was told by a prominent programmer who designs third party software that we shouldnít be using IE to test our websites any longer because it is outdated. Firefox, Opera and Safari should be used. But Safari he sais has some problems. He also said that Firefox is the most compliant of the 4.


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Integrity has no need of rules
Albert Camus

4silverstrea wrote:

Good points everyone. I was told by a prominent programmer who designs third party software that we shouldnít be using IE to test our websites any longer because it is outdated. Firefox, Opera and Safari should be used. But Safari he sais has some problems. He also said that Firefox is the most compliant of the 4.

Most of that is true, however considering the amount of people still using IE, it really should be tested in, maybe just not hacked for design symmetry. IE7 is a lot better than IE6 too, keep that in mind.


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- Josh

Sorry..I donít think I made myself clear. This is for a Macintosh user only, not a PC user. We shouldnít be testing in IE the programmer said.


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Integrity has no need of rules
Albert Camus

Josh wrote:

Most of that is true, however considering the amount of people still using IE, it really should be tested in, maybe just not hacked for design symmetry. IE7 is a lot better than IE6 too, keep that in mind.

One of the reasons why he said not to test in IE5 for Macs is that they are not doing anything to upgrade the program so testing in it is futile, esp. when there is no response to problems that might arise and there is no intention to upgrade IE for Macs. Makes sense?


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Integrity has no need of rules
Albert Camus