A Better Browser

This is my PSA to help the world rid itself of bad browsers:

So I just wrapped up major development on a 3-month project and I am stoked to be done. But, I am also more and more convinced of Internet Explorer's ... deficiency.

Now there are the normal "quirks" with IE that every web designer runs into (e.g., version 7's inline-block problem). These "features" are annoying and I have to deal with them often, but at least there are a number of known work-arounds to help me.

There is one major thing that I've come to see about IE in these past 3 months for which there are no work-arounds. It is dreadfully slow and clunky. Things that will run smoothly and look great on Chrome, Safari and Firefox, will look awful slow on IE. This last project uses a lot of DHTML and it has a really high level of user interaction, so naturally there are a lot of animations and fading of images, etc. IE just cannot handle it and I've had to remove a lot of animations for people who are visiting the site with IE.

So, now that the browser Google Chrome is celebrating its second birthday, I thought I'd share my thoughts about browsers once again. Use Chrome if you want a fast, responsive, useful browser. I particularly enjoy the streamlined UI. Switch between Chrome and IE and you'll notice MAJOR speed enhancements. I love Chrome and you will, too.

Virtual PC

As a web designer, I want to make my web pages look pretty in any browser people may use. And, one of the hardest browsers to test for is Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). Unfortunately, my Google Analytics show that a little under half of all IE users use version 6. A slight majority have switched it IE7. But not enough to forget about IE6 users.

To really be certain that my page will look right in nearly every visitor's browser, I test in Firefox, IE7, Safari and IE6. I figure this will cover 95% of my visitors, plus if it works in these there is a good chance it will work in the others (e.g., Opera, Mozilla, etc.).

The problem I ran into is being able to test a site in IE6 and IE7. You can't have both versions installed on your PC at the same time: Microsoft forbids it. To help us designers out, Microsoft has virtual hard drives (VHDs) available with IE6 installed. So, if you download Virtual PC (free) and the install the VHD for IE6 at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70868, you can easily test your design with IE6 on the same computer that has IE7 installed.

There you go. But, this would all be a lot easier if everyone just upgraded to IE7! What are they waiting for?