Keeping Up with the Browsers

April 26, 2006 / Web Design / Comments (0)

Reading a recap of the browser battles of the last decade in the Independent, I wondered if we're ever going to reach a time where all browsers display pages in the same manner?

Probably not. After all, there are many pages on the web that haven't been updated for years, and some that never will. Companies who build browsers can't simply expect users to keep up with them. Okay, clued-in web designers will try to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to CSS, XHTML, etc., but Joe Public doesn't know and doesn't care.

As an aside, Microsoft has recently been forced to change Internet Explorer due to a legal battle (it lost), affecting the way IE displays embedded objects (such as Flash-based interactions) on web pages.

Whenever a page has a Flash movie, or Java applet, IE now gives you a thoroughly annoying message, declaring click to activate and use this control. Worse, you see an ugly grey border around the image, and you have to click it before it will act as anything other than a simple image or animation.

Talk about killing usability. What really pisses me off is that Microsoft updated (i.e. crippled) my browser "automatically", while my computer was idle.

But don't worry, they say, as they have released examples of how to re-write websites in order to avoid giving users this message. Of course, the billions of web pages out there containing Flash etc. are now going to be carefully rewritten by diligent webmasters with loads of time on there hands, right?

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght.

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Mediajunk was Michael Heraghty's blog from 2002 to 2010, with articles on usability, UX, SEO, web design, online marketing, etc. More »

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