Friday, July 31, 2009

Reasons why I will not develop for Internet Explorer

I don't care if my website works in Internet Explorer or not. If they don't work for you, then there are a number of alternative browsers that are free to get, easy to find, simple to install, and superior in nearly every way conceivable. I don't use it, I don't want it. It's a liability to you and your computer to continue using it. As a programmer, I have some very good reasons why my webpage does not and should not work in Internet Explorer:
  1. Not w3c compliant, not even a very good effort to become so - they don't care about standards, they don't care about the developer, they don't care about you
  2. Poor scores on the acid tests--not even comparable to other browsers
  3. Security or complete lack thereof--honestly, the less secure Microsoft can make their browser, the more money they stand to make, either for themselves or their partners
  4. Money, money, money. For an alternative price scheme, see the Ubuntu promise at the bottom of the linked page (note: Ubuntu does nearly everything windows does, with the exception of DirectX 3D gaming, but is not for people who don't have the time to re-learn how to use their computer)
  5. I have to garbage collect my javascript!? (see O'Reilly's Learning Javascript 2E, section 7.3 for more details)
  6. Failed to support transparent and 24-bit pngs
  7. Not helpful when it needs to be, and too much help when it shouldn't be.
  8. Performance, not so bad starting itself (cold start)--very bad running applications (javascript and memory usage), which is what I would care about as a developer
  9. CSS rendering (the technology that makes pages look so dog-on pretty): FAIL
  10. No page-style switching -- forcing longer page-load times, and completely removing any kind of convenient customization a site could offer
  11. If I were to make this list about an open-source browser, these problems would get fixed (probably within a month or two)
So, as I'm developing websites--I have decided that I will only make a single web page that will work with IE, and that page will have instructions on how to get Firefox. I won't jeopardize my client's computers with that IE garbage.

1 comment:

  1. I love the name Vivian... It's donelles middle name... I would use it if I knew she wouldnt kill me for using it...

    ReplyDelete

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