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Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS | For A Beautiful Web

Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS | For A Beautiful Web

Andy Clarke asks the question that we all have pondered to one extent or another if you have spent anytime working for the web in a world beyond black text on a grey background that some of us started this game in. There is a common thorn in many a designers side (beyond the obvious longing for CSS 3 support in browsers on interest) we all know who it is don’t we… IE 6. How does a browser have so much penetration and so little love?

How do you answer the Internet Explorer 6 question?

• Design for better browsers, then design alternative solutions to handle IE6 bugs?
• Write a remedial IE6 stylesheet to address layout issues?
• Use JavaScript to bootstrap CSS support in IE6?
• Make your site look exactly the same in IE6 as in any other browser?
• Develop to better browsers and spend no development time or testing for IE6?
• Block IE6 users from seeing your site’s styles?

It seems that this is an awful good idea, I am not a designer, do not pretend to be a designer, if I need a design for a site that I am working on for a client I have a go to short list of people. But the sheer volume of time that clients are billed to make a site look and feel the same in IE6 is, frankly, ridiculous. So many lost hours and dollars. This does seem like a workable solution, there has to be a notion that there comes a time when a design has to have differentiation across platforms, and like it or not IE6 (and in some ways IE7) really is another platform. No matter how good a mobile browser it you have to make different design consideration for it, if that is a target that you care about. I think that the premise that the web is a write once and use everywhere design environment is just plain wrong.

Not unlike Arc90’s awesome Readability plug-in, the styles Andy has designed concern themselves with typographic hierarchy and whitespace. Here’s the theory: make the page easy to read, make it obvious that somebody designed it, and the IE6 user will have a good experience. [Zeldman - A new answer to the IE6 question? ]

Also I think that the better the separation of your content and your design the more flexibility you are offered to deliver differentiated content to the user. If your design is simple (not much to it, doesn’t actually do much) you can probably get away with spending time to get that look to be consistent with one set or ‘css’ and ‘templates’, but I think the reality is that we are attempting to do things that are ever more complex and intricate and a designers time might be better spent building a consistent experience not a consistent design.

I, personally, prefer this approach of providing a minimalist experience over the idea of preventing people from accessing it altogether. Or berating them for their choice of browser, assuming they have any choice at all. We should stop making fun of the kid who dresses funny because his parents can’t afford nice clothes. [Snook - Elephant in the room]

Chasing the ’standards’ rainbow of perfect rendering across all browsers on all platforms will lead to spending most of the pot of gold before you ever get to it (assuming you can get there…)

(Via Zeldman and Snook)