go ahead, snoop around…

Microsoft are constantly wasting my time. I am a Mac fanboy, this is no secret, but I am going to make no mention of Windows users here today.

Are you a web developer/designer? If so, then Microsoft waste your time, probably on a daily basis, too and it’s going to get worse. When I heard about IE8’s impending release, there was the same heart-sinking feeling as when IE7 was first installed on one of my VMs and I realised that not enough had changed. We were promised better standards compliance, and whilst that was delivered, it wasn’t even close to enough. After having installed IE8 beta 2, it’s just disappointing. IE8 devs still clearly can’t add up, as elements that are laid out perfectly in Firefox 3, Safari and Opera are falling all over the place in IE8.

Now, I don’t profess to being able to write my own web browser. If I could, that’s probably what I’d be doing. I don’t develop web browsers for the same reason I don’t fly spaceships or present kids TV - I can’t do those things. So why is it that Microsoft employ this team of people who clearly have little interest in making a web browser that actually works? My guess is that they don’t care about their users (surprised?) or they don’t care about the developers working on their platform (again, surprised?).

For this reason, from today I am not going to be indulging them or their inferior software for my personal projects. I won’t open or test my sites in Microsoft browsers, and subsequently I won’t make any attempt to fix anything for those browsers. Instead, what I will do is give IE users a one-time, tiny notice that I don’t support Microsoft and politely suggest they try an alternative browser. I will also offer a style-less, javascript-less version of everything I do for people whose experience is completely hampered by Microsoft’s inadequacy.

Hopefully, any developer who reads this will adopt the same mentality for their sites and in a perfect world, users will start seeing how little their experience is taken into account by the software giant. It’s all about numbers, baby!

Someone has to start the ball rolling, and why would users when the internet looks fine to them?!

Today, I want to talk about work. I like my job. I love to learn new things and be met with new challenges, and in my job that’s my daily bread. I like to challenge myself, too. Every project I undertake, I do better than the last one. That’s not to the discredit of the last one, because it was as good as I was capable of at the time. I challenge myself to get the job done with less code, smaller files, less-to-no repetition. I hate to compromise, even though the web frequently forces me to do so. I even hate to compromise when the compromise is better than what I was initially aiming for, because I had to forego something that was unachievable. I don’t like to admit that I had a bad idea (even though I can, and I consider it very important to be able to).

I think I’m good at what I do. I take a lot of pride in my work, and it shows in the enthusiasm with which I present myself and my work.

However, with each project I finish, I become more aware of and frustrated by the limitations that are inflicted upon web-workers on a day-to-day basis by certain aspects of the web. The problem is split about 70/30 in my eyes between users who use and insist on using antiquated software and the software itself. Looking at it from this angle, it would be easy to say that users are 100% of the problem, but I don’t think it’s right to let certain vendors get off scot-free, being substantially arrogant to release ridiculously sub-standard software.

The crux of this small point (I could go on but, as I said, all my midnight oil is gone) is that there are a lot of developers who have a real passion for user experience, right down to the stuff that you don’t even think about, and we do it as a hobby even when we’re not getting paid!

This is why I’m not obnoxiously telling you that you’re an idiot for using a Microsoft web browser - as a user, the majority of the reasons I want you to switch aren’t important to you, I’m simply asking that you try one of the amazing alternatives that are free, faster, easier to use (everything new involves a learning curve) and created by people who actually care about your experience and aren’t just putting a browser out because being seen as having a large market share is important for their image as a software giant. A couple of weeks ago, 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 in one day, and I’d really appreciate it if you did the same, it would definitely make my life a load easier to be able to drop support for barely-capable browsers.

If you try and don’t like Firefox, definitely take a look at Opera, another amazing browser.

You’ll thank me for this later.