I know IE is a *huge* market leader, and I *do* make sure my sites work in IE...
I agree fully with the "design for compliant browsers first, then go back and fix IE*" way of doing things. From my own personal experience I can tell you it is in fact easier that way. I think it's ill advised though to let that get confused with "IE is an afterthought"
My experience is that clients have the "make it look good on my AOL when I make internets from home" mentality. Most don't understand standards and we can't expect them to. They bark back things like "don't worry about that, we redesign every other year" when you mention future proofing and "just make sure it looks good" is the mantra. Because of IE's *huge* market share, when the client says "just make sure it looks good" whether they know it or not, they are also adding "in IE". After all, when they show it to three friends who show it to three friends the odds tell us they are all going to be using IE.
My issue is with the simple, often tossed in there "has to work in IE" bit, that in my opinion falls way short of expressing the real world business importance of a site looking top notch in IE.
If it's work for a client, It doesn't just have to simply "work" in IE, it's has to *shine*. At the very least a client site should never look any worse in IE then it does in a compliant browser. Does an element look off?, even a little bit?, fix it for IE even if that means it looks a little off in Moz when your done. Neato CSS trick fails in IE? Dump it, at that point it's nothing but bloat for the majority who won't see it (including your client).
Someday MS will get on the ball (we hope), until then, if we want to make sites for the majority, we have to stop looking down our noses at IE as a bastard afterthought and start insisting from ourselves that our sites look and function brilliantly in IE, every time.
Brian
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