>>> On 12/2/2007 at 3:48 PM, "Rick Faircloth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Therefore, right now at least, IE truly is the only *major* browser. Even FF is simply a more serious contender. Notice a wrote *more* serious contender. Not even a serious contender, yet. It's simply enough in use that I decide to devote time to making content look good on it. What makes a browser *major* is simply how much usage it has. Not how much it does or does not comply with standards. == snip == As far as standards go, the most important standards are decided by the using public, not by the W3C.
Some developers are idealists who want to live in the world *they* develop as far as what browsers deserve attention and development time. The rest of us live in the real world. I challenge any developer to develop an app for general consumption that works perfectly in FF and looks terrible in IE and see how much money that make from it. Rick You have good points, Rick, from a very pragmatic view. However, it is essential to webmasters interested in a user-friendly site that their sites look good in any browsers being used by 10% or more of their clientele. I'm afraid that the history of Microsoft is one of making applications that integrate well only with other Microsoft applications. W3C has helped to prevent a monopoly caused by this type of marketing practice. I feel duty-bound to pay attention to an organization whose standards have allowed the development of more sophisticated and user-friendly browsers such as Firefox. As far as browser market share is concerned, webmasters need to take it into account primarily as it applies to the sites they design and manage. Though Mozilla market share may be as low as 15% in some venues, for instance, on my university site Mozilla browser use is nearly 25%. And while Safari use is less than 3%, that is equal to 89 visits at my site, so I'm not going to ignore that either. There were only 17 visits from Opera users, so I don't worry about that too much. However, if sites look good in both IE and Mozilla, they usually look fine in Opera as well. One more consideration. As you say, FF is not even a serious contender *yet*. You are wise to recognize that its market share is growing every year. I am sure that one reason webmasters consider FF in building their sites is strategic. They don't want to have to redesign their sites later as the Firefox market share trend takes more and more of the browser market share. -- Ann ==== ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
