I'm curious - I have a question for any other website designers.

What browsers do you focus on when designing? Strictly IE? Firefox or Opera?

The SO and I were having a discussion on how important it is to design sites for various browsers. I say - to heck with anything but IE, since that's what the majority of users utilize and it's the most forgiving. He spends a lot of time getting the coding just right for Firefox and Opera.

Any thoughts out there?
TIA
Lauri

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Unions - the folks who brought you weekends!
Proud Army Mom

We coded for IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and several others including a couple of emulators. We always tested on various platforms, too, and at various sizes.

IE is the most forgiving? Wow, are you guys a FrontPage exclusive shop?

Coding to HTML standards (no hActiveX) will get you a page that works in all major browsers. Keep an install of all the maon ones (Safari, Firefox, Opera, Internet Exploder) to make sure it looks right and meets your needs.

actually, ie is pretty forgiving when it comes to handling html that isn't quite 'standard'. while compliance isn't a huge chore in simpler layouts, it can be a real pain in the neck when coding complex design and interaction. sometimes the ie 'workaround' is far simpler than the solution that is technically 'standard.'

that said, we try to code primarily for ie and firefox... current stats indicate around 60% of users have some flavor of ie and around 34% use some flavor of firefox. we find that 34% of our target audience is too big to completely ignore.

-M

FrontPage? ick

I'm a Dreamweaver user, but S.O. hard codes, plus uses Java and Flash extensively. He's waaay more advanced than I am!

thanks, all for responses - you backed his position, which I can accept!

(Here's an Example of our work - NTEU45)

I just know very few people who use other than IE, but I guess I should widen my circle of users.

I do appreciate the responses, even if I am wrong-thinking!

__________________
Unions - the folks who brought you weekends!
Proud Army Mom

You can find browser statistics - here's one from
Browser Statistics

So if you didn't include Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera you would be jeopardizing 38.5% of potential visitors. When we were developing commercial sites our clients were unwilling to forfeit even 1%. And that was when the Internet wasn't nearly as competitive as it is now.

Good point

Since the above website is primarily designed for members of National Treasury Employees Union, and since all members work for the Federal government, AND, since no one in our Agency is allowed to use anything BUT IE on a government computer, I was thinking less globally and more locally.

But, since dear S.O. designs for other clients, he tends to look at a much bigger picture. Guess that's why he's the designer and I'm just a federal employee!

__________________
Unions - the folks who brought you weekends!
Proud Army Mom

It really isn't that much more expensive to design for different browsers as long as you plan for it from the beginning. And sometimes the client requirements outweigh everything else anyway.

The harder thing is trying to make all the IE versions work the same in my opinion.

Ick. Stationary tiled photo backgrounds are horrible. I auto-abandon pages with that "feature" without looking back.
I will never understand the popularity of gouging out a user's eyeballs.

how polite. let's see some of your work, dark jedi.

-M

Lauri,

I checked in Firefox and Opera and it all seems to work just fine.

One of my hardest lessons was that the client was always right.

mmm and flintysooner,

Thanks for 1) your defense and 2) checking Opera and Firefox, respectively.

Constructive criticism is taken seriously and appreciatively. Noncommunicative slams are taken with about as much consideration as the value they have - none.

I "auto-abandon" comments like that without looking back.

Lauri

__________________
Unions - the folks who brought you weekends!
Proud Army Mom

I did not seek to be polite, I sought to be honest.

Little of my work is on the web anymore, I don't do design anymore.
Natural Resources Conservation Service was my last, and little of that is mine anymore.

Stationary backgrounds make overlay text hard to read. You want people to look at your web pages, make them worth looking at. If you can't take criticism, don;t ask for opinions.
I answer requests for input honestly. Always have.
"Does this dress make me look fat?" No, your fat makes you look fat. The dress fails to hide it as well as you might like.

no. you sought to be a jerk. what you offered was not honest and constructive criticism, but a childish jab. a professional who is secure in his talents and abilities does not behave in the manner that you did. consider yourself warned.

-M

As you wish. I will no longer provide criticism on request to users here.