In his article The top 20 IT mistakes to avoid (hat tip: Harry Fuecks) columnist Chad Dickerson goes further than putting forward a business case for developing cross-browser web applications, he actually lists developing web apps for IE only as the eleventh biggest IT mistake.
Many enterprises may not be able to avoid using IE. But if you make sure your key Web applications don’t depend on IE-only functionality, you’ll have an easier time switching to an alternative, such as Mozilla Firefox, if ongoing IE security holes become too burdensome and risky for your IT environment.
Dickerson’s point is simple – as tempting as it may seem, it’s a bad business decision to arbitrarily tie your web app to any one browser. This is compounded when a browser has a proven track record of problems. If your app isn’t tied to one browser then you can happily ditch the browser you were using across your organisation and switch to another.
Whether he’d recognise it by name or not, Dickerson is recommending Web Standards. It’s exactly the same message we’ve been preaching at the WaSP for years, and it’s no coincidence that the basic business case never goes away.
Use web standards. It’ll save your arse.
Comments
I tried to introduce the Ministry Team at my church to Mozilla Firefox but the Head Minister later told me that they would only use Internet Explorer because they wanted everybody to use the same software. I tried to remind him what I’d said about people’s credit card numbers potentially being stolen by hackers if they used Internet Explorer but he just “replied” with a confused look in his face.
Or maybe I just have a problem with dealing with “committees”. I try to give them advice but somehow it gets lost in their meetings and nothing gets done (same old story).
It’d be great if I found a workshop that deals with how to make committees and other groups of people actually listen to what’s being said to them.
Have fun
Peter Mount
Not a chance.
Every single web front end to every bought application is IE specific. Not just little things like using document.all, which we could fix with a few tweaks, but everything. The applications just will not work in Firefox without heavy tweaking. IE-specific HTML, specific CSS, specific JavaScript, specific DOM stuff…it’s all, in theory, workaroundable, and that’s what prompted my past musings on making Firefox emulate IE through an extension and what would need to be in that extension —but it would be serious, epic work. And once again, despite how the point of the web is to be cross-platform, we find ourselves bound in. People making commercial web apps just do not care about cross-browser; they develop for IE. The battle for web standards is beginning, slowly, to take effect on the web. In the firld of intranets and applications for internal use it’s barely even got a foothold, and I’d love to know a way to fix that, because it’s going to stand in the way of corporate adoption of Firefox.
It seems like madness to me to throw away that openness and flexibility by writing browser specific applications.
From a web application platform perspective, IE offers nothing over the other modern browsers so there really is no need to use its ‘special features’ (I’m struggling to think of even one).
The problem is finding key decision makers and persuading them that it’s worth the time put in. But especially with IE being tied to Windows versions in future, and growing interest in Linux, I don’t see a bright future ahead of a company which continues to build IE-centric garbage.
The danger is, of course, that things can swing the other way. Sure, you shouldn’t write IE specific code, but you also need to make sure you don’t end up with a site that only works in Firefox. Thankfully, most of the people “smart” enough (-1 Troll) to be building sites that aren’t IE dependant are usually “smart” enough to realise it swings both ways. We aren’t seeing sites made entirely in XUL, but give the unwashed masses some time…
Thankfully the push is for standards, not “omfg Firefox is awesome IE is evil kthx”.
Peter – oh boy committees! I starting working for my second one a few months ago and its been hard work. Well actually everybody in the committe is behind me except for one guy, and that one guy brings down the whole process… its a real shame!
You might want to look at IEDocMon, it’s a DOM Inspector addin for Internet Explorer. I know you said you changed to Firefox for development but you might find this handy. One site that has it is at: http://www.cheztabor.com/IEDocMon/
In my own humble way I’ve been trying to make sure things work in at least 3 browsers, i.e. Internet Explorer, Opera and Mozilla Firefox. As much as I’d prefer to do everything in Firefox it’s just a fact of life that you have to test in Internet Explorer as well.
As for committees, to quote Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks, “Can’t we all just get along”? (i.e. just before the Martians killed him and planted a Martian flag up where the sun don’t shine).
Have fun.
Although I say I only develop in FireFox, I do ofcourse double check sites in IE. Once everything is done (or at specific milestones during the build) I check sites in Opera, Netscape, IE5/5.5 and Mozilla aswell. IE5/5.5 normally has its own special slot just for fixing any box model problems etc
That is to say, Firefox is not a standard. Code to the specs and Firefox will play along. Code for Firefox and that’s no better than coding specifically for IE.
Your doing better than me. The only version of Internet Explorer I check in is the latest version. I’ll have to follow your lead and check stuff in IE5/5.5 as well.
Did you look at IEDocMon? I’m interested to see what other people think of it.
Have fun
On another note, I think it’s still a good idea to code for IE, just not IE only :)
If it were my own app that only I’d be using or a client that I personally know uses mozilla, I’d make it a “Mozilla only” CMS. It’s about time IE users know what it’s like to not have something work in their browser
Actually, blasphemous (sp?) as it may sound, I hope Firefox doesn’t win the final battle. The reason is that I hope there’s a constant battle to have the best browser possible, and thus keep innovating. Having a single winner and no innovation (as a result) is no fun.
Actually, the innovation is probably best left to those who write the standards. Otherwise we’d be back to the way we were when IE and Netscape both had elements the other browser didn’t support (<multicol> anyone? <layer>?).
I’m just hoping that MS notice the rise in firefox is being helped because of its compliance, and decides that IE needs to be comlpiant too.
Don’t get me wrong. Standards complicance is important. But so is innovation. As long as innovation doesn’t get in the way of standards adherence, and as long as browser specific extensions are clearly marked so, then what’s the problem with it?
I think what we all wish for is just for microsoft to come out with IE7 and that it roughly simulate something like Firefox. The reason why standards evangelists push firefox is because FF is the most up to date on implementing them. Remember how mad you used to get when you’d look at your site in IE 4.0 and it looked awesome, but then you’d open up netscape 3.0 and it sucked?
I bet standards evangelists back then (if they existed) were pushing common folk to download IE 4 because they had the most up to date browser that followed the W3’s specs (from what they were at the time).
Any how, that was during a time when browsers were almost constantly coming out with newer versions and the turnover rate was much quicker than it is now – as so it seems.
The word “evangelism” probably wasn’t used back then because there was nothing to evangelize to. I guess you could say that new religions were constantly popping up so it would seem kind of rediculous to evangelize folks to use a browser, and then you yourself switch to another just a few months later.
What if in IE7 microsoft decides to implement CSS 4 (this is totally hypothetical – especially since the W3C isn’t even completely finished drafting CSS3 recs), and Mozilla is still admists trying to fully implement CSS3? We’d then be telling people to switch to IE7.
With all that said…it’s all very doubtful.
What needs to happen is all browser makers need to share the same codebase, and any updates to the shared code, browsers would then be required to send out an update to their users. This way we can all use our browser of choice…and that choice would be based on browser experience such as tabbed navigation and bookmark options and what we can do with RSS etc, etc…and the choice should not be based on why some sites look funny in one browser, but normal in another.
Good discussion :)
Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. I meant innovation in terms of the browsing experience, not in terms of redefining standards. As far as redefining standards goes: been there, done that, didn’t like the T-shirt.