Internet Explorer unsupported

While redesigning this site, I became once again frustrated with Internet Explorer.

For example, IE 5 and 5.5 got the box model wrong. A page that displays properly across different browsers can only be made by resorting to all kinds of dirty css hacks.

In Internet Explorer 6 this box model bug is fixed. IE 6 switches to standard-compliant mode depending on the doctype declaration at the top of the html document. Without the declaration, or with a declaration specifying an old html version, the browser still uses the old quirky mode.

The latest version of html is XHTML 1.1, a W3C recommendation since may 2001. The Conformance Definition states that XHTML document authors are strongly encouraged to use XML declarations in all their documents.

IE 6 however, only switches to standard-compliant mode when the doctype declaration is exactly on the first line. When the declaration is on the second line — something that has always been in the XML specifications — it cannot be found. IE 6 then uses the old quirky mode with the incorrect box model.

Although extremely annoying, this is really just a little bug that could easy be fixed by the IE developers before the next minor upgrade.

Sadly this will not happen. Microsoft has decided to no longer release stand-alone upgrades. The next version of Internet Explorer will only be included in the next release of Windows, which is scheduled for 2005. Internet Explorer will no longer be free.

This site currently uses features like attribute selectors, PNG images, adjacent selectors, and fixed positioning. All of these are missing from IE. It is usable, but looks a lot better in a more modern browser like Mozilla or Safari.

During the last week I have been wondering how to change the design of this site to make it display properly in IE. After reading Tim Bray’s The Door Is Ajar I decided not to.

All websites we do at Fingertips always have and always will fully support Internet Explorer — we have a lot of experience with making fully standard compliant sites work in IE 5, 5.5 and 6 — but on my personal site I will not work around all it’s bugs and quirks. IE users will get the following message at the top of every page:

You appear to be using Internet Explorer. If you were looking at this in a more modern browser like Mozilla Firebird or Safari, it would look and work better and faster.

The anti-IE image is created by Bryan Bell and has been taken from Tim Bray’s essay. I hope they don’t mind.

Update: They don't seem to mind. Richard Tallent compiled a list of what can be done to promote adoption of better browsers. Dave from Mezzoblue had a good point against a new Browser Upgrade Campaign a few weeks ago. Also read Zeldman’s response to this. And then Dave responded to Tim. Isn’t the web a beautiful thing?