The Modern Web Development Process

Following my rant last week about people ignoring IE and telling their readers to use Firefox, Alex King has a great 4 step process for modern web design:

1. Create a nice web standards compliant web site, testing in Firefox and Safari.
2. Test the site in IE6 and create IE6 specific hacks for things that need tweaking.
3. Test the site in IE7 and create IE7 specific hacks for things that need tweaking.
4. Whenever you add new features to the site, try to remember to test in IE6 and adjust as needed.

Hear Hear! You listening Firefox Fanboys? Test Test Test again. Do it. Don’t bitch about it. Either that or don’t call yourself a web designer.

For the record, I love FF. It’s so much nicer than IE or Opera. We cannot ignore it though. 70% of internet users are still using IE in one form or another. I even spoke to a guy the other day that was using IE on his Mac because he hated Safari. At work we “chalk” this as a User Awareness Issue. Don’t worry, he’s aware of Firefox for Mac now.

Collin on April 16, 2007 | Filed Under Words

3 Comments

Adcuz  on April 16th, 2007

I think the only way anyone can call them selves a web designer is if they do it as a job…

Fanboys are shite anyway! :D good post though.

Daze  on April 17th, 2007

I constantly hear that from my Boss at work! He uses IE and I use FF- I must test test test, and test again! Its nice to see, however, when you spend half a day of CSS coding with testing in FF, then switch over to IE to see no difference – then you know you’re getting somewhere! Happens to me once in a blue moon!

And I think Alex missed a 5th, 6th and 7th step – after making changes and hacks for the site design to work in different versions of IE’s, then go back and check again for FF. Then re-hack as necessary to work in FF, then test again in IE, and then back again! :)

Phil  on April 25th, 2007

Just stopped by to say I like some of the changes you’ve made. The sidebars are definitely cleaner — and I think you were right by keeping both of them instead of going with one. Your little bio underneath the photo needs to be positions correctly (it looks like “a few details” is centred, but the rest is left justified).

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