cross browsers

After working on web development for the past months, it has become a peeve of mine to see misaligned contents on Internet browsers. Let's take a look at the FB's home page on the 2 browsers - IE8 and Firefox 3.6. The home page looks fine on IE 8, but the same page looks pretty ugly on Firefox 3.6. I make a mental check to not download Firebug to edit the source codes on Firefox (a habit I developed over the course of work).

"in Explorer 8"-cj

"in Firefox 3.6"

I know what you are thinking right now. You are thinking that IE is a better browser than Firefox? I will try to help make sense of what happened. If you read the forums regarding cross browsers compatibility, you would heard the same speak over and over again. IE is a developer's bane. While the rest of the browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and Safari runs on the same kind of engine, IE runs on an entirely different engine. IE browsers are smart browsers, Microsoft's developers have made it such that minor errors are self corrected and when no command is given for the styling is given, the browsers will present a layout style which it assumes you would want. On top of that, IE browsers are less standard compliant than the other browsers.

So the question now is: why do the developers make websites that looks nice on IE but ugly on the other standard compliant browsers like Firefox? My guess is FB started in 2004 when IE holds the majority of the market share and it still does now. So it makes more sense to develop a website compatible for a browser that the majority of the market is using. So voila, as more and more users cross over to use other browsers and Microsoft making arrangement for anti competition in Windows 7 in Europe developers are finding more of a need now to ensure cross browsers compatibility.

cross browsers.. brings back nightmares.