Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

True enough. But how many hours of life has ie sucked from developers? I mean ms purposefully held back the development of multiple internet standards, they deserve what they get imho, ideals or not.

Bob sells software. To run that software Ann needs X, Y, and Z.

When Bob tells Ann that she must have X, Y, and Z to run the software he is giving her important information. When Bob tells Ann (who is blind, or deaf, or has a motor-control disability (or just likes the software she uses), but who also buys the software her engineers use) that she cannot get information about the product that he sells because she uses the "wrong browser" Bob is being stupid.

You might not like the fact that people use different computers and different operating systems and different browsers and different settings on those browsers. You may not like the fact that WWW was an attempt to solve compatibility problems across those variety of systems.

But if you are trying to sell me something, and I visit your website to get information about what you are selling, and you tell me that I'm using the wrong browser to get that information - well, I'm probably not going to spend my money with you. This is especially true if the information you're giving is trivially easy to give as text with a few diagrams (and even diagrams can usually go with good alt and longdesc attributes.). That was available in HTML 1.x[1] I understand the desire to give everything sliding transitions and round corners and shiny overlays and etc. I understand that CSS and correct design help impart meaning that isn't available in plain text.[2] But it is incredibly frustrating to be told that you cannot get simple information because you're not using what someone else thinks you should be using.

Remember that it is trivially easy for me to use the browser you want me to use, on the the OS you want me to use, on the computer you want me to use[3] and yet still totally destroy the design by increasing the font size. People used to specify font sizes. Most people know realise that's a stupid idea. (Imagine a TV station that broadcast a programme at a fixed volume, overriding the viewer's tv volume control. You'd call that station stupid.)

[1] (http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht...)

[1] (http://www.alanflavell.org.uk/alt/alt-text.html#howlers)

[1] (http://www.alanflavell.org.uk/alt/)

[2] A List Apart used to have a nice page about this, but I can't find it at the moment.

[3] Baffling that people say that a 1 GHz machine with 256 MB ram is insufficient power to browse a website, but people do say that. And not forgetting that IE on Mac used to be created by a completely different team to IE on Windows. God knows who the poor souls who did IE on Unix were. See also the unreasonable bandwidth requirements for many websites. Sure, do what you like for fun, but again if I'm buying something from you I want a quick responsive website even if I'm on a stupid slow Australian link, or on some dial-up in the US (which is still surprisingly common) or if I'm using my mobile broadband dongle on a train, with a poor signal.

But IE6 won't even run on new versions of Windows. You'd need to run up a VM on a user's machine with a copy of XP.

What's the refresh cycle at DoD? Two decades?

If you are a good front developer then fixing ie7 issues shouldn't be an issue or take you long to fix!

For html5 use the html5 boiler plate and ensure your code validates. Also do not use floats to position everything, only elements that need to flow with the contents of the document. Use position absolute for elements that are static and of course in the block that holds said elements add position relative. Using too many floats is bound to make you hating ie7 even more.

brilliant.