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In 1975, the Metric Conversion Act designated the metric system as the preferred system for use in the United States. Sixteen years later, the President signed Executive Order 12770, directing the federal government to make primary use of the metric system. Yet we still follow mile markers on freeways today, and with the exception of soft drink bottling, most consumers still think in Imperial units. It’s a function of the market determining the standard, despite the best intentions of governing bodies to make use of a more efficient standard.

Last week, Tim linked to a story about how Opera is suing Microsoft to make Internet Explorer standards compliant. He makes several good points on how it can be difficult to code for IE, because it lacks standards compliance. I would argue, however, that given its roughly 80% market share, web users have decided that Internet Explorer is the standard.

I know that this argument tends to make purists unhappy. Yes, in theory, if everyone designed their browsers to meet W3C specs, and everyone wrote their pages to follow the same, we’d all live in a happily cross-browsable world. But in reality, for whatever reason (and this explanation seems to be a logical one), the Powers That Be in Redmond have decided that Internet Explorer doesn’t need to be fully standards complaint.

Read on below the fold for thoughts on how to make sure your site isn’t a casualty of the browser wars…

In part, the reluctance of browser builders to comply to standards may be a function of the fact that the W3C was founded as an intellectual body, back in 1991 when the web was just emerging from its academic cocoon. Given the more commercial focus of the modern internet, it could be argued that the standards don’t hold up to what people are designing for today (a quick look at the W3C’s website shows a very standards-compliant, but exceedingly Spartan and visually boring site), and that compliance should be secondary to utility.

So then the question comes up of what to design for. Some designers and other HTML aficionados will tell you to design for the standard, irrespective of browser quirks - if people choose to use a non-standards complaint browser, let them suffer the consequences. This kind of thinking, however, leads to sites that don’t serve your users, and in the end, there’s not a lot of point to a site that isn’t user-centric. To be fair, some sites will drop an evangelical ad to try to convert IE users, and use that to justify ignoring how the site looks in more mainstream browsers.

You can also design for IE and ignore the other browsers, assuming that if folks are savvy enough to pick a non-default browser, they understand that sites won’t always look optimal there. In addition, all PCs have Internet Explorer installed and you can get it for Macs, so most of your users will be able to get the optimal experience on your site, if they choose. Unfortunately, the constituency for non-IE browsers can be a vocal one (as I alluded to here), that doesn’t enjoy being treated as an afterthought. In addition, the share of other browsers has grown to the point that it’s difficult to justify cutting out 20% or more of your audience.

A third option would be to create alternate versions of each site for each browser, then redirect appropriately. Here, though, there becomes a question of triage - how many versions back of IE do you go? Do you need to support the latest beta release of Firefox? And does the 0.01% of your audience that uses Konqueror really merit the time it takes to adapt your site to them?

Lastly, with the growth of the mobile web, sites need to be able to think small as well - and which mobile devices do you prioritize? For more on the implications of the mobile web on design, see a piece I wrote regarding the iPhone or this piece by Taylor about Google’s Android.

In the end, the argument may become moot with the introduction of IE8 - according to a much-dugg story, the new version of Internet Explorer may be standards-compliant. For now, the best practice may be to check your site stats and see what your visitors look like.

As a user, I almost always browse with Internet Explorer - as I tell folks here, it’s because I like to experience the web the same way the average user does. It’s only on rare occasions that I have to open Firefox (outside of cross-browsing site-testing purposes) mostly when I’m using a new web startup application that’s too cool to care about working on IE yet. But in the new year, I’ll resolve to be more standards compliant by not obeying an interstate speed limit unless it’s posted in kph.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Usability, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.