There has been a lot of buzz surrounding Microsoft’s latest ad for Internet Explorer—
The ad is clever, but like pretty much every other Microsoft ad, they don’t show anyone using the software. Though they miss the mark entirely, when I and every other web professional complains about Internet Explorer, our complaints aren’t because the browser doesn’t perform well or is slow. The complaints are related to the work we have to do on the backend to make our sites work with IE. The source code for this very page contains lines like:
<!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css">
.addtoany_list a img{filter:alpha(opacity=70)}
.addtoany_list a:hover img,.addtoany_list a.addtoany_share_save img{filter:alpha(opacity=100)}
</style>
<![endif]-->
For those not in the know this means I have to work around IE and specific versions even to get the page to look right. In essence as a web developer I have to create the page once to work with Safari, Chrome and Firefox, then I have to go through another iteration to make it work with IE. The hate for IE comes not from the user experience of the browser which is fine, it instead comes from all of the extra work needed to make the page work with IE.
