This post will probably bore the snot out of everyone, but I'm writing it anyway. A friend of mine, Shelby, is at this media conference right now in South Georgia. He was IM'ing me about it, and so I went to look at his web site post that talks about it. It includes the following excerpt:

The IT director for the Loaf pointed out that crowds like this come with a good deal of "browser snobbery," and the like it or not 70% of the audience still uses Internet Explorer on Windows, the assiest browser on earth, so we should deal with it. Someone else countered his point by saying, well yeah but a few generations ago the majority of people didn’t think women should be allowed to vote. SMACK!

Generally speaking, Shelby and I agree about most things, but this comment made fire come out of my ears. See, I'm a wee bit sensitized to this particular subject from spending the last decade or so sitting in front of a computer.

So, I have to say that it chaps my hide when people don't want to code for / cater to Internet Explorer users. Hipsters, get over yourselves. People use IE, they always have, they will for the forseeable future, so stop being all "Firefox rules." I mean, seriously. Drives me up a freaking wall.

Can I tell you how many times people code something and then you look at it in IE and it looks like a screen full of garbage? And then they're like "I tested it in Firefox and it looked fine."

At which point I'm like, "Look, Mr. Tousled-Hair-I'm-too-cool-for-Microsoft-products. Some massive majority of users view the web with IE, so don't bother writing code that you haven't looked at in that browser. 'kay?"

Oh, and that analogy about women not being allowed to vote? Yeah, not really working for me. While we're on the subject of pet peeves, let's add bad analogies to the list.

But back to the browser snobbery issue, before I start some IE vs. Firefox web war among my dear readers, I should say that my own husband may not entirely agree with me. Wait, I just asked him and he says he does agree because, as he says, "there's fantasy and there's reality. Firefox may be a better product, but you're making the web page for the public. And it needs to work for your audience."

So there you have it, people. Now I'm going to hit publish and gazillions of bits will go zipping through the air, and then I'll see them put back together all pretty-like in my IE browser. Heh.

p.s. I must say that I do enjoy the Firefox logo. That cute little fox with his firey tail, all curled up around a globe? As logos go, it's quite delightful.
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