Posted: Fri 16 November 2007

Are Web Designers responsible for Bad Browsers?

We can't sit in the studio all day creating websites - we need to keep up with the latest techniques and technologies to build better and better websites. With this in mind, Matt and I attended Andy Clarke's "transcending css: modern techniques for designing a beautiful web" at Leicester’s LCB depot yesterday.

(For those who don't know, CSS is what allows us to style the look of a webpage - we can control the font used, the colours, the sizes, add background images and so on.)

So along with learning some great new techniques - learning why some of things I've tried to do in the past didn't work (and now how to make them work) and seeing how Andy's approach to building columns in a webpage can enable us to not only build better sites, but design better looking sites as well. With Andy's column's technique, we can create much more creative solutions for a web design, and not have any technical problems with then building that design.
But, aside from these new techniques, the one idea that I can't stop thinking about is trifle.

The Trifle and High Definition TV metaphors

Now, I've always tried very hard to make sure that when I design a website, that it looks the same in every browser. This seemed to me to be the way it should be done - I'd presented a concept to a client, they'd approved that concept and so that's how it should look on the final site regardless of what browser the client was using. Which is fine, but we have a problem in that not all browsers are the same.
In fact, some are downright awful.
And, even worse, the browser that most people use - Internet Explorer 6 - is one of these awful browsers.

What this has meant in the past is that I've designed and built websites that I know will look great in Internet Explorer 6, but of course, this then means that people using more advanced browsers get the same "lowest common denominator" experience.

What Andy is proposing - and is doing with his designs - is that we adopt the trifle metaphor.
Essentially, everyone gets the same sponge, jam, custard and cream, and it's delicious and everyone enjoys it.
But people who are using Firefox, Opera, Safari or any of the more advanced browsers get the hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top. The website is just that little bit better for these people.

Extending this idea, it's very similar to the state of television now. I know that when I watch a film on the little telly in the bedroom that it's not going to be as good quality as if I was watching the same film on an HD Widescreen tv with surround sound. I accept that - I'm still enjoying the film, but I'm aware that someone else might be getting that little but more enjoyment from it.

And this then leads me on to the point of this article - and I only started thinking about this because Andy spoke so passionately about it - are we, as web designers, responsible for allowing bad browsers to continue to be used so predominately? Aren't we our own worst enemies because we build sites that look great in bad browsers, so everyone then keeps using the bad browsers?

Shouldn't we be building websites that look great in bad browsers, but then build them in such a way that then look amazing in better browsers? If people then start to notice that when they look at the same site on their friend's computer that it looks much better - would then they switch to using a different browser?
And if they do, do we then get a state where the lowest common denominator is actually much higher?
What a great place to be in for web design then.
If our baseline becomes that much higher, how astounding are the websites going to be where the designers push the limits again?

So, I accept my responsibility.
I will be sprinkling hundreds and thousands across my website designs from now on!

By: john
http://www.eazytiger.net
Web design and ecommerce Leicester

• « back to articles