This issue is important to Mac users because like it or not many sites continue to use IE as the standard for building their web sites. If you want to create a web site - or more importantly web application - that includes more advanced features like menu systems, JavaScript driven controls, etc. then the coming release of IE 8 could have a dramatic impact on how you construct your site. Joel gives a great background to the whole issue.
As I am currently in the process of building a web based application for public use it has a huge impact on me. Should I compromise the application’s UI because I can’t get the flexible data presentation grid that works everywhere?
DIV based windows within a web application can dramatically improve the quality of the user experience, but if they look like crap or don’t even appear they are going to kill the user experience anyway. JavaScript event handlers are critical to improving the reaction time for the application but will suck it if they don’t work as intended.
I could build a Flash based interface but there are a large number of browsers in corporate environments that block Flash and it doesn’t appear Flash will be an option on the iPhone any time soon. That’s a market that I would like my application to be able to run in.
I know I’m going to support IE7, Firefox and Safari - which in itself is a huge amount of work, but is IE8 going to throw a wrench in that plan? The appeal to building web based applications over client based applications is that users don’t have to download anything and you can build them to work on virtually any OS that has a good web browser. The definition of a "good web browser" is already suspect - with IE8 it may be nearly impossible.
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
You must be logged in to post a comment.