Dan Gilleland posted on March 24, 2008 17:50
<Rant>
I couldn't help but read the line1 in an article (see link below to visit the full article) about "poor standards compliance with IE"1 and think to myself:
"You know, most users don't really care about 'poor standards compliance' in a browser; they just want it to browse the page safely & look nice."
And that's not a small point to consider. Come on, people! The only ones who care about "standards compliance" are the developers, not the people viewing the sites. Developers want standards compliance because it will make their lives easier. The average Joe doesn't really care about making the lives of web developers easier - they just want to see the pages they're looking for. Web developers still make up only a small percentage of the people who actually browse the Internet, and I would not be surprised to see if many web developers actually (gasp!) have both most2 of these browsers installed on their computers - if only to test their pages for both audiences.
2
Originally, I referred to “both”, and I included the following comment:
For those of you who might take me to task on referring to "both" browsers (as if there were only two), that is simply because there are only two major choices among users. Yes, there's Safari, Opera, et.al., but these are small fish in a big pool, and the majority of people still say "Who?" when those browsers are mentioned.
Since that time, Google has come out with its own browser (Chrome), and it is gaining in popularity (see here and here). I used to be quite satisfied with IE, and never really got onto the FireFox band wagon (nothing wrong with FireFox – I just tried it and didn’t find it offered that much for me over IE).
Well, times have changed, and now I almost exclusively use Chrome. And, in case you’re wondering, my switch was from an end-user’s experience (it was fast & didn’t crash much) and not from a developer’s experience (i.e., standards compliance didn’t have anything to do with it).
Personally, I don't care either, anymore. Hey, I'm a part time web developer, back from the days when the browser compatibility issues were really, really painful (HTML, JavaScript, CSS). I know the pain developers feel around standards compliance. I have felt the pain. But as I stare in the eyes of my non-techy friends who haven't a clue of what I mean when I refer to different browser DOMs or having to do CSS hacks - when I stare into those eyes that look bewildered and hear them say "It looked fine to me," then I realize that the only reason my shorts are in a knot is because I (the developer) was the one who tied it up in the first place. Now that I've aged a bit, and have seen how far browser builders have come in getting their individual "standards" to mesh, I find the differences just don't bother me anymore.
And, now-a-days, I don't think they bother my non-techy friends either.
So, when it comes to asking questions about the "market share" of a given browser, don't try factoring in "standards compliance" for the big picture, because this is an issue that just doesn't factor into the minds of most users.
</Rant>
Firefox, Safari, or Neither? - washingtonpost.com
1
“How about it -- with all the reports of security problems and poor standards compliance with IE, what keeps you sticking with it? And what would it take for you to switch?” (last line quoted from article)