"Firefox support - available soon!" means you're doing things the hard way

I am disappointed to see that Windows Live is not working right in Firefox.[1] Not because I'm all religious about browser support and all that, although Firefox has been my default browser for quite a while. I'm just as dismayed when I see sites that only support Firefox, Safari, or Lynx and say they're adding IE support soon...

That means you're doing it the hard way. It's a lot easier to build a site with cross browser support from the start than to build the whole site out for one browser and fix it. I've done both plenty of times, and I've always regretted it I fix browser compatibility issues after development. It's much easier to fix the HTML when you've just written it than when you have a working site.

If there's the slightest chance you'll need to support "the other browser" then get your HTML right at the start and spot check it as you go. Don't do it because it's the right thing to do, do it because it will save you a ton of time and frustration.

Disclosure: I've had to correct tons of "browser specific issues" over the years. Heck, I've done it plenty in the past week... However, I make a point of checking that the sites generally render in every browser with over a 10% market share throughout the development stage.

[1] I'm not disappointed that it doesn't support more browsers - there's good reason for that.

2 Comments

  • Totally agree. It seems these projects that "needed to be done yesterday" seem to get less priority on things like browser support. Sad really. :(

  • I'm disappopinted because

    a) it looks like start.com

    b) start.com works with Firefox.



    So you know it's possible to make the live.com functionalty work with Firefox because Start.com has the same functionality, at least right now, and it works with Firefox.



    So that means that whoever developed live.com either:

    a) developed live.com in isolation based on screen mockups of start.com

    b) was too lazy/stupid/arrogant to walk over to the start.com team and get their latest codebase.



    There's a "good" reason for it not supporting Safari, although you would think that the "guy that invented DHTML" could find a workaround, but not working in Firefox from the get-go is absolutely stupid. Not from a usability of market-share angle, but because they already KNOW how to make it work in Firefox.

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