IE, Internet Exploder

[bolson]

It seems like every time I run into IE it's bad news. The latest problem is how they show popup menus.

On my own I can test Safari and Firefox:

And then yesterday I got some complaints about how my polls rendered in IE, luckily someone forwarded me this screenshot:

The problem was that it was too easy to not notice that you should scroll up to positive ratings.

Really, how could I know they would choose a totally different way to render that than the two other browsers I tried?

So, do I change my page making it worse for the two browsers I like and better for the 85% of the people out there using the IE I despise and loathe?

I thought I was doing something clever and good with the UI to put the default item in the middle of the popup menu to reduce the average distance to the thing to pick, but there goes IE sucking and assuming that the default item is at the top. </rant>

Comments

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

What do Firefox and Safari do with that drop-down in lower resolutions? They may do the same thing when they don't have the screen real-estate to display the whole list. (In some ways, I like the IE way, as mozilla's incredibly long dropdowns can be annoying at times)

[motyl.livejournal.com]

So, do I change my page making it worse for the two browsers I like and better for the 85% of the people out there using the IE I despise and loathe?

Alternately, if you're willing to deal with complexity it's likely you can switch on browser type.

But really you should always test in IE. I hate IE and I test in it. That's what VMWare is for.

[soong.livejournal.com]

I do actually have one little test for IE in already. if ( IE ) then { print }

I think that's at the bottom of most pages on bettepolls.com right now.