Should you aim to develop flawless web-projects?
Browser discrepancies are normal. You have to accept them if you are developing for the web.
Of course, there are ways to circumnavigate these ‘bugs’ as some web-designers and developers like to call them, yet it is a labour intensive process that sometimes is rooted more in gut-feeling and common sense than logical analysis.
Therefore, I dare to ask whether web-developers should aim to hand off flawless products to their clients? Please note that I am not suggesting that you create faulty code that does not validate, but rather I am questioning the almost holy ritual that some developers seem to run through for every project in order to make their site work perfectly in Internet Explorer 4.
Of course, you should always aim to keep the basic functionality of a site, yet small browser differences usually take more time to resolve than what they are really worth.
In fact, it is impossible to create a website that renders and functions exactly the same in all browsers. So rather than trying to achieve this golden goal, web-developers should embrace browser differences and only create suitable fall-back options.
An important aspect of achieving this is the separation of content, style and scripting, as well as the use of semantic code.
I will not reiterate the almost unlimited sources on how to achieve this; I want to ask whether web-developers should go even further and stop trying to provide full functionality to older browsers?
Not only could we save time and money, but over time users might actually be re-educated to use new browsers.
How far can we go in only creating a box, within which a site is freely able to transform across browsers? There is a fine line between a compatible, well formed site and a fanatic developer who is wasting his clients money.
Where do you place that line?