If a Site Looks Bad, It's Probably YOUR Fault

This post is only for 48% of my readers - the rest of you are off the hook.

Let's face it, most of you are adults. Try to remember back to being a kid and learning how to ride a bike. More than likely, you started with training wheels. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, we all did it. How long did you keep your training wheels on? Probably not too long - maybe a couple of years. But, once they were off, you realized riding a bike was so much more fun, and the freedom was incredible.

Why are we talking about this? Because 48% of the people that have viewed posh'd have viewed it with Internet Explorer. I'm guessing many of you didn't even know there were other ways to get on the internet, you just know you're supposed to click that little blue "E." It's ok. Like the training wheels, we've all been there. Time to take the training wheels off though. If you'e using Internet Explorer (especially IE6), you're truly missing out on some of the most amazing websites ever created.

All browsers are NOT created equally. Most developers use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to create dramatic effects on their sites. It's nothing new, but sadly, Internet Explorer has a very hard time displaying CSS (I know this isn't a technical explanation, but if you understand CSS, you're probably already using Firefox).

It's probably easier for me to just show you how different browsers handle CSS. If you want to see how your browser performs, check out the Acid Test. It's a test designed to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products. I've done a few tests for you:

This is how the test results should look:




Now, here are a few results:

Safari for Mac OSX. Most of you are using a PC, so you are not able to use this browser. It ships on Macs, and is a fantastic browser choice (although there are other mac browsers just as good, if not better - I'm talking about you Camino)




Acid Test Performed on Firefox 2.0



It's not perfect, but considering the amount of CSS used in the acid test, this is actually a very good result.

Internet Explorer 6 (this is for 80% of the 48% of IE users)




WTF? If that doesn't make you cringe, and start searching Google for Firefox, I don't know what will. Like I said...it's time to take off the training wheels.

Take a look at the red ribbon to the left of this post. You'll see a Firefox Block that will take you immediately to the FF download page. Do it know. We'll wait.

It's my opinion that Firefox is hands-down the BEST browser for Windows users. It offers so much more than just a decent acid test. It gives you tabbed browsing (just try it, you'll like it) as well as a ton of plug-ins to simplify your day - one of which is the Google Toolbar.

Currently, I am using Firefox (actually BonEcho) on a Mac Pro. When I'm on the road meeting with clients, I carry a Sony XP laptop, and use Firefox 2. I'd go into the plug-ins I have installed, but there are a ton of them, so here's a brief description of a few. I have the weather in the bottom right of my status bar, I have a Twitter (we'll talk about this later) plug-in so I can view tweets in the sidebar, I have FireFTP so I can easily upload files for webdesign, and about 30 more. Do yourself a favor and download it today. I imagine a few of the sites on Poshd (including Poshd itself) don't look nearly as good to you as they should. Download Firefox, and revisit Poshd to see what I'm talking about. It's ok, you can thank me in the comments section.