Hester - 2:34 pm on Dec 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

My point is that by resizing all fonts, it encourages the use of images instead of text. For example on one of my sites I have a header div... But FF can resize this txt so that it wraps, but FF doesn't resize the div, but lets the text spill out into the following div. If it was a commercial site I would be forced to make this title into a gif.

But poor-sighted people shouldn't be made to suffer because of this. For a start, the amount of text they have to read on a typical site far outweighs text used for banners (that you wish not to be resized). It's a good point you make - but I would argue that using a gif would still be accessible, providing you added the ALT text (and possibly TITLE text too). If the user can't read the text in the gif, well they should download Opera, or set a user stylesheet up in IE to enlarge images using the zoom filter.

The problem with FF is it's a half-smart browser. It takes a lot more effort to create a browser with the flexibility and usability of IE than it does to create a purely 'standards-compliant' browser. It's the soft option.

LOL! Nothing is soft and easy about following the standards! Microsoft have been negligent in coding what they want from the standards, leaving tags like <abbr> in the cold. Firefox (and Opera) have taken up the reins by coding as much as possible, so the designer can use all the great things HTML and CSS have to offer. When you look at the bugs still remaining, the W3C specs, test cases etc, you realise how massively complex it all is to follow the standards correctly. (Often Firefox will do something one way, Opera another. People have to really study the results to work out which is following the standards or not. But at least they're trying.)

Of course Firefox isn't just a standards-compliant browser. (And if a browser isn't standards-compliant, what use is it really?) Firefox and Opera also cater for badly-written code, as you've shown earlier, manually correcting mistakes in order to display a page as best they can. If IE had been standards-compliant from the early days, a lot more pages would be too. It has allowed designers to get away with awful code. IE is also full of some truly ghastly layout bugs. Firefox is not.

And what is this "flexibility and usability of IE" you speak of? I see infinitely more flexibility in Firefox, with its extensions, fuller code support, a wide range of features simply missing completely from IE... it is also constantly being improved, so by the time we hit version 2.0 it will be truly amazing. Meanwhile Microsoft have locked IE in the cupboard for several years without improvements or new features, bar the pop-up blocker Mozilla has had for years. I doubt very much indeed Longhorn will provide us with a Firefox-beating IE7, I just can't see it myself.

Anyone still defending and using IE is on a sinking ship. Switch to Opera or Firefox or Safari, et al, as soon as possible. Then we can get on with designing better pages (that use things like generated content and PNG graphics IE cannot handle). I'm not saying the new browsers are perfect - they don't have IE's amazing filters for instance - but with IE there's just too much risk from spyware and hackers hell bent on breaking it right now.

The only cause to remain an IE user is for applications and intranets that depend on it. Or the user is simply unaware of alternatives. Or they wish to live in the past for some strange reason, like those people still using Netscape 4. Or they just can't bear losing the familiar menus and icons. Well, all I can say is wait until the next IE-only virus comes round. Is it worth it just for the comfort of using such an outdated browser?