Brennan’s Blog

There has been some IE7 bashing on Digg.com lately. Sure it can be fun, but the recent rants were just inaccurate. They were uninformed of the history or IE5, IE5.5, IE6 and the corrections which went into IE7. Some context is necessary here. Just consider that Netscape 4 was dominant when IE6 was released. The Javascript and CSS support in Netscape 4 was horrendous when you compare it to IE6, which stood still for 5 years. Given what we have managed to do with IE6 you have to give the IE6 developers some credit. Understanding the history and the recent changes will help you cope with the changes over the coming years.

Recommended Reading

• Preparing your Website for IE7
• Internet Explorer 7 and Future Proofing your Website
• The Wait for IE7, Good or Bad?
• Turn IE6 into IE7 with a Little Javascript
• Web Development Tools for the Power Developer

Recommended Books

• Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition
• More Eric Meyer on CSS
• The Zen of CSS Design

These books are written by authors who are giants in the field of web design and development. The techniques which are covered in these books are invaluable. And they are all browser neutral. When they cover workarounds they are meant to overcome the inescapable fact that a browser released 3 years ago will not have support for standards created 1 year ago. It just makes sense.