Okay, people, too many of you are using Internet Explorer. Yeah, I know it's the most common browser, and it's conveniently already installed on your computer, and I also know that some of you don't have control over the computers you use, but it's broken. If you can, you really should switch to a more standards-compliant browser, like Firebird. Firebird is lbooyd awesome, it implements all the web standards (though so does the main Mozilla distribution), and there's no reason anybody should be using Internet Explorer these days if they have a choice.
So how's IE broken? Well, first of all, it doesn't support the CSS child selector (>). This is important because I use it to apply different styles to the same tag in different parts of my pages. I'm simply not going to sprinkle class attributes everywhere when I can do the hard work in my stylesheet. And no, generic descendent doesn't cut it; it's got to be child. But that isn't important, because all it means is that text doesn't get justified in IE. Big woop.
The more important thing is that IE doesn't support the <q> tag, even though it's been in the HTML4 spec since 1998. (That's five years, Microsoft. Get with the rest of the world!) So why don't I just use normal quotation marks like everyone else? Well, for one, the <q> tag lets me use the cite attribute to record the source of my quotation, if it's on the web. Secondly, I can use CSS again to make the quotation marks beautiful and curly, and those two reasons are enough for me to use the proper tag, even though I know IE users are missing valuable punctuation because of it.
You have every right to go on using IE if you want; I won't stop you. I just think you should know what your choice of browser costs you.
Stephen says:
I use Opera primarily. It has crash recovery (I hear the latest version also has a recovery function for windows accidentally closed by the user).
My secondary is Mozilla. It seems a lot slower than Opera, and doesn't render some things as well. And mine (1.3-- not the latest version) crashes more often (without benefit of the recovery).
I use IE as a last resort. Not because Opera and Mozilla are better than IE-- and they are!-- but because I really can't stand Microsoft.
Laurabelle says:
I've got no bones against Opera, but I highly suggest that you try Firebird if you don't like Mozilla's speed. I agree that full Mozilla is huge and slow, but Firebird is the Gecko layout engine (used by Mozilla, very fast, very standards-compliant) without all the slow crap that Mozilla piles on top (email, news, chat, etc.). At first it looks really featureless, but there are tons of extensions you can add back on to get the functionality you want. It's the browser, man!
Ai Ling says:
Can't get styles to stick. I'm following MT's instructions but I'm not doing it right. :( Why won't my darn styles stick? I need to talk to you online! :)