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This sounds like a post-traumatic therapy session for the clients that accidentally saw their deliverables in IE7. If designers were to show their clients how

This sounds like a post-traumatic therapy session for the clients that accidentally saw their deliverables in IE7. If designers were to show their clients how their pixel perfect Photoshop sketches would look in IE7/8, guess how many clients they will end up loosing? Heck of a lot. You can talk all you want about being SEO-friendly and what not, but if the site looses its polish in some browsers, then the execution is simply not good. If rounded corners are a part of site's design, then they are presumably there, because they contribute to forming specific impression of a product in site's visitors' eyes. You drop them, all becomes square and that's a completely different feel that sends different product message. The same goes for "font stacks" - you just cannot fall back to Verdana when there's no Calibri and assume it's a work well done†, because it's not. Consistent visuals are absolutely essential to forming correct branding perception. If you are told otherwise - run, you are being fed bullshit. -- † Calibri looks much smaller.

dasil003 15y ago
This post shows an astonishing lack of awareness of cost-benefit tradeoffs and indeed the very nature of the web. If you design for the lowest-common denominator, where do you draw the line? IE6? IE5.5? Win98 fonts? Do you render images for everything in order to create the "correct" brand impression in as many browsers as possible while sacrificing organic search traffic? Do you sacrifice the mobile experience to cater to the 10-year-old computer crowd? Even if you forge ahead through the cognitive dissonance to create a graphic-design/visual-brand-centric priority system, for a given budget you have to decide whether you want to dumb it down for consistency's sake or create a more polished design that 50% of people will see today and 90% will see in a few years. The bottom line is that these decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis, and pounding on some creative hubris about the sanctity of each pixel will not guarantee anyone a more successful project. If you ran some A/B testing on the rounded corner issue you might be horrified to find out how inconsequential it ends up being in any given case.
- smackay 15y ago
  Identifying whether the client wants a cutting edge design or one that has the widest possible browser support would seem to be requirement #1.
  - Isofarro 15y ago
    I'd have thought identifying the target audience and the actual use-cases the site needs to meet as being the #1 requirement. Everything else derives from this, and is built to support it.
- macavity23 15y ago
  Agree 100% - and I would bet that the same A/B testing would show that those users who DO care about rounded corners, text shadows et al are using Chrome/FF/Safari.
rmc 15y ago
Unless you are willing to support lynx (the text only console browser), you need to draw the line somewhere. Where you should draw the line depends on your visitors and how much money you have.
- ctz 15y ago
  It also depends on the laws in your jurisdiction which will apply to you/your client. For example, in the UK: the DDA.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Ironically if you need to support Lynx then you will need use simply SEO-friendly markup and likely will have more time for css3 bells and whistles in modern browsers.
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  If the client is expecting fancy visuals, I think it is obvious that lynx support is not needed. Whether the same goes for IE6 and other antiquities/exotics - that depends entirely on site's demographics. But that's off the point. The point is that designing for optional rounded corners makes no sense IF the site design is considered an essential part of product marketing (and it obvious should be). Showing "degraded" version to IE users is not too dissimilar to selling unpainted cars in a poorer part of the town. People there are used to crappy experience after all, why bother.

dasil003 15y ago

This post shows an astonishing lack of awareness of cost-benefit tradeoffs and indeed the very nature of the web. If you design for the lowest-common denominator, where do you draw the line? IE6? IE5.5? Win98 fonts? Do you render images for everything in order to create the "correct" brand impression in as many browsers as possible while sacrificing organic search traffic? Do you sacrifice the mobile experience to cater to the 10-year-old computer crowd? Even if you forge ahead through the cognitive dissonance to create a graphic-design/visual-brand-centric priority system, for a given budget you have to decide whether you want to dumb it down for consistency's sake or create a more polished design that 50% of people will see today and 90% will see in a few years. The bottom line is that these decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis, and pounding on some creative hubris about the sanctity of each pixel will not guarantee anyone a more successful project. If you ran some A/B testing on the rounded corner issue you might be horrified to find out how inconsequential it ends up being in any given case.

smackay 15y ago
Identifying whether the client wants a cutting edge design or one that has the widest possible browser support would seem to be requirement #1.
- Isofarro 15y ago
  I'd have thought identifying the target audience and the actual use-cases the site needs to meet as being the #1 requirement. Everything else derives from this, and is built to support it.
macavity23 15y ago
Agree 100% - and I would bet that the same A/B testing would show that those users who DO care about rounded corners, text shadows et al are using Chrome/FF/Safari.

rmc 15y ago

Unless you are willing to support lynx (the text only console browser), you need to draw the line somewhere. Where you should draw the line depends on your visitors and how much money you have.

ctz 15y ago
It also depends on the laws in your jurisdiction which will apply to you/your client. For example, in the UK: the DDA.
dasil003 15y ago
Ironically if you need to support Lynx then you will need use simply SEO-friendly markup and likely will have more time for css3 bells and whistles in modern browsers.
huhtenberg 15y ago
If the client is expecting fancy visuals, I think it is obvious that lynx support is not needed. Whether the same goes for IE6 and other antiquities/exotics - that depends entirely on site's demographics. But that's off the point. The point is that designing for optional rounded corners makes no sense IF the site design is considered an essential part of product marketing (and it obvious should be). Showing "degraded" version to IE users is not too dissimilar to selling unpainted cars in a poorer part of the town. People there are used to crappy experience after all, why bother.