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by ivanbernat 5156 days ago
It's time we separate "full-stack" developers from "front-end" and "back-end" guys / gals. I've met some brilliant folks who write amazing Ruby but say they hate CSS or JS. Those are "back-end" guys. A "front-end" person will write CSS and HTML markup without a problem and will always make sure it's cross-browser compatible.

I've been coding front-end markup for 7 years now and I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. I'm talking about ~450 projects.

So my advice to all the startups calling "not supporting IE a feature" to outsource their markup to a company that will do it right. Remember, 90% of the world ISN'T using a Mac or a *nix flavor (I'm personally on a Mac) and many of them have no idea they can choose a different browser. Saying NO to someone just because they use a browser you don't like is like going around and bashing people based on their sexual preferences or religious beliefs. F-it, I'm still on Firefox, which is now far behind Chrome, will you ban me access in a year?

I keep telling startups, EDUCATE YOUR USERS. Put a banner and tell te to upgrade to IE9 or install Chrome Portable if they don't have the required permissions.

1 comments

> I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all.

Now that's a flat-out lie right there.

Or it's the truth and his ~450 projects have been of low to medium css/js complexity.

Or even high complexity and he got really, really, really lucky.

I'd say 80% of all projects were done within 24hrs (standard delivery time) while other projects were 40-page multy-style apps (mostly custom "CRM" solutions). Heck, I even had requests do make the markup IE6-only.
So in other words your apps mostly involved rendering text to a page and letting form submissions edit the database. Which explains why IE support is incredibly easy for you.