Designing Websites - What Browser to Code For?

flyingember asks: "I code up PHP/CSS webpages and recently wondered about who to code for. We know that each browser supports CSS a little bit differently than the others, likening back to the Netscape/Internet Explorer HTML wars. Opera or Mozilla hacks are seen constantly across the net. Looking through two years worth of saved webalizer statistics, 95% of my visits came from IE and the rest from Mozilla, these are the teeming masses of the internet. Even the traffic to my site two years ago resulting from this article sent 50% IE users on Windows XP, and the total was 95% from IE. The numbers have only grown more IE 6-dominant since then. Given the overwhelming Internet Explorer user base, unless your webpage is specifically targeting The *nix or Mac crowd why code for anything except IE 6?" While each browser does support CSS, and even some HTML a bit differently, what functionality seem to be universal across all of the major modern players? Can you design a sharp looking website with such features, without resorting to browser-specific code? If so, how?

Comments

Oh, God, please lend him some brains!

[Mr. Piddle]

...unless your webpage is specifically targeting The *nix or Mac crowd why code for anything except IE 6?

This again? Geezus, why is it that in the computer business that history is doomed to repeat itself every freakin' six months?!? You know, I used to work for a company with an all IE all the time policy. First, even they couldn't do it right, then! They fell into the trap of using all sorts of nifty IE scripting novelties, and, guess what, it sucked! Even worse, it wasn't uncommon for people in the company to need to access websites from a Sun workstation, for example, only to be left cussing from here to the moon.

DON'T CODE ONLY FOR IE, EVER!!!

Only one browser matters!

[stinkydog]

Code every thing to render in Lynx! You kids and your fancy [blink] tags don't know how good you have it. Back in the day we did not have "pop ups" and "flash". A couple of tags and some actual content was all we had to design pages with. The web went down the toilet when they introduced Mosiac.

Seriously, however you format your pages, always fire up Lynx and check your work, a text reader usually sees the web as Lynx does.

SD