As a web designer and developer, I am constantly reminded that I wear two hats: 1) to design and build websites that can reach the widest audiences, appeal to the most people and deliver rich, interactive, exciting content; and 2) design and build sites that are cost effective, timely and maintainable.

It seems that for some time now those two objectives have been at logger-heads as cross-browser, cross-OS, backwards compatible, highly portable websites have required so many “hacks” , “patches”, “tweaks” and “tricks” to keep things in order that development time increased exponentially. The result being that clients had to take an objective view – spend more money achieving the last 10%, or save money and chop off a category of potential customers.

That dilemma came one step closer this week to being removed. And not before time. There have long been calls from web developers, technologists and end users to convince Microsoft to signal the end of the IE6 browser. The basis for this is in IE6’s complete disregard for web standards, topped with security and compatibility issues. Google’s recent debacle in China proved to them at least that IE6 had not just been an inconvenient side-track, but had actually led to irrevocable damage. Google pulled out of China, and after a brief investigation announced that support for IE6 in its enhanced applications was to be removed as a direct consequence.

Google pulling out of China is not a small headline… It’s not like saying the German’s are to stop eating sausage. China is the most populated country on Earth, and currently one of the largest untapped online resources. Google “giving up” on them is an historic headline. And it seems to me that Google’s announcement to drop IE6 should be seen as the direct aftermath of those events.

Time then, has come to remove your IE6 hacks, tear down your IE6 test machines, hang up your well-used crib sheet for IE6 cross-browser tricks. Isn’t it?

Well, there’s the rub… the purists out there (and in here too) still feel an obligation, a need, a moral duty, to keep providing support for any device/browser/age/config that exists. Isn’t that our job? Shouldn’t we still take the time to explain to clients why cross-browser/cross-everything-else support is still worthy of a few extra Pounds/Dollars/Renminbi?

Of course, some clients will still see the need, and will appreciate the dedication that a good web developer can demonstrate when seventy four different browser/OS combinations are showing pixel-perfect renditions of their new website. But I fear that those clients will become fewer and fewer, and as a business I must recognise the value that is placed on perfection. I will of course always offer full cross-browser support, and will continue to provide the best possible service to my clients. But I will argue just a little less when they say “just make it work for the majority”.

Web standards exist to try to standardise the way website code is displayed in various different browsers. They have been created by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to guide developers on the best way to code websites and to help browser manufacturers such as Microsoft, Mozilla and Google create browsers that can display websites correctly. Unfortunately, the W3C web standards are only recommendations, and although there is excellent support globally for their adoption, some browsers reflect them better than others.

So why should we develop to these standards if they’re not fully supported? The fact is that most modern ‘A’-grade browsers do implement the W3C standards very well, and problems arise mostly from older browsers. The issue for web developers is deciding which versions of old browsers to continue supporting, as customers often have browsers on their computers which are out of date. Our aim is always to make the website as accessible as possible to the most people on widely differing technology. The pay-off is more potential customers reaching your valuable information; the cost is a harder, longer development time, but by developing to the latest web standards, you are ensuring your website will reach the widest audience and support the most forms of technology available to your prospective customers, and you are building a platform for the future that will be easy to maintain and re-develop.

Has Microsoft gone on holiday? It seems so. With their announcement last year of the inclusion of jQuery into the Visual Studio suite and now the imminent release of its latest Internet Explorer (v8). Why the shock? Well, it seems that early beta testing of the new browser is showing it may just have given in to the web standards it has been so sorely criticised for in the past. IE8 is priming up to give as faithful rendering as the current Firefox 3, generally accepted to be the epitome of web standards compliance. This cannot be emphasised enough as good news for all the beleaguered web developers out there who have spent endless days fixing cross-browser issues, primarily with IE.
Of course, the ever increasing market share that Firefox has taken from Microsoft may have something to do with it: recent figures showing a 20% share now going to Firefox[These figures are representative of one particular statistical review, and may not be representative of every web server. Some websites/industries can expect higher concentrations of certain browsers than others], compared with IE7’s “meagre” 46%! Still, that is a huge improvement from 3 years ago when IE held +83% market share.
Where does this leave cross-browser compatibility work – well, it’s going to be some time before the general population converts enough to warrant ignoring IE6+7, so the hard graft will have to be kept up for now. But it appears the end is in sight, at last.