November 20th, 2009|8:15pm.
A lot of my web developer friends get frustrated with Internet Explorer and in their rage vow to refuse to create hacks in order to make sites work under IE's archaic rendering engine. But this never works, expect on personal sites. No business wants to alienate the vast majority of their market by not supporting IE. No company has a strong enough web presence that they can people it's the browser's fault that the page looks like crap. Well, almost nobody. Google could tell people this. They are ingrained in enough people's lives that maybe people will question the browser that came with their computer back in 1998 .
Now that Google has firmly establised themselves in the browser market (not to mention their many complex web apps that require the capabilities of modern browsers), they really have good reason to try this power play. All they would have to do is redesign the default, simple Google home page using technologies that most modern browsers support but don't fail gracefully. In fact, I've gone ahead and done this for them. I've recreated the Google homepage using a bunch of HTML 5 tags.
I give you.... HTML 5 Google!
Go ahead and look at it in a browser that supports most HTML 5 (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and take a look at it in one that does not (any version of IE). It's functional in both, it just looks pretty stupid in IE (and tells users why). If Google doesn't work well in IE, then either people will switch or Microsoft will catch up quickly. Either way seems good.
Yes, I know that HTML 5 doesn't have an official spec yet, but basic elements can be supported to encourage use of obviously set elements. This is just a proof of concept for someone like Google putting some pressure on Microsoft to catch up with the times (they're already doing this a bit, try visiting YouTube in IE6, it gives you a warning about having a sub-optimal experience and suggests upgrades). IE isn't going to go away, so they need a good reason to make it better.
Feel free to swap this out for the regular Google page that your tech-resistant friends/family member have set for the home page of their browser. Google, if you're reading my blog, feel free to use this idea. You're welcome.
Like.
Dear Google,
Please hire my friend Dave.
-THX Juli